They sang, they spoke, they demanded, they were funny, serious—the group of some 100 people assembled by Code Pink at the Oakland Federal Building on Tuesday were doing whatever they could to tell the powers-that-be to stop funding the war in Iraq. 

They had to yell out their message above the traffic and downtown noontime buzz. “Our constitution doesn’t cover sound permits in Oakland,” Zanne Joi of Code Pink told the gathering, after police disallowed the group’s portable sound system. 

While most participants were in an oppositional mode, condemning George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and others, Joi reserved praise for Oakland Rep. Barbara Lee. “We need to give a shout-out to the one congresswoman who has voted from the outset against the war,” she said to the cheering crowd. 

Those gathered also took time to honor the war dead and praise the earth. “This is the ground that we hold for peace; no one will take it away from us,” they chanted. 

Sporting a “Fuck Bush” T-shirt, a woman identifying herself as Soul, spoke to the crowd. Soul identified herself as an anarchist from Berkeley Liberation Radio and said she had hung over the pedestrian bridge in Berkeley on Monday to make people aware of the high rate of suicide among troops in Iraq and those returning home.  

“We are the fertilizer, sowing seeds of dissent,” she told the crowd.  

East Bay Municipal Utility District worker Charles Smith, of AFSCME 444 (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) held a banner proclaiming the “Spirit of ’76” and calling for impeachment for Bush and Cheney. Smith said he hoped people would “kick King George [presumably Bush] out of the colonies.”  

Other groups supporting the rally included Grandmothers for Peace, Singing for Peace and United for Peace and Justice.  

Dana Dillworth was standing off to the side of the crowd, a huge cigar between her teeth and calling out: “Buy war bonds—or stock in Lockheed, Halliburton or Procter and Gamble.”  

When the Daily Planet approached, she said. “God Bless America. Thank God my stocks keep going up.” Dillworth said she had come from her home in Brisbane to mock those who get rich on the war effort. 

Despite a number of residents urging the City Council to oppose it, councilmembers unanimously approved a $396,000 county-federal grant aimed at delivering customized transit information to people living near Telegraph Avenue, San Pablo Avenue and the Ashby Avenue BART Station. (Councilmember Max Anderson was absent.) 

In other actions, the council held a workshop to discuss new policy for citizen comment at council meetings, honored a former department head who was forced out of his job (see accompanying story), approved a controversial new library trustee, and OK’d boycotts of Valley Power Systems in San Leandro and the Woodfin Suites Hotel in Emeryville. 

Travel Choice grant 

Most of the concern expressed by residents who spoke at the council meeting against accepting the grant for the project known as Travel Choice was directed more at the Transportation and Landuse Coalition (TALC), the nonprofit named as grant recipient, than at the program itself. 

That’s because the TALC is among the supporters of full implementation of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), a plan that many residents and merchants strongly oppose. If implemented, BRT would provide a dedicated bus lane on Telegraph Avenue, while removing automobile lanes. Opponents also say BRT could encourage inappropriate high-density housing projects.  

Supporters of Travel Choice, however, argued that TALC’s support for BRT was unrelated to accepting the funds. 

The grant “is intended to promote existing options,” Matt Nichols, Berkeley’s principal transportation planner, told the council. “BRT does not exist.” 

Stuart Cohen, TALC executive director, assured the council that the Travel Choice outreach workers would not be given information about the BRT and that the two issues would be kept separate. 

Before voting to approve the grant, the council added a clause that specifically would prohibit TALC from using the grant to promote BRT. 

Members of the public had other concerns, asking why the city did not put the project out for competitive bid. Nichols responded that TALC was the only entity familiar with Travel Choice in the Bay Area, having implemented the program successfully in Alameda and the Fruitvale district of Oakland. 

Speakers also questioned the project’s method of contacting residents by telephone, which, they said, could be a nuisance to those who get the calls. (They also go door-to-door in targeted neighborhoods.) John Knox White, Travel Choice Program Manager for TALC, responded that by offering free coffee and tickets on public transit they are able to keep most people on the phone. “Sixty-six percent took the time to have a conversation,” White said, of the project undertaken in Alameda. 

Mayor Tom Bates added his support: “If you’re going to get them out of their cars, they have to know their options,” he said. 

When it was his turn at the public microphone, Doug Buckwald told the council there’s a better way to get people out of their cars than Travel Choice: make public transit “low cost, more frequent and make it go where you want to go,” he said. 

Public Comment 

The council delayed a vote until October on new rules for public comment. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington and Mayor Tom Bates proposed competing ordinances each promoted at a 5:30 p.m. workshop. 

Among the most controversial questions was the issue of when to schedule public comment on items not listed on the agenda. Bates had proposed that these speakers be heard at the end of the meeting, generally around 11 p.m. for two minutes each. After listening to the public calling for public comment earlier in the evening, he said he would consider allowing three or four speakers, chosen by lottery, to speak early in the meeting; the others would speak at the end. 

Worthington’s proposal calls for the public to be heard on issues not on the agenda toward the beginning of the meeting, just after the vote on the consent calendar, where the council approves non-controversial items. 

“To have public comment (on non-agenda items) at the end of the meeting excludes the elderly and people with children. It takes away their democratic rights,” said Jane Welford of superBOLD (Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense). 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli responded, asking Welford: “How do you balance the public’s right to watch the council do its work with the citizen’s right to be heard in public comment?”  

Both Worthingon’s proposal and the mayor’s give the public time to address consent calendar items. The mayor limits consent calendar speakers to three in favor of an item and three against. If there are more than three in opposition, the item will be pulled from the consent calendar and discussed as an action item at the end of the meeting. 

