The California Supreme Court ruled on Thursday against California enacting ordinances allowing the seizure and forfeiture of vehicles used in picking up prostitutes or buying drugs, thus effectively ending the City of Oakland’s 10-year experiment in the practice. 

In a 4-3 vote in O’Connell v City of Stockton, the court ruled on the narrow grounds that the city could not enact enforcement laws in areas that had already been addressed by the state. “The illicit commercial activities—prostitution and trafficking in controlled substances—that are the focus of the city’s vehicle forfeiture ordinance,” the court’s ruling read, “are matters of statewide concern that our Legislature has comprehensively addressed through various provisions of this state’s Penal and Vehicle Codes, leaving no room for further regulation at the local level.” 

The ruling does not prevent police from towing automobiles involved in picking up prostitutes or drugs but only the forfeiture. Automobile towings are covered under the state’s Vehicle Code.  

Although the court asked attorneys involved in the case to submit briefs on whether the seizures themselves violated state or federal constitutional due process guarantees, the ruling noted that “because we conclude here that state law preempts the provisions of the Stockton Municipal Code pertaining to seizure and forfeiture of nuisance vehicles, thus invalidating those provisions and rendering them unenforceable, we need not address [those] issues.” 

That leaves unsettled whether the court considers seizure and holding of vehicles prior to a court hearing is a violation of the state or federal constitution. The California legislature is currently considering legislation that would reinstate such non-hearing automobile seizures aimed at stopping illegal “sideshows”—provisions which allow for 30-day confiscation and not complete forfeiture as called for in the Stockton ordinance—and Thursday’s ruling would not affect that legislation. 

Stockton’s “Seizure and Forfeiture of Nuisance Vehicles.” Municipal code provision that was the subject of Thursday’s ruling is virtually identical to Oakland’s so-called Beat Feet ordinance, which allows for the forfeiture of “any vehicle used to agree to or engage in an act of prostitution, or procure another person for the purpose of prostitution (pandering), or derive financial support or maintenance from the earnings or proceeds of prostitution (pimping) or illegally acquire or attempt to illegally acquire any controlled substance.” Oakland city officials had been closely following the O’Connell case, and the Oakland City Attorney’s office said the Oakland Police Department had suspended enforcement of the city’s “beat feet” laws pending the court decision.  

In 2000, the California Supreme Court had validated Oakland’s “beat feet” ordinance in the Horton v. City of Oakland case. Thursday’s ruling effectively overturns the Horton ruling. 

Last Tuesday, on the recommendation of City Attorney John Russo, City Council approved a $70,000 settlement in the case of Aram Sohigan v. The City of Oakland rising out of an auto seizure based on Oakland’s “beat feet” laws. In that case, Sohigan and two other plaintiffs were represented by Santa Rosa attorney Mark T. Clausen, the same attorney who represented the plaintiff in the Stockton case. 

Erica Harrold, public information officer for Russo, said that the court ruling means Oakland can no longer enforce the controversial “beat feet” ordinance. Harrold said that when Oakland City Council returns from its summer break, it will have the option of either amending the “beat feet” ordinance to conform to the Supreme Court’s rulings or to eliminate the ordinance altogether. She said that the City Attorneys office would be prepared to present Council with its options at that time. 

Harrold noted that Russo had been on the City Council in 1997 when the “beat feet” ordinance was passed, and opposed it “because he thought it was unconstitutional.” Harrold said, however, that Russo “dutifully enforced the law” while after he became City Attorney “although he didn’t agree with it.”

The Berkeley Transportation Commission’s transit subcommittee debated Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) on the Southside with Berkeley residents Wednesday. 

While BRT proponents emphasized the need for an improved transit service to better accommodate the high existing ridership, Southside neighbors dubbed it a “showpiece project” that would be catastrophic for the neighborhood. 

Proposed by AC Transit in cooperation with the Federal Transit Administration, the Bus Rapid Transit project promises to provide fast and frequent express bus service along an approximately 17-mile-long corridor extending from downtown Berkeley and UC Berkeley at the northern end, through downtown Oakland, and to San Leandro at the southern end. 

“When we envision Berkeley in 2030 and beyond we think Berkeley residents are going to get around in a very different way,” said Sarah Syed, Transportation Commission chair. “Berkeley residents are driving more often as the reliability of the bus has slowly declined. BRT is just one element of a city’s overall urban development.” 

According to the Bus Rapid Transit project draft environmental impact report, the project corridor is home to 260,000 residents and has some of the highest employment and residential densities in the East Bay. 

BRT changes would include dedicated transit lanes, stations with canopies and passenger amenities, advanced traffic signal priority for buses, and modern safety, security and communications systems. 

Overall, four BRT variations are under consideration through the Berkeley Southside area, which consists of Oxford/Fulton Street to Telegraph Avenue and Dwight Way. These alignments would connect downtown Berk-eley to Telegraph Avenue south of the UC Berkeley campus: 

• Two-way via Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue; 

• Two-way via Bancroft Way and one-way via Telegraph Avenue-Dana Street; 

• One-way via Bancroft Way-Durant Avenue and two-way via Telegraph Avenue; and 

• One-way via Bancroft Way-Durant Avenue and Telegraph Avenue-Dana Street. 

“What two-way does is give you a better balance.” said Peter Eakland, the city’s associate traffic engineer. “It will help increase mobility for people within the area.” 

Features welcomed by some in the small discussion groups included self-service, proof-of-payment fare collection as well as low-floor articulated buses which would stop at raised-platform stations. 

Some residents preferred the “No-Build Alternative” that includes “low-cost enhancements to bus services currently in operation in the study corridor and represents the best that can be done to meet the basic project purpose without a major investment.” 

Estimated to cost between $310 million and $400 million to design and construct, the BRT project has so far $102.03 million in committed funding. 

Some workshop participants said the project was not cost effective and demanded information on its funding sources. 

“At some point BRT is going to have a successfully passed EIR, yet the project is less than half-funded,” said Roland Peterson, executive director of the Telegraph Business Improvement District. “We want to know more about the construction schedules and the impacts.” 

Many objected that public participation in the project was being limited and called for a more transparent process. 

“We were treated like 4-year-olds at the workshop,” said Berkeley resident Doug Buckwald. “We were scolded for expressing our opinions. This meeting is a perfect example of social engineering. BRT is a package of many different features. We have to take all of them or none of them. We should be able to make choices that are decent instead of wasting thousands of dollars on needless transit infrastructure.” 

“The whole workshop has been designed to allow public participation,” contended Syed. “We want to hear from the people.” 

Syed added that the final environmental document would be released by spring 2008. If approved, construction is scheduled to take place between 2009 and 2011. 

Some neighbors were worried that the service would result in loss of parking for merchants and increase traffic on congested streets. 

“We were given a lot of facts and figures on ridership, but I want to know how many parking spaces disappear on the Berkeley route,” said Berkeley Architectectural Heritage Association President Carrie Olson. “Parking removal will hurt businesses. Will AC transit mitigate any loss of parking?” 

Berkeley resident Steve Finacom asked whether AC Transit would provide any guarantees for its service. 

“I have lived in the neighborhood for many years and I commute by walking on Telegraph,” he said. “I have noticed that there is no congestion on Telegraph. The buses are moving fine.” 

Disabled People Outside Project activist Dan McMullen asked if AC Transit was doing a count on the number of people currently using rapid buses. 

“I have yet to see one blocked in traffic or one being full with people,” he said. 

“I want to know who will pay for the maintenance of the transit only lanes,” said Finacom. “Who will police them? Will there be any pedestrian amenities in a pedestrian transit zone?” 

Len Conly, a Berkeley resident, said that his group had come to the conclusion that congestion problems would not be solved by a temporary fix. 

“Congestion is going to increase no matter what,” he said. “We have to look at the future.” 

Calls for a transit system that would loop together AC Transit, BART and other Bay Area transit providers became a familiar refrain during the meeting. 

Syed said that the Transportation Commission was planning to return in September and hold two more workshops. After being reviewed by the Transportation Commission, the project would be handed over to the Planning Commission. The City Council would have final say on its approval.

Flanked by high-priced consultants tasked with bolstering a “troubled” housing authority suffering from years of neglect, and facing a new board apparently ready to work through volumes of (sometimes contradictory, some say) HUD regulations, Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) Executive Director Tia Ingram reported at the Monday BHA board meeting on the progress of the newly indepen-dent agency. 

Several Housing Authority residents were also there. The time and place of the meeting had been posted at the housing authority and at City Hall at least 24 hours before, as required by law for a “special” meeting—one not held on a regularly scheduled night.  

They had come to tell the BHA board and staff about problems they face as housing authority clients. One woman spoke about lax management at the apartment building she lives in, where drug dealers are free to ply their trade, and another complained about problematic personal questions she was asked by a worker recertifying her subsidized housing eligibility. 

Rose Flippia, president of the Council of Residents in Public Housing, asked the board to visit the public housing units. “Come out and assess the property—really look at the issues and the way people are living,” she said. “It’s only fair; we’ve been suffering for the last four years. A lot of residents have lost confidence in management.” 

Carole Norris, chair of the newly constituted board, promised the residents that staff would follow up on issues raised. 

BHA, which subsidizes some 1,800 units of federally-subsidized privately-owned Section 8 units and 75 BHA-owned public housing units, was placed on “troubled” status by the Housing and Urban Development Department and has gone through a recent shake-up aimed at avoiding the agency’s being placed in receivership.  

The City Council plus two tenants, which had served as the board overseeing the agency, typically spent less than an hour per month tackling BHA issues, and voluntarily gave up its role as the housing authority board in favor of a new seven-member panel appointed by the mayor. 

As part of the overhaul, and after a stinging city attorney report blaming staff for BHA problems, the city manager announced that all BHA staff except manager Tia Ingram would be laid off at the end of June.  

The eight union members were able to apply for their old jobs. At least two former BHA employees are now working at BHA. Others, according to a confidential source, were asked to return, but opted to work elsewhere in the city. 

City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque’s widely-publicized condemnation of BHA staff included charges of inaccurately determining eligibility, failing to obtain verification for live-in aides or income, paying rent where occupants were deceased and blocking the manager’s attempts to solve problems.  

Workers responded in anger, lining up at a City Council meeting in June to say they were scapegoated for problems that included inadequate staffing, lack of training and a faulty computer system. Tenant advocates have told the Daily Planet that shocking headlines about BHA renting to dead tenants can be explained by the units’ being occupied by a dead person’s spouse or dependents. 

The city attorney has denied the Daily Planet’s Freedom of Information request for the list of landlords of supposedly deceased tenants; the new BHA staff is considering the resubmitted request. 

In other personnel shifts, Steve Barton, the city’s housing director—popular among the city’s low-income housing advocates—responsible for BHA as well as three other divisions in the housing department, was forced to resign. Consultants specializing in “saving” troubled housing authorities, were hired. In order to fund these efforts, the city has transferred $1 million from its general fund to the agency.  

Panos Kyrpianou of Cleveland-based CGI started work in June on a $20,000 contract for that month. The contract has been increased to about $50,000/month, beginning in July, to include four members of the CGI staff and running for three months, Kyrpianou told the Daily Planet. 

Eugene Jones, an independent specialist in HUD finances, has also been hired on a temporary contract to assist the executive director. BHA did not make information on his contract available to the Daily Planet. 

The centerpiece of the board’s Monday meeting was Ingram’s report on the agency’s corrective work. 

Problems include issues of “overhoused” people, such as “empty nesters” who once had a right to an apartment with more bedrooms than they currently need. There is an attempt in some cases to get the landlords to voluntarily reduce the rent on these units.  

The agency has uncovered some overpayment. “Some of the payments that went to landlords seem to be questionable—five figure payments that were significant. We have not found the paperwork to support those transactions,” Ingram told the board. 

“Where there are overpayments we’ve held landlords accountable in terms of collection efforts,” she said, noting that names of workers responsible for the transactions would be forwarded to the city manager and to the HUD inspector. 

Ingram addressed computer issues, noting the CGI consultant confirmed that BHA’s computer system “does not meet our needs as it is currently configured.” 

She also addressed staff issues, saying, “Some of them did a stellar job in terms of stepping up and transitioning [to new jobs with the city], leaving information on where we can find certain things.” Other staff made it difficult to find various pieces of information, she told the board. 

While the city attorney had painted a grim picture of the BHA staff in her May 22 report, Ingram has expressed a more positive view. In a June 6 email to the old BHA staff—sent to the Daily Planet by a person who asked for anonymity—Ingram wrote: “In spite of the fact that I continue to learn about existing problems … I continue to defend YOU … reiterating that I do not believe any BHA staff member is a criminal, or that any of the actions taken (or not taken) were with the intent of some personal gain. I have shared this with the press and with the various city officials—you can quote me on it if you like.” 

At Monday’s meeting, Ingram publicly complimented staff rehired by the agency, saying: “It’s important to recognize those who have labored long in the Housing Authority and demonstrated that we are true public servants.” 

After the scathing reports by the city attorney of May 22 and June 6, City Manager Phil Kamlarz—then the executive director of the agency and also faulted by the city attorney for his role in housing authority problems—announced that the HUD inspector general’s (IG) office would be coming to the city to do a thorough investigation of the concerns alleged by the city attorney. 

However, Ingram said Monday that an investigation has yet to be done. 

“There’s been a lot of talk about the investigation and some of the issues that we identified,” Ingram told the board. “The IG’s office has come out for an initial visit for about half a day. We’ve continued to identify issues; that information has been provided to the investigator who is scheduled to come back in August to resume his research.” 

Ingram praised the consultants’ work. CGI is half way through a complete audit of the computer and hard-copy files for the 140 people up for recertification in September, she said, noting that when the 140 people have been audited, that will be almost 10 percent of the Section 8 voucher holders.  

She also told the board she was proud of the staff’s success at two informal hearings “where both our proposed terminations were upheld.” She added, “It was refreshing to see that staff could really do a better job in servicing our clients.”  

Ingram addressed the importance of being on good terms with HUD. “The last six to nine months we’ve really enjoyed positive relations with HUD,” she said, noting that the regional director has been willing to grant BHA waivers, move deadlines and lend their staff to help. 

In other board business, interim BHA attorney Cheryl Carlson promised she was “not going to bore you to tears” in her review of the Brown Act, the state’s open meeting laws, and gave a five-minute overview, cautioning the board to conduct business in public and to address only items properly placed on the agenda. 

Some of the information presented in acronyms by Ingram and the consultants was difficult for board members to grasp—they will hold trainings to become familiar with the volumes of HUD rules. Board member Marjorie Cox called on fellow members to hold two regular meetings per month, to get up to speed. “I don’t want to provide inadequate oversight,” she said. 

Board member Wise Allen, however, said that more meetings means that the staff spends too much time preparing for the sessions. 

“You’ve got to give staff time to do their jobs,” he said. “Our work is policy. We’re not micromanaging.” 

The next meeting is tentatively set for Aug. 22 at 6 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 

A proposal to rezone parts of West Berkeley for car dealerships drew massive, vocal public opposition at Berkeley’s Plan-ning Commission Wednesday night. 

While only one speaker from the audience supported the project—as a means of freeing up dealer sites on Shattuck Avenue for housing projects—none of the West Berkeley business owners and workers who spoke had anything good to say of the notion. 

By the time the meeting ended, commissioners had decided to delay action on the West Berkeley Plan and zoning law changes until September, and commissioner Chair James Samuels asked city staff to bring dealers to the next session to support the reasons they want the change. 

One common theme running through many of the critiques focused on the irony of rezoning to accommodate car sales at the very moment the city has embarked on a program to reduce car use as a key step in slowing global warming. 

Another theme was the irony of rezoning the very recycling sites that are critical to the city’s companion Zero Waste mandate. 

During the two hours preceding the commission’s regular session, members had listened to an intense discussion of the city’s greenhouse gas reduction efforts under the programs launched by Measure G, passed overwhelmingly by Berkeley voters last November. 

“How do you reconcile this with the workshop you just held?” asked Steve Lautze, a West Berkeley resident who administers the Oakland/Berkeley Recycling Development Zone. 

The proposal calls for rezoning two areas of West Berkeley, one along the southern side of Ashby Avenue between Bay Street and San Pablo Avenue and the Emeryville border, the other along the freeway between Virginia Street and Codornices Creek, at depths varying between two and four blocks. 

The reason cited by city officials for adopting the controversial plan is to keep the sales tax dollars generated by Berkeley car dealers from leaving if the dealership are pressured by carmakers to relocate closer to the freeway. 

Dave Fogarty, of the city manager’s Economic Development staff, said Berkeley’s car dealers bring well over a million dollars to city coffers through the 9.8 percent of the city’s sales tax revenues they generate. 

The main purpose of the rezoning, he said, was to keep the four existing dealers from leaving along with their well-paying union jobs, rather than to attract new car sellers. 

Two of the city’s four current dealerships—Honda of Berkeley and McKevitt Volvo/Nissan—are located on recently sold sites on Shattuck Avenue which new owners are planning to develop when current leases expire, he said. 

Carmakers are pressuring dealers to relocate adjacent to freeways, so the West Berkeley rezoning was proposed. 

Fogarty also dismissed the notion that discouraging dealerships would discourage Berkeleyans from sliding behind the wheel and stepping on the gas—though he personally doesn’t own a car. 

Ashby blowback 

The two largest sites in the small parcel along Ashby that the city proposes to allow for dealerships in addition to the existing Mixed Use Light Industrial uses are those of Ashby Lumber and Urban Ore. 

The environmental documents required by the land use policy change use as a prototypical site the land now occupied mostly by Ashby Lumber. 

“I am appalled. I am offended,” said Jeff Hogan, an owner of the thriving business at 824 Ashby Ave.  

The business is listed as one of the city’s top 25 sales tax generators and provides 65 jobs. 

“Next year we’re celebrating out 40th anniversary in the City of Berkeley,” he said. “What a wonderful way to celebrate.” 

Hogan said that when he met with Mayor Tom Bates six months ago, the city’s top elected official told him, “We really have a need for your kind of business.”  

Ashby Lumber, the neighboring Urban Ore and MacBeath’s lumber work together, he said. Others described the business as a hub for the city’s builders and do-it-yourselfers. 

“Here I am up here defending myself,” Hogan said. “When I see what they are trying to accomplish, I think maybe there’s a neighboring city that would more appreciate my business.” 

But even if he moved, Hogan said, “I would never sell it to an auto dealership.” 

Applause followed. 

Urban Ore cofounders Mary Lou Van De Venter and Dan Knapp added their voices to the opposition. 

“We’ve been in Berkeley for 27 years in the recycling business,” said Knapp. “We started with zero at the Berkeley landfill,” and put more than a $1 million in the present location at 900 Murray St. “We are threatened by this auto (zoning) overlay.” 

Speaking in her role as president of the Northern California Recycling Association, Van De Venter asked the city for a full environmental impact report rather than the abbreviated statement and mitigated negative declaration produced by city staff.  

Even Steve Moran, whose German car repair shop at 751 Folger Ave. is listed as one of the beneficiaries of the Ashby portion of the proposed zoning, said the rezoning “doesn’t make sense” and said that the issuance of a zoning variance rather than a rezoning would meet his needs. 

M zone  

The largest parcel listed as an example of a potential dealership site in the large M zoned district—the 4.8 acre site of the old Flint Ink plant—didn’t even attract any bidders when it went on the auction block last month, said Mark Rhoades, the city planning manager who was attending his last commission meeting before his departure for the private sector. 

The M zone also contains another key component of the city’s recycling program, the Community Conservation Center at Second and Gilman street. 

David Tam, who serves on the city’s Zero Waste Commission, charged that the environment documents were legally deficient and ignored impacts on community services, including the city’s growing recycling program. He also spoke as a director of SPRAWLDEF (the Sustainabilty, Parks, Recycling and Wildlife Legal Defense Fund). 

The city’s Community Recycling Center is located in the heart of the M zone rezoning sector at 669 Gilman St., a key element in the city’s Zero Waste program goals. 

Van De Venter said the environment documents failed to address impacts on the city’s goals for reducing waste to a minimum, and Tam agreed. 

Delayed decision  

At the request of city staff, Commissioner Susan Wengraf moved to delay action on the proposals and continue the hearing until the panel’s next meeting on Sept. 5. 

Commissioners Helen Burke, Gene Poschman and Patti Dacey—filling a vacancy for the seat appointed by City Councilmember Kriss Worthington—all expressed reservations about the proposals. 

Burke cited the conflict between one policy to discourage car use and another seeking to profit from car sales, while Poschman said he was concerned about city actions to “fiscalize land-use policies,” rezoning land in hopes of gaining more tax revenues for the city. 

Dacey said she was concerned with policies designed to replace existing dealerships with high density housing projects—what she called “housewashing” in the spirit of the “greenwashing” label used to describe seemingly eco-friendly policies of polluting corporations. 

Roia Ferrazares said one solution might be creating a means to make granting variances easier instead of rezoning, or, failing that, to create spot zones for specific dealers—which was greeted by nearly unanimous concern from her colleagues. Chair Samuels said he was torn between the perceived threats to existing West Berkeley businesses and the loss of tax revenues—but said he didn’t think the existing businesses were seriously threatened. 

Commissioner Larry Gurley was the only member who expressed the view that the rezoning policies weren’t problematic. 

The city is taking comments on the environmental documents through Aug. 10, while the Planning Commission will take up the rezoning proposals in September.  

At Samuels’ request, Fogarty said he would invite the dealers to attend.

Greenhouse gases and Bus Rapid Transit dominated the first half of Wednesday night’s Berkeley Planning Commission meeting which drew a packed house to the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

While public transit plays a central role in the city’s effort to radically curtail Berkeley’s  

global-warming-inducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, AC Transit’s plans for Bus Rapid Transit running down Telegraph Avenue has hit a major speed bump in the opposition from residents of the nearby neighborhoods. 

Wednesday night’s commission meeting began with a two-hour presentation on Measure G measures, resulting from the resounding 81 percent victory scored by the proposal to cut the city’s GHG output by 80 percent in the next 43 years. 

Timothy Burroughs, the city’s climate action coordinator, opened the meeting, which included presentations by Greenbelt Alliance Senior Policy Advocate Stephanie Reyes, Berkeley Green Building Coordinator Billi Romain and Matt Taecker, the planner hired to help draft the city’s new Downtown Area Plan. 

The themes emerging from the presentations were familiar to Commissioners James Samuels, Gene Poschman, Helen Burke and Patti Dacey from their service on the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), the city council-appointed body that is developing the guidelines for the downtown plan. 

With sustainabilty as the designated theme of the new plan, they were familiar with the calls from Reyes and Taecker for denser “infill” development on transit corridors to reduce reliance on the passenger car, the single greatest source of GHGs. 

Looking at the existing city General Plan “is almost like reading a climate action plan,” said Burroughs, “geared toward erecting a more livable compact community” with an emphasis on transit-oriented development. 

While improved technology promises to make cars less polluting, Reyes said the city couldn’t meet its GHG reduction targets without cutting back car use. One key measure, bringing jobs and housing closer together while creating walkable neighborhoods with nearby services, will cut car use about 30 percent. 

The next major piece, she said, is bringing housing and transit together, with near-transit housing resulting in a ten-fold increase in transit use, she said.  

“The good news for Berkeley is that if you want to be on this downward path, just keep doing more of what you’re already doing,” she said. 

Romain said green building strategies are as much about building locations as they are about the technology of building. New projects of significant size are required to fill out use permit applications that contain green building checklists, and programs from the city and Pacific Gas & Electric offer strategies for increasing the efficiency of building design. 

Taecker presented the same Power Point presentation he’d offered to DAPAC members during their most recent meeting, citing massive carbon savings he said would accrue from creating more high-density development in the city center. 

He contended that “over 15 years with the densest alternative,” residents of the higher, denser downtown would save 112,000 barrels of oil and cut their carbon emissions by 60,600 tons. 

After Taecker, the audience began posing their questions. 

Questions fly 

What about UC? asked Zelda Bronstein, who opposed Mayor Tom Bates in the 2006 mayoral election. 

With 21,000 employees, many of them commuters, the university was also a major source of greenhouse gas, yet, she said, it is exempt from Burroughs’ program—though Bronstein, a former Planning Commission chair, said the current plan’s transportation element does deal with the university. 

She also pointed to the 2,000 new parking spaces the university’s Long Range Development Plan contains. 

“The idea that you’re going to ignore UC is absurd,” she said, but Burroughs said that his project has no purview over what happens on university property. 

High housing prices also mean that many university service workers commute from outside the city, Taecker acknowledged, adding that the more the city accommodates blue collar workers, “the better it will be.” 

Other questions focused on the conflict between the need for neighborhood serving merchants and high commercial rents. One man said commercial rent control was needed. 

BRT worries  

Foes of Bus Rapid Transit—at least a system which would restrict or close traffic on Telegraph Avenue—outnumbered supporters at Wednesday night’s meeting. 

As soon as the workshop ended, BRT rose to the fore, with speaker after speaker from the Telegraph area denouncing the AC Transit project, while a lesser number of BRT advocates spoke in defense of the proposed $400 million system. 

The most commonly heard concern was that plans that would close or restrict Telegraph Avenue would divert frustrated drivers onto nearby streets, particularly Hillegass Avenue, the main north-south roadway between College and Telegraph Avenues. 

Others said they were concerned that proposals to eliminate parking on Telegraph to make way for dedicated bus lanes would harm merchants such as Looking Glass Photo & Camera, at 2848 Telegraph Ave. 

Several Hillegass residents said they feared for the safety of their children if traffic grows any more intense. 

Wednesday’s meeting followed by a day a tempestuous Transportation Commission subcommittee meeting where tempers flared when worried neighbors confronted BRT-boosting commissioners. 

BRT forms a major element in discussions of the downtown plan now taking shape with Taecker’s help, and more heated discussions can be expected. 

The only formal action the commission took was to reaffirm an earlier vote about the choice of bus alternatives to be considered in the Southside Plan environmental impact reports. 

The final decision will be up to the city, and is certain to spark more controversy. 

Condos Okayed 

Commissioners gave their unanimous approval to transforming the 21 offices in the building at 2000 Hearst Ave. into individual commercial condos.

The state’s Brown Act and the Public Records Act aim to maximize the ability of citizens to participate in community affairs. 

But in a July 24 complaint filed with the mayor’s office, the watchdog group SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense) said the City Council violated the Brown Act and its own rules in three separate instances: allowing a presentation on drought issues that was not placed on the agenda; not making information on items discussed by the council adequately available to the public; and placing on the agenda an old item of business under a “new” business rubric. 

In a written response, City Clerk Pamyla Means said the complaints are invalid.  

At issue in the first complaint was a presentation at the July 17 City Council meeting by East Bay Municipal Utility District Director Andy Katz, accompanied by EBMUD Manager of Water Conservation Richard W. Harris. The 20-minute presentation, followed by five minutes of council questions, did not appear on the agenda and there was no time allotted for the public to comment on the issue. 

Mayor Tom Bates invited Katz to speak under the agenda rubric “ceremonial items,” a time generally reserved for occasions such as celebrating a Berkeley citizen’s 100th birthday or honoring a local hero. 

“Water conservation is an important issue,” Gene Bernardi of SuperBOLD told the Daily Planet on Thursday. The item should have been noted on the agenda to give the public notice that the issue would be aired, she said. Further, Bernardi argued, the public should have been allowed to address the item publicly.  

“This sets a precedent that you can permit things at City Council meetings that are not on the agenda,” Bernardi said. 

The Brown Act section cited by SuperBOLD says that each item to be discussed by a public agency should be clearly noted on the agenda and the council rules cited by SuperBOLD say: “Any request for a presentation to the Council will be submitted as an agenda item and follow the timelines for submittal of agenda reports.” 

Addressing council rules, City Clerk Means wrote: the council rules “define an agenda item as an item placed on the agenda for a vote of the council,” and therefore, since no vote was required, the non-agendaed presentation was proper. 

Further, Means wrote: “It is customary that public officials from other public agencies that are present at a given council meeting are invited to address the council at the onset of the meeting as a courtesy.” 

In a Thursday morning interview, Means said she was personally unable to name public officials who had been accorded this courtesy, but had been told that it was true.  

In a Thursday interview, Counclmember Kriss Worthington said he recalled that when former State Sen. Tom Hayden was present in the council audience, it was only by vote of the council that he was permitted to speak. Moreover, he said, other councilmembers are asked to go through a complex agenda-committee process to bring formal presentations to the council. 

Worthington said the drought issue should have been on the agenda. “We need to know how much money we’re wasting” on ill-advised water use. he said. 

A second SuperBOLD complaint concerned the inability of the public to get materials distributed to councilmembers. The complaint says a public speaker at the July 17 council meeting had referred to a “communication #2” and when a SuperBOLD member asked a city clerk assistant to see a copy of it, she “was told this communication was available on-line.”  

The complaint quoted the Brown Act saying “…writings, when distributed to all, or a majority of all of the members of a legislative body…are disclosable public records under the California Public Record Act…and shall be made available on request without delay.”  

Worthington noted that in the past such materials were made accessible to the public and press, but access to them has been problematic more recently. He said he often goes into the back room and makes copies for the public himself. 

Means said she puts a copy of the materials in the public binder and places a copy on the table outside the Council Chambers “for public viewing.” However, she noted in her written response, “On occasion, items that are set out for public viewing at the meeting are taken by persons at the meeting and not returned.”  

“There’s a difference between taking responsibility and making excuses,” Worthington said. 

SuperBOLD’s third complaint was about an item that had been removed from an earlier meeting agenda and placed on the July 17 agenda. SuperBOLD said, according to council rules, that it should have been considered old rather than new business, but Means said placement on the agenda is up to the Agenda Committee.  

The agenda committee meets mid-day on various Mondays when the council is in session. It is scheduled as a full council meeting, although only the mayor and two councilmembers are voting participants. Calling it a council meeting permits the participation of a council majority. Agenda committee meetings are not recorded.

A community meeting which officials said they called Tuesday evening to assess general library needs was part Berkeley Library lovefest, part rally to save the South Berkeley Branch Library. 

While notices of the community meeting at the Over 60s Health Clinic on Sacramento Street and Alcatraz Avenue, posted around town and on the city website, called for people to come to the meeting to “tell us what you want from your Berkeley Public Library,” other notices posted by a group organizing to Save the South Berkeley Branch Library asked for supporters to turn out to the meeting. 

There has been a plan afoot, which the Library Board of Trustees has been discussing for more than a year, to move the small South Berkeley library at Martin Luther King Jr., Way and Russell Street a few blocks southeast to the planned Ed Roberts Campus, slated to house mostly non-profit organizations serving disabled people.  

The project, to be located where the Ashby BART Station east parking lot is now, has yet to raise the funds it needs to break ground. 

The first community meeting to introduce the possible library move was held last month at St. Paul’s AME Church, while there is support for the proposal, opposition has also begun to congeal.  

The trustees have commissioned architectural drawings of the project and, while speaking favorably of it, they are quick to say they have made no decision about the move. 

The architects will speak about the project at a public meeting at 7 p.m. August 1 at the Central Library third-floor meeting room. At the same meeting there will be interviews for a new trustee and selection of the trustee by the board.  

When the 30 or so people attending the Tuesday evening meeting were asked what they like about the library, people did not hesitate to speak up: “It’s rare that I’m looking for a book I can’t find in the library,” said one person.  

“I go to the West Branch and I like it because they’ll send me a book from another branch,” said another. 

People said they like the reference staff, the fact that they can get newspapers online or go to the Central Library to look at paper copies, the children’s programs, the way homeless people visiting the library are treated with respect and much more. 

The discussion turned to the possible move of the South Berkeley branch.  

“I’d like to know why you want to relocate it,” said one person, “It’s right next to a park and in a residential setting.”  

While South Branch Supervisor Jeri Ewart underscored how small the library is, one person responded that is a plus: “You don’t need a map to move around in it,” she said. 

A woman identifying herself as a teacher at the adult school said her students told her they feel more comfortable in the small setting. “They feel intimidated in the Central Library,” she said. 

Yolanda Huang, a Parks and Recreation Commission member, said the South Branch Library is on a trajectory for kids walking down from Willard Middle School, up from Longfellow School and is next to a recreation center. “It’s part of their world,” she said, suggesting that the recreation center ought to be better integrated with the library. 