Worthington’s measure allows all speakers to address the council on consent and action items, but limits their time according to their numbers—if there are fewer than five speakers, each can speak for two minutes; if there are 5-9 speakers the time is reduced to 1.5 minutes and if there are more than nine speakers, each can speak for one minute. 

The mayor’s proposal allows the first nine speakers on action items to speak for two minutes and the others for one minute.  

Public speakers pointed out, however, that the quick and nimble would get to the microphone first, thus being able to speak for the full two minutes. The mayor said he would consider choosing the two-minute speakers by lottery. 

But Councilmember Linda Maio pointed out that when the council used a lottery system—they put speaker cards into a hopper from which the city clerk drew the cards—people used to put their names in more than once, or come with a large group so individuals could cede their time to a designated speaker. People who submitted just one name had less of a chance than others to be chosen. 

The mayor urged the council to move forward and establish public comment rules. He’s been experimenting with various formats since last year, when SuperBOLD threatened to sue the city over restricted public comment. 

“We need to adopt some rules; the public is confused,” Bates said. 

Meet elsewhere 

The debate over public comment sparked a discussion—not on the agenda—on the need for a new place for the council to meet. “We are denying the public a chance to attend meetings,” Worthington said, referring to times when the Council Chambers are full and people cannot enter. 

“It’s pretty disgusting that in Berkeley, there’s not a decent place to meet,” said Councilmember Betty Olds, advocating for the rehab of the building in which the Council Chambers is located—the Maudelle Shirek building (Old City Hall)—which is the school district headquarters and is not earthquake safe. 

Bates said the city has done a search and found no other place in the city that is wheelchair accessible, large enough and can accommodate TV transmission equipment. 

At Longfellow School it is difficult to hear because the acoustics are bad, Olds noted, adding that the Berkeley Community Theater “is so depressing.” City College is overbooked and the dais is narrow, City Manager Phil Kamlarz said. 

Wozniak noted there are many ways councilmembers get feedback in addition to hearing speakers at council meetings, including phone calls, letters and email. “We have to have other avenues,” than council meetings, he said. 

Library trustee approved 

New library trustees are generally given “rubber-stamp” approval by the City Council, after having been approved by the five sitting trustees. But at Tuesday’s meeting the council was not unanimous, voting 6-1-1 to approve Carolyn Henry Golphin to replace Laura Anderson on the board, with Councilmember Kriss Worthington voting in opposition and Councilmember Dona Spring abstaining.  

Golphin is past president of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce and works as marketing director for Skates By the Bay. 

Skates unsuccessfully sued Berkeley several years ago, claiming it should not have to follow the city’s Living Wage Ordinance, which impacts businesses on bayside properties owned by the city. 

Speakers from SuperBOLD spoke against Golphin’s appointment, based on Skates’ activism against the ordinance. 

“I’m proud of the support you give to labor and good pay,” Jane Welford told the council. “Because Carolyn Golphin was such a hard fighter against the living wage ordinance at Skates By the Bay” she should not be appointed, Welford said. 

But Susan Kupfer, chair of the Library Board of Trustees pointed out that, in promoting Skates’ point of view, Golphin was simply doing her job. 

During the trustees’ interview process, no questions on labor issues were posed to the candidates. 

Other matters 

In other matters, councilmembers voted unanimously to support a boycott of Valley Power Systems in San Leandro, which is on strike—they do maintenance work on fire engines—and to also support a boycott of the Woodfin Suites Hotel in Emeryville, which has refused to comply with Emeryville’s Living Wage Ordinance for hotel workers. Emeryville has asked the hotel to comply with the ordinance by paying back wages owed the workers, but it has yet to comply.  

Olds abstained on the Woodfin Suite boycott. 

The Berkeley Board of Education began the search for a new superintendent for the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) Wednesday. 

The board hired Mission Viejo-based Leadership Associates—a search firm specializing in superintendent selection skills in over 130 California school districts—less than a week after BUSD superintendent Michele Law- rence announced her retirement starting Feb. 1. 

Board members discussed with the firm’s representatives criteria which would play an important role in recruiting a new superintendent and agreed upon a timeline. 

A small group of parents turned up at the meeting Tuesday night since most families were attending Back to School night and PTA meetings. 

Lee Glover-Owens, mother of a sixth-grade student at King Middle School, emphasized the importance of a superintendent who would fight to eradicate the achievement gap in the Berkeley public schools. 

“The next superintendent should not only tackle the problem but also eliminate it,” she said. “I want the next superintendent to be a humble person, well educated and with a hands-on love for children. He or she should open up every possible resource to teach a child and ensure that every child is successful by the time they leave Berkeley High.”  

David Manson—district representative for state Sen. Don Perata—told the board that it was important to include voices from communities of color during the selection process, an idea that was also emphasized by board member Karen Hemphill. 

“The new superintendent should be a leader in bringing together community groups,” she said, “someone who has demonstrated through prior activities a deep understanding of equity and how race and class affect student achievement.” 

The board agreed that the ideal candidate should be comfortable with being in the spotlight.  

“We will be giving a very careful look at what you are looking for,” Jake Abbott of Leadership Associates told the board. 

“It’s extremely important we hear what you are thinking about.” 

Board member Shirley Issel said it was important to focus on the district’s current needs during the selection process.  

“During the last recruitment process we had a lot of need to focus on financial stability,” she said. “The district was in a run down condition that needed to be repaired. We have made a lot of progress but there is continued weakness in personnel management and pupil achievement. The new superintendent will have to continue critical oversight on budget and respond to critical needs. I am particularly looking for someone who has demonstrated achievement in all these areas.” 