“The South Branch is a safe place for kids in the afternoon,” Huang said.  

Elaine Green, a candidate for the Board of Trustees, said the proposed site south of Ashby and east of Adeline poses safety concerns for children crossing the wide streets.  

A member of the group is forming to keep the South Branch where it is; Green said they have collected signatures of 300 people who oppose the move. 

Winston Burton suggested spending funds to improve South Branch rather than moving it, using the meeting room for homework help, showing films and hosting art and music programs. “It can become so much more than a place to read books,” he said. 

One person suggested moving the adult books to a new site at the Ed Roberts Campus and leaving the children’s and youth component where it is, and another said the tool library should move, leaving space for expansion of the rest of the library. 

Library Trustee Terry Powell pointed out some of the negatives of the present South Branch site. “We know that the South Branch is very crowded,” she said, noting that the space limits the number of books there.  

“It has limited accessibility [for disabled people],” and a limited number of computers, she said, underscoring, however, “We have made no decision, no commitment.” 

But Huang was not convinced that South Branch versus Ed Roberts was the correct discussion to be having. “The needs of the South Branch need to be unhinged from Ed Roberts” and considered in their own right, she said.

A 22-year-old homeless woman was arrested early Thursday for the sexual abuse of a 14-year-old Berkeley boy, six weeks after she was caught with the same youth along an Oregon highway. 

An alert patrol officer, Amber Phillips, discovered the pair at 12:23 a.m. as she was walking her nightly foot patrol along Hearst Avenue by Ohlone Park. 

Looking into the park from near the corner of Bonita Avenue, she saw Melissa Danielle Cullen and a partially clad boy, said Berkeley Police spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss. 

“She detained them because the boy seemed young and she felt the situation warranted further investigation,” said the sergeant. 

Under questioning, the pair revealed that they had been sexually involved for some time. Prior to coming to Ohlone Park, the couple had also spent time in Tilden Park, said Sgt. Kusmiss. 

“The items they had in the park gave the appearance that they had been sleeping on the streets or in parks for some time,” she said. 

A call to the boy’s father brought him to the scene, where the youth was handed over to his custody and Cullen was transported to the police station. 

The officer learned that Cullen was already facing nearly identical sexual abuse charges involving the same boy, stemming from a June 15 arrest in Lincoln County, Ore., Kusmiss said. 

An officer with the department’s sex crimes detail continued the investigation during the day. 

Cullen is now being held in custody on three felony charges—lewd and lascivious acts with a minor, statutory rape and child stealing—as well as a misdemeanor count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. 

The charges are virtually the same as those Cullen still faces from her arrest in Oregon.  

According to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department, Deputy Abby Dorsey was on patrol along U.S. Highway 101 near Yachats, Ore., at 8:47 a.m. June 15. Spotting a vehicle parked along the roadway, she looked inside—allegedly discovering Cullen and the boy in the midst of having sex. 

Further investigation revealed that the couple had driven north from Berkeley without the knowledge of the boy’s parents, according to Dorsey’s report.  

Cullen was arrested for statutory rape, sex abuse, contributing to the sexual delinquency of a minor and custodial interference and booked into Lincoln County Jail, pending pre-trial release on $90,000 bail. 

Sgt. Kusmiss said Lincoln County District Attorney’s office is preparing the paperwork to seek Cullen’s extradition to stand trial for the charges there. 

Though Lincoln County authorities listed Cullen as a Berkeley resident, Sgt. Kusmiss said, “She said she originally came from Massachusetts, and she said she’s been homeless for some time. She’s been traveling.” 

Cullen told officers she had originally met the youth on the street in Berkeley, and the investigation began. According to police, the couple reconnected in Berkeley following the Oregon arrest. 

The sergeant praised Officer Phillips for taking the initiative in launching the investigation. 

“It’s quite an unusual case for us. If she hadn’t been alert, we probably wouldn’t have made the case,” said Sgt. Kusmiss.

Oakland Unified School District officials and at least some board members were keeping close-mouthed at the end of this week about allegations of possible improper relations between a male school board member and a 17-year-old female Oakland area high school student. 

The allegations involved board member Chris Dobbins, who was elected to the 6th district seat last November to replace the retiring Dan Siegel. The allegations included email messages, conversations, and meetings between Dobbins and the student, who Dobbins told the Oakland Tribune he was mentoring. 

“This is still under investigation by the district and the police department,” board president David Kakishiba said by telephone, saying that any further statement or possible board action would have to wait “until we have the full story.” 

None of the sources involved revealed the identity of the student, who reportedly graduated from a high school in Oakland last month. 

There appear to be two questions at issue right now. The first is whether the allegations against Dobbins amount to anything that might be in violation of California law, enough for the Alameda County District Attorney’s office to bring charges. The second is whether the allegations, even if not involving criminal activity or unproven, are enough to either seriously damage Dobbins’ rising political career or force him to resign from the board. In addition to any possible criminal charges, the board itself has the power to censure Dobbins, an act that would carry no penalties but would have political implications. 

Kakishiba refused to speculate on any possible future board action. 

The next scheduled OUSD board meeting is August 8. 

At least one board member, Noel Gallo, has publicly called on Dobbins to resign because of the accusations. Dobbins himself was taking the California Bar examination this week and was not commenting, but sources on the board said that he had told board members he would provide them with a decision on Friday as to whether or not he would resign. 

If Dobbins were to resign, the California Education Code allows the board to either select Dobbins’ replacement or call for a new election. If the board were to choose a replacement themselves, District 6 voters could petition for a replacement election. 

Interest in the District 6 school board race was low last November because Oakland Unified was still under full state control at that time, with the board holding no powers. With a small measure of local control restored to the board earlier this month and widespread belief that more powers will be returned in the near future, any new election may spark a fierce campaign for the 6th District seat, including candidates with an eye for a possible run against 6th District Oakland City Councilmember Desley Brooks in three years. 

Dobbins left an upbeat voicemail message referring all questions to his attorney, Scott Newbold of San Mateo, who said that Oakland police “are concluding their investigation. Based upon what I know about the situation, I don’t think they are going to find anything.” 

OUSD Public Information Officer Troy Flint said by telephone that sometime last week district officials “received information about a relationship that needed to be explored.”  

Flint said that OUSD state administrator Kimberly Statham “reviewed the relationship between Dobbins and a student and decided it needed to be referred to child protective services and the Oakland Police Department.” 

Flint said that an Oakland Tribune article which claimed that Statham had called on Dobbins to resign was incorrect. “We are monitoring the situation and reserving judgment until we receive a final report from the police department.” 

Lt. Kevin Wiley of the OPD Youth and Family Services Division did not return telephone calls by press time.

Elephant Pharmacy is hosting an electronic recycling drop-off day on Saturday. The pharmacy, at 1607 Shattuck Ave., will be accepting computers, TVs, stereos, and all other electronic equipment from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. 

Computers & Education will reuse as much as possible and the Computer Recycling Center will environmentally recycle the rest. CRC is registered with the California Integrated Waste Management Board and the Department of Toxic Substance Control. 

Elephant Pharmacy will also be handing out 10 percent-off coupons (for purchases that day) to everyone recycling electronics. 

“We put computers into the hands of foster kids and home-bound disabled elderly, and in most cases this is their very first computer,” says Lynn Goodison of Computers & Education. Computers & Education overwrites all hard drives to destroy all personal data. 

An estimated 5 million computers become obsolete in the United States each month. Computers and electronic products may also contain hazardous materials that harm the environment.

By Cynthia Johnson 

Had he lived, John Lennon would have been 67 years of age today (Friday). On Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. in Berkeley, there will be a party and film to remember musical genius and peace icon John Lennon and honor beloved local activist Hal Carlstad. 

We will show the outstanding 2006 film by David Leaf and John Schenfeld The U.S. vs. John Lennon. 

The Lennon documentary shows the vivid history of Vietnam-era resistance and John’s evolution from Beatle to inspiring peace activist and threat to the national security establishment. Yoko Ono Lennon said “Of all the documentaries made about John, this is the one he would have loved.” 

The present day interviews with Yoko in the film are priceless and a sad reminder of the current brutal situation in Iraq where so many innocents are dying. Many may have not realized the intense efforts of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover and Congress (specifically Strom Thurmond) to neutralize John’s impact for peace by trying to deport Lennon before the 1972 presidential election when 18-21 year olds could vote for the first time. John was assassinated Dec. 6, 1980 just after Reagan had been “elected” and we can only speculate on what his profound ongoing impact might have been had John lived. The last years showing the family and John with his son Sean, who was also born on July 27, are very touching.  

We will remember Hal by finishing raising the funds for the state of the art sound system begun at his memorial July 15. 

There was an SRO crowd of hundreds at the St. Joseph the Worker Church July 15, including family and friends from his teaching, beekeeping, winemaking, activism and other diverse circles, including Country Joe, who sang “Remember Me and Carry On.” 

Cindy Sheehan, who became the face of the current U.S. antiwar movement, called him her” activist father” as Hal encouraged her to speak her truth just months after her son Casey died in Iraq and before she became a national figure. She co-founded the Gold Star Families for Peace at the Berkeley Fellowship in February 2005 with Hal’s encouragement, and now is leading protests for impeachment and keeping constitutional government alive. Cindy and Hal were truly connected on an energetic level as so many were.  

Some of Hal’s other peacemaking friends thought a very appropriate legacy for a man arrested so many times—almost as many as his other late friend, Father Bill O’Donnell—would be a state of the art sound system, the Hal Carlstad Wireless Portable Sound System, for all social justice groups to use in their ongoing demos, protests and street theater. Many peace groups have been sponsoring a monthly Die-In at the San Francisco Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate, the first Thursday of every month until the Iraq Occupation Ends. The next one Thursday, Aug. 2 at 1 p.m. will be dedicated to Hal and will have the new system for sound in place. 

“Hal was a man of action who loved to see creative action to educate people and the media” said an Earth First friend. A fitting closing at the Memorial was the huge white Bird of Peace puppet that gracefully circled around the church support by members of the Art and Revolution Collective. 

The UU Social Justice Committee hopes to raise the money needed for the Sound System on Saturday night and anything over will go for a scholarship for youth to go to Cuba with Pastors for Peace Caravan. Hal loved Cuba and went there many times challenging the embargo. A health professional who visited Hal often at the Intensive Care Unit stated, “Hal might well have survived had he the benefit of a Cuban health care system. He would have loved Michael Moore’s Sicko too. Hal was not denied a costly operation due to his Medicare, but a health care system based on greed is not adequate.” 

Obviously the past is over but not hard to imagine that these two heros would want a government and system based on caring for all living things and would want us to be happy, love more and keep moving for change knowing we all have different roles at different times of our life. 

The doors to the Fellowship Hall will open at 6pm on Saturday and there will be tasty, healthy treats to celebrate John’s Birthday and Hal’s ongoing legacy. The program will start with joyful musical offerings by Maxina Ventura including the great Pat Humphries song “Great Spirits will Live Forever—We’re All Swimming to the Other Side” and the film will start right after, with a discussion & party to follow the film. All are welcome and no one will be turned away.  

For further information on these events call 528-5403. 

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland-Berkeley) came to the Berkeley Technical Academy on Martin Luther King, Jr. Way along with a number of other public officials on Friday to announce that a group of nonprofit organizations would receive a $300,000 San Francisco Foundation grant “to promote civic unity and engagement” in West Berkeley.  

Calling West Berkeley “a world-class community,” Lee said the SF Foundation funds would help “make West Berkeley soar.” SF Foundation CEO Sandra Hernandez credited Lee with pointing out West Berkeley needs to the foundation. 

The grant will be awarded in $60,000 installments over five years. How it will be spent is yet to be determined. The eight grantees will spend six months in retreats and meetings to determine how the money can best be spent.  

According to material distributed by the SF Foundation, based on the 2000 census, West Berkeley is one of the Bay Area’s 52 most impoverished areas, with 60 percent of the households earning less than 80 percent of California’s median income and 41.1 percent earning less than 50 percent of the California median, despite the fact that one-third of the city’s private sector jobs are in West Berkeley and one-fourth of all of Berkeley’s jobs are there. 

West Berkeley manufacturers “have a weak record” in hiring West Berkeley residents, the foundation materials say. 

Grantees are: Berkeley Technology Academy, Berkeley Boosters, Farm Fresh Choice, Church Without Walls, Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action, The Way Christian Center, Rosa Parks Elementary School Family Resource Center and West Berkeley Foundation.  

As Berkeley’s planning commissioners prepare for a public hearing on a plan to rezone two hunks of West Berkeley for car sales, embattled activists have questions. 

Drafted at the urging of Mayor Tom Bates as a plan to keep car dealers—and the sales taxes they raise—within the city, the plan has raised fears among some that the plan could be targeting local business and result in property value spikes that could drive others to leave—including the area’s dwindling supply of artists. 

Planning commissioners will hold a public hearing on the plan amendments and proposed zoning regulations when they meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Rick Auerbach, the spokesperson for WEBAIC, West Berkeley Artists and Industrial Companies, said his concerns with the proposals were raised by a closer examination of the city’s environmental study of their potential impacts. 

The proposals would rezone two blocs of West Berkeley totaling 205 acres—one extending north and south from Gilman Street east of the I-80 interchange and the other between Ashby Avenue and the Emeryville border west of San Pablo Avenue. 

Auerbach said he was particularly concerned because the site used as an example for a dealership in the Ashby sector, now zone for light industrial use, is currently the site of Ashby Lumber and buildings that house live/work spaces for artisans. 

The environmental initial study by city planner Jordan Harrison “assumes 11.8 acres of new dealership uses would be built in the two project areas,” including two along the southern side of Ashby, one a 2-acre dealership and the other occupying about a third of an acre. 

Ashby sites 

The small south-of-Ashby property at 751 Folger Ave. is currently a German car repair shop, with an owner who has told the city he would like to expand into used vehicle sales. 

While Auerbach said he doesn’t have problems with a dealership on the Folger Street site, he said the city could permit the use if the Zoning Adjustments Board approved a variance allowing a dealership at that location. 

“They wouldn’t need to rezone the area to accomplish that,” he said. 

What concerns Auerbach is that the study proposes a “prototypical site” for the larger dealership that is already occupied by one of the city’s leading contributors of sales tax, Ashby Lumber. 

“There are really no good sites south of Ashby,” Auerbach said. “That’s the point. It really doesn’t make any sense.” 

In its traffic analysis, the proposal offers two alternative sites along Ashby on either side of Seventh Street. 

“You have Ashby Lumber on one side and Urban Ore on the other. Urban Ore is a very important part of the city’s Zero Waste program, and both businesses provide good paying jobs,” Auerbach said. 

“Ashby Lumber is a great source of about 60 good jobs, and it’s a good source of revenue to the city,” he said, citing a June, 2005, report in the Daily Planet listing the retailer as one of the city’s top 25 sales tax producers. 

The two businesses are the only sites large enough to accommodate the dealership proposed in the city’s environmental study, he said. 

The tract used for illustration that includes Ashby Lumber also includes buildings that are rented by artists who live and work there. West Berkeley has recently lost two major live/work havens, and studio space has also been vanishing. 

City enforcement actions aimed at building and fire code violations in the Shipyard, an unusual collection of studios housed in shipping containers and an old industrial building within the boundaries of the proposed south-of-Ashby rezoning area, ended short of a shutdown, but raised fears of artists who have seen their foothold in the area dwindle in recent years.  

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

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

Two years ago city officials cited the owner of the Drayage at 651 Addison St. for multiple fire and building code violations, ending another cherished West Berkeley artists’ community which housed an eclectic collection of artists, artisans and their studios. 

West Berkeley lost another arts collective a year ago, when the Nexus Collective lost its lease to buildings at 2701-2721 Eighth St. 

WEBAIC members, including Urban Ore co-founder Mary Lou Van DeVenter are passionate advocates for preservation of an artist-friendly environment. 

Flint Ink 

The other major dealership site cited in the study is the abandoned Flint Ink Co. site in the Gilman Street area, zoned solely for manufacturing (M). 

While the traffic analysis examines three sites in the M zone, including two between Second Street and the freeway, the largest and only vacant site is the 48-acre property that housed the old ink factory. 

That property was auctioned June 1 by the current owner, a partnership which includes Berkeley developer Ali Kashani’s Memar Properties. 

But the sale won’t be completed unless the city approves the rezoning for car sales. While the auctioneers and Kashani wouldn’t talk to a reporter from the Daily Planet, Todd Good of Accelerated Marketing Group told real estate web site Globestreet.com in May that sale was contingent on the rezoning. 

It is the Flint Ink site, which includes landmarked buildings, that has featured most prominently in city discussions of dealership sites. 

The other two sites chosen as examples are currently occupied by self-storage facilities, which typically employ smaller numbers and generate fewer taxes than retail uses. 

What concerns Auerbach is something else that Good told the Internet realty news site—that rezoning could raise the value of the land from its current $40 to $60 per square foot to between $75 and $100 if the land is rezoned and the new owners received the entitlements to install a dealership on the site. 

Auerbach and other advocates for the West Berkeley arts community say they fear that higher property values could lead to rents and new uses that would drive the artists out. 

The city’s planning documents are posted on the web at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

planning/landuse/WestBerkeleyAuto/default.htm.

A residential development company founded by Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad purchased property owned by the state-operated Vallejo City Unified School District last year, raising questions about the relationship between Broad and his urban public education Broad Foundation as well as about the sale of property of school districts taken over by the State of California. 

Last year, Vallejo Unified’s state-appointed administrator agreed to sell 18 acres of property to Los Angeles-based KB Home for between $17.5 and $22 million, depending on contract incentives.  

Vallejo Unified was taken over by the state in 2004 after it was forced to take out a $60 million state line of credit in order to balance its budget and, according to a recent article in the Vallejo Times-Herald newspaper, “school district surplus property is being sold to generate a steady stream of income to make yearly payments on the $60 million state bail-out loan.” 

According to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Chip Johnson, KB Home plans to put a 214-home development on the 18-acre spot, replacing four baseball diamonds currently being used by some 300 local Little Leaguers. 

In addition to the KB Home property, the Vallejo Unified state administrator has sold four other parcels of property to a resaler for a possible price of $10 million. 

While there is no evidence that the Broad Foundation, which Broad (pronounced “brode”) founded in 1999, played any role in the Vallejo City Unified School District during the years since the 2004 state takeover, the Foundation has played a key role in shaping the Oakland Unified School District under state control. 

The foundation trained former Oakland Unified School District state administrator Randolph Ward, who then hired several Broad Foundation-trained personnel in key positions with the district while it was under state control. In 2005, the Broad Foundation teamed with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation to contribute $24 million in investments to Expect Success!, a program that radically altered Oakland Unified’s education direction. In addition, support for charter schools is one of the Broad Foundation’s major purposes, and under state control, Oakland Unified has rapidly increased the number of charter schools under its jurisdiction. 

Meanwhile, the Broad Foundation has become a major financial player in other school districts, particularly in support of charter schools. In November of last year, Business Wire reported that the foundation had given a $10.5 million grant to public charter school operator Green Dot, which Business Wire called “the largest single private grant to public charter schools in California.” 

At the same time, Broad has become a major player in state and national politics, contributing more than $336,000 to Democratic candidates between 2000 and 2006, and more than $41,000 already for the 2008 elections. 

Eli Broad co-founded Kaufman and Broad Building Company (which later became KB Home) in 1957, but gave up his chairmanship of the company in the late 1980s, and a company spokesperson said that Broad “has no relationship” with KB Home “at this point.” However, Broad continued to hold large shares of KB Home stock past that point. As late as 1996, however, the last time he had to report to the SEC on his KB Home stock holdings because his shares dipped below 5 percent, Broad held more than 1.5 million common shares of KB Home stock, amounting to 4.89 percent of the outstanding shares. Broad also reported that he gave 765,000 shares of KB Home common stock to the Eli Broad Foundation in July, 1995. 

And Broad continues to hold a financial relationship with at least one KB Home official.  

Broad has recently made a bid to buy both the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times with fellow Los Angeles billionaire Ronald W. Burkle, who serves on the board of directors of KB Home. 

That creates a circular relationship in which Eli Broad holds influence over state education policy—including state school takeover legislation that now includes provisions allowing easier sale of state property—and then has a financial relationship with a director (Ronald W. Burkle) of his former home development company (KB Home) that has recently benefited from the property-sale provisions in state takeover legislation. 

While nothing about these relationships appears to be illegal, it raises further questions about whether the property sale provisions were placed in the state takeover law solely to benefit the districts and the state—as proponents say they were—or whether they were placed there to benefit real estate developers. 

The provisions of the 2004 Vallejo state takeover legislation that suspend portions of the state education code to allow Vallejo Unified to sell property to help pay back its state loan were borrowed directly from the 2003 Oakland Unified state takeover law, where they first appeared.  

Last year, State Superintendent Jack O’Connell announced he was invoking the Oakland provisions to sell 8.25 acres of Oakland Unified property to an east coast developer, including the district administrative headquarters and five schools. A broad coalition of parents, education activists, teachers, students, and local politicians—including Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, the Oakland City Council, the OUSD Board of Trustees, the Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees, and State Assemblymember Sandré Swanson—eventually forced O’Connell to back out of the proposed deal. 

An IT worker, a former Chamber of Commerce president, an NAACP activist, an advocate for the disabled, a former librarian and a former city councilmember are among the candidates vying for the Board of Library Trustees. 

Four hopefuls came before the board last week. Three others will appear Aug. 1, the date the trustees say they will make their selection.  

In an unusual move, the board voted Wednesday to interview two candidates whose applications were turned in after the July 1 deadline. Former City Councilmember Ann Chandler’s application is stamped July 3; Abigail Franklin’s application was also late. (The Daily Planet was unable to locate Franklin’s application, which could be found neither in the city clerk’s office nor at the library.) 

Jane Welford, a member of Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense (SuperBOLD), criticized the interview process. “They shouldn’t have accepted applications from people who didn’t get their applications in on time; it’s pretty outrageous,” she told the Daily Planet on Monday. 

Mary Lukanuski, a former Berkeley Public Library employee who works in software design, will also be interviewed Aug. 1. Her application was received June 29. 

The composition of the Library Board of Trustees, which oversees an approximate $14.5 million mostly taxpayer-funded budget, is spelled out in the City Charter: “Five Library Trustees shall be appointed and may be removed by a vote of five members of the council…” One member must be a councilmember appointed by the council.  

The charter gives the trustees broad powers “to manage the library and to appoint, discipline and dismiss all officers and employees of the library.” 

City law restricts trustees to two four-year terms. Trustee Laura Anderson’s second term ends in October. 

The board has typically chosen its members with rubber-stamp approval by City Council. 

However, after the forced resignation of former Library Director Jackie Griffin, the community asked for greater library board transparency and more community input into trustee and director selection. Griffin had been at loggerheads with the library union over her treatment of employees and in conflict with the community over a decision made with limited citizen input to purchase a check-out system that uses radio frequency identification chips. 

A City Council-library committee was to write new, more open, trustee selection guidelines, but the process stalled when one of its members, Trustee Chair Susan Kupfer, was unable to meet during any of the 15 dates proposed, according to Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who chairs the committee. 

At its meeting last week, outgoing trustee Laura Anderson was chosen to take Kupfer’s place on the committee. 

Welford criticized the trustee interviews, saying the questions asked the candidates did not reflect community concerns. The community, including library personnel, was invited to pose questions during last year’s selection process for a new library director, but no community process has occurred with the trustee selection. 

Not asking questions on personnel issues “shows they haven’t been taking the union seriously,” Welford said, adding that omitting questions about RFID shows “they don’t want to deal with it.” 

The Daily Planet reviewed the taped July 18 candidate interviews. 

Carolyn Henry Golphin 

A 12-year Berkeley resident, Golphin has extensive experience serving on boards, and is currently active with 10, including her role as a first vice-president (and past president) of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce, and a board member of the St. Paul AME Church, the Berkeley Food and Housing Project, the [UC Berkeley] Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund and six other groups. 

She is marketing director of Skates on the Bay. 

In response to a question about whether she would have time for the job, Golphin said, “I won’t accept [the job] if I feel I can’t do it.”  

Asked how she would approach budget constraints, Golphin responded: “I wonder if we’ve talked enough to corporations for support.” She also suggested reaching out to foundations. 

Golphin said she had honed her public speaking skills as a “public spokesperson for the Chamber.” 

The library should serve people in need, Golphin said, noting that it is a place where jobseekers go for a variety of resources. “Some people cannot afford to have the Internet at home,” she said. 

While the Berkeley library has no filters on Internet access, including computers for children, Golphin said, “It is important that our children be protected … I’m concerned that we can’t protect what our children have an opportunity to read.” 

Elaine Green 

A 59-year Berkeley resident, Elaine Green is CEO of the Lorin District Development Association. Among references for the position, she names outgoing trustee Laura Anderson. 

In her interview with the board, Green stressed the role of trustee as a “liaison with the community.” 

Green pointed to existing library strengths, including a sense of safety at all the branches and each branch’s reflection of the community it is in.  

“Libraries are vital to our democracy,” she said. “Berkeley has a long tradition of social justice—it’s part of the fiber of our being.” 

She said she has, in part, honed her leadership skills serving as legal redress chair of the Berkeley NAACP. She has also spoken out in public against a proposed condominium development at the Ashby BART station. 

Green, who has expressed reservations at public meetings about the South Berkeley Library moving to the Ed Roberts Campus at the Ashby BART station, said that the library should conduct needs assessments every five years. “We need to keep up with the needs of the community,” she said.  

Like Golphin, Green said she sees the need for some library control over what children access on the Internet. “At present, in my mind, is the need to understand and monitor the availability of the MySpace website,” Green wrote in her application.  

Kevin Haney 

A former library volunteer, Kevin Haney, a Berkeley resident since 2004, is an information technology manager at UC Berkeley and adjunct professor at San Francisco State University. 

His resume indicates that he helped found a startup pharmaceutical company in Tucson in 1992 that was sold to Aventis Pharmaceuticals in 1995. 

Haney said his work experience would help him serve on the library board. He manages a group of eight people and is “used to dealing with a great deal of diversity and differing of opinions on a day-to-day basis,” he said.  

Asked about the role of libraries, Hanley said: “Libraries serve a catalytic role in the community; they transform people.” 

To play a role in running the library, “You have to understand the aspirations of the community,” Haney said, including the need for literacy, citizenry and economic self-sufficiency. 

Haney acknowledged that there is “never enough money” for organizations such as libraries. Facing budget constraints, “The best thing you can do is be sure you have a clear set of priorities” and see how other entities facing similar constraints have overcome them. 

On renovations, he said: “It is important to renovate, but important to preserve.”  

Haney said parents should make the decision for their children concerning Internet filters.  

Frances “Dede” Dewey 

An 11-year Berkeley resident, Frances “Dede” Dewey, who uses an electric wheelchair, is an activist with a history of asserting the rights of disabled people.  

Among the reasons for applying for the post, Dewey says in her written statement: “I feel the disabled community needs to be better represented with regard to the decision-making process of where and when the new South Branch Berkeley Public Library will be relocated.”  

“My concern is that disabled issues may not get fully addressed with the rebuilding of the South Branch when it happens,” she said during the interview, adding that a new library should strive to go beyond legal requirements.  

“I’m concerned that disability issues may get put by the wayside,” she said, noting that, while the small South Berkeley branch library is not wheelchair friendly, the library board should be looking at a variety of options, not just the Ed Roberts campus. 

“You have to have more than one choice,” she said. 

Dewey served with AmeriCorps for two years and has served on Berkeley’s Labor Commission. One skill she learned on the commission was to ask questions that serve to clarify, rather than to argue. 

The library should write more grants, she said, noting that she helped write a grant for disabled access when the main library was renovated. 

Mary Lukanuski 

A Berkeley resident since 2001, Mary Lukanuski designs web-based applications for a software company in Palo Alto and has worked as a librarian in academic research. At one point in her career, she worked part time as a “web librarian” at the Berkeley Public Library. 

In her written application for the position, Lukanuski said she is “impressed how the Berkeley Public Library believes in its mission of public service and strives to actively engage its community.” 

Ann Chandler and Abigail Franklin 

A city councilmember from 1984 to 2002, Ann Chandler served as council liaison to the library board. “Making decisions about using resources to best serve the community is critical to the library’s success,” she said in her written application. 

Abigail Franklin’s application was not available.  

Library meetings 

The Library Board of Trustees will continue interviewing trustee candidates and make its selection in a meeting that begins at 7 p.m. Aug. 1 at the central library downtown, in the third floor community room.  

A community meeting on library needs will be held today, July 24, 7 p.m., at LifeLong Medical Care, 3260 Sacramento St., second-floor conference room. 

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) will hear the request for a use permit to convert Walter Ratcliff’s landmark Fidelity Bank Building into a mixed use development Thursday. 

Jim Novosel, of Berkeley-based Bay Architects, has proposed a project which would preserve the existing 4,000-square-foot historic structure at 2323 Shattuck Ave. and convert the two-storey bank space into a restaurant and a dwelling unit. 

The project includes a new five-story building, to be built in place of the existing three-story building adjacent to the Fidelity building, which would have 2,609 square feet of commercial floor area and 15 dwelling units.  

The exterior of the Fidelity building will not be changed according to the project proposal. 

The permit request includes beer and wine services at the restaurant and sidewalk cafe seating. There are eight on-site parking spaces which will be eliminated.  

Inspired by Renaissance Italian architecture, The Fidelity Bank Building, located between the Mechanic’s Bank and the Union Bank on Shattuck Avenue, was built in 1925. It was until a few years ago occupied by Citibank but is now empty. It has been a venue for the Berkeley Arts Festival in recent years. 

City staff have expressed support for the proposed mixed-use infill nature of the project but have recommend denying the permit because of the lost parking spaces. 

Other items 

• Hal Brandel will request a use permit to add beer and wine service to Anchalee’s Thai Cuisine at 1094 Dwight Way. City staff have received no complaints from neighbors and the Berkeley Police Department has indicated they have no problems with the permit. 

• Ali Eslami, owner of The Missouri Lounge in Berkeley, will request a permit to convert two commercial spaces previously used for a restaurant and oxygen bar at 2525 Telegraph Ave. into a 5,803-square-foot space that would be used for a restaurant and an art gallery, to be open 6:30 a.m.-2 a.m. 

The applicant will also request a use permit for distilled spirits in addition to the existing beer and wine services. Berkeley police have objected to the change in the Alcoholic Beverage Control commission license and have requested that the proposed business not operate beyond midnight. 

• Eslami has also requested a use permit to reconfigure an existing three-story, four-unit residential building at 1423 Kains Ave.  

The proposed reconfiguration would have a double-decker garage with two car lifts. Neighbors at 1460 and 1421 Kains Ave. have expressed concerns about noise. According to staff, the noise decibel level is within the ambient level of the area. 

Peralta Community College District officials released their first comprehensive report last week on how much Measure A facilities bond money the district plans to spend on each of its four campuses, but quickly backtracked when trustees complained that the board had never authorized such an allocation plan. 

In June of 2006, area voters approved a ballot measure authorizing a parcel tax increase to raise $390 million to build and furnish facilities in the Peralta College District. 

At the July 17 Peralta Board of Trustees meeting, General Services Director Sadiq Ikharo reported that the district has now allocated $35.2 million of that bond money for district projects. But while there have been no allegations that any of this money was spent for anything other than projects authorized by the bond measure, there have been complaints by the media, board members, and college staff that up until now the district has maintained no publicly published running total of bond projects and expenditures, with fears that new projects might be added to the list without regard for planned projects perhaps being knocked off. 

In addition, a citizen oversight task force called for in the bond measure has yet to organize itself, elect officers, or even hold a formal meeting. 

On Tuesday, concerns about Peralta’s bond measure allocations surfaced when Laney librarian and faculty senate representative Evelyn Lord complained to trustees about an agenda item requesting trustee approval for the proposed Laney College Athletic Facility Complex. The agenda synopsis for the item indicated that the proposed funds for the complex “will be deducted from laney College’s share of the Measure A allocation.” 