After joining the district in 2001, Lawrence saw it through a serious budget deficit and oversaw cost savings of up to $15 million in the last three years. 

Board president Joaquin Rivera said that Berkeley could not be a training ground for a new superintendent, and requested a candidate who had experience with school boards and state and federal issues. 

“We are still looking for the same things we looked at six years ago,” said school board vice president John Selawsky. “Someone who advocates strongly for public education, has strong leadership skills, experience, and values the culture of Berkeley. Someone with strong business knowledge and political sophistication. Even though we have around 10,000 students in our community we have a very politically conscious community.” 

Selawsky added that since the board would address the district’s facilities sometime in the next five to ten years, the new superintendent would have also have to understand the importance of a community process. 

“We want someone who will stick with us,” said Issel.  

“And also buys into our district’s concept of focusing on the whole child. He or she must have high expectations for all children,” quipped in Riddle. 

A majority of board members said that the next superintendent should respect negotiations with unions. 

“Someone who can count,” Riddle added. “I see a lot of facilities bonds in the future. It would be really nice to have a superintendent who knows what a parcel tax is since we rely heavily on those for a budget.” 

Robert Trig of Leadership Associates told the board that superintendent searches had increased in the last one year. 

“Superintendents are retiring,” he said. “The field is getting thinner. We are going outside California to look for candidates. This brings in some positives as well as negatives. The California finance laws are unique. If you haven’t worked in California and don’t have a network of people who can help you, it can be very difficult. This is an issue.” 

Abbott added that to attract the right kind of candidates, districts were providing “golden handcuffs,” or amenities such as health benefits and housing loans. 

Lawrence, whose contract stipulates an annual salary of $200,000, was also provided a $300,000 housing loan in order to encourage her to live within the district. 

“Berkeley is not a very large district but it is a high profile district,” said Trig. “We want the candidates to understand the challenges of the district.” 

Riddle said that the board wanted to cast a wider net to the district’s sister cities while Issel said that she preferred someone from within the state. 

Reading from a suggested timeline, Abbott said that the consultants would meet with district staff and community members on Sept. 24 and 25 for input. 

“We’d prefer if the board not be there during the community meetings,” Abbott said. “We want people to feel comfortable. The board can listen but not take part in the discussion.” 

According to the timeline, the consultants would begin identifying candidates and develop a recruitment brochure between now and October. After interviewing the finalists on Dec. 8 and 9, the board would visit the community of the leading candidate. The new superintendent would begin in January. 

Closed session 

Following the discussion, the board met with the consultants in closed session to discuss the contractual parameters of the future superintendent.  

Terry Francke of the California First Amendment Coalition told the Planet that the closed session might have violated state laws requiring open government meetings. He said the Brown Act, which governs when meetings can be closed to the public, had no provision which allowed closed sessions to discuss the financial terms of a contract in general. 

“If they want to decide the maximum they will pay in the abstract before entering into negotiations with a particular person, that cannot be in closed session,” Francke said. “Closed session is permissible when the board is discussing its agreement with a particular person.” 

Lawrence, however, told the Planet that the school board was legally permitted to establish the financial parameters of a contract for a prospective superintendent in closed session. 

“In terms of negotiating a salary of a prospective superintendent we can do it in closed session,” she said. “Once the parameters have been established and the contract settled the board must fully disclose it to the public. The same was done in my case.” 

Former Berkeley Housing Director Steve Barton, pressured to resign after what some say was a cursory investigation by the city attorney into problems at the Berkeley Housing Authority, was back before the City Council on Tuesday to accept a proclamation honoring him as a “stalwart and creative leader in achieving the city of Berkeley’s affordable housing mission.” 

While Barton said he was appreciative of the praise, he made clear in the statement he read thanking the council for the proclamation that he believes the city is obliged to thoroughly investigate the allegations made against him and others. 

City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque, absent on medical leave until Oct. 1, wrote two scathing memos, one May 22 and the other June 6, blaming Barton and a host of other city employees for the problems at BHA.  

In her June 6 memo, Albuquerque talked about “a pervasive abdication of duty on the part of line BHA employees,” and said, “city management at every level failed to follow legal advice on how to identify and rectify the full scope of the serious and growing operational problems at the BHA.” 

Barton’s statement was received with a standing ovation by the audience. He thanked the council, and spoke of the activism of his younger years participating in movements for racial equality, ending the war in Vietnam, supporting gay liberation, and participating in actions to protect the homes of low-income people.  

Barton praised the city for its ability to maintain a government “whose core values are democracy, social justice, a sustainable environment and an economy that values creativity over profit.” 

Nevertheless, the criticisms he raised were pointed. 

“Unfortunately, appreciative as I am of the honor you do me this evening, I can’t pass over the city’s recent violation of its principles of decency and respect to all people including its employees,” he said, pointing to the city attorney’s “statements regarding myself and many other city employees who worked with or at the Berkeley Housing Authority.  

“These statements were made without serious investigation, without any effort to hear from those who were criticized, and without reviewing all of the available information. I believe that you have an obligation to ensure that a careful and balanced third party review is carried out and made public.” 

Barton is not alone calling for an investigation. In a June 14 memo to the City Council, the Housing Advisory Commission called for an independent investigation and on June 19, the Rent Stabilization Board wrote: 

“On June 6, the city attorney issued a letter to council and the press blaming a number of city employees, including Dr. Barton for management problems with the Housing Authority and Housing Department. Because Dr. Barton strongly disputes the allegations raised … and fears if unchallenged, his professional reputation will be irreparably harmed, we ask that the city manager and City Council immediately initiate an independent and thorough investigation into the accuracy of the allegations….  