“What is Laney College’s share of Measure A?” Lord asked. “I’ve never seen that presented. In item after item, I see Measure A money coming to the board and being approved, and that makes me nervous. What priority items are going to fall aside?” 

Board President Bill Withrow first said that he recommended “that the board defer commitment for any more expenditures of Measure A funds” for the time being, but after Chancellor Elihu Harris explained that the board was only being asked to approve asking for bids for a project it had already approved in concept last March, and Laney President Frank Chong insisted that no Measure A project suggested by the Laney Facilities Committee “is going to be left out,” trustees unanimously voted to authorize bidding on the athletic complex. 

But the issue of how Peralta will allocate Measure A money surfaced again when Ikharo presented board members with a “Road Map To The Future-Facilities Development,” a 25-page report on the district’s future capital improvement projects. Included with the report was a breakdown on how Peralta had allocated its first $35 million in board-authorized Measure A expenditures: 2 percent to Berkeley City College, 21 percent to College of Alameda, 44 percent to Laney College, 23 percent to Merritt College, and 10 percent district-wide. But in addition, the report included a “Phase 2” chart that detailed how district officials planned to allocate the remaining $354.8 million in Measure A bond money: 1 percent to Berkeley City, 20 percent to College of Alameda, 37 percent to Laney, 24 percent to Merritt, and 4 percent to the District Administrative Center. 

Ikharo said that the allocation to each college “was made based upon the square footage” of buildings in each college which needed to be renovated. The problem was, such a square footage allocation has never surfaced either in the text of Measure A itself, or in public board discussions on the issue. 

Trustee Nicky Gonzalez Yuen, chair of the board’s facilities committee, immediately called putting out the allocation figures “speculative,” and “a little bit premature. To my knowledge, the board has never allocated specific amounts to each campus.” 

By publishing such amounts, Yuen said, “the colleges will be expecting these amounts and if they don’t get everything that is promised to them in these figures, they’re going to come back to us and ask why.” 

Ikharo immediately agreed with Yuen, saying that the future Measure A allocations in the “Road Map To The Future-Facilities Development” report were “tenative numbers.” 

In other action on Tuesday night, board members rejected on a 3-4 vote a proposal that would have set up a citizens committee to assess the reinstatement of comprehensive child care services at the district (Linda Handy, Yuen, and Abel Guillen voting yes, Marcie Hodge, William Riley, Cy Gulassa, and Withrow voting no). Instead, on a 5-2 vote, trustees authorized the chancellor’s office to produce such a report by March of next year (Handy, Yuen, Guillen, Gulassa, and Withrow voting yes, Hodge and Riley voting no). 

Reinstatement of full child care service in the district has been what trustee Riley called Tuesday “a real touchy issue, an emotional issue” since Peralta ended infant care services at its Laney College child care center last year, with district officials saying it could no longer afford to provide the service. 

A 21-year-old Berkeley woman was fatally shot to death Saturday as she rode in a car heading north on Martin Luther King Jr. Way in North Oakland. 

Shots fired from a passing car injured the driver of the Buick in which Kikhiesha Brooks was riding, and the vehicle slammed into a streetlight standard. 

Two men then jumped out of a car and fired repeatedly into the wrecked vehicle before speeding off, said Oakland Police. 

Brooks died minutes later at Highland Hospital, while a man in the car sustained lesser injuries. 

Lalane Coaxum, the slain woman’s sister, told the San Francisco Chronicle that Brooks had been headed to her home to pick up food for a family reunion in Jack London Square. 

A Berkeley High School graduate, Brooks was the mother of a 2-year-old daughter. 

A representative of the Alameda County Coroner’s office declined to comment on the death, stating that all information on homicides could be released only by the investigating agency. 

Bay City News contributed to this report.

A subcommittee of Berkeley’s Transportation Commission will meet with Southside residents tonight (Tuesday) to hear their concerns about Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). 

The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. with an informal open house at Trinity United Methodist Church, 2362 Bancroft Way. 

Among the issues on the table are routes, service features and station locations, as well as discussions on benefits and possible mitigations to offset neighborhood impacts. 

The meeting, hosted by the commission’s Transit Subcommittee, is scheduled to last until 9:30 p.m. 

BRT—scheduled to run between Berkeley and San Leandro—would feature pre-paid fares, dedicated stations and, possibly, creation of special bus-only lanes along Telegraph Avenue and Bancroft Way. 

Two proposals have called for closing or restricting parts of Bancroft and Telegraph to through traffic, including on plan that calls for elimination of car traffic on the last two blocks of Telegraph. 

While AC Transit and BRT advocates say the faster service would increase ridership in an era where global warming threatens, neighborhood activists have charged that the service might result in loss of parking for merchants and increased traffic on residential streets to work around closed or congested streets. 

Once again I’m exercising my editorial privilege of previewing opinion contributions and responding to them the same day they’re printed. I’ve read the comments from Jean Damu and Alona Clifton in this issue, and I both agree and disagree with the points they raise. 

Let’s get one out of the way first. I don’t think the way Dave Lindorff and others on the left bank of the Internet stream have been bashing John Conyers is racism, exactly. Even though I’m white myself I’m usually no apologist for the average white person, including the average leftist white person. I’m fully aware of spoken and unspoken assumptions that can affect the way persons of European-only descent treat those who have some ancestors who came from other continents, even when the intentions are benign. But in this case it’s more complicated than that. 

Background: some people, with Cindy Sheehan and Medea Benjamin the big names out front, think that the main agenda for activists against the Iraq War is impeaching the responsible parties right now, from Bush on down. On Saturday a group of such people went to the Washington office of John Conyers, chair of the House judiciary committee, to press their point of view, and when he declined to agree with them instantaneously, saying he didn’t have the votes, they announced that they wouldn’t leave his office until he complied with their demands.  

This was all planned in advance—anyone can track the planning on the Internet, on the Daily Kos site among others. And surprise, surprise, when their plans were carried out, the sitters-in were arrested. Now they, or some of their friends, are whining about it. 

You know what? It’s called civil disobedience. Getting arrested, if you choose to disobey the law, is part of the program. We always told our daughters not to get arrested by accident, but getting arrested on purpose for a good cause is an honorable tactic in some circumstances. Whining after the fact ruins the whole point of the protest.  

The subsequent personal attacks on Conyers, a brave man doing his best, are outrageous. One lamebrain web-site, supposedly pro-impeachment but probably hosted by the contemporary equivalent of Cointelpro or perhaps the Republican National Committee, shows his picture with a big X across his face, and calls for defeating him in the next election because the protesters were arrested in his office. Evidently they don’t realize that if Conyers were actually to be defeated, his successor would not be chair of the Judiciary Committee, and its discussion of impeachment would come to a grinding halt. Oh, and of course Bush would also be out of office by then, wouldn’t he? And succeeded by whom? 

Lindorff, a prolific polemicist, has another such attack posted in all the usual places. I haven’t bothered to find out what his previous history is, but one of his barbs caught my attention: “As one angry activist in the hallway remarked, ‘Where is today’s (Rep. Allard) Lowenstein or Father Drinan. There is none!’ ”  

As it happens, I have in my desk drawer this very day a fading copy of a bill of impeachment introduced against Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War, authored by priest and congressman Robert Drinan and—John Conyers, then as now U.S. Congressman from Detroit’s First District. And as it happens, I knew Al Lowenstein, even before he was in Congress, in the mid sixties when he toured the country looking for a candidate to run against Johnson, long before Lindorff was out of high school.  

Drinan and Lowenstein are both dead now, but Conyers was their good friend and is the worthy inheritor of their pragmatic tradition. If they were alive today, they’d certainly support his decisions.  

Lindorff and others also compare Conyers negatively to Rosa Parks, whom I met many times when she was a field representative for Conyers’ Detroit office. Perhaps he doesn’t know that when she sat down on the bus she wasn’t just a spontaneous protester, but was the carefully chosen “respectable” and well-trained representative of a tightly organized and coordinated long-term game plan. And she never whined about being arrested. 

So why is this not exactly conventional racism? Well, for one thing the same crowd is also attacking the white Rep. Nancy Pelosi. (Cindy Sheehan has announced that she’s running against Pelosi, wasting her own time and ours.) That’s not conclusive, of course, because as long as both African-Americans and women as groups are in less-powerful positions in American society (i.e. they’re not White Males) they are both easy targets for attackers. But this particular incident looks like it’s just another case of the deplorable historic tendency of leftists to prefer internecine warfare to engaging the real enemy on his own turf, more than it’s about race. 

As a genetic WASP, I can’t remember many jokes and I tell them poorly. But one I do know and tell often is about the guy who’s crawling around on his knees one dark night under the streetlight outside his house. A neighbor lady asks him what he’s doing. He says he’s looking for his car keys, which he dropped as he was getting out of the car.  

“But the car’s over there at the curb!” she says. “Why aren’t you looking there?” “The light’s better here,” he answers. 

Ray McGovern, one of those arrested in DC, spent 27 years in the CIA, proving that some people are mighty slow to get the word. Now he has a web post reprinted on Commons Dreams which is headed “John Conyers Is No Martin Luther King,” wherein he also accuses Conyers of having Alzheimer’s.  

Well, some of us around here do remember Martin Luther King, and Conyers surely does too. We remember that he loved to quote the words of an old spiritual: “Keep your eyes on the prize, move on!”  

It’s much more convenient for Lindorff, McGovern, Sheehan, Benjamin and their cohorts to attack their friends, but it’s much less effective. When John Conyers says he just doesn’t have the votes to do what you want, believe him, don’t go for his throat. Instead, keep your eye on the many real bad actors, or on the possible swing votes in Congress—don’t start organizing one more circular firing squad. 

“After all I’ve seen, I still have joy.” Those words are from a gospel song, or perhaps a spiritual, that I heard once sung by the choir in an African-American church, and I’ve typed them out and posted them over my desk, just in case. They remind me that life has lots of unpleasant stuff in it, but joy is always an option. And on Sunday night Barbara Dane gave a packed house at Freight and Salvage a beautiful demonstration of how to live with joy all your life. 

It was her 80th birthday celebration, though she’s actually been 80 since May. Since she’s lived so long, she’s been able to live many lives, and the two sets she did over more than three hours captured several of them. For the first part of the evening she recalled her political history, with a stunning backup band plus legendary harmonica blues player Charlie Musselwhite and India Cook, a remarkable fiddler, as well as local favorite Ellen Hoffman and guitarist Johnny Harper. The set included songs from her early folkie days, civil rights songs, bluesy numbers...but for Barbara every moment’s a teaching moment. She’s still got an immensely powerful vocal instrument—she’d be called a mezzo in the classical tradition where she got her early singing training—and she’s always used it to tell the audience what she thinks they need to know to be saved.  

This audience was more than ready to shout hallelujah.  

For many of us at the Freight on Sunday night it was particularly inspiring to see that one of the icons of our youth is still thriving. There were some wheelchairs, walkers and canes in evidence, people considerably older even than me (along with a surprising number of younger folks.) Barbara proudly describes herself as an “old lady,” and some wear-and-tear is evident, but she’s still a great beauty and a vigorous on-stage presence. 

Her stamina is amazing. She brought a whole new set of musicians onto the stage for the second half of the program, a hot jazz ensemble with several well-known veterans in her own age range. These included Dick Hadlock, my daughter’s kindergarten teacher at John Muir School, who still blows a mean clarinet. For most of the last 50 years, fine musicians like him have had to look for day jobs to support their musical habit, as listeners have gradually become addicted to the canned music owned and controlled by big corporations.  

It’s been just about fifty years since I first heard Barbara Dane singing folk songs at the Ash Grove in Hollywood, and while she’s always had a devoted group of fans and outstanding reviews she’s never quite hit the big time. In retrospect it’s clear that her outspoken leftist politics had a lot to do with this—the music industry frowns on performers who can’t resist biting the hand that feeds them. One of her self-distributed CDs is called “I Hate the Capitalist System”—not a title you’d see on a major label. 

The most moving number of the evening was probably the oldest one: a deeply felt rendition of the folk classic “Careless Love” accompanied only by pianist Ray Skelbred. She managed to turn it into a powerful emotional lesson on women’s history without changing a word of the traditional text. But every song she sang carried extra meaning along with its melody, because that’s how she’s always looked at the world.  

Barbara’s show was a dramatic contrast to my encounter earlier in the day with another icon of my youth, KPFA. Here I must confess that I haven’t been able to listen to the station very regularly in the last 20 years, partly because of the tales of bickering that always emanate from it and partly because my own busy schedule doesn’t include auto commute time. But the bush telegraph was active on the weekend—I must have gotten 10 calls and e-mails telling me to listen to the talk show at 10 on Sunday when the mayor of Berkeley would be interviewed, so I turned it on while I sorted socks.  

Big mistake. I knew that Larry Bensky, a reliable if sometimes stodgy known commodity, had retired, but I hadn’t ever heard his replacement, one Peter Laufer. Laufer’s Googled credentials and the summaries of his previous shows seemed fine, up-to-code on national and international topics, no problem. But his interview with Mayor Bates was an embarrassing series of softball pitches, leading off with the host’s riff on how he’d loved Telegraph Avenue when he’d been in school here for two years in the sixties, but now it seemed excessively—ahem—seedy to him. Perhaps that’s what living in Marin does to you.... 

He provided Bates with ample opportunity to express his well-known distaste with individuals to be found on our Berkeley streets. I won’t belabor my own opinion of Bates’ attitude toward the poor one more time, because a couple of our readers got right on him with letters which will appear in this issue.  

But the attitude of the KPFA host definitely needs adjustment. He was lucky enough to get calls from several authentic residents of South and West Berkeley, the most neglected part of the city, who tried valiantly to pose their own hard questions to the mayor, but they were cut off in the most peremptory manner. One poor woman started to ask why nothing much was being done about crime in her neighborhood, but was able to get out no more than half a sentence before being squelched—it might as well have been Rush Limbaugh at the controls.  

Bates, on the other hand, was allowed, at not just one but at least three junctures, to get away with claiming that he has no power to control what callers regarded as excessive development in their neighborhoods in Berkeley’s Flatlands because it’s just “The Free Market” at work. That’s the same lame excuse George Bush uses to deny climate change and the Democratic Leadership Council uses to explain why we can’t have single payer health care.  

Two different people in the audience at the Freight on Sunday night approached me to gripe about the show which they’d heard that morning. I had to agree with them. 

Since when have KPFA talk show hosts sat passively by while guests pitched the inevitability of unbridled capitalism? I have absolutely no idea who’s on top these days in the local board faction wars, but does any of the factions want the host of the prime time Sunday talk show to diss listeners who call in, while rolling over for neo-liberal politicians? I doubt it. My guess is that most KPFA listeners and activists are still the kind of people who appreciate Barbara Dane’s continued efforts to point out what’s wrong with just leaving “The Free Market” to operate as it pleases, regardless of who’s injured in the process. And I imagine they expect the same kind of critical thinking from broadcasters. 

BOUNCE-GYMS IN THE PARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Does the city of Berkeley care about global warming? Does it make sense to sanction the use of gas-powered electricity generators in our public parks for private functions? 

Does the city of Berkeley care about protecting the commons? Do we have so much park lands that we should allow them to be used for the business of providing “amusement-park” entertainment? 

This is a no-brainer. There is no reason to allow the city’s scarce park resources to be compromised by noise, air-pollution and encroaching privatization. 

Bruce Loeb 

• 

MISLEADING INFORMATION ABOUT UCB 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Daily Planet has recently run a series of articles which present misleading and inaccurate information about the University of California’s program to clean up contaminants left by historic industries on and near what is now the UC Berkeley Richmond Field Station (RFS). I am writing on behalf of the university to address a few of the many misrepresentations. 

One claim is that the university has not properly communicated to its employees about the clean up at RFS and nearby properties. On the contrary, UC has held many meetings with RFS employees and maintains a website (http://rfs.berkeley.edu) specifically to provide technical information and current news to our employees and the community about conditions at RFS.  

Another claim is that the university has retaliated, or threatened to retaliate, against employees who may have expressed workplace health concerns. This is simply not true. Employees are made aware of the university’s “Policy for Protection of Whistleblowers from Retaliation,” which specifically allows employees to express their concerns without fear of reprisal. Further, UC Berkeley labor relations representatives have asked repeatedly for information on the alleged retaliations, but the unions have failed to provide any details. 

The Daily Planet states that the university “devised its own cleanup” at RFS, when the fact is that our remediation plans were developed by experienced environmental consultants, and reviewed and approved by the lead regulatory agency and numerous other government agencies. 

DTSC has recently alleged that part of the RFS remediation work conducted between 2002 and 2004 lacked proper permits. DTSC has emphasized that these alleged violations are not based on any increased health risk at or near the RFS. 

Since the beginning of our cleanup efforts, the university has worked in a fully cooperative manner, first under the Regional Water Quality Control Board, and now under DTSC’s Coastal Cleanup Operations Branch. That the same agency we have been cooperating with since 2005 would now initiate an enforcement action against us is a surprise and disappointment, and we disagree with the agency’s position. We are eager to meet with DTSC so that we can understand their concerns and resolve this issue. As always, the university is committed to completing the site cleanup and restoration in a safe and efficient manner for the benefit of the entire community.  

Mark Freiberg 

Director, Environment, Health and Safety 

University of California, Berkeley 

• 

TRADER JOE’S 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I share Stephen Wollmer’s concern that the City Council’s recent approval of the Trader Joe’s project undermines the integrity of the city’s land use planning process and sets a bad precedent. As he wrote in last Friday’s Daily Planet, the council majority has taken the view that they have wide latitude in allowing a project to exceed zoning regulations if it appears necessary to make the project economically feasible.  

The zoning regulations exist in part so residents and developers know the “rules of the game” for any given parcel of land. The requirements to include affordable housing and to provide “bonuses” (license to exceed what the zoning allows) for developers already complicate matters. But when the City Council claims the right to award additional bonuses on a case-by-case basis, as it did with the Trader Joe’s project, it’s essentially saying it reserves the right to bend the rules. To be sure, it makes sense to allow a degree of discretion, but awarding an arbitrary number of bonuses to make a project “economically feasible” puts the council in the position of judging project economics, and invites developers to game the system (even more than they do now).  

Where I disagree with Mr. Wollmer is in his disparagement of developers’ complaints that complying with Berkeley’s development standards and affordable housing inclusion requirements is expensive. That these policies increase costs and reduce revenues is obvious. Whether they render a given project too risky with respect to its likely profitability is very hard for outsiders to judge, since both costs and revenues are subject to uncertainty. 

Requiring developers to provide a large number of apartments that will yield below-market rent in perpetuity is a sacred cow that no one (except developers) wants to criticize. But it doesn’t come for free, and all too often it’s the neighborhood around a pumped-up project that bears the cost (in terms of livability and land values). I like low rents as much as the next person, but to me it seems unfair when new residents of a neighborhood (the future tenants in the below-market units) benefit at the expense of those who already live there. It may be that having “smart” AND “neighborhood-friendly” growth requires new ways of providing housing that’s affordable for those of modest income. 

Steve Meyers 

• 

WE’LL SURVIVE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mayor Tom Bates came across as your standard collectivist-statist during the KPFA interview on Sunday. He was blaming everything on the feds for not supplying the loot fast enough and the capitalist system for the personal failure of every street bum in Berkeley. 

Bates properly drew the line at some of the more outrageous lumpen around the so-called People’s Park. By the way, Becky O’Malley, you don’t have to live in Marin to realize the deterioration of Telegraph Avenue, you just have to have your head not lodged up your anal cavity. 

As far as KPFA goes they have been losing listeners for decades and fell quite short on their last marathon. Laufer, while still insufferably PC, is almost a breath of fresh air after the intolerable and totally predictable Bensky. Maybe your ilk doesn’t run things around here anymore, Becky. Tough but we’ll survive. 

Michael P. Hardesty 

Oakland 

• 

MAYOR’S REMARKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for running the deeply heartfelt July 24 commentary by Susan Chacin in regards to local Street Spirit vendors of Berkeley, and Mayor Tom Bates recent on-air KPFA radio comments that were casting dirt upon the homeless population in Berkeley. 

As I listened in to KPFA’s July 22 Sunday Salon morning program, I too was hurt by the insensitive nature of Mayor Bates’ comments as he publicly bragged about avoiding Street Spirit vendors in Berkeley, so that he could avoid giving a contribution. These rantings sounded more like the behavior of Scrooge in the old Dickens Christmas classic, rather than the mayor of a so-called progressive city who should inspire us all with good will and deeds. Mayor Bates made it clear on KPFA that he is no friend of the homeless when he implied that the community should not assist the poor with monetary contributions, even if they are selling Street Spirit. Mr. Mayor, if you read this in the near future please be advised that when the community makes contributions to Street Spirit vendors for the newspapers they sell, it is for a noble cause, and not something the community should be ashamed of or avoid. Street Spirit newspapers are expertly published on a monthly basis by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and it’s founding editor, Terry Messman. 

Even during troubled times, Terry Messman has managed to make the newspaper freely available to it’s vendors on a monthly basis, so that they have something to sell that is of value to the community at large. For the asking price of $1 dollar, the newspaper offers stability, an income and some meaning to the lives of the homeless involved in the program, which is much more love than the mayor is offering to the homeless lately. 

Street Spirit newspapers go way beyond being informative, and are loaded with great poetry and artwork by the community contributors. Each issue is a collectors edition in it’s own right, and a deep reflection of who we are. 

I support the Street Spirit vendor program, and am grateful that many others support this community effort to offer the homeless a position in our society as our friends and neighbors. 

Lynda Carson 

Street Spirit contributor 

• 

KUDOS TO DELLUMS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Horray and bravo to the Oakland’s newest, the Honorable Mayor Ronald Dellums, my hero for decades for his tireless efforts in the recent lockout of Oakland’s Union/Teamsters who work for Waste-Management, and who safely drove the huge garbage trucks.  

I am a dues-paying, retired teacher from Berkeley and Oakland. I always honor labor’s picket lines; this situation is not a strike. We need more and stronger labor unions for all working people. My fear is that this same company may lock out their workers in Southern California in an attempt to break their union, thereby cutting wages and working conditions for many hard working men and women who deserve good pensions, health care, safety conditions, a living-wage, and of course the time-honored traditions which were won by blood, sweat and tears—withholding their labor, a strike which is now one of the company’s demands.  

We teachers were threatened with firing if we did not return to work during the six-week teachers’ strike in Berkeley in the fall of 1976. As with many settlements, amnesty was granted and all teachers went back to work with no repercussions. In today’s situation the company, Waste Management, Inc., has locked out the workers for more than 20 days; families undoubtedly feel the strain financially and personally. WM recently raised their rates and obviously are making enough of a profit to settle the labor dispute and agree on a good contract. It has been reported on TV and in newspapers that the trash in our poorer Oakland neighborhoods hasn’t been getting picked up in a timely/regular fashion, which is a health hazard.  

Former President Reagan broke the air traffic controllers union which I consider a tragedy. I urge all readers who value labor and respect working people who are union members or not to remember it is labor unions who have brought you the 40-hour work week, no child labor, the weekend (my own mother used to work Saturdays, a 48-hour work week), safer working conditions for men and women, the right to organize and have representation in unfair labor practices among many other benefits. “Solidarity Forever...and the union makes us strong!” as the old working class song goes.  

Sylvia P. Scherzer 

Albany 

• 

EAT CROW 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With cancellation of Oakland’s July Fourth fireworks display and the Waste Management lockout, the answer’s in on whether our new mayor was on the job, or just enjoying junkets around the country. It was no secret that the trash labor contract was coming to an end with trouble looming. The mayor should have gotten a court order for the company and union to fulfill their contract with the city. The city’s health is, after all, the most basic government duty after fire and police. Will your columnist Allen-Taylor eat crow?  

Jim Young 

Oakland 

• 

TUITION INCREASES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am outraged at the proposed tuition increases at the University of California. The tuition at our public universities is already much too high. If Canada, England, Cuba and Venezuela can provide free university education for their people, why can’t we do it here in the United States? The high cost of education here in the United States makes it very hard for middle class and low-income people to attend university. And when kids leave college, they owe a bundle. 

Here, tuition increases at the state universities and community colleges have increased steadily, until now the UC deans want to charge $43,000 a year to go to a public professional school, like law or business.  

While we are raising barriers to education here in the United States, we are importing professional people educated at free or low cost universities in India, China, the Philippines and elsewhere to fill our professional jobs here. There is something wrong with this picture.  

Who benefits? Big business hiring cheap foreign labor? 

Those greedy deans and regents—instead of comparing their salaries with industry, they should be comparing them with school teachers. These deans and regents are employed in the public sector, and should be loyal to the people they educate, not to their business buddies. 

Margot Smith 

• 

DENVER VS. BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I just returned from Denver, where I rode RTD’s wonderful light rail system. That kind of thing may be too expensive for the East Bay, but it sure is a beautiful dream. The most amazing thing was the Free Shuttle Bus on 16th Street Mall. It carried happy shoppers and restaurant patrons through 20 blocks of Denver’s downtown, on lanes without cars. There is no parking whatever on the mall. The mall buses are special units, built in Denver. They have four doors. They are hybrid diesel-electric, using natural gas. Everyone rides the mall buses—tourists, business suits, cattlemen there for a convention, students, and workers. Downtown Denver is indeed, as I read on the back of a city worker’s shirt, “clean, safe and vibrant.” 

It was quite a come-down to return to Berkeley and attend the Southside BRT meeting. The same reactionaries were still claiming that bus-only lanes on Telegraph will be bad for business and that any reduction in parking on Telegraph will kill off what commerce remains. Downtown Denver shows what can happen with good, far-sighted city planning. The lanes on Denver’s 16th Street Mall are reserved for the mall buses. Evenings and weekends, the lanes are used by horse-drawn carriages and pedicabs, but never any cars—not even regular city buses. The mall buses, sidewalks and stores were crowded and business was booming. The light rail crossed the mall and regular city buses were available on the other streets. Berkeley could have a mall bus and a business boom, if some of us were not so reactionary about public transportation, or so fixated on cars and parking. Where were the cars in Denver? Oh, there were plenty of them; many times, I watched congestion from the sidewalk or a bus, or as I sped along in a light rail train. There are plenty of parking lots, and metered on-street parking is available on the streets feeding the mall. But on the mall itself, pedestrians strolled car-free or rode the Free Mall Bus, getting off when they saw an interesting store or restaurant. Denver’s downtown business was booming, even with bus-only lanes. 

Steve Geller 

• 

POPULATION CONNECTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The danger posed by environmental degradation is on the forefront of many people’s minds. Thankfully, many of these same people are quickly finding ways to combat the problems. Most advocate for conservation and improved technology. I certainly agree that these are promising steps toward environmental sustainability. However, without addressing an essential component of the environmental crisis—population sustainability—the Earth will continue to be overstressed, which threatens our collective flourishing. 

Each of us can personally combat rapid population growth and the consequent environmental degradation by making educated, informed choices about the number and spacing of one’s children. When people receive adequate family planning education and have the ability to choose and implement their decisions, they tend to have fewer children. This leads to a reduction in environmental degradation, which raises the quality of each child’s life.  

Comprehensive sex education and international family planning services provide a useful education on the environmental consequences of one’s reproductive choices. Please ask your representatives to do two things to further this cause: 1) Vote for the Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act, would require federal funding for domestic comprehensive sex education, and 2) Secure more funding for international family planning.  

Georgia Gann 

Population Connection 

• 

MORE ON TRADER JOE’S 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am not happy letter writer James Sayre is getting a Trader Joe’s in his neighborhood. I am surprised that he somehow has created the imaginary and fantastic idea in his head that Trader Joe’s can be compared with a supermarket. Consider the wide array of products at a supermarket, such as the Andronico’s in the Willard neighborhood in Berkeley. Customers there are given a choice of products. There are premium brand fava beans in salty water and there are private brand fava beans in salty water; there are regular’ bananas and there are organic bananas; there are more brands of wheat bread than you would ever buy. But at Trader Joe’s, this is not the case. Trader Joe’s sells it own labeled products made for them by other manufacturers. Less choice for the consumer, higher prices overall and a bad tradeoff for those who think they are getting a supermarket. Certainly, Berkeley has reached the point where a luxury market is in demand. I remember the day Andronico’s started carrying Krispy Kream donuts, but even one donut was not a value for money.  

James Sayre and other supporters of Trader Joe’s might call those who oppose this store “Marxists” and “Communists”; but I challenge the strength of his argument. I challenge James Sayre to shop at Trader Joe’s with only the average weekly shopping budget of a low-income single man and promise to only eat on that budget for a month. In the end tell us, for the common good, whether the community needs the choice of a supermarket or the dictate of Trader Joe’s. The average weekly August thrifty food budget of a low-income single man in California (according to the USDA, who sets the standard) is $31.10. Can James Sayre prove Trader Joe’s is not harmful to families on a budget? I await his results in one month’s time in the letter column of this newspaper. 

John Parman 

Washington, DC (and Berkeley) 

• 

TRUSTEES CAN’T BE TRUSTED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Berkeley Board of Library Trustees (BOLT), at the July 18 meeting, voted to approve acceptance of an application for the upcoming trustee vacancy from a person whose application was received after the submission deadline of July 1. Four candidates who managed to apply during the short window of opportunity were interviewed by BOLT at the July 18 meeting. Another special meeting, originally to interview one more presumably timely applying candidate, will be held on Wednesday, Aug. 1 at the Central Berkeley Library. 

The work of the ad hoc Committee to Sunshine the Trustee Selection Process, set up by City Council recommendation, and designated to establish qualification criteria and timelines for the application process was ignored, and its’ further progress stagnated by the unavailability of committee member, BOLT Chair Susan Kupfer, whose work and social schedules were too full for her to allow scheduling of an ad hoc committee meeting for more than four weeks. Yet Chair Kupfer was able to schedule two special BOLT meetings in July mainly for the purpose of interviewing candidates for the October, 2007 trustee vacancy. Now that BOLT has replaced Kupfer with Laura Anderson on the ad hoc committee, hopefully it will meet and recommend the application process be reopened so that other candidates who did not apply by the July 1 deadline may now have the opportunity to apply and compete with the candidate whose application was received late on July 3. 

Gene Bernardi 

Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense (SuperBOLD) 

* 

DICTATORSHIP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

So the Bush administration is inept? That’s what I keep hearing. Too inept to pull off any kind of 9/11 conspiracy, too befuddled to have planned for and even encouraged the lethal dysfunction now occurring in Iraq. 

But apparently not too inept or befuddled to give us what may be our first American dictatorship. For we find ourselves with a president who first prevents members of his staff and the Justice Department from testifying at a congressional hearing, and then vows to repudiate any contempt citations that may result from this hubris. 

Furthermore, he may get away with it! He has packed the Justice Department with neocons. If Congress does vote to issue the contempt citations now being considered against Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten, the court (U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.) may well side with Bush. 

The fact that we must even worry about such a scenario tells us much about how far we have already traveled down the path towards authoritarianism. Congress and the courts will soon decide if we have, in fact, already arrived at that appalling destination. 

Judy Shelton 

• 

PARAMEDIC RESPONSE 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

3 p.m., Wednesday July 25: I just witnessed a narrowly averted tragedy in north Oakland that makes me question the willingness of the Oakland Fire Department and the 911 system to do their job in flatland neighborhoods. Working at my desk, I noticed a young woman on the ground in the OHA parking lot across the street, surrounded by spilled purses and jackets, her friends attempting to revive her. I crossed the street to see if immediate assistance was needed while calling 911. The girl was flat on her face, out cold, snot draining from her nose, her friends prodding and tugging her to wake her up. One said don’t call 911, my mom will kill me. 

It took Oakland Fire Department paramedics eight or nine minutes to arrive after my call, which may have not been the first 911 alert. When the fire fighter paramedic unit arrived, they exited the truck at a stroll and though I cannot for the life of me explain their attitude, but the nonchalance with which they approached the body in the parking lot made me particularly angry, their casual approach incongruous to an emergency situation. 

Sitting on my porch I yelled “Hurry up, go do your job,” and rather than take it as a prod to get on the hustle, one of the firefighters, the one with the big biceps, stared me down like he wanted to kick my ass while the girl remained sprawled on the ground, unmoving. This child could have aspirated vomit and would have been brain dead or completely dead in the time it took them to show up. 