“We also ask that this investigation address … the appropriateness of the city attorney making these allegations in a public forum. None of the individuals named have had a chance to respond, and the validity of the allegations are in serious question.” 

Reached by phone Thursday, City Manager Phil Kamlarz said his response has not changed since the boards originally issued their letters: he will initiate an investigation after the HUD investigator completes his investigation. Kamlarz could not say when that would happen.  

“I haven’t talked to them for a month and a half,” he said. (The Housing Authority separated itself from the city in July.) The Daily Planet asked Kamlarz if his office would encourage HUD to finish its work quickly and Kamlarz responded: “They’re calling the shots. They’re the feds.” 

Carole Norris, chair of the Berkeley Housing Authority board, spoke of her “great regard” for Barton in a phone interview with the Planet on Thursday. She said she is concerned that the charges have not been thoroughly investigated and that Barton’s demand for an independent investigation is “a reasonable expectation.”  

While she said that shoring up the troubled agency is her first priority, she plans to place the question of an investigation before the board in October. 

Superior Court Judge Richard Keller Wednesday denied UC Berkeley’s request for a court order ending the tree-sit at Memorial Stadium. 

The Alameda County Superior Court judge said he needed more evidence before ruling on the move by the university to end the protest aimed at saving an oak grove the university hopes to chop down to build a high tech gym a stone’s throw from the Hayward Fault. 

“My intent is to maintain the status quo until we can get a full hearing,” said the jurist from his bench in a Fremont courtroom. 

Keller set Oct. 1 as the date for a 2:30 p.m. full court proceeding that will include testimony from both sides. 

The university had filed papers Tuesday seeking a temporary restraining order, naming two participants in the ongoing protest that began Dec. 2 in the pre-dawn hours of Big Game day when Zachary Running Wolf scaled a redwood near the stadium wall. 

Others quickly followed up the trunks of nearby oaks. 

As days lapsed into weeks, and then months, punctuated by periodic arrests and sweeps by UC Berkeley police, the protest drew national attention. 

The suit, filed on behalf of the UC Board of Regents, seeks preliminary and permanent injunctions on the grounds that the protest is a case of illegal trespassing which violates “the regents’ policies” and “constitutes a nuisance ... that is injurious to the health and safety of members of the campus community and interferes with the comfortable enjoyment of Regental property.” 

“Someone is going to break her neck,” declared the papers filed Tuesday by Michael R. Goldstein, one of the two attorneys representing the Regents in the action. “And someone is going to start a fire ... They are living in filth and creating a health hazard.” 

A declaration by UC Berkeley Police Chief Victoria Harrison filed with the court cited 217 incidents reported by her department between the first day of the protest and Aug. 24. 

On game days, Harrison declared, she will be forced to call on police from other university campuses to augment the typical deployment of 150 security officers, public and private—and said even more would be needed if not for the fence the university erected at her request around the protest site Aug. 29.  

But Dennis Cunningham, the attorney who represented the protesters, said the only disruption came from the fence itself. 

“I don’t think it is safe to go up in the trees,” Goldstein told the court. 

“The question is, how are you going to safely remove them unless they voluntarily came down,” Keller replied. “And that’s wishful thinking the way I see it.” 

The judge said he wanted to make sure that protesters have “food, water and the substances of life going up while the case is pending.”  

Goldstein said the university would make certain that happened, but he hoped the tree sitters and their supporters would return the favor with peaceful conduct.” 

The hearing wasn’t without its moments of levity. After Cunningham told the judge “your insight is considerable,” Keller quipped, “Would you tell my wife that?” 

As for any health crisis presented by the tree-sitters, Cunningham said the university itself had created it by putting up the fence. 

But Keller declined to issue an order forcing the university to maintain supplies to the arboreal activists. 

“I grew up in a part of the country where civil disobedience brought about major changes in human experience,” said the judge, referring to his childhood in the South and specifically citing the case of Selma, Ala., where on March 7, 1965, state and local lawmen bludgeoned and tear-gassed 600 marchers on their way to Montgomery. 

“I am not unfamiliar with the concept of civil disobedience,” he said. “But at the same time, there are consequences. My intent is to maintain the status quo” until the Oct. 1 hearing. 

“It went well,” said Running Wolf after the hearing. “He did not issue the restraining order and we are very satisfied with that.” 

“We intend to get a peaceful resolution to this illegal protest,” Goldstein told reporters outside the courtroom. “Any parent will understand what we are doing.” 

While the university wouldn’t allow any camping on the ground or in the trees at the grove, “we have a long-standing tradition of honoring free speech,” said UC Berkeley Executive Director of Public Affairs Dan Mogulof. 

But, he said, “there are limits to free speech.” Just as the courts have ruled it’s illegal to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, so, he said, it was wrong to light cooking fires in the tops of trees at the height of fire season. 

At that point, he was interrupted by Ayr, an activist who has been supporting the tree sitters with food, supplies and moral support from the start. 

“The only reason they had fires was to cook their food after the fence went up,” he said. 

“Why not smoke them out?” asked a reporter. 

“We are not going to do anything that risks life or limb,” said Mogulof. 

Protest today 

Veterans of the Free Speech Movement and current university students will gather at the grove today (Friday) at 1:30 p.m. to speak out against the university’s actions against the tree sitters. 

Among those who are slated to appear are Michael Rossman and Michael Delacour, both veterans of the Free Speech Movement. 