Another fireman yelled calm down and said that they had encountered a similar scene around the corner and their assistance had been refused. But I’ve got to ask, if this was the same young woman, who would allow a minor to refuse obviously needed medical attention? 

The girl was taken away in an ambulance and Fireman Biceps stared me down again as he strode back to the fire truck. All I could do was curse him under my breath and ask, how long is the response time in Montclair or Rockridge? 

Hank Chapot 

Oakland 

• 

LAUGHABLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Let’s review the facts behind Sharon Hudson’s latest letter, so readers can decide for themselves whether she is spreading misinformation. In a 2003 opinion piece, Ms. Hudson opposed a development in the seminary neighborhood by writing “The seminary neighborhood is a classic walking neighborhood. The Urban Land Institute, a smart growth group, states that buildings need not exceed three stories to accommodate compact development,’ and that ‘primary buildings in walkable neighborhoods shall not exceed 35 feet...’” 

I was surprised to hear this, since the ULI usually often supports high-density development (much higher density than I would like), and I wrote a letter to the editor saying that their website featured an award for a 35-story building. 

Martha Nicoloff responded by giving a reference for the study that Ms. Hudson quoted (Urban Land Institute, “Smart Growth in the San Francisco Bay Area: Effective Local Approaches”) and Ms. Hudson repeated this reference in her latest letter. 

But if readers look up this reference, they will find that that the statement Ms. Hudson quoted is not in the body of this study, where the ULI states its own position. It is in Appendix E, where they summarize a model zoning ordinance created by a group in Utah, which they give as an example of one possible model ordinance promoting compact growth. The study includes a number of other examples of compact growth, such as infill development in San Jose that varies from 19 to 205 dwelling units per acre. 

The ULI promotes smart growth and walkable neighborhoods at a variety of densities—sometimes as low-density as three stories but usually much higher density. Ms. Hudson was clearly spreading misinformation in her original opinion piece, where she claimed that the ULI generally opposes development over 35 feet in walkable neighborhoods. 

Anyone who has a background in planning issues and knows the record of the ULI will find her claim laughable. 

Charles Siegel 

• 

EXXON PROFITS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Exxon Mobil is reporting yet another quarter of staggering profits near $10 billion. While we pay the high gas prices that pump up Exxon’s profits, we are also paying for Exxon’s campaign to block action on global warming. 

Studies used by Congress show that if we increase our use of homegrown renewable energy resources like wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass, then consumer energy prices will drop and new high-paying jobs will be created. ExxonMobil is the only oil giant still refusing to invest in renewable energy. 

Sarah Rodriguez 

• 

SMUG SMILE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On this morning’s news Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was shown praising the valor of a soldier killed in Iraq. (I didn’t get the soldier’s name.) Gates was so moved, his voice broke and his face was contorted with grief. Moments later, on the same news broadcast, George W. Bush was shown sprinting across the White House lawn waving cheerily at reporters. I asked myself, does this man feel any remorse or guilt for the thousands of young men whose lives have been snuffed out thanks to his immoral war? I look for some sign of anxiety, perhaps circles under his eyes, deep lines in his face—as was evidenced on Lyndon Johnson’s countenance during the Vietnam War. But no—there’s nothing there but that smug, self-satisfied smile! 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

PET BREEDING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Let’s get one thing straight about Assemblyman Lloyd Levine’s hugely controversial (and recently dropped) spay/neuter bill, AB 1634: There’s no such thing as a “responsible pet breeder.” An estimated 25-30 percent of the animals in our shelters are pure-breds, and pet breeders, “responsible” or not, are an integral part of the problem, however vehemently they deny it. So long as one healthy dog or cat remains unadopted in the shelter, there should be no intentional breeding of dogs or cats allowed, period. 

Want a new pet? Then save a life. Go to your local shelter or a pet rescue, not a breeder. 

Eric Mills 

Action for Animals 

Oakland 

• 

PUBLIC TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am so disappointed that the Assembly balanced their budget by cutting $1 billion that should be invested in public transit. The cuts are even more upsetting because the Assembly simultaneously voted for tax breaks for powerful corporate interests, including Hollywood, airlines, and the oil companies.  

We need world-class transportation for California’s future, including clean buses and fast subways connecting neighborhoods, and high speed rail connecting our cities. Especially with 60 million people in California by 2050, cutting more than $1 billion from public transit will only make it harder to avoid gridlock on our roads, reduce our oil dependence and meet our global warming commitments.  

The Senate should reject the Assembly’s cuts, and instead dedicate a larger percentage of the revenue from the sales tax on gasoline to public transit for future years. Keeping California mobile depends on it. 

Michelle Denney 

• 

ARE WE SAFER? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the remaining 548 days of the Bush II presidency what to do about Iraq will dominate all discussions of foreign policy and will be accompanied by this contextual question, stated or implied: “Are we safer?”  

For the Republican Party and its presidential hopefuls it’s a tricky question which they will be forced to interpret rhetorically or risk contradicting themselves. They want to take credit for having kept the nation free from attack but they must keep alive the fear that an attack is possible, probable or imminent. This would tell us we’re safer but we’re not safe, yet. 

Democratic Party leaders and presidential hopefuls will have to handle the question differently because for them it’s a trap. They cannot agree without surrendering to the opposition and they can’t disagree—there’s no denying six years with no terrorist attacks on the homeland —so they’ll respond evasively by citing weaknesses in intelligence gathering and in security mechanisms.  

If one recognizes the emotional fraud embedded in the question, one can handle it this way:  

Q: Are we safer?  

A: Of course, we are. We’re safe in the sense that a terrorist attack, even one as catastrophic as 9/11, cannot destroy the world’s only super power, unless we let it. Furthermore, it is easy to be safer but difficult to be safe enough.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

• 

MIDDLE EAST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

True to its tradition as an outlet for every manner of hysterical anti-Israelism, the Daily Planet ran as a serious op-ed a condemnation of Israel for a traffic accident in the West Bank in which a Bedouin child was run over by a garbage truck. The accident is labeled a “crime” and all of Israel indicted, tried, and found guilty. But the author gives the reader not one scintilla of corroborating evidence. We do not learn whether the child recklessly ran in front of the truck or whether the truck was driving recklessly. All we learn is that the villagers soon arrived on the scene and set the truck on fire. We do not learn whether the driver was a Jew or an Arab.  

The writer wants us to believe that he or she was a Jew, since the word “Israeli” is used all over the article. But, in fact, it is very unlikely that Jews drive garbage trucks though Arab villages in the West Bank. I don’t care so much about the writer, Heide Basche. The East Bay has no lack of Palestinian propagandists. My concern is that The Daily Planet persists in publishing every manner of provocative propaganda without taking the slightest journalistic care to do even rudimentary fact checking. For all we know, and for all that we can rely upon The Daily Planet, the whole incident might be just an Internet hoax. 

John Gertz 

• 

IMPEACHMENT IS TOO GOOD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The current administration has squandered both our tax dollars and our reputation around the world. Our Bill of Rights has been decimated, our Constitution, not worth the animal skin it’s written on. To paraphrase James Madison, “Pardon power should not to be used as a blank check to break the law of the land.” If I had leaked Valerie Plame’s name to the press, I would be tried for treason and we all know the penalty for treason. Impeachment is too good for these Anti-American Corporate Croanies. 

Robyn Linder 

Orinda 

• 

FRED THOMPSON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Good lord a mighty! Perhaps with the “hep” of TV, narcissism, and just plain ignorance, Fred Thompson, the frog/toad star of Law and Order, could be our next right-wing president! Arnold got in, Ronald got in, and now, to continue the great horror of media influence on our glued-to-the-set citizenry, good ol’ Fred could lead us on into the early, tragic years of the 21st century.  

America, have you no shame?  

Robert Blau 

Did you know that your neighbors can get together and decide that it is in your best interest to pay a supplemental property tax, all without your input or a fair voting process? Well, welcome to Berkeley. Year: 2007. This is what is happening right now in South/West Berkeley under the interestingly named proposed Community Benefits District (CBD). 

The biggest land owners on this side of town (in order: Bayer, Wareham Corporation and the City of Berkeley, along with developers Denny Abrams, Dennis Cohen, Steven Goldin, Doug Herst and Steven Donaldson) have decided that we need to “beautify and bring order” to our mixed use neighborhood of residences and businesses. They list their priorities as: street cleaning, sidewalk repair, graffiti abatement, homeless/encampment removal, 24-hour security (meaning two men in pickup trucks with walkie talkies? cell phones? guns?), and additional transit services.  

I am a resident in Potter Creek (Heinz Street to Dwight/San Pablo to the train tracks) and went, uninvited, to a meeting of these developers last week. I asked why the corridor of Sixth Street (between University and Dwight)—almost entirely single family homes—was being red-lined out of this district. Their response: it is a residential neighborhood and this doesn’t apply to them. Hmmm. Exactly what we think. This district does not apply to us. Second, why the “weighted” vote? Meaning, if the above developers are for this district, because they own more land, they win. Our votes don’t count. This is a done deal before there is even a single vote cast. So please, let’s not call this a vote, shall we? 

When asked about the allocation of funds, I was told by Marco Li Mandri (who makes a living selling this idea to communities) to read the mission statement. It is all about beautification, safety, cleanliness and mobility. Hey, who is against that? Not me. He said that 75% of the budget was for just that. And the other 25 percent? Well, he said for the running of the CBD office. Ahhh. 

In reading the fine print, after I got home, I see that the much of that 25 percent is for land use issues. Of course. Politics. They want to hire consultants, lawyers, and meet with city officials and rework that pesky document called the West Berkeley Plan to suit the “weighted” voters of the CDB. Them!  

In other fine print we learn that the largest landowner, Bayer, has cut a special deal with the CBD planners. They will not have to pay their equal share of this tax as they will not have to pay the percentages on their taxable building square footage. Why? Because it would cost too much. 

And the City of Berkeley’s stance? Well, they are sitting at the same table. Why not get the people to pay an extra tax? What a dream concept for them. The thing is, City of Berkeley, I already pay you to clean my street, and pick up the occasional dropped mattress, arrange for city buses to pass by, and for the police to come when called and I think you do a commendable job of it. You know this, you get my check twice a year and cash it. And sidewalks? We just bought them 2 years ago, thank you. Graffiti? Never had it in my 15 years here. And, the buses run on time.  

But, you say you want flowers? Call us. Trees, bushes? Call us. We would love to partner up with you and plant flowers and pick up trash on a regular basis. “Welcome to Berkeley” signs would be nice. The first freeway exit to Berkeley, in Potter Creek, at Ashby could look so much better. It is awful. Let’s call the City. I’m sure, together we could come up with many good ideas. 

My only remaining question is this: are you sure you have the right name for your group? Doesn’t “Developer Benefits District” (DBD) have a nicer ring? 

Sarah Klise is a West Berkeley resident. 

The jaw-dropping attacks on Michigan Congressman John Conyers this week by members of the white, leftist sector of this nation’s antiwar movement have proven how deeply racism exists. 

Conyers was picketed and attacked by leading activists and spokespeople of the anti-war movement because he, as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, determined that there did not exist enough votes to move to the floor of the House of Representatives a discussion of the impeachment of president George Bush for creating the war in Iraq.  

“Conyers has betrayed the American people,” bawled Global Exchange and Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin. “Conyers is no Martin Luther King,” wailed former analyst of the CIA, Ray McGovern. Lefty journalist David Lindorf scribbled, “The shame of John Conyers.” All three articles appeared on the July 24 version of the progressive website Commondreams. In addition, Cindy Sheehan, anti-war mom, had herself arrested sitting in at Conyers’ office.  

Give us a break! 

What does impeaching George Bush have to do with ending the war in Iraq? And what gives white, anti-war activists the right to call into question the moral and humanistic motivations of John Conyers because he determined the political will did not exist within Congress to impeach the president? 

From our point of view (and speaking as progressive African Americans) Conyers is the outstanding member of Congress, who has been most outspoken in support of the anti-war movement and against the Bush Administration.  

But here is something else. Year after year, actually every year since 1989, John Conyers has introduced into congress HR 40, the African American Reparations Study Bill. It is a bill that is likely the lowest common denominator of the Black reparations movement in the U.S. To date Conyers has never had the votes to get it out of committee, onto the floor of the House. But each year he re-introduces the bill, constantly searching for more endorsers. He has never given up on this issue that is supported by the vast majority of African Americans.  

To the best of our knowledge neither Medea Benjamin, Ray McGovern, David Lindorf and certainly not Cindy Sheehan or few of the other “leading lights” of the white left in the anti-war movement (with the notable exception of Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich) have ever lifted a finger or raised their voice in support of African Americans cry for repair from the legacy of the Atlantic Slave Trade.  

But yet, how ironic that these normally progressive whites feel perfectly comfortable labeling John Conyers “a betrayer of the American people.”  

Here is another irony. If white Americans had voted against George Bush by half the percentage points that Black Americans voted against George Bush, Dubya would have never gotten near the White House.  

As for McGovern’s claim that Conyers is no Martin Luther King, we say, who is some white guy to tell us who is and who is not our leader or leaders? That is what J. Edgar Hoover tried to do to us with regards to the Black Panther Party. Also, who is to say, if Martin Luther King were alive today, what he would or would not say?  

Some white sectors of the anti-war movement need to re-focus themselves and try to build allies in the streets and in the halls of government to end the war, rather than engaging in mindless racism and alienating the most progressive and anti-George Bush communities in America, namely Black America.  

Jean Damu is active within the Reparations Movement and Alona Clifton is a former member of the Peralta Community College board and a long-time political activist in Oakland. Both are members of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration Steering Committee.

Your July 24 editorial (“It’s All About Attitude in the End”) was deeply insulting to me, to Rush Limbaugh and to our myriad broadcast brethren. Reducing public discourse to an “us versus them” formula denigrates the very notion of free speech. I’m convinced that I speak for all of us when I say that it is you who are the problem here. More on that, as we say on the radio, in a moment. 

First, let me express thanks for complimenting my credentials as being “up-to-code” as you put it. Yes, a cursory Internet search does confirm the decades of journalism and talk radio. But you undoubtedly don’t know about my lifelong commitment the very philosophy upon which Pacifica Radio was built. Space and modesty prohibit me from detailing those efforts. Suffice to say that KPFA is my home, too. So, I must take exception to your diagnosis that I am in need of an attitude adjustment. (Get thee to a cranium chiropractor? Hello re-education camps!)  

You criticize me for having “sat passively by while guests pitched the inevitability of unbridled capitalism.” But if you had listened attentively to last Sunday’s program, you would have heard that every single call vehemently criticized Mayor Bates. There was no need for me to pile on, and in this context that would have accomplished nothing. Besides, it is not necessarily my job to attack my guests, be they public servants or the citizens they serve. 

Moreover, it is completely appropriate for the city’s chief executive to express his position. That’s why we invited him. Unlike you, I do not assume that all listeners (or even most listeners) know everything about everything. My show is a public information service for the masses, not just a limited forum for the narrow-minded few. That’s why it’s called broadcasting. 

It’s too bad you’ve based your judgment on only one program. Had you bothered to listen to any previous broadcast, you would have heard what many criticize as me being too aggressive. Some see me as too hard, some as too soft. We professionals call it journalism. (To quote radical songwriter Ricky Nelson: “You see, ya can’t please everyone, so ya got to please yourself.”) 

You criticize me for “dissing listeners who call in, while rolling over for neo-liberal politicians.” Listening to the mayor hardly constitutes “rolling over,” and animated discourse is not “dissing.” Besides, since when did members of my sophisticated audience lose their taste and tolerance for verbal sparring? Really, let’s be grown-ups here. A spirited exchange is an essential part of the public forum. 

I wish to emphasize that I did not hang up on any callers. My personal policy is to provide everyone with a reasonable opportunity to speak. I do occasionally tell people to get to the point. There is a clock on the wall and no callers have the right to monopolize the microphone. I am here to serve all my listeners. 

Moreover, my audience is not passive. An important part of my job is to motivate listeners to do more than simply complain. I hope I can act as a catalyst for change. As an example, I assigned one caller who expressed dissatisfaction with park policy to engage the system, attempt to change what bothers him and report back to me and the audience. (Maybe you missed that part of the program, too.) 

Let me digress by immodestly pointing out that, unlike you, the challenges of broadcast programs like this one are not theoretical for me. I literally wrote the book on this subject (“Inside Talk Radio”). If you would like, I’d be pleased to send you a copy; it’s a harsh critique of the medium…Rush Limbaugh included. 

You criticize me for being out of touch with the Berkeley point of view. Unlike your newspaper which has only one point of view, my radio show serves the entire community and all points of view. As anchor of this program, my job (despite what you might wish it to be) is to facilitate the free exchange of ideas. 

You criticize me for being a Marin County carpetbagger. Since when did Berkeley cease to be a part of the Bay Area—or of the world? In fact, it is you who have cocooned yourself in a mindset that everyone who bathes is somehow suspect. That homeowners must be oppressors of the masses. That only lifelong residents of (on?) the streets of Berkeley have the right to an opinion about this community’s public issues. Good grief! You are the problem! 

In addition, as I made clear when I introduced the mayor, KPFA listeners are worldwide. We talked about Berkeley, both from the point of view of those of us who live and work here, and as a laboratory that produces lessons for the rest of the audience to take advantage of. 

After the Sunday show with Mayor Bates I went to the renovated South Berkeley home of a couple of friends for a leisurely lunch on that gorgeous sunny afternoon. The husband is a Telegraph Avenue merchant, has been for a couple of decades. The wife is about to open her own shop down on San Pablo. They’ve lived in the neighborhood for more than 10 years. First, they regaled me with horror stories about my old Dwight and Telegraph neighborhood and how important it is to the quality of life for all Berkleyans to clean up those blocks leading to Sather Gate. Then they corroborated the stories the mayor told on the air about the businesses the city is closing in South Berkeley because they constitute a menace. If they and the mayor are part of the problem, sign me up on their team. 

Finally, apropos of nothing, it’s interesting that you don’t find Telegraph too seedy for your taste, but you wrote in your hit piece on me that you do sort your socks. That’s strange: Disorder is OK outdoors but not in? Sounds like symptoms of a closet conservative to me. 

And now this post script: You’ve been gracious enough to print this unedited response in your newspaper. Consider this an invitation to join me one day soon on my radio show. You’ll find an environment shockingly different from the pages of your paper: a place where all points of view are truly welcome. 

It was a hot summer’s day in Philadelphia, 100 degrees in the street with 98 percent humidity. I came home with chocolate syrup and strawberries all over my white uniform after another stressful day of driving a Mr. Softee’s ice cream truck in the hood.  

My father looked at me and said, “Son, how’d it go today.” I told him, “I spent half the day arguing with people who were trying to cheat me over a 25 cent ice cream cone and the rest, trying to stop them from stealing the whole truck! In a way I can’t blame them we were all hot and miserable. I think I’m going to quit.” 

My father looked at me and said, “Son, I understand—you don’t know the secret of life!” “What’s that,” I said excitedly. He said, “Make money and prosper doing what you like and pay others to do the things you don’t.”  

“What’s so secret about that?” I responded. “Most people I know,” he answered “make their living continuing to doing things that they did before, went to school for, or pays them the most money, but it’s rarely what they love. They end up marking time until they get to retirement to do what they truly want. The secret is don’t wait! How many people went to school to learn what they thought was an exciting profession, but now find themselves spending most of their time in a cubicle banging away on a computer keyboard? Or how many people do you know who spend their money on music, art and being out in nature but make their living doing mundane things that have nothing to do with what they love?” 

“You’ve got to pay your bills,” I said. “Yes, yes,” he responded. “But that’s the secret of life! You can have it both ways. If you do what you like you’ll do it often and enjoy doing it. If you do something often you can get good at it and eventually you’ll get paid. The responsibility of paying your bills is always there, but why not enjoy yourself? After all this is the only life you have.”  

My father’s conversation floated around in the back of my brain for years. I became a career counselor for a jobs program and one day it all came into view. I realized that yes, there are bills and the fear of failure, but the biggest obstacle was that most of the people I was counseling never knew what they really liked to do. They were always driven by the three forces that my father had described years before: what they did for a living, what they knew how to do, and the need for money. So I developed an exercise to help people discover what they like.  

I asked the class, “How may of you have ever spent eight full hours just thinking about what you like? (Out of 25 people one hand went up). I want you to spend the next three hours making three lists, no matter how long, wishful, trivial or mundane, of what you like, what you don’t like, and what you did, do or know how to do for a living. We’ll take an hour for lunch where you can share what you wrote with each other, if you choose to do so. After lunch I want you to draw a line connecting what you like, what you don’t and what you did or do for a living, and we’ll discuss the results.” 

It was amazing how few people were really connected with what they like. Most people in every class had more lines connecting what they did to what they didn’t like, than to what they liked and wanted to do. 

The next step was obvious. I told them, “Now that you’re closer to knowing what you like you need to plan your work and work your plan. If you know what you like to do and you’re not doing it find some place to volunteer—someone will be glad to have you and you’ll get better. If you are doing what you like but it can’t support you—go to school, improve yourself. If you’re doing what you don’t like and it doesn’t pay well—find another job.” 

Some of the people I counseled did go on to have successful careers (one of them picked me up in a new car when I was hitchhiking) and told me they enjoyed their work. Any time I’d run into a past student I would always ask, “Are you doing what you love?” Many said yes. I realized that the secret of life is about the journey not just the destination. For myself, I realized I enjoyed a lifestyle of just walking and talking, and recently I discovered writing an occasional story. Hey Pop, I think I’m close!  

OPEN CALL FOR ESSAYS 

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 e-mail your essays, no more than 800 words, to firstperson@berkeleydailyplanet.com. We will publish the best essays in upcoming issues.

TRADER JOE’S 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Imagine having a grocery store with good food, low prices and smiling clerks. Imagine having a grocery store with good food, low prices and smiling clerks in every neighborhood in Berkeley and Oakland. Imagine Trader Joe’s. Imagine not having to drive or bicycle or bus or walk miles to get to some over-priced corporate food chain with high prices, poor quality and apathetic help. 

It would seem that a well-run Trader Joe’s grocery store is a real threat to some of the old-time hard-core Marxist-Leninist Trotskyite East Bay lefties. The very idea that our capitalist society can occasionally produce well-run socially-conscious companies, the very idea… 

I am very happy that we Rockridgers of Oakland are getting our very own neighborhood Trader Joe’s grocery store in a few months. It will replace the awful, poorly-run, over-priced Albertson’s (which swallowed up the good low-priced Lucky’s in their corporate quest for greed). “Good widdance to bad wubbish,” as the great Elmer Fudd would say. 

Living right next to a grocery store of any stripe might be a bit of a sticky wicket, as the English might say. As a starting kindergartner 60 years ago, I was not thrilled to live right across the street from the local elementary school. Too close for comfort. I cried at the door on the first day of school after being walked to the kindergarten class. Who are all those kids and what are those giant blocks? But most of us adjust (finally) to our new situations. These anti-Trader Joe’s folks may well end up being some of the store’s most devoted customers. 

James K. Sayre 

Oakland 

• 

HUDSON’S RESPONSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you, Charles Siegel, for again reminding me of your very humorous letter in 2003. In that letter you erroneously asserted that I had been mistaken when I stated that the Urban Land Institute, a “smart growth” organization, recommended very moderate building heights for walkable neighborhoods. At that time, Martha Nicoloff quickly wrote to support my original ULI source with another ULI source of her own. I will quote from Ms. Nicoloff’s letter here, because although your errors of fact—such as mistaking 35 stories for 35 feet—are somewhat funny, what is not funny at all is the perversion of “smart growth” being foisted off on the existing neighborhoods and future residents of Berkeley. 

Ms. Nicoloff wrote: “In a handbook for planners and developers published in June, 2003 by the San Francisco District Council of the Urban Land Institute, you will find the following quote: ‘Building Heights Intent: Buildings in walkable neighborhoods need not exceed three stories to accommodate compact development....Primary buildings in walkable neighborhoods shall not exceed 35 feet; accessory buildings (garages and second units) shall not exceed 25 feet. Chimneys, vents, cupolas, ornamental parapets, and other minor projections may exceed these height limits by up to five feet.’ (Reference: Smart Growth in the San Francisco Bay Area: Effective Local Approaches.)” The ULI also has other humane recommendations, such as at least 50 square feet of private open space and access to another 100 square feet of private or semi-private open space.  

However, this in no way contradicts the ULI’s right to give awards to 35-story buildings in the right context, as you mention. They ULI gave a 2006 award to a bizarre, bullet-shaped 35-story building in Barcelona. This building is next to a “double-decker roundabout at the intersection of three of Barcelona’s major boulevards” and the area is designated for future skyscrapers; it does not appear to be a residential neighborhood. 

The ULI also gave 2006 awards to the San Francisco Presidio (low-density historic preservation), and to a Singapore conservation program that has designated over 6500 buildings for historic preservation, which ULI calls “a model conservation program to preserve its rich heritage of vernacular buildings and colorful neighborhoods.” Hmmm...I think Berkeley has some of those, too, doesn’t it?  

Sharon Hudson 

• 

THOUGHT PROCESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is gratifying to learn that Councilmember Max Anderson fully supported the ZAB recommendation to shut down the Dollar Store at 2973 Sacramento St. (Daily Planet, July 20). Perhaps, however, Mr. Anderson can tell us how he reconciles his position with his publicly stated opposition to the 2006 court decision in which a property owner at 1610 Oregon St. (which is situated practically around the corner from 2973 Sacramento) was ordered to pay her neighbors $70,000 for maintaining a public nuisance. As with this case, that one involved knowingly permitting drug dealers and other assorted criminal types to use her property as a safe harbor for illegal business dealings. As with this case, the evidence in that one was “overwhelming, clear, and well-documented over a long duration.” 

I am not a resident of Mr. Anderson’s district, but if I were I would want to know the exquisitely calibrated thought process by which he reaches different results in two such strikingly similar cases. 

Evelyn Giardina 

Walnut Creek 

• 

OAKLAND SCHOOLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s July 20 article “Contrast Between State Takeovers of Oakland and Vallejo Schools” documents that the progress in return of local control in Vallejo was greater than in Oakland. Mr. Allen-Taylor interviewed David Kakishiba, Oakland School Board President, who thinks the greater success of Vallejo in regaining local control is due to the Solano county superintendent, and the state administrator of Vallejo school district, providing a more rigorous administrative focus on the Vallejo recovery plan than Alameda County Superintendent Sheila Jordan, and Oakland State Administrator, Kimberly Statham provided for their recovery plan. 

The lack of administrative vigor mentioned above might be one of many factors explaining the differences between Vallejo and Oakland in making progress toward return of local control. Another factor might be the smaller size of both Vallejo and Solano County making their responsibilities easier to administer. Another factor may be that the Oakland state administrator placed a priority in implementing the Broad Foundation managerial reforms. This reform commitment may have distracted that administration from its mission of implementing the recovery plan endorsed by the quasi-State agency Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT).  

Yet, there might be a simpler explanation for Oakland lagging behind Vallejo in returning of local control. It might be that Dr. Kimberly Statham, the Oakland state administrator, is neither highly qualified, nor even legally qualified. There is nothing in her record that would have qualified her as an “expert in finance.” In fact, Javetta Robinson, her chief financial officer, and a person that qualifies as an “expert in finance,” was recently apparently fired with little thought of a replacement. I interpret this action as demonstrating, not only a lacking in financial expertise, but managerial expertise too.  

California Education Code 41326(b)(2) defines the qualification for a state administrator as “The administrator shall have recognized expertise in management and finance.” And Ed Code 41326 also makes State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell and Alameda County Superintendent Sheila Jordan responsible for seeing that this law is carried out. Kimberly Statham was a feel good, popular alternative to Oakland’s previous abrasive state administrator, Randolph Ward; but, being popular did not mean she was qualified. But even if finances were State Administrator Statham’s priority, she would still, by California law, remain legally unqualified for the position of state administrator.  

Jim Mordecai 

Oakland 

• 

THE SMALL STUFF 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Another very good editorial! (“Time to Savor the Small Stuff,” July 20.) It lifted my spirits that tiny little bit that helps to make it through another day in a town with a ruling class that currently tries to forget that low-income and blue collar working class families exist, and when they do notice, tries to eliminate them from surviving here—by government action, or inaction. I love my Berkeley neighbors, most are unique and wonderful, but I am personally frequently disappointed by the results of decisions of the BUSD, the rent board, and many of those on the City Council. Maybe the next generation will be able to do a better job, and repair some of the damage now being done. What happened to our hopes and dreams of truly open, competent, and caring government, and the need for truth and justice, that we had way back in the 1960s and 1970s here in Berkeley? Unprofitable? Forgotten? Even though the government of Berkeley is frustrating, it is wonderful to look around and at least see the large numbers of individual Berkeley people who are doing things to make life for others better in at least “small ways.”  

Patty Pink  

• 

MARK RHOADES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The exit of controversial Planning Manager Mark Rhoades is a much welcome move. After all, while at the planning office, he was very divisive and made lives miserable for a lot of Berkeleyans, including us tenants at 2507 McGee St. Mr. Rhoades as well as the city attorney’s office have made us very anxious and fearful of our future housing as they plan to put the property in receivership. The irony of it all, they have selected Mr. Ali Kashani, a developer for profit as the receiver. The Daily Planet story mentioned that Mr. Rhoades is “likely to be working” with Mr. Kashani. This raises serious question on the propriety of his action and the potential “conflict of interest.” 

The property in question is in a much better shape compared to what it was in 1991 when Dr. Rash B. Ghosh purchased the property. From documents I have seen, the property was in really bad shape and in need of much needed repairs and improvements. In good faith, Dr. Ghosh proceeded in fixing the property with the permits issued by the City. Alas, 18 months after the work has been completed, the city changed its mind and decided that “they should have not issued those permits” and demand changes to the property. To further add insult to injury, Mr. Rhodes took the matter to the Municipal Court and the City Council. The Municipal court dismissed the case but Rhoades convinced the council to declare the property “a public nuisance” after conducting hearings in the absence of Dr. Ghosh who is out of the country at that time. Now that Dr. Ghosh could not afford to implement the expensive changes the city requires, and even after he has obtained condo conversion approval, Rhoades and the city attorney’s office still wants the changes be implemented, otherwise, the property goes into receivership to Ali Kashani. What a blatant display of injustice! 

The 2507 McGee St. is not only our home but it is also a place where like-minded individuals converge to work for the International Institute of Bengal Basin (IIBB), a non-profit organization dedicated to improve water quality and environment and reduce the toxic impacts both at home and abroad. It is also home to a non-denominational temple where we use for meditation. 

We believe that the problem of 2507 McGee St. can easily be resolved if only the city, particularly the planning and city attorney’s office, are not too stubborn to consider other options that are beneficial and cost effective to parties concerned. If the city remains glued to its decision, we stand to lose what we have worked so hard to be better citizen of this city, the country and the world at large. 

Rosalie Y. Say 

• 

TOO OLD AND CRANKY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If Mayor Bates, by his own admission is too old to conduct city business, perhaps he should resign. Frankly, the City of Berkeley might be better off with an altogether younger City Council with a more visionary outlook. When I was young the slogan was not to trust anyone over 30. Then we all reached 30 and the slogan was deemed to be out of fashion. Maybe there was something to it after all. 

Mayor Bates is too old (and cranky) to stay up past 11 p.m. and Dona Spring is not the only one to be the brunt of his rudeness. He is not fit to be mayor of a city that used to be in the vanguard of municipal governance. His attitude on KPFA on Sunday morning did nothing to change my opinion. He is rude and condescending when speaking to his constituents. 

Constance Wiggins 

• 

PUBLIC TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

While it is absolutely necessary to consider building on transit lines, it’s also absolutely necessary to consider the noise. Traffic noise is crazy-making. Sound walls, as we’ve found, redirect the noise. In particular, building on BART lines is insanity until the train passage can be virtually silenced. Making crazy people—people who are enveloped by that noise, who keep their windows and doors closed in order to lessen that noise, ...these make people who are not healthy members of society. I’m sure you’ll be in contact with people concerned with this problem—and with proposals for ways to deal with it. The Paris subway, I’m told, runs on rubber wheels. BART wheels are out of round, and the tracks are worn. Consider the comfort as well as the necessity of living very close to good transportation. The major problems with transportation start with its inadequacy and cost to riders. There need to be 100 times as many buses going all over the place all the time—jump on one, get off, transfer to another to get where you’re going. This needs many more workers. The major problem in the United States is the lack of sufficient workers to do what we need done—like let us have enough good transportation. 