Photograph by Richard Brenneman  

UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof and attorney Michael R. Goldstein talked with reporters Wednesday afternnon after Superior Court Judge Richard Keller denied their request for an order barring protesters from occupying trees near Memorial Stadium.  

The owner of the proposed Muse Art House and Mint Cafe on Telegraph Avenue said that the project might be dead after a ruling by the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) Thursday. 

ZAB voted 6-2 to approve the restaurant and an art gallery in the former location of the Blue Nile Restaurant, but did not grant the requested permits for distilled spirits and expansion of hours at the site. 

The board decided that the cafe could remain open until midnight on weekends and 10 p.m. on weekdays, turning down owner Ali Eslami’s request to stay open until 2 a.m. on weekends and midnight on weekdays in response to neighborhood concerns about noise and rowdiness. 

“This will kill the project,” Eslami, who said he has spent close to $1 million on the project so far, told the Planet Thursday. “I will appeal ZAB’s final decision to the City Council, but if I have to decrease the hours and eliminate liquor then the project will not be feasible.” 

Eslami said that the zoning board was forcing him to open a restaurant when he intended to create an art house. 

“My whole idea is modeled after the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco,” said Eslami, referring to the interdisciplinary artist space on Folsom Street which hosts collaborative exhibitions, classes and small concerts and doubles up as a working artist studio and gallery. “Being on Telegraph is a challenge. Forcing the Muse Art House to become a restaurant is a big disappointment for me.” 

He said that without a permit to sell hard alcohol and extended hours, the business wouldn’t be able to make a profit. 

“We are not going to be able to generate revenue from the art part of the project,” Eslami said. “Our main revenue will be from the food side and the alcohol will add a competitive edge. It will bring in a wider spectrum of people.” 

For a group of Telegraph neighbors who had come to the meeting to protest Eslami’s plans, the proposed project meant only one thing: drunken college kids sauntering past their front doors when the cafe closed at 2 a.m. 

“Mr. Eslami is trying to convince you that it’s going to be an art cafe, but I am calling it a night club because that’s what it is,” said Dione Cota, who lives near the proposed project. “The late-night disturbances on Telegraph make me call the police weekly. If you approve this project I will be calling them nightly.” 

Recalling drunken brawls, loud music and public urination that took place at the now-closed business called The Patio on Dwight Way, long-time neighbor Dean Hunsaker said that he wanted the new business to be responsible to the community. 

“We would not want to allow something like The Patio to happen again,” he said. “Making alcohol available in this part of town generates a red flag. The question is: what type of restaurant, and what type of drinks? ... What exactly is ‘occasional live entertainment? What kind of music, how loud, how frequently?” 

Berkeley Police Chief Doug Hambleton, in a letter to ZAB, said that he believed the proposed business would not call for additional police hours. 

“Eslami described artistic events, poetry readings and alternative live performances such as jazz, folk, foreign and ethnic music coupled with food service,” Hambleton wrote in his letter. “Alcohol service would be incidental to the other aspects of the business and his stated intention for his desire for a hard spirits license is to be able to serve high end liquors and cordials. [It’s] not a typical bar-type operation.” 

Hambleton added that the business plan should be clear in the use permit to avoid confusion. 

Eslami also recently met with Regent Street neighbors and members of the Willard Neighborhood Association to negotiate an agreement between the two sides about alcohol permits and late hours. 

Vincent Casalaina, president of the Willard Neighborhood Association, lauded Eslami on his efforts to reach out to the neighbors. 

“We sincerely hope that Mr. Eslami does indeed have an art cafe and we will be his best customers if that is the case,” he said. “The reality is that the proposed site is a few blocks from the university and that this area has significant problems due to alcohol use by the student population. We don’t want to add fuel to the fire with additional hours and a hard-liquor license in a site that is almost 6,000 square feet right next to a residential neighborhood especially when so many city, university, police and neighbor resources are spent trying to reduce the problem.” 

“We are not just catering to college students, but to a sophisticated artistic community,” Eslami said, “Right now there’s no place to have a decent late-night meal on the Southside.” 

He added that he hoped to open the project before January. 

“About 45 percent of police resources are tied up in the Southside,” said Telegraph resident Doug Buckwald. “Crime is up 25 percent in the Southside. If we open another establishment that is open late and serves hard liquor we will get more of these problems.” 

“This will not be a rowdy place.” Eslami told the board. “We will not serve them beer and let them out ... Alcohol is incidental here. We can’t create a concept and have unhappy neighbors. We understand the concerns but not letting a new business come in is not the answer.” 

Board member Terry Doran called the proposed project an “unique establishment for the South Campus.” 

“It appeals to a broad group of people, especially people from my generation,” he said. “I’d like to have a drink, I’d like to stay up till 2 a.m. and I’d like to hang out.” 

Board member Jesse Arreguin said that he was against the request for hard alcohol. 

“You haven’t demonstrated the necessity for that at this time,” he told Eslami. “Beer and wine is totally reasonable.” 

“To take the risk of hard liquor and later hours puts the risk on neighbors,” said board member Bob Allen. 

The board also decided that an acoustical study would be conducted on the noise levels and that the permit would be reviewed in six months. Cafe patrons would not be allowed to park in the residential parking zones and would instead be directed to park at a nearby UC parking lot. 

The laptop thief who stole eight laptops from eight customers at Cafe Strada on Bancroft Avenue on Sunday evening is still at large. 

The case has been handed over to the Berkeley Police Department, said UC Berkeley Police Lt. Mitch Celaya. 