For disabled people there need to be on-call and by-appointment carriers for their particular needs and destinations. I don’t mean that every walking person who is limited in movement needs a vehicle different from a common public transportation vehicle. Many people whose physical ability is limited seem to require handicapped’s transportation because the public transportation is so far from them and/or too infrequent for ease of use. 

An objective for a meaningful society is being able to do what we do near enough to home that extensive distance travel is not necessary. But the idea of work, play, the stuff we do being available near home is so distant at this time I’m only appending it almost as an afterthought. The huge profit by dint of our labor, the extensive enslavement of the working class are barely noticed in this, capitalist society. Comfort of all of us and gentle care of Earth are so distant from people’s thinking .... how sad. 

Norma J. F. Harrison 

Anybody who is unsure about the concept of social engineering should take note: there is an excellent opportunity to see it in action tonight (Tuesday) at the so-called “Community Workshop” on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), sponsored by our city’s Transportation Commission. The announcement for the event states that the commission “welcomes [our] participation,” and then instructs us to “come prepared to engage in a respectful, consensus-building process about the future of Bus Rapid Transit in Southside area of Berkeley.” That all sounds pretty good—after all, who could be against respectful dialog and consensus-building? Well, the members of the Transportation Commission, for starters. It turns out that they do not want any dialog about the most important issue regarding BRT: Do we think it is worth the tremendous disruption to our streets, homes, and businesses to have it here at all? Nor are they interested in the true nature of consensus-building, which involves an honest assessment of the range of community opinion at the very start of the process. 

So, what do they want us to discuss at the meeting? The announcement lists the following: “Route Alignment, Service Features, Station Locations, Station Features, Mitigations, and Joint Benefits.” Whoa, Nellie! In other words, they want us to participate in the workshop as long as we agree with all of their assumptions about the value and necessity of BRT, and we want to help decide the best way to implement it. And then later, they will use this meeting and others to claim that they have done adequate community outreach and the public agrees with them! This is like the sheriff who gives the condemned prisoner a choice of execution methods for his sentence, but neglects to allow him to have a trial on the charges. It is fundamentally unfair. 

If you haven’t been following this issue, you may assume that a vigorous debate must have occurred about BRT—perhaps sponsored by our City Council or AC Transit or an independent group such as the League of Women Voters. Well, it hasn’t. AC Transit planners and city officials have never encouraged any serious discussion of the merits and detriments of this massive and expensive transportation system. And the Transportation Commission has been one of the worst violators of public responsibility in this regard. Indeed, they have practiced their own version of “Decide, Announce, Defend” in handling the issue. They have been unabashed advocates of BRT from the very start, without inviting any community input. Some of them have even been so disingenuous as to claim repeatedly that BRT is a “done deal”: it will be built in Berkeley, they say—the City Council has already agreed to it and there is no way to stop it. This is simply not true. And equally important, their behavior goes against all the traditions of democratic participation in Berkeley.  

In fact, opposition to BRT is growing daily, in part because the Environmental Impact Report shows that it will encourage very few automobile drivers to switch to public transit, and will do little or nothing to help reduce greenhouse gases. Even so, these facts don’t seem to stop supporters from repeating false claims about BRT’s environmental benefits. So, we need to show up at meetings like the one tonight and express our views on the whole BRT question—not just on the narrow terms that the Transportation Commission has set out for us. 

I have taken this opportunity to write the announcement that should have been written for the event, one that favors democratic participation rather than social engineering: 

Bus Rapid Transit: Focus on Southside Berkeley 

Community Workshop 

6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., Tuesday, July 24.  

2362 Bancroft Way 

Your participation is welcome at our Community Workshop. Please come if you are a resident of Berkeley who cares about this issue, because it will have significant impacts on the entire city. In particular, if you live or own a business in the Southside area, we want you to express your concerns and ask questions. Our primary goals are to increase community awareness about BRT, listen to the views of residents and merchants, and present information about the current state of planning for this system. Everyone is encouraged to attend this event, and there will be substantial time for public comment. 

I hope to see you there. 

Doug Buckwald is a Berkeley activist.

To Mayor Tom Bates: 

I was very disappointed to hear something you said on the “Sunday” show on KPFA this Sunday, July 22. You said that when you see a Street Spirit vendor at the Berkeley Bowl, you often cut through the parking lot to avoid him. You used this personal revelation to illustrate that some members of the public feel uncomfortable around the homeless, and that this discomfort can hurt business in Berkeley. Your personal example followed a more vehement statement about the homeless, or, you clarified, not so much the homeless as mentally ill and drug addicted street people who have “incredible street behavior.” The host clarified that you meant incredibly poor street behavior. 

There were so many insensitivities in these few lines that I hesitate to break them down at all. But I support Street Spirit and buy it whenever I can. I want you to acknowledge publicly that this publication is part of the solution, not part of the problem. I think that any comment by an elected official that condones people avoiding Street Spirit vendors is reprehensible. This project combines self-expression, honorable work, and increased resources going toward meeting homeless people’s needs. I have found Street Spirit vendors hardly ever to be aggressive or obnoxious. It is passers-by choice whether to purchase the paper or not.  

I submit that your discomfort with the homeless, and that of many people in our community, stems more from guilt and projection than from any bad behavior on the part of these citizens. We know that “there but for fortune go you or I.” We fear the calamity that could pluck us from our comfortable, seemingly secure lives, and drop us down in front of a supermarket, dependent on the generosity of strangers. We wonder if we are doing all we can to change the world so that human need would come before corporate greed. And we imagine the resentment, anger, and loathing that we would feel if we were ever in their shoes, to see prosperous, uncaring neighbors pass by without even acknowledging our humanity. It is these truths that Street Spirit narrates, and for these reasons we should all subscribe.  

But you are correct on one count. There are many others who feel as you do. I sometimes wish I did not have to interact with homeless people. But I have made a decision. If a homeless man or woman can face me and ask for help, I owe it to them to give as often as I can. I work for a day when homelessness is erased. I like living in Berkeley because, as you also noted with paternalistic pride, we do more “for” the homeless than most other cities. But this problem is all of ours, not just an issue for people who are currently at the forefront of the struggle. Until you see yourself in the homeless, Street Spirit vendor, and respect him or her as doing a necessary job, all of us will be poorer, and your efforts to “help” the homeless will lack the heart it takes to interact with respect and equality. 

Yours in expectation of better  

leadership, 

Susan Chacin 

For the past two years, I have expressed strong objections about the contractual relationship between the City of Berkeley (City of Berkeley) and the Berkeley YMCA. This has occurred in numerous e-mails and phone messages to Mayor Tom Bates, City Manager Phil Kamlarz and my council district representative, Linda Maio. Despite my creating a lengthy paper trail of objections to this contract, and aggressively following up to request involvement, the mayor, city manager and Ms. Maio chose not to inform me that the matter was up for discussion and renewal last June 30. I felt that was a deliberate effort to prevent my objections from being heard in a City Council meeting. Throughout the year since that time, I re-stated my objections in writing and phone calls to Bates, Kamlarz, Maio and the city clerk’s office. None of them informed me that this issue was scheduled for the agenda last week. In recent weeks, I specifically asked a Bates assistant, named Arianna, to inform me when the item was going to be discussed this year. She rudely told me that was not in her job description, and that finding out what was on the council agenda was my “problem” (as she phrased it). 

On July 10 at 4:30 p.m. I received a call from the office of Councilmember Kriss Worthington, informing me that the City Council was scheduled to discuss and approve its contract with the Berkeley YMCA that evening at 7 p.m. ( So, much for a quiet evening at home watching the “Midsummer Classic”—rather than enjoying the planned decompression, I got more stress.) I dropped everything to prepare the following address to the Berkeley City Council. The late notice and parking difficulties caused me to walk into the council chambers at 7:05, according to the digital clock. But because the entire consent agenda was read and approved in the unprecedented time span of five minutes, at Mayor Bates direction, I was prevented from making this statement for the second straight year. 

To The Berkeley City Council: 

There are many urgent and compelling reasons to reserve or deny approval for the City of Berkeley’s contract with the Berkeley YMCA. 

On the face of it, it sounds great for the City of Berkeley or any corporate or government employer to subsidize health club memberships for its employees. But the Berkeley YMCA, while serving as the de facto health club and community for the City of Berkeley, engages in practices that are not permitted by any other city contractor. I argue that the council should withhold approval for any contract with the Y until the following issues are fully investigated and resolved:  

1) Inasmuch as the Berkeley City Council is a very pro-labor and pro-union organization, it should concern you that the Berkeley Y is active and aggressively engaged in union busting. At least two employees, Ms. May Cotton and Mr. Krassimir Stoykov were fired or forced out because they were suspected of trying to organize a union. In fact, they were not. 

2) The Berkeley Y is an exclusionary organization, run by a very secretive executive committee, which is accountable to no one. They don’t even follow their own by-laws in important policy and administrative matters.  

3) When I held membership at the Y, I made at least three written complaints about being sexually harassed in the men’s locker room. The Y avoided dealing with this issue because it did not want to risk being depicted as anti-gay. Yet, this fails to make a distinction between a positive and a very negative gay agenda. For resisting sexual advances in the men’s locker room, I was depicted by Y directors as anti-gay. This is untrue and unfair. More to the point, the Berkeley Y failed to honor its obligation to protect me from unwanted sexual advances in the shower and locker room. I recognize that I’m not a sympathetic character, but you should consider that childcare workers at the Y have been instructed not to allow young boys into the men’s locker room for this very reason! 

4) I hold professional certifications in pool management and fundraising. The Y directors freely solicited my expertise in both areas, but chose to avoid implementing my recommendations. Because I made formal complaints about the level of hygiene in the pools and locker room, and about the sexual activity in the locker room, my membership was revoked. There was no due process involved, contrary to the Y by-laws. 

5) The City of Berkeley maintains a visible conflict of interest with the Y. The Department of Environmental Health and the City of Berkeley itself have been awarded the Y’s “Champion Corporate Partner” designation in the past few years. Sr. Dir. Manual Ramirez candidly admitted to me in his office that the “inspection” that resulted from my complaint was woefully short of thorough. He also said that his department should not be accepting awards from facilities that it is regulating.  

These issues aside, the City of Berkeley’s own pool system desperately needs the money that is given to this private, unaccountable and exclusionary organization. As a swimmer at the city pools, I’m well aware of the urgent need for funding to address repair and ultimately renovation needs.  

The City of Berkeley should terminate it inappropriate contract with the Berkeley Y and designate that money for emergency needs for all three city pools.  

Thank you, 

H. Scott Prosterman 

My mom was a nurse with a great disdain for doctors. All she wanted us to be was “healthy, happy children.” She reinforced that by feeding us carrots and broccoli—a few cinnamon sticks thrown in—instead of candy for snacks.  

Not being much of a drinker, I wandered the earth with sugar as “my only vice.” Until the late ’70s and early ’80s when I ran into Michael Lesser, M.D., a friend, Michael Caditz, and the book Women Who Love Too Much. The book had a little diagram, showing how similar sugar and alcohol are as chemicals. When Dr. Lesser heard of my college senior year diet of ice cream cones, he declared, “Ice cream is grease and sugar, nothing more.” That information impressed me; I stopped the ice cream.  

That, and Michael Caditz’ experimentation with Pritikin and MacDougal diets, which said you need 10 percent protein, 10 percent fat, and 80 percent carbohydrates, started a trend in our dancing crowd that had me gradually deleting the sugar and fat from my diet.  

Historically, I am neglecting the salutary influence of Adele Davis and Frances Moore Lappe (cookbook writers with personal and planetary health emphases), which informed many of us on the East and Berkeley Coasts throughout the 70s. How many “Crusty Soybean Crowd Pleasers” did you make?  

I can document being up in Montana, having to milk cows at 6 a.m. before we went off to work in the Forest Service. The sight of their eyes, by which we found the cows at that dark hour and called them in, were too much for me. That was one of the deciding factors in becoming a vegetarian. Big, mournful cows’ eyes. I could relate to the Aurevedics.  

Wonderful Vegetarian Society affairs helped solidify an effort to become more vegetarian/vegan. Working with Dr. Lesser and his Nutrition and Vitamin Therapy book and his Orthomolecular Society meetings. Learning in nutrition flourished, especially around the Bay Area, in the eighties.  

Now we are blessed by the Elephant Pharm, the Ecovillage in Oakland, Feldenkrais, A Course in Miracles, dancing, listening to classical and other great music that flourishes around here. Now we can eat at the wonderful Ananda Fuera, Millennium, Café Gratitudes and Herbivores in San Francisco and Berkeley, the Long Life Vegi House on University, along with buying organic food from the larger stores here. We use City Car Share, and we have a smaller footprint by living simply.  

To friends who want it put simply, I say—Cut out the white stuff: White bread, white rice, bagels, yes, bagels, scones, and above all, red meat and potatoes. Must eat fruits and vegetables. Eat Oatmeal in the morning, and put fruit and nuts in it. Gogiberries are best. Eat fruit the first thing to get enzymes rolling. Putting sugar in your body first thing in the morning is tantamount to taking a screwdriver to your pancreas. Pancreatic cancer: six months of pain before demise. Do as the Europeans do: eat a larger lunch and a smaller dinner. Eat dinner before 7 p.m. if you want to A. Lose weight B. Get good sleep.  

Then go dancing! Take BART to the Symphony/Opera/Ballet, get a good walk up and down the BART stairs, and tread lightly going. Eat at Ananda Fuera or Absinthe: soup and quinoa salad and marinated beets, in a lovely courtyard garden.  

Don’t forget the endorphins! Breathe, listen and sing to music, and laugh a lot. Do something for peace.  

OPEN CALL FOR ESSAYS 

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 e-mail your essays, no more than 800 words, to firstperson@berkeleydailyplanet.com. We will publish the best essays in upcoming issues. 

One of the great attractions of the herd—or of the mob, it’s more dangerous younger cousin—is that once joined, it relieves the individual of having to make many individual investigations and decisions. That was always the case, from the dawn of time, but it is increasingly appealing in a world that is growing both more complicated and more illusion-driven, simultaneously. When every line of every speech or presentation or newspaper article must be closely searched and scrutinized for both accuracy and hidden agenda, the mind wearies, and the soul longs for a safe haven where there is a comfort that everyone around you is moving along with the same assumptions, right or wrong. Thus, the herd is joined, and followed. 

While there are some people in and around Oakland who are taking careful and thoughtful looks at the administration of Mayor Ron Dellums and coming out with insights and criticisms that help us all understand what the mayor is doing and where the city may be heading, that appears to be the minority. Discussion is being currently dominated by a group of folks—how large, who knows—who decided somewhere along the line that Mr. Dellums was and is wrong for Oakland, and everything he is doing or planning on doing, with no exceptions, only proves that point. 

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Chip Johnson gets paid to make periodic observations of the East Bay, and so you have his recent “Dellums Still Not Talking To Council Or To Voters” in which he asserts, in part, that “last week, Dellums became a party to negotiations aimed at ending the [Waste Management workers] lockout, but outside the closed doors he has said little to reassure the public that the dispute will be resolved soon.” Based upon the 33 comments that currently appear online in the Chronicle in response, a large number of those commenting agree. 

“It’s not surprising that Dellums doesn’t know what to do with the garbage strike,” a reader signed “opinyonated” (all of the commenters used pseudonyms) writes. “On the basic, ‘Simcity’ issues that run a city, he’s helpless. … It’s a disgrace that a city is drowning in garbage because of complacency.” From “concernedoaklan”: “The garbage strike is symptomatic of how little clout [Dellums] has. Its amazing that the mayor of the biggest city in the East Bay cannot whip the Teamsters and Waste Management into shape. I bet that Dellums just doesn’t want to step on Teamsters’ toes and WM is hell-bent on punishing Oakland for electing this anti-business mayor.” And from “GetMeOut”: “Ahhh poor people that live in the areas that have not had their trash picked up. Serves you all right. You voted in a Mayor that cannot and will not do anything about it.” 

Respectfully, I disagree. 

The error in these judgments about Mr. Dellums’ role in the Waste Management lockout comes, I believe, from a fundamental misunderstanding both of who Mr. Dellums actually is—as opposed to what folks’ perceptions of who they believe him to be—and the role needed to be taken in successfully mediating a dispute. 

To explain, a little history. 

I met Ron Dellums 41 years ago, in the fall of 1966. That summer, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Chairman Stokely Carmichael had made his famous “Black Power” speech during a march across Mississippi, virtually exploding Mr. Carmichael into the spotlight as the new, young national black leader. In the fall, a group at UC Berkeley—perhaps the associated student union, but memory fails me—invited Carmichael to speak at the Greek Theater. That upset the chairperson of the Black Student Union at Cal—his name escapes me, too—on the theory that in those racially polarized times, it appeared an affront to the African American community to have Mr. Carmichael come to the Bay Area in his first trip as the new national black leader to talk to white students at UC, as opposed to a gathering of the people he had been annointed to lead. A number of local black college students and activists, myself included, agreed with the UC BSU, and there were threats of a black boycott of the Carmichael Greek Theater speech, along with a possible picket line. 

Someone called a meeting of the young black activists to try to settle the dispute. It might have been Mr. Dellums himself, who was a Berkeley City Councilmember at the time. He was certainly in attendance at the meeting, looking very different from the rest of us—10 years older, for one (which makes considerable difference in temperament and maturity when you are 18 or 19), and notably wearing a suit and tie even in those more relaxed-dress days. 

We youngsters spent the first half of the meeting ranting—and oh, Mary!, could we rant in those days—and Mr. Dellums listened patiently, as was his way. Only when we were finished did he begin speaking, agreeing with us that it appeared disrespectful and belittling for Mr. Carmichael to skip the African American community on his trip to the East Bay. He said he thought that we—the student activists—might be able to raise enough of a stir to force Mr. Carmichael to cancel the trip altogether, but he wondered if that might be wasting an opportunity. Why not let ASUC pay for Mr. Carmichael’s trip to California and allow him to speak at UC, Mr. Dellums tactfully suggested, but ask him to first speak to an African American audience after he got here. That way, Mr. Dellums explained, we would get the respect we were asking for and deserved and, in the bargain, white folks would be paying for it. We considered it a moment, and agreed, and Mr. Carmichael later came and spoke at UC and at a black venue as well and, if I remember correctly, also took a tour of San Francisco’s Fillmore District, which was then a largely African American community. It was a historic and highly successful tour all around, by all accounts. 

It was, of course, a brilliant suggestion Mr. Dellums had made, more brilliant as I considered it years later, and realized that Mr. Dellums had fashioned a classic compromise, one that satisfied the needs and wishes of both sides. But there was one more element—perhaps the critical element—that helped make it possible. Had Mr. Dellums called a press conference and made the suggestion himself, without calling in the black student activists, we almost certainly would have rejected it out of hand, because it would have been imposing a solution upon us, making it appear as if we were backing down on our demands, settling for less. By making the suggestion in a private meeting, and then letting us make the announcement, it made us look like we had come up with the idea ourselves and were not backing down, but were being reasonable and trying to work with all sides.  

That’s how successful mediation works, trying to find a solution that both sides can live with, and then letting the two sides take the credit. 

But that, of course, is how Mr. Dellums has consistently worked. While his national reputation was forged in the Vietnam War era as a shouting, fist-shaking, dashiki-wearing radical, that was more a product of the media—you know how we in the media tend to distort—and his real work was quiet persuasion and compromise behind closed doors, trying to stick to his core principles while figuring out ways to get his opponents to bend in the direction he wanted. It is why he was able to eventually become chair of the House Armed Services Committee—hardly the spot for a wild radical—and why he retains to this day the respect of conservative members of Congress who served with him, who almost universally say that while they often disagreed with his positions and goals, they could not find fault with the means he used to go about trying to accomplish them. 

One needs to take this history into account in trying to figure out, and judge, what Mr. Dellums has been trying to accomplish in the Waste Management workers lockout, even if one disagrees with those methods. 

When I first heard about the lockout, my assumption was that Mr. Dellums was involving himself in quiet mediation to try to solve the labor dispute, and even a non-careful reading of news items from the first days of the lockout shows that he was. But when some citizens—and some of my media colleagues—applauded Mr. Dellums’ tough statements against Waste Management after a week or two of garbage had been piling up, and the subsequent filing for an injunction against the company by Oakland City Attorney John Russo, I saw that as a bad sign rather than a good one. It was an indication that the earlier attempts at quiet mediation had not been working, there was considerable distance between the two sides, the lockout might drag out longer than any of us hoped, and the mayor needed to apply public pressure. 

The Waste Management lockout has left Mr. Dellums in the classic no-win political situation. While some critics are clamoring that the mayor should have taken a tougher public stance earlier, there is no evidence that this would have forced Waste Management or the Teamsters into an earlier settlement, and there is every reason to believe that it might have delayed such a settlement. And had the mayor come out earlier and demanded a settlement, and no settlement thereafter immediately came forth, how many of the commenters to the Chronicle do you think would have then told us about how toothless and ineffective they believed the old mayor had become?  

Meanwhile, when and if the settlement comes, almost no-one will give Mr. Dellums credit for pulling it off. To paraphrase the Confederate spy and former actor Harrison said in Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, the best of such work is done in the dark, with no audience present to applaud. 

There is certainly much room for criticism of Mr. Dellums, both in general and in his actions concerning the ongoing Waste Management lockout. I would tend to take those criticisms more seriously, however, were they based upon what the Oakland mayor is actually doing or, at least, trying to do. 

The north fork of Strawberry Creek, which runs in its natural open channel along a block and a half of Le Conte Avenue west of La Loma Ave., is home to a number of distinctive historic structures, including the landmarks Weltevreden (1896), Allenoke Manor (1903), and Theta Xi Chapter House (1914). Among these remarkable buildings, one of the most distinctive is the smallish Oscar Maurer photography studio, whose north elevation descends steeply to the creek bank. 

On July 24, 1907, the Oakland Tribune announced, “Oscar Maurer, the local artist […] is having a studio built on Le Roy Avenue opposite his home and next to the studio of his brother, Fred Maurer, the musician. The structure is unique in design, with cement exterior and tiled roof.” 

Five weeks later, on September 1, the Tribune reported that Maurer “has recently taken possession of his new studio which has just been completed. It is one of the finest hereabouts, being built and furnished in the Spanish style of architecture.” 

Designed by Bernard Maybeck, the studio foreshadows the architect’s eclectic design for the First Church of Christ, Scientist (1910). The elements assembled here include Mediterranean, Mission Revival, Neoclassical, and Modern. 

At the entrance, a delicate Corinthian column embedded in a large plate-glass display window contrasts with the unpainted walls and a beamed ceiling stained in Maybeck’s signature red and blue. The creekside elevation is broken up to resemble a cliffside village with multiple cascading gable roofs. Toward the rear, a tall leaded-glass window displays a double fleur-de-lys motif under a “broken pediment” executed in Spanish roof tiles. 

Unlike the wood-shingle houses Maybeck was designing in the 1890s and the early 1900s, the Maurer studio was built in concrete. As in the Lawson house at 1515 La Loma Ave., the choice of material reflects the impact of the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, in which Maurer lost his previous studio. 

Oscar Maurer (1870 –1965) was born in New York City. His father, Frederick C. Maurer, a manufacturing chemist, immigrated from Germany as a child. Frederick’s eldest brother was the famed lithographer Louis Maurer. It was Louis who advised Oscar to take up photography, the coming great medium with artistic possibilities. 

In 1886, the Maurers moved to San Francisco, where Oscar’s father became associated with the Bass-Hueter Paint Co. and San Francisco Pioneer Varnish and Glycerine Works, eventually rising to corporate secretary. The family resided on Potrero Hill. 

The teenaged Oscar got hold of a box camera, set up a darkroom in the basement, and was soon selling a line of San Francisco scenes to local art stores (framed prints were popular as home decoration at that time). He studied chemistry and physics at the University of California but didn’t pursue a scientific career. Between 1891 and 1898, he worked as a salesman for Bass-Hueter. By 1897 he had become a member of the California Camera Club, to whose board of directors he would be elected in 1900. In 1898 Maurer traveled to Mexico, where he made his photograph “The Storm,” exhibited at the Chicago Salon of 1900. Alfred Stieglitz, one of the exhibition’s three jurors, commented on this print: 

While the Chicago Salon is honored by the presence of much of the best work by the acknowledged leaders, it is also distinguished by the exceptionally fine work bearing names that we will certainly hear more of in the future. One of these names is Oscar Maurer of San Francisco. He sends “The Storm,” and it is one of the big things of the exhibition. The picture possesses rare feeling, exquisite tones, and the best of composition. All visitors seem to notice it. 

The critical success may have given Maurer the courage to become a full-time professional photographer. In 1899, he was listed in the San Francisco directory as a photographer at 220 Sutter Street, which was the address of the Wetherbee Photo Company. In late 1900, Maurer and William E. Dassonville opened a portrait studio on a second-floor balcony in the rear of Lassen & Bien’s photographic supply house on Stockton Street. 

Working in the Pictorialist tradition, Maurer shot primarily landscapes and seascapes. In early 1901 he entered ten prints in the First San Francisco Photographic Salon, then left for Europe with Dassonville. His travels in France and Holland resulted in a portfolio titled Life Under Foreign Skies, which was published in Camera Craft. 

Having returned from Europe in time for the Second Photographic Salon, Maurer entered “about twenty studies,” reported the San Francisco Call on January 10, 1902, “one especially standing out prominently—‘On the Maas’—a Dutch scene.” Reviewing the same exhibition a week later, the Call opined that “the best individual collection of photographs is shown by Maurer.” Also in 1902, Maurer’s work was presented in Charles H. Caffin’s article “The New Photography” in Munsey’s Magazine. The following year, it was on display in Vol. VII of the journal The Camera. In an article for Camera Craft, Maurer wrote, ”Not until the present day has the camera been recognized as a legitimate means for the production of pictures that may be termed works of art.” 

Maurer did not confine himself to nature subjects but pursued documentary urban photography as well. His pre-1906 work perished in the San Francisco post-earthquake fire, but a few published examples remain. Volume 22 (1900) of the San Francisco periodical The Wave included his Chinatown camera study “For Ways That Are Dark.” The July 1903 issue of Everybody’s Magazine carried the article “The Kindergarten of the Streets” by Edith Davids. Documenting the activities of children in New York’s Lower East Side, the article was illustrated with fifteen photographs by Maurer. It was republished in the book Tales of Gaslight New York. 

In 1903, Oscar Maurer married Margaret (Madge) Robinson, an elegant, cultivated, and socially prominent woman who co-founded the Hillside Club. Two years later, the couple traveled to Europe, where Oscar shot the photographs that illustrated Madge’s article “Old World Friendliness Between Man and Nature” (The Craftsman Vol. 8, 1905). Also in 1905, the Maurers moved into Weltevreden, the showcase Berkeley home of Madge’s mother, Mary Moody, at 1725 (now 1755) Le Roy Ave. 

Oscar’s parents moved to Berkeley the following year, in the wake of the San Francisco earthquake, settling into a new Mission Revival house at 1726 (now 1776) Le Roy Ave., across the street from Weltevreden. The house was built in 1905, apparently by F.E. Armstrong, for Margaret Marx, who continued to own it for a number of years but never lived in it. Oscar’s brother, Frederick Jr., a respected pianist and music teacher, lived in this house until his death in 1947. The house remains largely unaltered to this day. Oscar photographed it for a Sunset magazine article titled “Berkeley, the Beautiful,” which featured several Northside landmarks, including Weltevreden, Allenoke Manor, the Beta Theta Pi chapter house, and Charles Keeler’s house. 

Oscar continued to work in San Francisco. He and Arnold Genthe are said to have used a studio space at the George H. Knight gallery on Sutter Street in rotation. It is not clear whether this is the location mentioned in an Oakland Tribune society column dated August 12, 1905, which announced “a studio tea to be given by Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Maurer at their studio on Sutter Street.” The column described the studio as “delightfully artistic” and furnished with “rare and wonderful old things” the couple had brought back from Europe. 

As his workload increased, Maurer took a studio of his own in the California Academy of Sciences building at 819 Market Street, where he remained until the building (containing his entire body of work) was destroyed in the 1906 fire. Remaining from that period are his post-earthquake images of the devastation, taken with a No. 1 Folding Kodak camera. 

After 1906, Maurer continued to exhibit his photographs in prestigious venues such as the Photo-Secession Gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue, New York. Many of his images were published in the American Journal of Photography over the next two decades. He also wrote technical articles and essays on his photographic excursions, sometimes publishing in Sunset magazine. 

In 1911, several of Maurer’s photographs were included in California—The Beautiful, a portfolio of camera studies and poetry published by Paul Elder. Two years later, he showed a collection of photographs taken in Mexico and Southern California at a group exhibition mounted in the California School of Arts and Crafts, 2119 Allston Way, Berkeley. “These are done on fine Japanese tissue paper, entirely a new medium used in photography,” reported the Oakland Tribune on April 6, 1913. 

While his exhibition and published photographs often depicted nature and street scenes, Maurer derived his income mostly from portrait photography. 

Following the destruction of his San Francisco studio, Maurer bought a new Aristo arc light and set up shop in Berkeley—first at Weltevreden, then in his new studio across the street. 

During the first decade of their married life, Oscar and Madge Maurer were luminaries of the Berkeley artistic social scene, which was closely tied to the Hillside Club. Around 1914, they left Berkeley for Del Mar, and the studio was occupied by portrait photographer Maude Stinson, who worked there until 1949. 

Already in the 1930s and possibly for a considerable time before, the studio was no longer the property of any Maurer. In 1941 it was purchased as an investment by Lorena Sauer, wife of the geographer Carl Ortwin Sauer. Used as a voice studio for a while, in the 1950s it was rented by the interior design firm of Ruth Dibble and Elsie Semrau, who had a hand in decorating the Sauers’ home at 1340 Arch Street and who purchased the studio toward the end of the decade. They remained there until the early 1980s. 

Oscar and Madge, who almost drowned in the great San Diego flood of 1916, moved from Del Mar to Los Angeles. They divorced in the early ‘20s, and both soon remarried. Oscar’s second wife was Elizabeth Baker Robinson, a performance artist. They eventually moved to Berkeley, and from the late 1920s until the early ‘40s lived with Fred at 1776 Le Roy Avenue. Oscar then established a studio in Santa Monica but returned to Berkeley by 1950, now living at 2418 Ashby Avenue. 

With the illness of his wife (she died in 1957), Maurer withdrew little by little from the grind of portraiture work. As a widower, he lived alone at 2646 Telegraph Avenue. In 1965, the Oakland Museum exhibited his 1906 earthquake photographs. He died the same year, aged 94. 

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

Photograph: The Oscar Maurer studio, 1772 Le Roy Avenue (Daniella Thompson) 

In both print and web issues: 

• Recent Home Sales -- includes not only the recent sale prices of the listed addresses but also the previous sale price and date. Readers can see how prices are rising or falling in the neighborhood they live in or where they hope to move. Partial listings will be in weekend print issues, with full data plus an interactive map on the web. 

• Open Homes -- a complete list of all the homes open for view each weekend. Basic listings are always free to sellers, who should ask their listing agent to make sure their home is included. Even more information can be found on the web, including an interactive map.  

On the Web: 

• Zoning application listings with interactive map -- the interactive map shows all zoning permit applications for Berkeley and provides a graphical look at development hot spots.  

• Recent Home Sales -- The only easily accessed data on recent East Bay home sales on the web; the only such listing that includes the previous sale price and date of sale. Includes data on sales for the previous month, not just the previous week; the only web site that presents this information on an interactive map. 

• Open Homes --- the most easily accessed data on weekend open homes in the East Bay. The only site organized so that it can easily be printed at home. The most complete and accurate map of East Bay open homes available on the web.

Sebastopol is not exactly next door, but the Apple Capital of Sonoma County is a great excuse for a day trip. The Gravenstein Highway (Route 116) between US101 and the town is lined with roadside attractions, botanical and otherwise, although there seems to have been a sudden wave of mortality among the local antique stores. 

Peacock Horticultural Nursery is the new kid on the block. Robert Peacock and Marty Waldron opened it two years ago, after moving up from San Leandro three years before that. Peacock, a landscape designer, also did plant merchandising for the flagship Smith & Hawken in Mill Valley, until the company decided it had grown beyond mere plants.  

The place they found in Sonoma, just down the road a piece from California Carnivores, had a history as a nursery: the previous owner grew violets for sale at a roadside stand. “There’s a fantastic legacy of camellias, old roses, old landscape,” Waldron said. It’s bracketed by huge old oaks where red-shouldered hawks yodel and acorn woodpeckers yammer. 

Peacock’s (“PeaHort” to its friends) may be small, but it’s densely packed with plants. There’s a bit of everything: succulents, cycads, aroids, bonsai, grasslike things. “We love the restios,” admits Waldron. The owners describe the place as “dedicated to providing unusual, obscure and hard to find plant choices for the collector as well as the home gardener,” and it shows. 

“Robert is always looking for unusual stuff,” Waldron continues. “We’re trying to find a niche, something little and unusual. And no tchotchkes.” They’ll try to propagate anything, like the mystery Miscanthus, maybe South African in origin, they picked up at a UC Botanical Garden sale a while back.  

With all that variety, Peacock’s twin (and overlapping) strengths would be shade plants and variegated-foliage specimens. Waldron touts an Acer ‘Eskimo Sunset’ as “plant of the month,” and it really is a stunner: cream and green patterned leaves with a strong blush of burgundy on their undersides. Other things you wouldn’t think came in variegated varieties pop up: violets, ceanothus, hydrangea, a little cactus, elderberry. 

The pride of resident cats—one of whom, a gray tabby, rejoices in the name Hortus Third—adds to the nursery’s atmosphere. Waldron calls them “our marketing directors,” all domesticated from feral families. 

We stopped at Peacock’s mainly to pick up a Sonoma Farm Trails map, since our road atlas didn’t do justice to the county’s back roads, and left with a whole flat of stuff for our shady spots. Peacock and Waldron are finding more than one niche to fill, and their establishment deserves more than a casual look. 

In fact, it requires more than a casual look. The sign pops up suddenly on the busy road, and like all those nurseries on the road to Half Moon Bay it’s an invitation to a rear-end collision. Take it slow and resist the road’s importunate tailgaters. Peacock Nursery is too good to miss. 

Sebastopol field trip: a new nursery among the antiques and apple orchards 

Sebastopol is not exactly next door, but the Apple Capital of Sonoma County is a great excuse for a day trip. The Gravenstein Highway (Route 116) between US101 and the town is lined with roadside attractions, botanical and otherwise, although there seems to have been a sudden wave of mortality among the local antique stores. 

Peacock Horticultural Nursery is the new kid on the block. Robert Peacock and Marty Waldron opened it two years ago, after moving up from San Leandro three years before that. Peacock, a landscape designer, also did plant merchandising for the flagship Smith & Hawken in Mill Valley, until the company decided it had grown beyond mere plants.  

The place they found in Sonoma, just down the road a piece from California Carnivores, had a history as a nursery: the previous owner grew violets for sale at a roadside stand. “There’s a fantastic legacy of camellias, old roses, old landscape,” Waldron said. It’s bracketed by huge old oaks where red-shouldered hawks yodel and acorn woodpeckers yammer. 

Peacock’s (“PeaHort” to its friends) may be small, but it’s densely packed with plants. There’s a bit of everything: succulents, cycads, aroids, bonsai, grasslike things. “We love the restios,” admits Waldron. The owners describe the place as “dedicated to providing unusual, obscure and hard to find plant choices for the collector as well as the home gardener,” and it shows. 

“Robert is always looking for unusual stuff,” Waldron continues. “We’re trying to find a niche, something little and unusual. And no tchotchkes.” They’ll try to propagate anything, like the mystery Miscanthus, maybe South African in origin, they picked up at a UC Botanical Garden sale a while back.  

With all that variety, Peacock’s twin (and overlapping) strengths would be shade plants and variegated-foliage specimens. Waldron touts an Acer ‘Eskimo Sunset’ as “plant of the month,” and it really is a stunner: cream and green patterned leaves with a strong blush of burgundy on their undersides. Other things you wouldn’t think came in variegated varieties pop up: violets, ceanothus, hydrangea, a little cactus, elderberry. 

The pride of resident cats—one of whom, a gray tabby, rejoices in the name Hortus Third—adds to the nursery’s atmosphere. Waldron calls them “our marketing directors,” all domesticated from feral families. 

We stopped at Peacock’s mainly to pick up a Sonoma Farm Trails map, since our road atlas didn’t do justice to the county’s back roads, and left with a whole flat of stuff for our shady spots. Peacock and Waldron are finding more than one niche to fill, and their establishment deserves more than a casual look. 

In fact, it requires more than a casual look. The sign pops up suddenly on the busy road, and like all those nurseries on the road to Half Moon Bay it’s an invitation to a rear-end collision. Take it slow and resist the road’s importunate tailgaters. Peacock Nursery is too good to miss. 

Peacock Horticultural Nursery 

4296 Gravenstein Highway South 

(Highway 116), Sebastopol 

(707) 291-0547 

9 a.m.–5 p.m. Wed.–Sun. or by appointment 

www.peacockhorticulturalnursery.com 

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

Before I proceed to plagiarize, I like to, at least, pay homage to the memory and, in this case, their extraordinary creativity and insight of the oracle. 

In 1975, the musician Brian Eno (and the painter Peter Schmidt) published a set of flash-cards called Oblique Strategies. They still sell through a British supply house for £30.00 and are designed to help musicians (and other artists) break through blocks and expand their creativity. 

An example of one card (there are roughly 100 in the set) is “You can only make one dot at a time.” 

Now, on the face if it, this seems like a silly statement. What dots? Are they musical notes? Paint dots? Pixels in a digital art work? 

The point is for you to see how you might apply these cryptograms to your situation. They are often broad and intentionally incongruous. They are designed to throw you off balance and knock you out of the box you’ve been stuck in. 

Here’s another one that I just love: “Honor thy error as a hidden intention.” 

This is a little easier to wrap once mind around. Basically, it says, don’t jump to fixing your mistake. Take a good healthy look at it. Was there something in it that you can learn from or use? Sometimes our mistakes are actually just the right action but so out of step with our current image that they just look wrong at first glance. Take a minute to look carefully at them and you may decide that this is exactly where you should be heading. Isn’t this fun? 

Years ago, my wife and I used to throw the I Ching when we felt stuck or on the horns of something (dilemma or opportunity). The OS cards are similar but they’re also designed specifically to get you to try something new in the interest of the creative process. 

I’ve thought for some time that remodeling or architectural design could make good use of these cards (which are really designed for artists and most specifically for musicians) but I’d like to do one better by suggesting a set just for the housing design professional (or the amateur equivalent). 

So here are a few possible cards one might find in a deck of Oblique Space-Design Strategies: 

“Put inside things outside. Put outside things inside.” 

This one could be interpreted as putting the NFL in your living room on a giant flat screen TV and taking a nap in the back yard, but we can do a little better than that. If one meditates on this mantra, one might put a creek through the hallway and a clawfoot tub on the back porch. 

The first go around with one of these things might be all wrong but once you’re out of the box, you can play with the things you find and put them together in a way that you can live with. The real trick is getting out of the damned box. 

Here are some more suggested cards: 

• Use something wobbly that is safe and fun. 

• Install it upside down. Does it work? 

• Consider the sound the room (floor, ceiling, etc.) will make. Give it a song. Make it very quiet. Make it scream. 

• Use color to help people doing something in the room. What are they doing? Is it a plum activity or a vermillion ones. 

• What happens if it’s very wide? Short? Long? Round? 

• Make it taller than any you’ve seen. 

• What animal is the space (Furry? Fast? Hibernating?) 

• If the house is a cell? Where are the vacuoles? Mitochondria? Nucleus? 

• Devote the design of a room/house/lamp/lawn to a person you love deeply. Let things you love about them manifest in your choices. 

• Make one space that you can feel completely safe in. One you can sleep in for 10 hours. One that feels like a cup of coffee. 

• Have the electrician design the plumbing. Have the gardener design the electrical system. Now compare to the drawings. What did you learn? 

• Try making the square thing round and the round thing square. 

• Take a poem you like and use each of the first 10 words as your overriding design constraints for 10 systems or 10 rooms. 

• Make something really dangerous but exciting. Now work backward to where it’s safe but still feels exciting. 

• Make some portion of the built environment suited to hosting a wild animal (mouse, moose, elephant). 

Try making up a set for yourself. You can make cards based on throwing the I Ching and interpret them for yourself. In fact you can base cards on a randomly selected page from a psychology text, a romance novel, a book on Feng Shui or a guide on resoling shoes. Our brains have an extraordinary ability to pick patterns out of one set of activities or studies and apply them to grossly dissimilar circumstances. Employing this deep skill (or oblique strategy) is one of the great secrets of creative individuals. 

A great resource that has some less wild-haired directives is the not-sufficiently-famous A Pattern Language by the Christopher Alexander and members of the Center for Environmental Structure here at Berkeley. 

A pattern language is similar in that each mantra/fortune/edict can be expressed initially as a single line of text, a single phrase, such as “Thick Walls” (pattern # 197. They all have numbers). Each pattern speaks about the way things in buildings feel or work when various features ( or patterns) are manifested and also presents alternatives that change the feeling or function. These patterns far exceed building design and range beyond to design an entire globe. It’s a fun idea, designing a world based on a set of principles culled from previous successes (most patterns are simple observations about what worked well in the past … often the distant past). 

If these various methodologies don’t work for you, try anything. That’s the real message here. Don’t do what everyone else is doing. The architectural world and particularly the remodeling world seen locally is doing just what William Morris observed it to be doing in the 1870s when he was developing the Arts and Crafts movement as a rebellion against industrialization. We’re all being sold our pre-designed dream homes (do we all dream alike?) either whole or in one slab of granite after another. 

A common fear that I hear or see in the nascent remodeler is that what they do will be too different from what everyone else is doing. Professional and homeowners alike seem to lack the bravery to do something even a little different than their neighbors. I guess the advertisements are working. We’re all so afraid of not fitting in. Now, here’s the funny part about this dilemma and it’s not a warm fuzzy lifestyle piece: 

Years ago, I remember inspecting a house that someone brave had rehabbed. Each room had different colors and they were terrific, vibrant, strong and emotional. The rooms were rich and had character and voice. The lighting was good (not fancy, just good) and the furnishings were fun and often loud. It was hard not to smile walking through the place. When this place hit the market it went WAY over the typical asking price for a house of this size and location.  

It is clear that it turned people on. Not just one or two odd folks but everyone. The lesson is that individual expression is more widely understood than a dull mass message and that this will be more welcome than most of us fear it will. 

Goethe said “Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” Goethe was speaking to the designer or poet just as much as he was to the conqueror. Go boldly. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor, in care of East Bay Real Estate, at mgcantor@pacbell.net.

A Quakelet With a Vertical Twist 

The 4.2 quake early Friday, July 20, which originated near Butters Drive in the Oakland hills, gave Berkeley some serious shaking. The energy moved northwest along the Hayward fault and, by the time it rose to the ground in Berkeley, it was vertical, so Berkeley felt it more than other places. Shaking was felt near Point Reyes, and as far as Napa. 

The entire Hayward Fault is due for a large quake. The last major quake on that fault was 139 years ago. Did the July 20 quake release some of that strain that’s been building up over the years? Unfortunately no, says Steve Walter, USGS seismologist. What does he suggest? “Be prepared.” Get your emergency kit up to snuff, secure that furniture, get an automatic gas shut-off valve installed, and have your retrofit checked. 

Here’s to making your home secure and your family safe. 

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

For many of us on the left coast, President Bush’s pardon of Scooter Libby was a non-event; we’ve grown blasé about Bush abuses. As a result, we shrug and say to the rest of the nation: What did you expect? You supported a conservative demagogue whose most notable “accomplishments” were a series of business failures. Why are you surprised that he’s become the worst president in modern history? Nonetheless, while it’s comforting to bask in self-righteousness, that won’t fix our common problem: Bush will be President for another 18 months and the immorality of the Bush administration infects us all. The president is a moral termite. 

If you’ve ever had a termite infestation in your house, you know how pernicious the insects are: they chew their way deep into your woodwork and, before you know it, your home’s structure is jeopardized. Then the infected area has to be treated to ensure the termites are destroyed—often the entire house needs fumigation—and the damage has to be repaired—whole sections of your residence require reconstruction. That’s exactly where America is with the Bush administration: first the pests have to be treated and then the structure—the federal government—has to be repaired. 

How do we remove these moral termites from the White House? The best alternative is for Bush and Cheney to resign. After all, even Richard Nixon had the sense to resign once he realized that he’d lost the support of three-quarters of the U.S. electorate. Unfortunately, Bush and Cheney don’t have good sense, so it will be necessary to impeach them. There are specific, factual grounds for impeachment such as their falsifying the justification for the invasion of Iraq and illegally eavesdropping on domestic communications. But, the larger grounds are the damage the Bush administration has inflicted on the United States, the corruption of America’s moral infrastructure. 

Bush and company have caused four types of destruction: They’ve severely damaged the reputation of the United States. Recent polls indicate the United States continues to lose favor with much of the world. It’s not only that non-Americans don’t like us, think we’re fat, greedy, and brutal, but also that they listen to our talk about democracy and don’t believe we are sincere. After all, in many parts of the world the face of America is our military or our most aggressive businesspeople. As a result, when we say “democracy,” many non-Americans see militarism and unrestrained capitalism. Throughout the world there’s deep cynicism about Bush’s claim that the United States is spreading liberty and democracy. This has affected our reputation and the security of Americans who travel overseas. Moreover, in some parts of the world it’s made theocracy look attractive. 

Secondly, the Bush administration has jeopardized the security of the United States. The invasion of Iraq has done more harm than good: it has promoted the cause of al Qaeda, and other Islamic extremists, and made it easier for them to attract recruits. As serious as that is, it’s overshadowed by two more debilitating injuries: the prolonged occupation has weakened the U.S. military and the Bush administration’s tight focus on Iraq has delayed the implementation of the recommendations of the 9-11 commission, kept the United States from common-sense actions that strengthen domestic security. 

Thirdly, Bush administration termites have adversely affected the lives of most Americans. Some of this deterioration has been psychological: recent surveys indicate that American confidence in the future is approaching an all-time low. Most Americans don’t like the road that America is on and don’t have confidence in the president or Congress. They have good reasons for this pessimism: for millions of Americans, life got much harder under the Bush administration. For the past six years, the White House has catered to the rich and powerful. As a result, the social fabric of democracy has been weakened as average Americans are forced to spend more time working and less time participating in public democracy. 

Finally, the Bush termite infestation has undermined the office of the presidency. After six years, it’s become painfully apparent George Bush never accepted a fundamental tenet of American democracy: the balance of powers doctrine. Bush and Cheney believe in the Imperial Presidency, the notion that the president is above the law. Bush’s conduct has disgraced the office of the president and created a situation where a majority of Americans do not trust him or the government. This is bad at any time, but it’s particularly troubling in an era where America is battling militant fundamentalists. 

So, what needs to be done? The obvious first step is to remove Bush and Cheney from office. The next step is to replace them with someone who is committed not only to occupying the White House but also to restoring public confidence in the presidency. The problem is larger than politics, it reflects the public morality that runs America: do politicians govern from the perspective of their own self-interest or with respect for the common good? We need to clean the termites out of the White House and restore integrity to our government. 

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

The mimosas are blooming, and I’ll bring the orange juice if you’ll bring the champagne to toast them with that favorite brunch beverage—mimosas, of course. Looking at the current price of OJ, you might be getting a bargain.  

Mimosa, Albizia julibrissin, also gets called “silk tree” (not to be confused with the more tropical “silk-floss tree”) and “sensitive mimosa” when people confuse it with the Brazilian native Mimosa pudica, which is more a shrub than a tree, with somewhat similar leaves and more globular, uniformly pink flowers. Both species can show up as weeds in some parts of the country, especially the wetter Southeast. 

The shade of A. julibrissin flowers can vary widely, from gilded to outright rosy. They’re always engagingly fluffy and light-catching though, and attractive to bees and butterflies.  

I’ve seen hummingbirds investigating them, but I can’t say how much nutrition the birds actually get out of the flowers.  

I don’t believe they’re sticky and dangerous to local birds the way blue-gum eucalyptus flowers are, at least. Euc flowers have been blamed by observant and nonhysterical birders like Rich Stallcup for the deaths of warblers that he and others have found under the trees with their nostrils completely occluded by, um, gum gum.  

Birds that co-evolved with eucs in their native Australia have bills that are longer below the nostrils, so they can use the sweet flowers and any bugs garnishing them with no problem, but ours haven’t been around eucs long enough I guess. Eucs’ bloomtime in winter when we have more more hungry warblers around because they migrate here might be compounding the problem.  

Albizia species—there are some hundred-plus of them—hail from Africa, Asia, and Australia; the species we have here is from China by way of Italy, evidently, where Filippo degi Albizzia introduced the whole genus in 1749. Where it lost the second z is one of those things I’ve never quite caught up with.  

Looking at the long puckered seedpods, you might guess immediately that our mimosa’s a bean, a legume. Like many but not all legumes, this tree fixes nitrogen. What? What that means is that these plants have a set of symbiotic bacteria housed in nodules in their tissues, primarily in their roots (though Hawai’ian koa keeps some up in aerial crotches), that work some of the 78 percent of the air that is nitrogen into compounds the plants can use, much more efficiently than other soil bacteria that live on their own. 

Some legumes, our native redbud for example, don’t bother with this but similar process has evolved in other plant species, like some tropical grasses, and other bacteria species. Evidently it’s a good idea. You can certainly understand its usefulness in nutrient-lean tropical soils.  

Mimosas aren’t long-lived as trees go, and a root fungus that kills them has begun to show up in California. But they’re handsome, tough, and cast a nice lacy shade we can sit in to drink those other mimosas. 

I’d say plant them—away from wildlands, please—and enjoy them. Slainte! 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. 

Mimosa flowers and foliage. This tree gets planted mostly in private yards and gardens, but the rosy individual shown here lives on a very public street in San Anselmo. 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Green Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section.

FRIDAY, JULY 27 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “All in the Timing” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through Aug. 11. Tickets are $12. 525-1620. www.aeofberkeley.org  

Altarena Playhouse “Oh My Godmother” Fri and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through Aug. 11. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Central Works “Bird in the Hand” Thurs-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through July 29. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381. 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Meet Me in St. Louis” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. in July at 951 Pomona Ave., at Moeser, El Cerrito, through Aug. 4. 524-9132. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“A New Home, A New Life” Photographs by Refugee Youth in Oakland, Wed.-Sat., to Aug. 8 at Oakland Art Gallery, 199 Kahn’s Alley, Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland. Exhibit co-sponsored by the International Rescue Committee who helped to resettle the youth in Oakland. www.oaklandartgallery.org 

FILM 

Movies About Movies “Sunset Boulevard” at 3:30 p.m. in the Community Meeting Room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6139. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Youth Writing Festival Participants read from their works at 6 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com  

Eli Gordon and Andrew Joron read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “Aïda” at 8 p.m. and SUn. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$40. 925-798-1300. 

“La Dolce Vita dei Flauti” Recorder consort music at 8 p.m. at St. Albert’s Priory, 5890 Birch Ct. off College Ave., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15. 528-1725. 

M.I.A., Sri Lankan singer at 2 p.m. at Amoeba, 2455 Telegraph Ave. www.amoeba.com 

Warner Ellenberg Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Peru Canta y Baila! A celebration of Peruvian independence day at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Collective at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Nawal, music from the Comoros, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Houston Jones at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

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

Steven Gary and Laura Zucker at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Diablo’s Dust, The Morning Line, Fainting Goats at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Christ on Parade, Final Conflict, Look Back and Laugh at 7 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

The Mundaze at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Kapakahi at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

A Christian McBride Situation at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200.  

SATURDAY, JULY 28 

THEATER 

Big City Improv, in Berkeley for one night only, at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Statge, 1901 Asby Ave. Tickets are $15-$20. 595-5597. www.bigcityimprov.com 

Shotgun Players “The Three Musketeers” Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. at John Hinkle Park, Southampton Ave., off The Arlington, through Sept. 9. Free. 841-6500. 

FILM 

Jewish Film Festival from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. at The Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. For information on tickets call 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rhythm & Muse Reading and Open Mic featuring poet Marc Hofstader at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. between Eunice and Rose Sts. 527-9753. 

“Transparent Passions” Performances, spoken word and art installation from 1 to 3:30 p.m. at Peralta Park, corner of Solano Ave. and Peralta St. 528-9038. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Familia Cepeda, Afro-Puerto Rican, at 8 and 10 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Babatunde Lea Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Najite, Bass Culture Review, Afrobeat from Los Angeles, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Amy Obenski and Kristin Lagasse at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The Soul Burners at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Neydavood Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Autumn Sara, High Like Five, Seconds Left at 6 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Maya Kronfeld Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Fred Randolph Jazz Group at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Nicole McRory at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

The Altered Egos, Bunny Numpkins and the Kill Blow-up Reaction at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082.  

Christ on Parade, Attitude Adjustment, El Dopa at 7 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JULY 29 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Color & Light” Photographic art by Bill Hannapple. Reception for the artist at 1 p.m. at The LightRoom Gallery, 2263 Fifth St., through Aug. 24. 649-8111. www.lightroom.com 

“First Exposures: Bay Area Youth Photography” Reception at 2 p.m. at Mills College Art Museum, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. www.sfcamerawork.org 

FILM 

Jewish Film Festival from 11:30 a.m. to 8:45 p.m. at The Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. For information on tickets call 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tao Lin and Stephanie Young read at 7 p.m. at 21 Grand, 416 25th St. at Broadway. Cost is $5. 649-1320. 

“Rewriting Copyright with the Swedish Pirate Party” A panel discussion on how both creativity and civil liberties are often stymied by today’s copyright laws at 5 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10. www.hillsideclub.org 

Cal Adventures Open Mic at 7 p.m. at the recreation yard across from Hana Japan at the Berkeley Marina. 642-4000. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Midsummer Mozart, Program II, featuring Elspeth Franks, soprano, at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church. Tickets are $30-$60. 415-627-9145. www.midsummermozart.org 

San Francisco Renaissance Voices “The Regina Monologues” music for lute, readings from Shakespeare, and Elizabethan madrigals and folksongs at 7:30 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 2001 Santa Clara St., Alameda. Tickets are $12-$15. 522-1477. www.sfrv.org 

Berkeley Opera “Aïda” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$40. 925-798-1300. 

Summer Jazz with Chester Smith & his Organ at 3 p.m., The History of Jazz with Randy Moore at 4:30 p.m. at Open Jam Session at 5 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, Golden Gate Branch, 5606 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. 597-5023. 

Brad Colerick at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Folk This! and Friends An evening of radical protest music and theater at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568.  

Con Alma Voice-tet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

JL Stiles at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Ten Ton Chicken, Eyewitness Blues Band, David Gans and others at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$20 sliding scale. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Aaron Bahr Jazz Quintet at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

Americana Unplugged: Corbin and Crew at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Ignite, Stick to your Guns These Days at 6 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146.  

MONDAY, JULY 30 

CHILDREN 

Magic Dan at 3:30 p.m. at the North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library. 981-6250. 

FILM 

Jewish Film Festival from 2:15 to 8:15 p.m. at The Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. For information on tickets call 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Austin Grossman and Tao Lin at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

James Lindsay shares stories from his mother’s memoir “Bold Plum” about the guerrillas in China’s war against Japan at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Marty Nemko describes “Cool Careers for Dummies” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with Dale Jensen birthday celebration reading at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

Breaking Chains A night of poetry at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Flutopia at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

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

West Coast Songwriter’s Showcase at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $5 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Orquesta Borinquen at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, JULY 31 

CHILDREN 

Dan Chan the Magic Man and Kat at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext 17. 

Voice of the Wood “How the Jackrabbit Got His Very Long Ears” at 3 p.m. at the West Branch of the Berkeley Public Library. 981-6270. 

FILM 

Jewish Film Festival from 1:45 to 8:45 p.m. at The Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES  

Deborah Davis introduces “Not Like You at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Randy Craig Trio at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Wally Schnalle at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1 

CHILDREN 

Zun Zun plays “Music of the Americas” in Spanish, English and Portuguese at 3:30 p.m. at the CLaremont Branch od the Berkeley Public Library. 981-6280. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Telegraph 3 p.m. Project” Photographs by Robert Eliason and poetry by Owen Hill opens at the Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Allston Way with a reception at 7:30 p.m. exhibition runs to Jan. 31. 665-0305.  

“Glimpses in Time” Photography exhibition in honor of Gordon Parks opens at the Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland, and runs to Aug. 31. 465-8928. 

FILM 

Jewish Film Festival from 2 to 8:30 p.m. at The Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. For information on tickets call 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org 

Eco-Amok: An Inconvenient Film Fest “Prophecy” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ian Jackman describes “Eat This!: 1,001 Things to Eat Before You Diet” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ann Channin, jazz, at 1:15 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 981-5190. 

Johnny Bones and the Palace of Jazz at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Saul Kaye “A Taste of Paradise” at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Tri Tip Trio at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun/Zydeco dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Mundaze Acoustic at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Tenth Annual East Bay Blues Revue at 7:30 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 2 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Shaped by Water” Abstract landscape paintings by Jane Norling. Reception for the artists at 11:30 a.m. at the EBMUD Gallery, 375 11th St., Oakland. 287-0138. 

“New Visions” Group show of work by Bay Area artists. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Pro Arts Gallery, 550 Second St., Oakland. 763-9425. 

FILM 

“2nd Verse” A documentary exploring teen life in the Bay Area and the popularity of Spoken Word, at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$6. 849-2568.  

Jewish Film Festival from 1:45 to 8:30 p.m. at The Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. For information on tickets call 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org 

A Theater Near You “White Light/Black Rain” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Roberta Spear Retrospective “A Sweetness Rising” with Pholip Levine, Peter Everwine and Sandra Hoben at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

“Conversations on Art” with Faith Powell on the female subjects in Man Ray’s work at 6:30 p.m. at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. 549-6950.  

Larry Kearney reads his poetry at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Steve Carter Trio at noon at the downtown Berkeley BART station. info@downtownberkeley.org 

“Once More, For the First Time” students of the Ailey Camp perform at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Free tickets available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Dgin, Mad Maggies at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Iwori, Raya Nova, Sugar Shack at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082 . 

Vortex Tribe at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Pete Escovedo at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

“I know thousands of songs,” says singer Cynthia Davis, who will perform a special matinee of jazz standards and negro spirituals this Sunday at Anna’s Jazz Island. “But I seldom sat down and learned one. I learned them from the old movies; we used to go twice a week in the old days. When I sing a song, I go back to the scene in the movie. Songs in musicals were written to tell stories. 

“And now that I’m trying to write my life as a theater performance, I’ll have to allude to those movie scenes.” 

Davis, a former longtime Berkeley resident, who taught at the New School in San Francisco and sang at “different clubs around the Santa Fe Bar and Grill,” besides doing an outdoor concert at UC in the ’80s set up by her dancer niece Maya, now lives and sings in Cancun, Mexico. 

“In 1996, I had a sabbatical from the New School, and visited Spain and London,” Davis recalled. “A friend suggested I speak at the school in Cancun; I was invited to teach for three months. That was 11 years ago!” 

She’s sung at the Ritz-Carleton and Maroma Hotels, at the Cancun Jazz Festival (on bills with such acts as Sister Sledge and Diana Krall) and at a club, Roots, “where every night I was introduced as ‘Cynthia Davis, the Golden Voice of Jazz!’” 

Her audiences in Cancun are a mix of local Mexicans and tourists. “People tell people they meet at Immigration to come see me. When I visited Cuba and went to an expensive tourist jazz club, just to take a look, a man said, ‘Hey, I know you!’ I thought it was a pick-up line. But he had a video of me advertising the jazz festival! He invited me and my friends in.” 

She works with a Mexican pianist and a Cuban guitarist. “I don’t scat very much; my guitarist does the scatting,” she said. 

“If I leave Cancun,” Davis said, “people email me and get me back. But I miss Berkeley so much. It’s the only place I could live in the U.S. If I could spend six months in each place, it would be perfect. But the rents here are so high.” 

She moved to Berkeley decades ago, after graduating from Antioch College. “All my Antioch friends had moved to Berkeley. It was a perfect transition.”  

She was reunited with one of them when Loni Hancock knocked on her door, canvassing the neighborhood while running for mayor. Hancock requested that Davis sing at her wedding to Tom Bates. And Davis found herself repeating the same set of songs—twice—at their classmate Karen Jacobs’ house for a party to which Hancock and Bates came late. “I sang it again for them as they held hands and listened.” 

Born in Newport News, Vir., Davis is African American but also Cherokee and Blackfoot, French, Irish, Jewish and Portuguese. Her grandmother was a singer at churches and weddings, appearing once on the Ed Sullivan Show before moving from New York to Newport News to care for her aunt. 

Davis began singing at 6 in a school choir, and at 12 became featured soloist at her high school. Her choir director featured her in a Friday night talent show, rehearsing her in the empty auditorium. “I came out to sing ‘Ebb tide’ and almost fell down. That empty auditorium had 5,000 people in it! So I leaned on the piano for support—and people said, ‘Ooo, she’s got an act!’” 

Later, smaller audiences would make her nervous: “I could see everybody’s face! I was so used to singing in front of large groups, I didn’t think I’d make it through the concert.” 

She was featured every Friday night for five years. Later, Davis was chosen to sing negro spirituals “at everybody’s funeral. I sing them Marian Anderson style. And a capella when I can. I didn’t come from a gospel church.” After moving to Berkeley, Terence Kelly asked her to join the Oakland Gospel Choir. 

Davis has taught “since I was 12. Later, I joined the Future Teachers of America.” At one point, she improvised what would later be termed conflict resolution for 4- and 5-year-olds. Now she is a storyteller two hours a week at a Cancun private school. 

Reflecting on growing up in Virginia during segregation, Davis said, “It was a very polite segregation in Newport News. But our 250 voice choir, with a brilliant director who should’ve been at Juilliard, never won an award. I feel I had an advantage, though, because my mother was a teacher and my father directed a black bank. I seldom rode the bus, but when I did, I sat in front! They weren’t going to stop the bus for that. But my mother would say, ‘I’m going to have to bail you out of jail!’—and I’d say, ‘Yes, you will!’ All my life I bucked the system.” 

Both her parents had gone to college at Hampton Institute, “but that was too close, which is why I went to Antioch”—which finally brought her to Berkeley. 

Davis stopped singing once, but found “I have to sing. Not just to entertain, but because it has something I need. I love sad songs; they get the sadness out. It’s good they’re bringing sad stories back. Otherwise, people put the sadness into anger.” 

“I didn’t really learn how to sing,” Davis concluded, “just placement and how to breathe. I’ve sung all my life. If you ask me how, I’ll tell you to pick a song you love, learn it backwards and forwards, and sing it with all your heart—then get it out there! Then come to me, and I’ll help you.”

In 1969, Ralph Arlyck made a student film called Sean about his 4-year-old neighbor in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. Sean was the son of hippie parents and in an interview with Arlyck he claimed to smoke and eat marijuana, earning the film a great deal of notoriety, including praise and damnation from politicians and dire predictions of Sean’s fate as an adult.  

Thirty years later, Arlyck returned to San Francisco to see what became of Sean and his family. However, the resulting feature, Following Sean, is much more than an update. The project ended up taking nearly a decade to complete, and the final product is something much more profound, Arlyck having transformed the experience into a stirring meditation on time and aging, on youth and dreams and ideals, on middle-age, old age, companionship and family.  

Despite the predictions, Sean is in fact a grounded, articulate and well-adjusted young man. And Arlyck has gone on to a successful career in film. But what makes Following Sean engaging is not so much the factual details of lives lived, but the context in which they’ve been lived, and the ways in which paths cross, diverge, reconnect and diverge again.  