According to Celaya, a man walked into the patio area of Cafe Strada at 9:50 p.m. on Sunday and sat down at a table where a number of people were working on their laptops. 

Displaying a handgun tucked in his waistband, he told the people at the table to put their laptops in his duffel bag. He repeated this at another table and then walked south on College. 

Although both campus and city police searched the area, they were unable to located a suspect. 

Celaya said that crime had risen around the campus in the past few weeks, as the fall semester began. 

“I am very concerned that property crime and personal crime is higher than in past years,” he said. “Last year there were 12 robberies committed from January to September. This year the number stands at 22 for the same period of time.” 

Celaya also said that a graduate student had been shot with a BB gun while resisting theft of his backpack on Monday night near Haviland Hall. Two suspects were arrested in this case. 

Cell phone thefts occurred outside the Unit One dorm courtyard and the Unit Two loading dock on Sunday night. No arrests have been made in those cases. 

Suspects were also arrested for a pair of strong-arm robberies on Channing and Kroeber Plaza on Sunday. 

“We are pushing community outreach and asking students to sign up for crime alerts which will be emailed to them,” Celaya said. “They can also take advantage of the BearWALK program and the night safety shuttle. Students should avoid dark areas and walk in groups. We always try to respond quickly when we get a call for help.”

The Berkeley Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union plans to protest this Saturday the lawsuit by Verizon Wireless against the City of Berkeley, an attempt to overturn the city’s protective ordinance regarding cell phone antennas. 

The group will hold a demonstration in front of UC Storage at 2721 Shattuck Ave. from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. and urge residents to boycott Verizon. 

Verizon sued Berkeley in federal court in August, alleging that the city was in violation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The cell phone giant asked the court to declare Berkeley’s ordinance regarding cell phone antennas illegal and to allow the cell phone company to install antennas at three locations, including the UC Storage building. 

The Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) voted 5-4 in July to reject a use permit application by Verizon Wireless and Nextel Communications for 11 cell phone antennas atop UC storage. 

The Telecommunications Act requires cities to grant cell phone companies a permit within a reasonable period of time and allows the carrier to sue for unnecessary delay. In a confidential memo to ZAB, City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque had warned that a rejection of the Verizon application would be a violation of state and federal law.  

“The fact that they are going after the city’s ordinance means other neighborhoods will be affected as well,” said Laurie Baumgarten, a resident of South Berkeley. 

Baumgarten added that even though the federal law prevents cities from acting on cell phone radiation health issues, the community was concerned about the risk.  

“We have children in the neighborhood and a childcare center across the street. We as a neighborhood do not want these antennas dumped on us. We need to have a citywide discussion about the future of this technology and whether we want to put our health at risk.” 

At the last ZAB meeting, Verizon land use attorney Paul Albritton had said that minutes of cell phone use had increased between 2005 and 2006. “There really is hard evidence which shows that down the line cell phone lines will not work when there is congestion,” he said. 

By Judith Scherr 

Perhaps best known for his leadership in the fight against apartheid in South Africa and in the founding of TransAfrica, a lobbying group promoting “enlightened” U.S. foreign policy in Africa and the Caribbean, Randall Robinson is less known for his steadfast support for Haitian democracy and sovereignty. 

Robinson, who now lives on the island of St. Kitts with his wife and daughter—and wrote about his decision to get out of the United States in his book Quitting America—is a personal friend of ousted Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide. His wife Hazel Robinson and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums both worked as lobbyists for Haiti under Aristide. 

In his new book, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President (Basic Civitas Books, New York, 280 pages, $26), Robinson tells the detailed story of the abduction of the Haitian president by U.S. officials. His primary sources are the Aristides and a Haitian pilot, who witnessed the event. 

The importance of Robinson’s landmark book is not simply the revelation of the true story of Aristide’s abduction. Through the story of the kidnapping, Robinson unwraps the history of Haiti, showing us how a singular act of aggression is but one significant action within 200 years of attempts by foreign powers to subjugate the struggling black nation. 

Randall Robinson will speak and sign books Thursday, Sept. 20 at 6:30 p.m. at an event sponsored by Marcus Books at Allen Temple Baptist Church, 8501 International Blvd, Oakland. Tickets are $5 for the event, $30 with the book. 

The setting 

“Poorest country in the Western Hemisphere” is a descriptor so often used for Haiti by State Department spokespeople and most the world’s news media that what many of us in North America have come to know about Haiti is limited to the tiny nation’s abject poverty, illiteracy, criminality and inability to govern herself. 

In this context, the media told us—when it bothered to report the event at all—that in 2004 a Haitian president faced with a fierce armed revolt took advantage of a waiting U.S. jet and benevolent American diplomats to escape to safety. 

Most North Americans believed that story disseminated by the Associated Press and others. 

In An Unbroken Agony, Robinson sheds fresh light on the Feb. 29, 2004 kidnapping of Aristide, whose name one finds today scrawled large on the walls of Port-au-Prince’s impoverished slums and whose photograph is still held high when protesters march through Haiti’s streets.  

Robinson places the Feb. 29 abduction—literally a U.S., France and Canada-backed coup d’etat—within the context of the nation’s 200-year struggle for sovereignty. 

That struggle begins with slavery. “French slavery in Haiti was not only the most profitable worldwide for the French but also the most cruel,” Robinson writes.  

Those who would become free Haitians began their revolt in 1791 and won independence in 1804. The nation of former black slaves, however, was not well received in Thomas Jefferson’s United States, where slavery wouldn’t be abolished for another six decades. 