The decision to draw parallels between Sean’s story and his own might at first seem self-indulgent, but Arlyck finds just the right tone, examining the social context in which their lives—and the lives of three generations of each man’s family—have unfolded. Sean’s grandparents were active Communists during the McCarthy era; his father was a hippie refugee from an upper-middle-class upbringing; and Arlyck’s East Coast Jewish background frequently clashes with attitudes and ideals he derived from his West Coast experience. Each man has both embraced and rebelled against his roots, and each has gained his share of wisdom, pride and regret from the experience. It’s a thoughtful film, a sort of cinematic poem, with images from the past juxtaposed with the present, revealing three decades worth of sadness and joy and love and pain. 

Following Sean airs at 10 p.m. Tuesday, July 31 on KQED.

Out of the hundred or so operas that are produced in major houses annually, Giuseppe Verdi’s Aïda ranks among the top 20 and has done so for decades. This brings up a pressing question for opera companies: Is it possible to show the same opera over and over with little change in the production, or are companies obliged to rework expensive operas so that they seem continually new? Last Saturday, the Berkeley Opera opened its own version of Aïda, one that strove to be unconventional—fresher and more relevant. 

Smaller companies seldom stage Verdi’s Egyptian opera because of the financial demands of the opera’s conventions—notably a cast of supernumeraries formed into a victory procession that traditionally includes elephants, horses or some other fauna, as well as a last act that necessitates a double stage, with temple above and tomb below.  

One of Berkeley Opera’s solutions to the burden of the production was to limit casting, costuming and rehearsal time to the opera’s few soloists, and to place the chorus off stage. The ingenious transformation of the Egyptian victory processional into a television broadcast allowed not only for video projections of crowd scenes but also created an ironic portrayal of the opera’s royal family as a kind of media event.  

Which leads us to a more crucial decision by Berkeley Opera’s creative team: the updating of Aïda’s setting to a contemporary milieu. It’s to the company’s credit that it continually tries to address current issues. For the other pressing question in opera today is about social significance: Are traditional operas that showcase long abandoned mores and values meaningful to the culture at large?  

Since the 1980s Peter Sellars has been a force in the direction of opera. His work with composer John Adams has pushed the themes and ideas of opera well into the present century. But his interpretations of Mozart have had even greater effect. For what Sellars brought to opera is directorial license to modernize conventional opera in edgy productions pertinent to today’s politics and sexuality. This is what director Yuval Sharon attempts with Berkeley Opera’s Aïda.  

Sharon’s production opens with a line of uniformed maids cleaning the floor of a white-walled office reminiscent of a room in the White House. The upstage hallway is painted red, the stage-left hallway, ultramarine blue. Men in suits pass through. Above the set is a second stage: a dark attic like room into which a man is thrown on a bed and beaten. During the opera’s course this room serves as torture chamber, killing room and finally the tomb in which Radamés and Aïda die.  

Even though the supertitles don’t refer to any country by name, the parallels with contemporary American political power are obvious. And they can be chilling: for example, when the priest Ramfis sings about “the Deity.” 

Overall, however, the production falls prey to the logical inconsistencies that occur when 130-year-old operas are squeezed into a modern concept; it’s further beset by difficult directorial choices badly made. 

Enacting torture is always questionable. It’s one of those extremes of reality that when set in an essentially imaginary or fantastic medium like theater takes on an artificial and self-conscious quality. It becomes a parody of itself, thereby losing its power and diverting the intent behind portraying it. It seems gratuitous. 

Other attempts to show the horrors and corruption of power—the high priest’s sexual mauling of the Patriotic Girl, the beating of the messenger, the ending throat-slitting by the opposing guerrilla forces—also seemed gratuitous. Set in contrast to the opera’s splendid choruses, which were ably sung by the UC Alumni Chorus, these scenes were awkward at best.  

Aïda is one of Verdi’s more psychologically complex operas: built around the triangle of Aïda, Radamés and Amneris, it brings up questions of personal versus social loyalty and the force of passions to betray. Its ethics of emotions have political implications in and of themselves that are accessible to the audience even in the most conservative productions. Berkeley Opera’s violence-laced interpretation flattened out the characters’ complexity so that they, and consequently the entire production, seemed cartoonish. Which was an injustice to the singers and musicians. 

Juyeon Song sang the role of Aïda in a slightly dark and appropriately weighted soprano. Tenor Kevin Courtemanche sang the role of Radamés vibrantly and energetically. Jennifer Roderer sang the wonderfully dramatic mezzo role of Amneris. The priest Ramfis was sung by bass William Pickersgill, Soprano Margaret Valeriano delivered a sweet and pure toned version of the priestess. The orchestra was kept in fine order by Maestro Jonathan Khuner. 

AIDA 

Presented by Berkeley Opera at 8 p.m. Friday and at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. For tickets and information, call (925) 798-1300, 

or visit www.berkeleyopera.org.

The north fork of Strawberry Creek, which runs in its natural open channel along a block and a half of Le Conte Avenue west of La Loma Ave., is home to a number of distinctive historic structures, including the landmarks Weltevreden (1896), Allenoke Manor (1903), and Theta Xi Chapter House (1914). Among these remarkable buildings, one of the most distinctive is the smallish Oscar Maurer photography studio, whose north elevation descends steeply to the creek bank. 

On July 24, 1907, the Oakland Tribune announced, “Oscar Maurer, the local artist […] is having a studio built on Le Roy Avenue opposite his home and next to the studio of his brother, Fred Maurer, the musician. The structure is unique in design, with cement exterior and tiled roof.” 

Five weeks later, on September 1, the Tribune reported that Maurer “has recently taken possession of his new studio which has just been completed. It is one of the finest hereabouts, being built and furnished in the Spanish style of architecture.” 

Designed by Bernard Maybeck, the studio foreshadows the architect’s eclectic design for the First Church of Christ, Scientist (1910). The elements assembled here include Mediterranean, Mission Revival, Neoclassical, and Modern. 

At the entrance, a delicate Corinthian column embedded in a large plate-glass display window contrasts with the unpainted walls and a beamed ceiling stained in Maybeck’s signature red and blue. The creekside elevation is broken up to resemble a cliffside village with multiple cascading gable roofs. Toward the rear, a tall leaded-glass window displays a double fleur-de-lys motif under a “broken pediment” executed in Spanish roof tiles. 

Unlike the wood-shingle houses Maybeck was designing in the 1890s and the early 1900s, the Maurer studio was built in concrete. As in the Lawson house at 1515 La Loma Ave., the choice of material reflects the impact of the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, in which Maurer lost his previous studio. 

Oscar Maurer (1870 –1965) was born in New York City. His father, Frederick C. Maurer, a manufacturing chemist, immigrated from Germany as a child. Frederick’s eldest brother was the famed lithographer Louis Maurer. It was Louis who advised Oscar to take up photography, the coming great medium with artistic possibilities. 

In 1886, the Maurers moved to San Francisco, where Oscar’s father became associated with the Bass-Hueter Paint Co. and San Francisco Pioneer Varnish and Glycerine Works, eventually rising to corporate secretary. The family resided on Potrero Hill. 

The teenaged Oscar got hold of a box camera, set up a darkroom in the basement, and was soon selling a line of San Francisco scenes to local art stores (framed prints were popular as home decoration at that time). He studied chemistry and physics at the University of California but didn’t pursue a scientific career. Between 1891 and 1898, he worked as a salesman for Bass-Hueter. By 1897 he had become a member of the California Camera Club, to whose board of directors he would be elected in 1900. In 1898 Maurer traveled to Mexico, where he made his photograph “The Storm,” exhibited at the Chicago Salon of 1900. Alfred Stieglitz, one of the exhibition’s three jurors, commented on this print: 

While the Chicago Salon is honored by the presence of much of the best work by the acknowledged leaders, it is also distinguished by the exceptionally fine work bearing names that we will certainly hear more of in the future. One of these names is Oscar Maurer of San Francisco. He sends “The Storm,” and it is one of the big things of the exhibition. The picture possesses rare feeling, exquisite tones, and the best of composition. All visitors seem to notice it. 

The critical success may have given Maurer the courage to become a full-time professional photographer. In 1899, he was listed in the San Francisco directory as a photographer at 220 Sutter Street, which was the address of the Wetherbee Photo Company. In late 1900, Maurer and William E. Dassonville opened a portrait studio on a second-floor balcony in the rear of Lassen & Bien’s photographic supply house on Stockton Street. 

Working in the Pictorialist tradition, Maurer shot primarily landscapes and seascapes. In early 1901 he entered ten prints in the First San Francisco Photographic Salon, then left for Europe with Dassonville. His travels in France and Holland resulted in a portfolio titled Life Under Foreign Skies, which was published in Camera Craft. 

Having returned from Europe in time for the Second Photographic Salon, Maurer entered “about twenty studies,” reported the San Francisco Call on January 10, 1902, “one especially standing out prominently—‘On the Maas’—a Dutch scene.” Reviewing the same exhibition a week later, the Call opined that “the best individual collection of photographs is shown by Maurer.” Also in 1902, Maurer’s work was presented in Charles H. Caffin’s article “The New Photography” in Munsey’s Magazine. The following year, it was on display in Vol. VII of the journal The Camera. In an article for Camera Craft, Maurer wrote, ”Not until the present day has the camera been recognized as a legitimate means for the production of pictures that may be termed works of art.” 

Maurer did not confine himself to nature subjects but pursued documentary urban photography as well. His pre-1906 work perished in the San Francisco post-earthquake fire, but a few published examples remain. Volume 22 (1900) of the San Francisco periodical The Wave included his Chinatown camera study “For Ways That Are Dark.” The July 1903 issue of Everybody’s Magazine carried the article “The Kindergarten of the Streets” by Edith Davids. Documenting the activities of children in New York’s Lower East Side, the article was illustrated with fifteen photographs by Maurer. It was republished in the book Tales of Gaslight New York. 

In 1903, Oscar Maurer married Margaret (Madge) Robinson, an elegant, cultivated, and socially prominent woman who co-founded the Hillside Club. Two years later, the couple traveled to Europe, where Oscar shot the photographs that illustrated Madge’s article “Old World Friendliness Between Man and Nature” (The Craftsman Vol. 8, 1905). Also in 1905, the Maurers moved into Weltevreden, the showcase Berkeley home of Madge’s mother, Mary Moody, at 1725 (now 1755) Le Roy Ave. 

Oscar’s parents moved to Berkeley the following year, in the wake of the San Francisco earthquake, settling into a new Mission Revival house at 1726 (now 1776) Le Roy Ave., across the street from Weltevreden. The house was built in 1905, apparently by F.E. Armstrong, for Margaret Marx, who continued to own it for a number of years but never lived in it. Oscar’s brother, Frederick Jr., a respected pianist and music teacher, lived in this house until his death in 1947. The house remains largely unaltered to this day. Oscar photographed it for a Sunset magazine article titled “Berkeley, the Beautiful,” which featured several Northside landmarks, including Weltevreden, Allenoke Manor, the Beta Theta Pi chapter house, and Charles Keeler’s house. 

Oscar continued to work in San Francisco. He and Arnold Genthe are said to have used a studio space at the George H. Knight gallery on Sutter Street in rotation. It is not clear whether this is the location mentioned in an Oakland Tribune society column dated August 12, 1905, which announced “a studio tea to be given by Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Maurer at their studio on Sutter Street.” The column described the studio as “delightfully artistic” and furnished with “rare and wonderful old things” the couple had brought back from Europe. 

As his workload increased, Maurer took a studio of his own in the California Academy of Sciences building at 819 Market Street, where he remained until the building (containing his entire body of work) was destroyed in the 1906 fire. Remaining from that period are his post-earthquake images of the devastation, taken with a No. 1 Folding Kodak camera. 

After 1906, Maurer continued to exhibit his photographs in prestigious venues such as the Photo-Secession Gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue, New York. Many of his images were published in the American Journal of Photography over the next two decades. He also wrote technical articles and essays on his photographic excursions, sometimes publishing in Sunset magazine. 

In 1911, several of Maurer’s photographs were included in California—The Beautiful, a portfolio of camera studies and poetry published by Paul Elder. Two years later, he showed a collection of photographs taken in Mexico and Southern California at a group exhibition mounted in the California School of Arts and Crafts, 2119 Allston Way, Berkeley. “These are done on fine Japanese tissue paper, entirely a new medium used in photography,” reported the Oakland Tribune on April 6, 1913. 

While his exhibition and published photographs often depicted nature and street scenes, Maurer derived his income mostly from portrait photography. 

Following the destruction of his San Francisco studio, Maurer bought a new Aristo arc light and set up shop in Berkeley—first at Weltevreden, then in his new studio across the street. 

During the first decade of their married life, Oscar and Madge Maurer were luminaries of the Berkeley artistic social scene, which was closely tied to the Hillside Club. Around 1914, they left Berkeley for Del Mar, and the studio was occupied by portrait photographer Maude Stinson, who worked there until 1949. 

Already in the 1930s and possibly for a considerable time before, the studio was no longer the property of any Maurer. In 1941 it was purchased as an investment by Lorena Sauer, wife of the geographer Carl Ortwin Sauer. Used as a voice studio for a while, in the 1950s it was rented by the interior design firm of Ruth Dibble and Elsie Semrau, who had a hand in decorating the Sauers’ home at 1340 Arch Street and who purchased the studio toward the end of the decade. They remained there until the early 1980s. 

Oscar and Madge, who almost drowned in the great San Diego flood of 1916, moved from Del Mar to Los Angeles. They divorced in the early ‘20s, and both soon remarried. Oscar’s second wife was Elizabeth Baker Robinson, a performance artist. They eventually moved to Berkeley, and from the late 1920s until the early ‘40s lived with Fred at 1776 Le Roy Avenue. Oscar then established a studio in Santa Monica but returned to Berkeley by 1950, now living at 2418 Ashby Avenue. 

With the illness of his wife (she died in 1957), Maurer withdrew little by little from the grind of portraiture work. As a widower, he lived alone at 2646 Telegraph Avenue. In 1965, the Oakland Museum exhibited his 1906 earthquake photographs. He died the same year, aged 94. 

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

Photograph: The Oscar Maurer studio, 1772 Le Roy Avenue (Daniella Thompson) 

In both print and web issues: 

• Recent Home Sales -- includes not only the recent sale prices of the listed addresses but also the previous sale price and date. Readers can see how prices are rising or falling in the neighborhood they live in or where they hope to move. Partial listings will be in weekend print issues, with full data plus an interactive map on the web. 

• Open Homes -- a complete list of all the homes open for view each weekend. Basic listings are always free to sellers, who should ask their listing agent to make sure their home is included. Even more information can be found on the web, including an interactive map.  

On the Web: 

• Zoning application listings with interactive map -- the interactive map shows all zoning permit applications for Berkeley and provides a graphical look at development hot spots.  

• Recent Home Sales -- The only easily accessed data on recent East Bay home sales on the web; the only such listing that includes the previous sale price and date of sale. Includes data on sales for the previous month, not just the previous week; the only web site that presents this information on an interactive map. 

• Open Homes --- the most easily accessed data on weekend open homes in the East Bay. The only site organized so that it can easily be printed at home. The most complete and accurate map of East Bay open homes available on the web.

Sebastopol is not exactly next door, but the Apple Capital of Sonoma County is a great excuse for a day trip. The Gravenstein Highway (Route 116) between US101 and the town is lined with roadside attractions, botanical and otherwise, although there seems to have been a sudden wave of mortality among the local antique stores. 

Peacock Horticultural Nursery is the new kid on the block. Robert Peacock and Marty Waldron opened it two years ago, after moving up from San Leandro three years before that. Peacock, a landscape designer, also did plant merchandising for the flagship Smith & Hawken in Mill Valley, until the company decided it had grown beyond mere plants.  

The place they found in Sonoma, just down the road a piece from California Carnivores, had a history as a nursery: the previous owner grew violets for sale at a roadside stand. “There’s a fantastic legacy of camellias, old roses, old landscape,” Waldron said. It’s bracketed by huge old oaks where red-shouldered hawks yodel and acorn woodpeckers yammer. 

Peacock’s (“PeaHort” to its friends) may be small, but it’s densely packed with plants. There’s a bit of everything: succulents, cycads, aroids, bonsai, grasslike things. “We love the restios,” admits Waldron. The owners describe the place as “dedicated to providing unusual, obscure and hard to find plant choices for the collector as well as the home gardener,” and it shows. 

“Robert is always looking for unusual stuff,” Waldron continues. “We’re trying to find a niche, something little and unusual. And no tchotchkes.” They’ll try to propagate anything, like the mystery Miscanthus, maybe South African in origin, they picked up at a UC Botanical Garden sale a while back.  

With all that variety, Peacock’s twin (and overlapping) strengths would be shade plants and variegated-foliage specimens. Waldron touts an Acer ‘Eskimo Sunset’ as “plant of the month,” and it really is a stunner: cream and green patterned leaves with a strong blush of burgundy on their undersides. Other things you wouldn’t think came in variegated varieties pop up: violets, ceanothus, hydrangea, a little cactus, elderberry. 

The pride of resident cats—one of whom, a gray tabby, rejoices in the name Hortus Third—adds to the nursery’s atmosphere. Waldron calls them “our marketing directors,” all domesticated from feral families. 

We stopped at Peacock’s mainly to pick up a Sonoma Farm Trails map, since our road atlas didn’t do justice to the county’s back roads, and left with a whole flat of stuff for our shady spots. Peacock and Waldron are finding more than one niche to fill, and their establishment deserves more than a casual look. 

In fact, it requires more than a casual look. The sign pops up suddenly on the busy road, and like all those nurseries on the road to Half Moon Bay it’s an invitation to a rear-end collision. Take it slow and resist the road’s importunate tailgaters. Peacock Nursery is too good to miss. 

Sebastopol field trip: a new nursery among the antiques and apple orchards 

Sebastopol is not exactly next door, but the Apple Capital of Sonoma County is a great excuse for a day trip. The Gravenstein Highway (Route 116) between US101 and the town is lined with roadside attractions, botanical and otherwise, although there seems to have been a sudden wave of mortality among the local antique stores. 

Peacock Horticultural Nursery is the new kid on the block. Robert Peacock and Marty Waldron opened it two years ago, after moving up from San Leandro three years before that. Peacock, a landscape designer, also did plant merchandising for the flagship Smith & Hawken in Mill Valley, until the company decided it had grown beyond mere plants.  

The place they found in Sonoma, just down the road a piece from California Carnivores, had a history as a nursery: the previous owner grew violets for sale at a roadside stand. “There’s a fantastic legacy of camellias, old roses, old landscape,” Waldron said. It’s bracketed by huge old oaks where red-shouldered hawks yodel and acorn woodpeckers yammer. 

Peacock’s (“PeaHort” to its friends) may be small, but it’s densely packed with plants. There’s a bit of everything: succulents, cycads, aroids, bonsai, grasslike things. “We love the restios,” admits Waldron. The owners describe the place as “dedicated to providing unusual, obscure and hard to find plant choices for the collector as well as the home gardener,” and it shows. 

“Robert is always looking for unusual stuff,” Waldron continues. “We’re trying to find a niche, something little and unusual. And no tchotchkes.” They’ll try to propagate anything, like the mystery Miscanthus, maybe South African in origin, they picked up at a UC Botanical Garden sale a while back.  

With all that variety, Peacock’s twin (and overlapping) strengths would be shade plants and variegated-foliage specimens. Waldron touts an Acer ‘Eskimo Sunset’ as “plant of the month,” and it really is a stunner: cream and green patterned leaves with a strong blush of burgundy on their undersides. Other things you wouldn’t think came in variegated varieties pop up: violets, ceanothus, hydrangea, a little cactus, elderberry. 

The pride of resident cats—one of whom, a gray tabby, rejoices in the name Hortus Third—adds to the nursery’s atmosphere. Waldron calls them “our marketing directors,” all domesticated from feral families. 

We stopped at Peacock’s mainly to pick up a Sonoma Farm Trails map, since our road atlas didn’t do justice to the county’s back roads, and left with a whole flat of stuff for our shady spots. Peacock and Waldron are finding more than one niche to fill, and their establishment deserves more than a casual look. 

In fact, it requires more than a casual look. The sign pops up suddenly on the busy road, and like all those nurseries on the road to Half Moon Bay it’s an invitation to a rear-end collision. Take it slow and resist the road’s importunate tailgaters. Peacock Nursery is too good to miss. 

Peacock Horticultural Nursery 

4296 Gravenstein Highway South 

(Highway 116), Sebastopol 

(707) 291-0547 

9 a.m.–5 p.m. Wed.–Sun. or by appointment 

www.peacockhorticulturalnursery.com 

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

Before I proceed to plagiarize, I like to, at least, pay homage to the memory and, in this case, their extraordinary creativity and insight of the oracle. 

In 1975, the musician Brian Eno (and the painter Peter Schmidt) published a set of flash-cards called Oblique Strategies. They still sell through a British supply house for £30.00 and are designed to help musicians (and other artists) break through blocks and expand their creativity. 

An example of one card (there are roughly 100 in the set) is “You can only make one dot at a time.” 

Now, on the face if it, this seems like a silly statement. What dots? Are they musical notes? Paint dots? Pixels in a digital art work? 

The point is for you to see how you might apply these cryptograms to your situation. They are often broad and intentionally incongruous. They are designed to throw you off balance and knock you out of the box you’ve been stuck in. 

Here’s another one that I just love: “Honor thy error as a hidden intention.” 

This is a little easier to wrap once mind around. Basically, it says, don’t jump to fixing your mistake. Take a good healthy look at it. Was there something in it that you can learn from or use? Sometimes our mistakes are actually just the right action but so out of step with our current image that they just look wrong at first glance. Take a minute to look carefully at them and you may decide that this is exactly where you should be heading. Isn’t this fun? 

Years ago, my wife and I used to throw the I Ching when we felt stuck or on the horns of something (dilemma or opportunity). The OS cards are similar but they’re also designed specifically to get you to try something new in the interest of the creative process. 

I’ve thought for some time that remodeling or architectural design could make good use of these cards (which are really designed for artists and most specifically for musicians) but I’d like to do one better by suggesting a set just for the housing design professional (or the amateur equivalent). 

So here are a few possible cards one might find in a deck of Oblique Space-Design Strategies: 

“Put inside things outside. Put outside things inside.” 

This one could be interpreted as putting the NFL in your living room on a giant flat screen TV and taking a nap in the back yard, but we can do a little better than that. If one meditates on this mantra, one might put a creek through the hallway and a clawfoot tub on the back porch. 

The first go around with one of these things might be all wrong but once you’re out of the box, you can play with the things you find and put them together in a way that you can live with. The real trick is getting out of the damned box. 

Here are some more suggested cards: 

• Use something wobbly that is safe and fun. 

• Install it upside down. Does it work? 

• Consider the sound the room (floor, ceiling, etc.) will make. Give it a song. Make it very quiet. Make it scream. 

• Use color to help people doing something in the room. What are they doing? Is it a plum activity or a vermillion ones. 

• What happens if it’s very wide? Short? Long? Round? 

• Make it taller than any you’ve seen. 

• What animal is the space (Furry? Fast? Hibernating?) 

• If the house is a cell? Where are the vacuoles? Mitochondria? Nucleus? 

• Devote the design of a room/house/lamp/lawn to a person you love deeply. Let things you love about them manifest in your choices. 

• Make one space that you can feel completely safe in. One you can sleep in for 10 hours. One that feels like a cup of coffee. 

• Have the electrician design the plumbing. Have the gardener design the electrical system. Now compare to the drawings. What did you learn? 

• Try making the square thing round and the round thing square. 

• Take a poem you like and use each of the first 10 words as your overriding design constraints for 10 systems or 10 rooms. 

• Make something really dangerous but exciting. Now work backward to where it’s safe but still feels exciting. 

• Make some portion of the built environment suited to hosting a wild animal (mouse, moose, elephant). 

Try making up a set for yourself. You can make cards based on throwing the I Ching and interpret them for yourself. In fact you can base cards on a randomly selected page from a psychology text, a romance novel, a book on Feng Shui or a guide on resoling shoes. Our brains have an extraordinary ability to pick patterns out of one set of activities or studies and apply them to grossly dissimilar circumstances. Employing this deep skill (or oblique strategy) is one of the great secrets of creative individuals. 

A great resource that has some less wild-haired directives is the not-sufficiently-famous A Pattern Language by the Christopher Alexander and members of the Center for Environmental Structure here at Berkeley. 

A pattern language is similar in that each mantra/fortune/edict can be expressed initially as a single line of text, a single phrase, such as “Thick Walls” (pattern # 197. They all have numbers). Each pattern speaks about the way things in buildings feel or work when various features ( or patterns) are manifested and also presents alternatives that change the feeling or function. These patterns far exceed building design and range beyond to design an entire globe. It’s a fun idea, designing a world based on a set of principles culled from previous successes (most patterns are simple observations about what worked well in the past … often the distant past). 

If these various methodologies don’t work for you, try anything. That’s the real message here. Don’t do what everyone else is doing. The architectural world and particularly the remodeling world seen locally is doing just what William Morris observed it to be doing in the 1870s when he was developing the Arts and Crafts movement as a rebellion against industrialization. We’re all being sold our pre-designed dream homes (do we all dream alike?) either whole or in one slab of granite after another. 

A common fear that I hear or see in the nascent remodeler is that what they do will be too different from what everyone else is doing. Professional and homeowners alike seem to lack the bravery to do something even a little different than their neighbors. I guess the advertisements are working. We’re all so afraid of not fitting in. Now, here’s the funny part about this dilemma and it’s not a warm fuzzy lifestyle piece: 

Years ago, I remember inspecting a house that someone brave had rehabbed. Each room had different colors and they were terrific, vibrant, strong and emotional. The rooms were rich and had character and voice. The lighting was good (not fancy, just good) and the furnishings were fun and often loud. It was hard not to smile walking through the place. When this place hit the market it went WAY over the typical asking price for a house of this size and location.  

It is clear that it turned people on. Not just one or two odd folks but everyone. The lesson is that individual expression is more widely understood than a dull mass message and that this will be more welcome than most of us fear it will. 

Goethe said “Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” Goethe was speaking to the designer or poet just as much as he was to the conqueror. Go boldly. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor, in care of East Bay Real Estate, at mgcantor@pacbell.net.

A Quakelet With a Vertical Twist 

The 4.2 quake early Friday, July 20, which originated near Butters Drive in the Oakland hills, gave Berkeley some serious shaking. The energy moved northwest along the Hayward fault and, by the time it rose to the ground in Berkeley, it was vertical, so Berkeley felt it more than other places. Shaking was felt near Point Reyes, and as far as Napa. 

The entire Hayward Fault is due for a large quake. The last major quake on that fault was 139 years ago. Did the July 20 quake release some of that strain that’s been building up over the years? Unfortunately no, says Steve Walter, USGS seismologist. What does he suggest? “Be prepared.” Get your emergency kit up to snuff, secure that furniture, get an automatic gas shut-off valve installed, and have your retrofit checked. 

Here’s to making your home secure and your family safe. 

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

FRIDAY, JULY 27 

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 

The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society will hold its annual Bearded Iris Rhizome Auction from 7:30 to 10 p.m. at the Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave, Oakland. Growing advice from experts is available. 277-4200. 

International Working Class Film Festival with “Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America” and others at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Suggested donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

Free Compost for Berkeley Residents from 11:45 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. at the Berkeley Marina Maintenance Yard, 201 University Ave, next to Adventure PlaygroundSelf-serve. Please complete sign-in log before loading compost. 644-6566. 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 8 p.m. at Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navellier St. Pot luck at 7 p.m. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

SATURDAY, JULY 28 

Berkeley Kite Festival on Sat. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. www.highlinekites.com 

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. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Brooks Island Voyage Paddle the rising tide across the Richmond Harbor Channel to Brooks Island from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. For experienced boaters who can provide their own canoe or kayak and safety gear. For ages 14 and up with parent participation. Cost is $20-$22. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 6-9 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Cece Weeks Commemoration Day Potluck and Tree Planting, in honor of the disability and Indian rights activist at noon at Ohlone Park, McGee St. entrance. 332-6654. 

Electronics Recycling for televisions, computers, monitors, and home electronics, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 868-3034. 

E-Waste Recycling from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at IKEA Emeryville, 440 Shellmound St. For a list of what can be recycled see www.unwaste.com 

Oakland 1946 General Strike Walk to revist the sites of Oakland’s “Work Holiday.” Meet at 10:30 a.m. at the fountain at Latham Square, Telegraph and Broadway. For information call 464-3210. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of the Estuary to learn about Oakland’s founding on the waterfront. Meet by 10 a.m. at the C.L. Dellums statue in from of the Amtrack station, Second and Alice Sts. Cost is $10-$15. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around the restored 1870s business district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of G.B. Ratto’s at 827 Washington St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society will hold its annual Bearded Iris Rhizome Sidewalk Sale from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in front of the Downtown Oakland YMCA, 2350 Broadway. Growing advice from expertsis available. 277-4200. 

Explore the Ohlone Greenway in El Cerrito from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on a six-mile hike to visit a restored creek, view public art, and hike the Hillside Nature Area. Return by BART. Reservations required. 415-255-3233. www.greenbelt.org 

Summer Garden Party with musical entertainment featuring a Barbershop Quartet & old-fashioned brass ensemble and Ice Cream Bar, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Salem Lutheran Home, 2361 East 29th St., Oakland. Free. 534-3637. 

Cherokee Society for the Greater Bay Area General Meeting with a focus on Cherokee visual art. Potluck lunch and program, including Cherokee language practice and children’s activities from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Community Meeting Room, 3rd flr., Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 464-4649. www.bayareacherokee.org 

“Rosie Goes Green” Presentations on green technology in Richmond’s historic Atchison Village, from 9:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the AV auditorium, by the flagpole, Curry St. and Collins, at west end of McDonald Ave., Richmond. Food, music and other entertainment. 215 5530. 

“The U.S. vs John Lennon” Screening at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donations accepted. 528-5403. 

Family Sundown Safari at 5 p.m. at the Oakland Zoo. A hands-on program for children 3 and up to explore the Valley Children’s Zoo. 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

Your Library, Your Way - Have Your Say! An Albany Library Community Forum from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720 ext 16. 

Fast Pitch Softball for Adults at noon on Saturdays in Oakland. For information call 204-9500. 

Guinea Pig Adoption Fair from 1 to 4 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 525-6155. 

Preschool Storytime for 3 to 5-year-olds at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720 ext. 17. 

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 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174. . 

SUNDAY, JULY 29 

“Open Garden” Join the Little Farm gardener for composting, planting, watering and reaping the rewards of our work, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of the Eichers of Oakland to learn about Oakland’s residential district of houses by Joseph Eichler, from 1:30 to 4 p.m. Cost is $10-$15. Reservations required. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Toddlers in the Meadow Little ones and their grown-up friends exlore the meadow and look for butterflies, at 10:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Beautiful Butterflies Learn what kinds visit our meadows, at 2 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

“Rewriting Copyright with the Swedish Pirate Party” A panel discussion on how both creativity and civil liberties are often stymied by today’s copyright laws at 5 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10. www.hillsideclub.org 

Kids’ Day, with children selling their artwork and homegrown produce from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Kensington Farmers’ Market, 303 Arlington, behind ACE Hardware, Kensington.  

Social Action Forum with Stephen Zunes on terrorism and the Middle East at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302. 

CoHousing Slide Show and information on a new co-housing project in Grass Valley at 2 p.m. at 1250 Addison St, Suite 113. 849-2063. 

Bicycle Trails Council of the East Bay presents The DirtLaw Festival with music, films and food from 5 to 11 p.m. at Blake’s on Telegraph, 2367 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $10. 848-0886. www.btceb.org  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

MONDAY, JULY 30 

Sing-a-long Circles in the Oak Grove from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at the threatened Oak Grove in front of Memorial Stadium, Piedmont Ave., just north of Bancroft. 658-9178. 

Summer Science Club for children in grades 3-5 for two weeks in the afternoon at Hall of Health, 2230 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $100, financial aid available. 549-1564. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

Family Sing-a-long at 6:45 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223. 

Dragonboating Year round classes at the Berkeley Marina, Dock M. Meets Mon, Wed., Thurs. at 6 p.m. Sat. at 10:30 a.m. For details see www.dragonmax.org 

TUESDAY, JULY 31 

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 Berkeley Meadow in the East Shore State Park. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

“Elevating the Sparks of Peace: Stories of Hope and Reconciliation from the Holy Land” with Eliyahu McLean of Jerusalem Peacemakers at 8:30 p.m. at Chochamat HaLev Maggid Conference, 2215 Prince St. 704-9687. www.chochmat.org 

Tuesday Documentaries at 7 p.m. at the Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Allston Way. Donation of $5 benefits the Berkeley Food and Housing Project. 665-0305. 

Bayswater Book Club meets to discuss “The Secret History of the American Empire” by John Perkins at 6:30 p.m. Call for location 433-2911.  

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Family Storytime for preschoolers and up at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 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, AUGUST 1 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around Preservation Park to see Victorian architecture. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Preservation Park at 13th St. and MLK, Jr. Way. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234.  

South Berkeley Library Presentation with Noll & Tam Architects who have been hired to investigate possible spaces for the library at the Ed Roberts Campus, at Board of Library Trustees meeting at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 3rd flr. Community Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

“Richmond Shoreline and its Resources” A talk by Rich Walkling and a showing of the documentary “Rheem Creek and Breuner Marsh: A Promised Land” at 7 p.m. at 4191 Appian Way, El Sobrante. 665-3538. www.spawners.org 

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 10 a.m. to noon at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. To register call 594-5165.  

CSI at Your Library A crime solving presentation by the Berkeley Police for children 10 and up at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223. 

Family Math and Science Night at 6 p.m. at the West Branch of the Berkeley Public Library. A bilingual program for children ages 7-10 and their families. 981-6270. 

Skin Cancer Screening at the Markstein Cancer Education Center, Summit Campus, Oakland. Appointments reuired. 869-8833, option 2. 

Pax Nomada Bike Ride Meet at 6 p.m. at Nomad Cafe for a 15-25 mile ride up to through the Berkeley hills. All levels of cyclists welcome. 595-5344. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome. 548-9840. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley BART Station. 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, AUGUST 2 

El Sabor de Fruitvale Farmers market with activities for children, information on community services and music, from 3 to 7 p.m. at Fruitvale Village Plaza, 3411 East 12th St., near the Fruitvale BART. www.unitycouncil.org 

Summer Family FIlm Series at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223. 

“The White Rose” A film about a group of courageous youth in Nazi Germany at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. www.revolutionbooks.org 

Cope with Creativity Workshop on “Healing Touch for Self-Care” at 6:30 p.m. at 4401 Howe St., Oakland. To register call 888-755-7855, ext. 4241. 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club meets at 6:45 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline. namaste@avatar.freetoasthost.info  

TUESDAY, JULY 24 

EXHIBITIONS 

“At the Med ... Were You There?” Thirty years of sketches from Telegraph Ave.’s Mediterranean Coffee House by Doyl Haley on display at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761.  

Robin Meredith introduces “The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Flauti Diversi, solo sonatas and suites for recorder, harpsichord and violoncello at 8 p.m. at St. Albert’s Priory, 5890 Birch Ct. off College Ave., Oakland. Tickets at the door are $10-$15. 528-1725. 

Swamp Coolers at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun/Western Swing dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Matt Morrish at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Ravi Coltrane at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$18. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

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

WEDNESDAY, JULY 25 

FILM 

+---3 with response by entomologist Vincent Resh at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Noisy People” A documentary on sound artists and musicians from the San Francisco improvisational music community at 7:30 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. at Arch. Cost is $10. 843-8724. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Introduction to Jazz Improvisation for Recorders” A workshop with Eddie Marshall, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Aulos Room, St. Albert’s Priory, 5890 Birch Ct. off College Ave., Oakland. Cost is $20. 528-1725. 

Michael Eric Dyson will discuss his book “Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip-Hop” at noon at Barnes & Noble at 6050 El Cerrito Plaza, El Cerrito. 524-0087. 

Michael Tucker indroduces his memoir “Living in a Foreign language” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

“Writing Teachers Write” Teacher/student readings from the Bay Area Writing Project at 5 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “Aïda” at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$40. 925-798-1300. 

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

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

Buxter Hoot’n at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

The Adrian Gormley Ensemble at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

A Global Threat, Monster Squad, The Wednesday Night Heroes at 6 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $7. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Wake the Dead at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Ravi Coltrane at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$18. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, JULY 26 

CHILDREN 

Zoomobile Come meet unusual animals at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Public Library, Montclair Branch, 1687 Mountain Blvd. 482-7810. 

FILM 

International Latino Film Society “Soledad is Gone Forever” at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$6. 849-2568.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Deep Listening for Recorder Players” A workshop with Tom Bickley and Nancy Beckman at 7 p.m. at St. Albert’s Priory, 5890 Birch Ct. off College Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5. 528-1725. 

“Arts & Crafts Houses in the East Bay: Why They Are More Art than Craft” with author Dave Weinstein at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club. Cost is $20. For revervations call 848-4288. 

Poetry Flash with Susanne Dyckman and Laura Walker at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. 525-5476. 

Oakland Out Loud Poetry Reading with poets from PEN Oakland, followed by open mic, at 6 p.m. at the Oakland Public Library, 125 14th St. 238-3134. 

Robin Romm reads from her collection of stories “The Mother Garden” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

“Taste Matters” with Benjamin Wurgaft on Jewish food in the eyes of American and European food writers, at 6:30 p.m. at the Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. 549-6950. 

Michelle Redmond reads from her novel “The Year of Fog” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Kaz George Quartet at noon at the downtown Berkeley BART station. info@downtownberkeley.org 

Polyhymnia “Never and Always” A concert of chamber works for musicians, actors, photographers, and laptops, at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. Cost is $10. 548-9050. 

“Voices in the Virtual World” James Minton, Chris Runde and Gene Baker at 8 p.m. at Oaktown Creativity Center, 447 25th St., Oakland. Suggested donation $5-$10. 568-6920. 

Eric McFadden Trio/Satisfied Allstars, featuring Bobby Vega, Jessica Lurie, Dave Watts, Chris Rossback at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Rory Block at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Mack Rucks Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Jack Gates Trio, Latin jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Willard Grant Conspiracy, Chris Jones at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Fred O’Dell at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

A Christian McBride Situation at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200.  

FRIDAY, JULY 27 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “All in the Timing” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through Aug. 11. Tickets are $12. 525-1620. www.aeofberkeley.org  

Altarena Playhouse “Oh My Godmother” Fri and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through Aug. 11. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Central Works “Bird in the Hand” Thurs-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through July 29. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381. 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Meet Me in St. Louis” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. in July at 951 Pomona Ave., at Moeser, El Cerrito, through Aug. 4. 524-9132. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“A New Home, A New Life” Photographs by Refugee Youth in Oakland, Wed.-Sat., to Aug. 8 at Oakland Art Gallery, 199 Kahn’s Alley, Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland. Exhibit co-sponsored by the International Rescue Committee who helped to resettle the youth in Oakland. www.oaklandartgallery.org 

FILM 

Movies About Movies “Sunset Boulevard” at 3:30 p.m. in the Community Meeting Room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6139. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Youth Writing Festival Participants read from thier works at 6 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com  

Eli Gordon and Andrew Joron read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “Aïda” at 8 p.m. and SUn. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$40. 925-798-1300. 

“La Dolce Vita dei Flauti” Recorder consort music at 8 p.m. at St. Albert’s Priory, 5890 Birch Ct. off College Ave., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15. 528-1725. 

Warner Ellenberg Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Peru Canta y Baila! A celebration of Peruvian independence day at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Collective at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Nawal, music from the Comoros, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Houston Jones at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Robbie Fulks at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Steven Gary and Laura Zucker at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Diablo’s Dust, The Morning Line, Fainting Goats at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Christ on Parade, Final Conflict, Look Back and Laugh at 7 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

The Mundaze at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Kapakahi at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

A Christian McBride Situation at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, JULY 28 

THEATER 

Big City Improv, in Berkeley for one night only, at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Statge, 1901 Asby Ave. Tickets are $15-$20. 595-5597. www.bigcityimprov.com 

Shotgun Players “The Three Musketeers” Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. at John Hinkle Park, Southampton Ave., off The Arlington, through Sept. 9. Free. 841-6500. 

FILM 

Jewish Film Festival from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. at The Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. For information on tickets call 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rhythm & Muse Reading and Open Mic featuring poet Marc Hofstader at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. between Eunice and Rose Sts. 527-9753. 

“Transparent Passions” Performances, spoken word and art installation from 1 to 3:30 p.m. at Peralta Park, corner of Solano Ave. and Peralta St. 528-9038. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Familia Cepeda, Afro-Puerto Rican, at 8 and 10 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Babatunde Lea Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Najite, Bass Culture Review, Afrobeat from Los Angeles, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Amy Obenski and Kristin Lagasse at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The Soul Burners at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Neydavood Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Autumn Sara, High Like Five, Seconds Left at 6 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

Maya Kronfeld Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Fred Randolph Jazz Group at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Nicole McRory at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

The Altered Egos, Bunny Numpkins and the Kill Blow-up Reaction at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Christ on Parade, Attitude Adjustment, El Dopa at 7 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JULY 29 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Color & Light” Photographic art by Bill Hannapple. Reception for the artist at 1 p.m. at The LightRoom Gallery, 2263 Fifth St., through Aug. 24. 649-8111. www.lightroom.com 

“First Exposures: Bay Area Youth Photography” Reception at 2 p.m. at Mills College Art Museum, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. www.sfcamerawork.org 

FILM 

Jewish Film Festival from 11:30 a.m. to 8:45 p.m. at The Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. For information on tickets call 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tao Lin and Stephanie Young read at 7 p.m. at 21 Grand, 416 25th St. at Broadway. Cost is $5. 649-1320. 

“Rewriting Copyright with the Swedish Pirate Party” A panel discussion on how both creativity and civil liberties are often stymied by today’s copyright laws at 5 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10. www.hillsideclub.org 

Cal Adventures Open Mic at 7 p.m. at the recreation yard across from Hana Japan at the Berkeley Marina. 642-4000. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Midsummer Mozart, Program II, featuring Elspeth Franks, soprano, at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church. Tickets are $30-$60. 415-627-9145. www.midsummermozart.org 

San Francisco Renaissance Voices “The Regina Monologues” music for lute, readings from Shakespeare, and Elizabethan madrigals and folksongs at 7:30 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 2001 Santa Clara St., Alameda. Tickets are $12-$15. 522-1477. www.sfrv.org 

Berkeley Opera “Aïda” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$40. 925-798-1300. 

Summer Jazz with Chester Smith & his Organ at 3 p.m., The History of Jazz with Randy Moore at 4:30 p.m. at Open Jam Session at 5 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, Golden Gate Branch, 5606 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. 597-5023. 

Brad Colerick at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Folk This! and Friends An evening of radical protest music and theater at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Con Alma Voice-tet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

JL Stiles at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Ten Ton Chicken, Eyewitness Blues Band, David Gans and others at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$20 sliding scale. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Aaron Bahr Jazz Quintet at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Americana Unplugged: Corbin and Crew at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Ignite, Stick to your Guns These Days at 6 p.m. at Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway. Cost is $10. 763-1146. www.oaklandmetro.org 

MONDAY, JULY 30 

CHILDREN 

Magic Dan at 3:30 p.m. at the North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library. 981-6250. 

FILM 

Jewish Film Festival from 2:15 to 8:15 p.m. at The Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. For information on tickets call 925-275-9490. www.sfjff.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Austin Grossman and Tao Lin at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

James Lindsay shares stories from his mother’s memoir “Bold Plum” about the guerrillas in China’s war against Japan at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Marty Nemko describes “Cool Careers for Dummies” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with Dale Jensen birthday celebration reading at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

Breaking Chains A night of poetry at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Flutopia at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

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

West Coast Songwriter’s Showcase at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $5 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Orquesta Borinquen at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco is celebrating the centennial of the founding of the California College of the Arts with a selection of paintings and sculptures by some of the institution’s faculty and student alumni whose works have appeared at the gallery during the past 30 years. No theme unites the works beyond the characteristics of vitality and grace. 

The first work that the visitor sees is internationally renowned conceptual artist David Ireland’s “Untitled (Capillary Action),” 1995, (78 inches in height) which sets a standard for inventiveness. The base is a rectangular, galvanized steel box whose bottom is covered by the crusty residue of evaporated water, salt and dye. A length of cheese cloth drapes from a wire hanger, which itself hangs from a vertical wire support, into the box whose evaporated contents have stained it dark to light ocher.  

Other works by Ireland located across the gallery include drawings and paintings on paper and principally a reclaimed glass cabinet, “Untitled (Cabinet),” 1989/2006, whose two shelves support objects of personal and professional significance to the artist, for example: a color-glazed, porcelain, Asian female figurine partially wrapped in cement; painted wood and cardboard forms; a framed photograph; a hand-formed wax object that resembles either a stunted phallus or a toadstool; and a jar of nails (finger and toe, not carpenter’s) accumulated by the artist while performing his daily hygiene. 

Nearby, John Roloff’s Planting Studies, 1998-2001, ink jet prints and Laura Dufort’s painting “Silver Mandalas .01” afford elegant respites for meditation, as do works by Sian Oblak and John Zurier elsewhere in the gallery. 

The juxtaposition of works by two masters of contemporary figuration permits visitors a rare opportunity to compare and contrast their visions, both of which convey, I feel, some of the psychovisual distress of the Iberian Peninsula. Judith Linhares is represented by two erotically charged paintings on paper. 

Works of Robert Bechtle restore visitors to a world they recognize. Known as a photorealist he is represented by two works in charcoal on paper which could, indeed, be mistaken for black-and-white photographs, in part because of his masterful use of the texture of the paper. Three small watercolors of Paros are as soft as melodies. 

Image: Robert Bechtle’s “Marpissa" part of his Paros watercolor series

America’s prison construction boom is forging rapid change in small-town America, and small-town California is leading the pack. Prison Town, USA, a new documentary by Po Kutchins and Katie Galloway, shows the impact of a prison economy on Susanville, a Northern California town at the foot of the Sierras in Lassen County. When the last of its lumber mills closed down, Susanville faced an economic crisis and turned to the burgeoning prison industry for a panacea. The prisons promised employment and support for local businesses. But what Susanville got was far less, as the buy-local pledge was reneged, prison jobs brought unforeseen social problems, and the prisons themselves—three of them—dwarfed and began to consume the town that had opened its arms to them. The film shows at 10 p.m. today (Tuesday) on KQED as part “POV,” PBS’ acclaimed documentary series, now celebrating its 20-year anniversary.

“Who were the important architects in Berkeley? There’s Julia Morgan and … that guy, what’s his name?” a newcomer to town asked me a few weeks ago. 

“Maybeck,” I answered, while wondering whether I should launch into a list of Berkeley’s overlooked architects. Why are only those two so widely remembered? 

That’s just what local journalist and author Dave Weinstein asked himself several years ago. He began researching and writing an occasional series of articles for the San Francisco Chronicle about designers who substantially contributed to the Bay Area architectural landscape but are not well known. 

This coming Thursday evening Weinstein discusses some of those architects, their work, and the Arts and Crafts aesthetic in an illustrated talk entitled “Arts and Crafts Houses in the East Bay: Why They’re More Art than Craft.” 

“These architects were more artists,” he says in explanation of his theme. And they shouldn’t be typecast as always designing in one style. “It’s always been my feeling that in looking at architecture in general, people tend to think of it in categories. And I like to go beyond that.” 

“Even architects whose work we think we know often surprise us,” he adds. Much of his writing explores remarkable eclecticism in the design careers of those he’s studied. 

Along with his take on the Arts and Crafts movement, his perspectives on several local architects—including Leola Hall, Walter Ratcliff, John Hudson Thomas, Ernest Coxhead, Carr Jones, and Albert Farr—will be a focus of the talk. 

Hall, one of the first women to design in Berkeley, specialized in affordable, interesting, “spec” homes, particularly in Berkeley’s Elmwood district, after the 1906 earthquake. Ratcliff had an extensive professional career, contributing hundreds of homes and commercial and institutional buildings to the local landscape.  

Farr, in particular, interests Weinstein in part because he’s sometimes unfairly pigeon-holed as an architect who simply designed “English cottage” homes. “Roses ‘round the door’ picturesque-ness’” one architectural historian wrote.  

But Farr also worked with “Arts and Crafts … French, American Colonial, Spanish Colonial, even touches of Moderne,” Weinstein writes, and “fans know him for exquisite and imaginative design.”  

Farr designed homes in Belvedere and Piedmont. One of the Bay Area’s great residential architectural losses was the 1914 fire that destroyed the nearly complete Wolf House in Glen Ellen, a 15,000-square-foot lodge which Farr designed for Jack London. 

If you can’t attend the Thursday talk—or even if you can—a copy of Weinstein’s book, Signature Architects of the San Francisco Bay Area (Gibbs-Smith, 2006), is a good introduction to these interesting designers and an excellent reference. Copies will be available for sale at the lecture. 

The book profiles 15 Bay Area architects or design firms over a span of more than a century, from the 19th century Newsom brothers who built many prominent Victorians—but also Craftsman homes—to Berkeley’s 20th century International Style architect Donald Olsen, and Oakland’s Ace Architects. 

It’s a handsome book, with beautiful photographs by Linda Svendsen who, Weinstein notes with sadness, died recently. There’s a chapter apiece in a conversational journalistic style on the work of each designer or firm, with small sidebar profiles of each architect and highlight lists of their buildings and where they can be seen.  

Weinstein not only sleuthed out old records on the architects but also knocked on the doors of the houses they designed gathering anecdotes and perspectives from the people who live there. He also interviewed several of the architects who are still living—and, in most cases, still designing. 

In the process, he resurrects the memory of near forgotten designers such as Luther Turton, who did many Napa homes and buildings, and Frank Wolfe who built extensively in the South Bay, particularly San Jose, and often worked in the Prairie style. 

Several of the architects he wrote about had a strong influence on Bay Area design or did remarkable work that should draw national attention, but are strangely unremembered outside the world of local architectural historians and preservation societies. 

“If these people had been active in Southern California there would be books out about them” individually, Weinstein says of architects such as Gardner Dailey, who “brought Modern Architecture to the Bay Area.”  

Weinstein was a leader in the restoration and reopening of the Cerrito Theater (“I started raising a fuss to get the city to rebuild it,” he says). He grew up on Long Island, first came to the Bay Area in the 1970s after college at Columbia, and now lives in El Cerrito.  

His career includes journalism school at UC Berkeley and many years working for local papers, including the Hayward Daily Review, and the West County Times and Contra Costa Times as a reporter and editor. After retiring from full-time journalism several years ago, he has been concentrating on research and writing about architecture and local history.  

A book on Berkeley is in the works. He’s also involved with California Modern magazine and the “Eichler network” (www.eichlernetwork.com) that celebrates the mid-century homes of another Bay area trendsetter, developer Joseph Eichler. 

Photograph by Linda Svendsen. A sheltering fireplace alcove in North Berkeley’s Thomas Pratt house shows how John Hudson Thomas incorporated unusual forms into his home designs.  

The Weinstein lecture this Thursday begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St., a few blocks east of Shattuck. To be sure of a seat, call the Berkeley Association of Realtors at 848-4288. Refreshments are served after the talk, and books can be purchased. Tickets cost $20, $15 for members of the Hillside Club or the Berkeley Association of Realtors. 

http://thesimplehome.com/documents/lecture.flyer.cc.pdf 

B.A.R. President Arlene Baxter organized the lecture series (Weinstein’s talk is the third of four), with proceeds going to the B.A.R. Youth Arts and Education Fund. The series is sponsored by Kevin Eves of Wachovia Mortgage.

The mimosas are blooming, and I’ll bring the orange juice if you’ll bring the champagne to toast them with that favorite brunch beverage—mimosas, of course. Looking at the current price of OJ, you might be getting a bargain.  

Mimosa, Albizia julibrissin, also gets called “silk tree” (not to be confused with the more tropical “silk-floss tree”) and “sensitive mimosa” when people confuse it with the Brazilian native Mimosa pudica, which is more a shrub than a tree, with somewhat similar leaves and more globular, uniformly pink flowers. Both species can show up as weeds in some parts of the country, especially the wetter Southeast. 

The shade of A. julibrissin flowers can vary widely, from gilded to outright rosy. They’re always engagingly fluffy and light-catching though, and attractive to bees and butterflies.  

I’ve seen hummingbirds investigating them, but I can’t say how much nutrition the birds actually get out of the flowers.  

I don’t believe they’re sticky and dangerous to local birds the way blue-gum eucalyptus flowers are, at least. Euc flowers have been blamed by observant and nonhysterical birders like Rich Stallcup for the deaths of warblers that he and others have found under the trees with their nostrils completely occluded by, um, gum gum.  

Birds that co-evolved with eucs in their native Australia have bills that are longer below the nostrils, so they can use the sweet flowers and any bugs garnishing them with no problem, but ours haven’t been around eucs long enough I guess. Eucs’ bloomtime in winter when we have more more hungry warblers around because they migrate here might be compounding the problem.  

Albizia species—there are some hundred-plus of them—hail from Africa, Asia, and Australia; the species we have here is from China by way of Italy, evidently, where Filippo degi Albizzia introduced the whole genus in 1749. Where it lost the second z is one of those things I’ve never quite caught up with.  

Looking at the long puckered seedpods, you might guess immediately that our mimosa’s a bean, a legume. Like many but not all legumes, this tree fixes nitrogen. What? What that means is that these plants have a set of symbiotic bacteria housed in nodules in their tissues, primarily in their roots (though Hawai’ian koa keeps some up in aerial crotches), that work some of the 78 percent of the air that is nitrogen into compounds the plants can use, much more efficiently than other soil bacteria that live on their own. 

Some legumes, our native redbud for example, don’t bother with this but similar process has evolved in other plant species, like some tropical grasses, and other bacteria species. Evidently it’s a good idea. You can certainly understand its usefulness in nutrient-lean tropical soils.  

Mimosas aren’t long-lived as trees go, and a root fungus that kills them has begun to show up in California. But they’re handsome, tough, and cast a nice lacy shade we can sit in to drink those other mimosas. 

I’d say plant them—away from wildlands, please—and enjoy them. Slainte! 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. 

Mimosa flowers and foliage. This tree gets planted mostly in private yards and gardens, but the rosy individual shown here lives on a very public street in San Anselmo. 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Green Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section.

TUESDAY, JULY 24 

Southwest Berkeley Community Library Needs Assessment Community Meeting at 7 p.m. at LifeLong Medical Care, 3260 Sacramento St. at Alcatraz. 981-6195. 

Bus Rapid Transit: Focus on Southside Berkeley Community Workshop at the Transit Subcommittee of the Transportation Commission at 6:30 p.m. at 2362 Bancroft Way. 981-7010.  

Public Meeting on Bay Area Transportation Planning The Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration are reviewing the Bay Area's transportation planning process carried out by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The public in invited to comment at 5 p.m. at the Joseph P. Bort MetroCenter Auditorium, 101 Eighth St., across from Lake Merritt BART, Oakland. 817-5757. www.mtc.ca.gov 

East Bay Vivarium’s Traveling Reptile Show at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave, Albany. 526-3720 ext 17. 

“Looking Outside the Big Box for Local Economic Growth” with Jeff Milchen, co-founder of the American Independent Business Alliance at 7 p.m. at The Home of Truth, 1300 Grand St., between Encinal and Central, Alameda. Sponsored by Action Alameda and California Healthy Communities Network, a project of non-profit Tides Center. 522-2208. www.calhcn.org  

Educator’s Academy on Natural History for pre-school to 3rd grade teachers to learn easy ways to liven up lessons on natural history. From 9:30 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. Fee is $45-$51, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

“Mobility Matters for Older Drivers” a video presentation at 1 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 981-5190. 

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. 

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 8:45 to 1:30 a.m. at the Downtown Oakland Senior Center, 200 Grand Ave. 981-5332. 

Tuesday Documentaries at 7 p.m. at the Gaia Arts Center, 2120 Allston Way. Donation of $5 benefits the Berkeley Food and Housing Project. 665-0305. 

Berkeley PC Users Group meets at 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. MelDancing@aol.com 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 1247 Marin Ave. 524-9122.  

Family Storytime for preschoolers and up at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

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, JULY 25 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll learn about butterflies from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza at 388 Ninth St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

“The Political Scene: State and County Priorities” with Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson at the Berkeley Gray Panthers meeting at 1:30 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 548-9696. 

“Climate Protection and Berkeley’s Built Environment” at the Planning Commission meeting at 6 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 981-7081. 

Prevent Scams, Fraud and Identity Theft A presentation to help seniors at 7 p.m. at the Persian Center, 2029 Durant Ave. RSVP to 848-0264. 

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. Heavy rain cancels. 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, JULY 26 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll learn about butterflies from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Tilden Explorers A nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We’ll learn about butterflies from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m.. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Starry Night Skies with Celeste Burrows from the Chabot Space and Science Center followed by a 3 mile hike to Wildcat Peak to watch the sunset, search for constellations and observe the moon. At 6:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

FOCUS Equity Forum Join a planning effort that encourages Bay Area urban growth near transit and in existing communities, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Lawrence D. Dahms Auditorium, Joseph P. Bort MetroCenter, 101 8th St., across from Lake Merritt BART, Oakland. Sposored by the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 464-7926.  

“The Truth About Darfur and the Struggle for African Liberation” A teach-in and fundraiser at 7 p.m. at Interplay, 2273 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. 625-1106. www.solidarityforafrica.org 

Kibale Community Fuel Project A report on how innovative stoves are being used in Uganda, at 6:30 p.m. in the Marian Zimmer Auditorium, Oakland Zoo. 632-9525, ext. 122. 

“Staying Human in the Computer Age” A conference on the the challenges of and opportunities for human identity in the computer age. Thurs.-Sun. at International House, Piendmont Ave. at Bancroft. For information call 415-567-5115. www.binarybeing.org 

Compressed Natural Gas Station Grand Opening at 10 a.m. at 205 Brush St., West Oakland. Includes a display of alternative fuel vehicles. 238-2966. 

Easy Does It Board of Directors’ Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 1636 University Ave. 845-5513.  

Cope with Creativity Workshop on “Art to Express Grief” at 6:30 p.m. at 4401 Howe St., Oakland. To register call 888-755-7855, ext. 4241. 

FRIDAY, JULY 27 

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 

The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society will hold its annual Bearded Iris Rhizome Auction from 7:30 to 10 p.m. at the Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave, Oakland. Growing advice from experts is available. 277-4200. 

International Working Class Film Festival with “Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America” and others at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Suggested donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

Free Compost for Berkeley Residents from 11:45 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. at the Berkeley Marina Maintenance Yard, 201 University Ave, next to Adventure PlaygroundSelf-serve. Please complete sign-in log before loading compost. 644-6566. 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 8 p.m. at Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navellier St. Pot luck at 7 p.m. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

SATURDAY, JULY 28 

Berkeley Kite Festival on Sat. and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. www.highlinekites.com 

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. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Brooks Island Voyage Paddle the rising tide across the Richmond Harbor Channel to Brooks Island from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. For experienced boaters who can provide their own canoe or kayak and safety gear. For ages 14 and up with parent participation. Cost is $20-$22. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 6-9 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Oakland 1946 General Strike Walk to revist the sites of Oakland’s “Work Holiday.” Meet at 10:30 a.m. at the fountain at Latham Square, Telegraph and Broadway. For information call 464-3210. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of the Estuary to learn about Oakland’s founding on the waterfront. Meet by 10 a.m. at the C.L. Dellums statue in from of the Amtrack station, Second and Alice Sts. Cost is $10-$15. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around the restored 1870s business district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of G.B. Ratto’s at 827 Washington St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society will hold its annual Bearded Iris Rhizome Sidewalk Sale from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in front of the Downtown Oakland YMCA, 2350 Broadway. Growing advice from expertsis available. 277-4200. 

Explore the Ohlone Greenway in El Cerrito from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on a six-mile hike to visit a restored creek, view public art, and hike the Hillside Nature Area. Return by BART. Reservations required. 415-255-3233. www.greenbelt.org 

Summer Garden Party with musical entertainment featuring a Barbershop Quartet & old-fashioned brass ensemble and Ice Cream Bar, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Salem Lutheran Home, 2361 East 29th St., Oakland. Free. 534-3637. 

Cherokee Society for the Greater Bay Area General Meeting with a focus on Cherokee visual art. Potluck lunch and program, including Cherokee language practice and children’s activities from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Community Meeting Room, 3rd flr., Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 464-4649. www.bayareacherokee.org 

Computer Recycling from 10 am. to 11 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 415-462-6000. 

“Rosie Goes Green” Presentations on green technology in Richmond’s historic Atchison Village, from 9:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the AV auditorium, by the flagpole, Curry St. and Collins, at west end of McDonald Ave., Richmond. Give-aways, free food, music. 215 5530. 

“The U.S. vs John Lennon” Screening at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donations accepted. 528-5403. 

Family Sundown Safari at 5 p.m. at the Oakland Zoo. A hands-on program for children 3 and up to explore the Valley Children’s Zoo. 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

Your Library, Your Way - Have Your Say! An Albany Library Community Forum from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720 ext 16. 

Fast Pitch Softball for Adults at noon on Saturdays in Oakland. For information call 204-9500. 

Guinea Pig Adoption Fair from 1 to 4 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 525-6155. 

Preschool Storytime for 3 to 5-year-olds at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720 ext. 17. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174. . 

SUNDAY, JULY 29 

“Open Garden” Join the Little Farm gardener for composting, planting, watering and reaping the rewards of our work, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

Toddlers in the Meadow Little ones and their grown-up friends exlore the meadow and look for butterflies, at 10:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Beautiful Butterflies Learn what kinds visit our meadows, at 2 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of the Eichers of Oakland to learn about Oakland’s residential district of houses by Joseph Eichler, from 1:30 to 4 p.m. Cost is $10-$15. Reservations required. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

“Rewriting Copyright with the Swedish Pirate Party” A panel discussion on how both creativity and civil liberties are often stymied by today’s copyright laws at 5 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $10. www.hillsideclub.org 

Kids’ Day, with children selling their artwork and homegrown produce from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Kensington Farmers’ Market, 303 Arlington, behind ACE Hardware, Kensington.  

Social Action Forum with Stephen Zunes on terrorism and the Middle East at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302. 

CoHousing Slide Show and information on a new co-housing project in Grass Valley at 2 p.m. at 1250 Addison St, Suite 113. 849-2063. 

Bicycle Trails Council of the East Bay presents The DirtLaw Festival with music, films and food from 5 to 11 p.m. at Blake’s on Telegraph, 2367 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $10. 848-0886. www.btceb.org  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

MONDAY, JULY 30 

Sing-a-long Circles in the Oak Grove from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at the threatened Oak Grove in front of Memorial Stadium, Piedmont Ave., just north of Bancroft. 658-9178. 

Summer Science Club for children in grades 3-5 for two weeks in the afternoon at Hall of Health, 2230 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $100, financial aid available. 549-1564. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

Family Sing-a-long at 6:45 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223. 

Dragonboating Year round classes at the Berkeley Marina, Dock M. Meets Mon, Wed., Thurs. at 6 p.m. Sat. at 10:30 a.m. For details see www.dragonmax.org 

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. Yarn and needles provided for donated items. At 3:30 p.m. at 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., July 25, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Mary Ann Merker, 981-7533.  

Energy Commission meets Wed., July 25, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5434.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed., July 25, at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., July 26 , at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.  

Mental Health Commission meets Thurs. July 26, at 6:30 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. 981-5213. 

The July 17 article “OUSD Local Control Bill Gains Support” mistakenly indicated that that passage of the Oakland local school control bill, AB45, would have bearing on whether or not FCMAT reports in Oakland will continue. It does not. 

The July 17 article “Forfeiture Audit Shows Police, City Mismanagement” omitted a statement from the Berkeley city auditor’s office that the chief of police had requested the audit. The article also mistakenly reported that the city auditor had said the bank accounts were “not reconciled”; the auditor’s report said that they were “not timely reconciled.