“Most everyone everywhere—enslaved and enslaver alike—recognized that the countdown to slavery’s end … had been set ticking by the Haitian Toussaint L’Ouverture and his triumphant army of ex-slaves,” Robinson writes. 

The U.S. and Europe greeted the black nation’s birth with an economic boycott. And, strange as it may seem, in 1825 France imposed a debt on its former colony equal to $21 billion in 2004 U.S. dollars “as compensation from the newly freed slaves for denying France the further benefit of owning them,” Robinson writes. 

The ravaging of Haiti included a brutal U.S. occupation from 1915 to 1934 resulting in the deaths of some 15,000 Haitians. During that time the United States repaid Haiti’s debt to France, imposing its own $16 million obligation on the Haitian people, which Haiti did not pay off until 1947.  

The U.S.-supported dictatorial rule of father then son Duvalier (1956-1986) would further impoverish the exploited masses.  

“Haiti on an operational level could be likened to racialist South Africa,” Robinson writes. “In exchange for the trappings of state power, the dictator Francois Duvalier and his black successors gave to the white and mulatto upper class a free hand to exploit the huge black, largely illiterate labor force in any way it saw fit.”  

A priest who later gave up the priesthood, Aristide became known and loved among the masses for preaching the dignity and rights of the poorest of the poor. He was elected president in 1990, despite the hostility of the upper classes given free reign by the Duvaliers and the post-Duvalier regimes, but was toppled in a military coup after only nine months in office. 

Ending the brutal military rule, President Bill Clinton supported Aristide’s return to Haiti in 1994, imposing conditions including the privatization of some Haitian industries. 

Among Aristide’s first acts on his return was to abolish the military, some of whose former members would become rebel leaders in 2003-2004. 

After the five-year presidency of Rene Préval—president again today—Aristide was re-elected in 2001. His attempts to ease the burden of the poor, such as doubling the minimum wage to $2/day, provoked the anger of the upper classes and their American friends. 

Destabilizing the second presidency 

Robinson explains how the United States undermined Aristide’s second presidency through propaganda and support for both political and military opposition.  

He quotes Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., on the efforts of the International Republican Institute: “‘The fix was in: The U.S. Agency for International Development and the International Republican Institute (the international arm of the Republican Party) had spent tens of millions of dollars to create and organize an opposition—however small in numbers—and to make Haiti under Aristide ungovernable.’”  

To elucidate the U.S. role in training and arming the rebels, Robinson quotes from a report of the Investigation Commission on Haiti, written by attorney Brian Concannon, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and others, that says the rebels were armed and trained in the Dominican Republic.  

“‘U.S. military officials have confirmed that 20,000 M16 rifles were given by the U.S. to the Dominican Republic after November 2002 and admitted that many of those rifles were now in the hands of the Haitian rebels,’” the report says. 

Further destabilizing Haiti, Washington blocked $146 million Inter-American Development Bank aid that was to fund projects such as clean drinking water, health, education and roads. 

Feb. 29 

In the buildup to the Feb. 29 coup, the rebel band took over a number of small Haitian towns by seizing local police stations. Secretary of State Colin Powell reportedly told former Congressman Ron Dellums—and the media erroneously reported—rebels were poised to capture Port-au-Prince, a city of some 3 million persons, and kill the president.  

Robinson describes what was really going on: “The few police brave enough to contest [the rebels] had no way to answer their firepower. The rebels, outfitted smartly in baggy camouflage with bulletproof vests and steel helmets, had good reason to expect that the mere sight of them would scare the bejesus out of lightly armed policemen defending a lightly staffed police post, miles and mountains distant from Port-au-Prince.”  

The military activity was a “smokescreen” to pressure Aristide to resign, “not a serious army,” Robinson says. 

A truck carrying television crews followed the rebels, whose task “was to terrorize the countryside outside of Port-au-Prince—to hack, murder, burn, loot, raze—to tear a fiery swath of destruction across the northern half of Haiti … and maximize the news media’s coverage of what appeared to be the inexorable fall of the democratic government, village by defenseless village,” Robinson writes. 

‘Voluntary’ flight 

Did the Aristides leave voluntarily? 

Robinson says they would have packed bags and told close friends, which they did not. They were actively making preparations for interviews in the following days with Tavis Smiley and George Stephanopoulos. 

The U.S. media was complicit in making it appear that Aristide left voluntarily, Robinson says. “The American television networks had been airing old footage shot in natural light at the Port-au-Prince airport showing President Aristide without his wife, shaking hands and making his way along a line of government ministers before boarding a nearby commercial aircraft. The networks represented the footage to be pictures of the president’s voluntary departure from Haiti.”  

The reality, Robinson says, was that U.S. officials put the president and his wife on an airplane before dawn Feb. 29; the aircraft was not a commercial plane; no members of the Aristide government and no media were at the airport. The Aristides were taken to the Central African Republic against their will.  

Robinson tells how he, along with Rep. Maxine Waters and others, flew to CAR and secured the Aristides’ release.  

Despite having an elected president in Haiti today—after two years of U.S.-backed unelected rule—the country has not regained its sovereignty and Aristide remains in forced exile in South Africa. 

Haiti continues to be controlled by foreigners, including a military occupation by some 8,800 United Nations troops. 

“Sadly, real democracy remains a long way off for Haiti,” Robinson concludes. “For how can any reasonable observer contend to the contrary as long as foreign powers, directly or indirectly, remain bent on preventing Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s most widely respected humanist and democrat, from returning home to his own country?” 

Contributed photo  

Randell Robinson will talk about his new book Sept. 20 at Temple Baptist Church.

Superior Court Judge Richard Keller Wednesday denied UC Berkeley’s request for a court order ending the tree-sit at Memorial Stadium. 

The Alameda County Superior Court judge said he needed more evidence before ruling on the move by the university to end the protest aimed at saving an oak grove the university hopes to cut down to build a high tech gym a stone’s throw from the Hayward Fault. 

“My intent is to maintain the status quo until we can get a full hearing,” said the jurist. Keller set Oct. 1 as the date for a full court proceeding that will include testimony from both sides. 

The university filed papers Tuesday seeking a temporary restraining order against the ongoing protest that began last December in the pre-dawn hours of Big Game day, when Zachary Running Wolf scaled a redwood near the stadium wall. 

University officials surrounded the site with a fence two weeks ago, and the bid for a court order was the next step aimed at halting a high-profile tree-in that even gained the attention of the New York Times. 

Running Wolf hailed the judge’s decision Wednesday as “a victory for us.” 

Until the court rules, the university agreed to allow the tree-sitters to have access to food and other necessities. 

Merci is a word that’s thrown around quite a bit at Ecole Bilingue, East Bay’s oldest bilingual school, and it’s not just because its 500-odd students have a lot to thank their teachers for. 

Conversational French is encouraged at this private French-American institution located in West Berkeley, and teachers, students and parents can be spotted talking fluent French at any given point of the day. 

“They grow up with two norms so they know there are always two ways of looking at things,” explained Frederic Canadas, principal, during the school’s 30th anniversary celebration Friday. 

“EB (Ecole Bilingue) is very special. In 30 years we opened a middle school, a one-to-one laptop learning program and five new languages. I think we are trying to ensure that EB will be here in the next 30 years so that we can celebrate its 60th anniversary.” 

Canadas, a veteran in bilingual education, grew up in Grenoble, France, and has taught in schools all over the world. 

“I came to EB from Finland and fell in love with it,” he said. “It was a dream come true.” 

Accredited by the French Ministry of Education and the California Association of Independent Schools, Ecole Bilingue grew from humble origins. 

Tired of ferrying their children across the Bay Bridge to the French-American school in San Francisco, seven families came together in 1977 to start their own bilingual institution in the East Bay. 

“I went to the French-American school in the city,” said Odile Arizmendi, “and we commuted all the time. My mother, Annie May DeBresson, and some other families decided that there was enough interest in bilingual education in Berkeley to start a school here.” 

DeBresson’s grandchildren, Olivia and Matias, are both EB students. 

“Some of the teachers who taught my brothers and sisters are still here,” Arizmendi said, “and they are really affectionate towards my children. That makes all the difference in the world.” 

Although tuition—at $15,115 for Pre-K through fifth grade and $17,490 for sixth through eighth grade—is steep, enrollment has never been better. 

“Parents are disappointed that their children are being wait-listed,” he said. “One of the challenges that the school faces right now is getting its facilities upgraded. We need bigger buildings to accommodate more students.” 

Besides excelling in academics, students are also taught to be global citizens.  

Last year the EB community reached out to children affected by Hurricane Katrina through Project Backpack and also raised money for leukemia research and relief efforts in Africa. 

Apart from focusing on French and English curricula, the school also offers its students and their families a community, one that offers them the best of two worlds and that is culturally, economically, and religiously diverse. 

On Friday afternoon, after listening to a brief history about their school, students were treated to homemade cup cakes and then sent home with a packet of California poppy seeds. 

“The obvious thing that strikes you about the school would be language,” said Arizmendi, “but the less obvious thing would be the true diversity. It’s like a home away from home.”  

More than 46 nationalities are represented at the school, and students come here from places as far-flung as Morocco, Belgium and Papua New Guinea. 

“When I first came here, I didn’t know English at all,” said fourth-grader Laila Bendrai shyly. “My mom’s from Morocco but I grew up in Montreal, Canada. So my first language is French.” 

“We couldn’t understand what she was saying,” said Cassie Fox-Mount. “But then I learned French and she learned English and we became best friends.” 

Almost half the students at EB arrive at the school without any prior exposure to French but are introduced to the language in their “maternelle” (kindergarten) classrooms. 

“Before they get to the alphabet, they learn basic songs and instructions in French. By the time they get to first grade, they can read and write in French,” said the school’s communication officer Jennifer Monahan. “Kids here learn things they don’t learn in any other school. Eight-year-olds are taught about the Civil War, Neolithic cave art and the Roman Empire. My daughter is learning trigonometry in sixth grade.” 

Monahan, who has a Ph.D. in French from UC Berkeley, said that EB graduates go on to attend some of the best high schools and colleges in the country. 

“By the time they get to eighth grade they are really articulate,” she said. “Their critical thinking and conversational skills are really amazing and they develop a very deep and complex understanding of the world.” 

Tucked between the Scharffen Berger Chocolate Factory and the future home of the Berkeley Bowl on Heinz Street, the middle school classrooms resemble buildings out of a Harry Potter novel. 

“They were built like that to break down barriers and create opportunities for collaboration and friendly competition across grade levels,” said Canadas. 

Thirty years ago, however, the campus was a different place. 

“There were about 50 students and eight to 10 teachers,” said fourth and fifth grade English teacher Zooey Gouguet, who was part of the original faculty. 

“There wasn’t a lot of hierarchy and it was more of a cooperative effort. Jeannette Rouger, the headmistress, not only handled admissions and all the accounting, but also taught a class. The campus was also a lot smaller. We only had four classrooms.” 

Over the years more classrooms took over a former bindery, bakery and a Moroccan copper warehouse. 

“The school has become 10 times bigger, but its philosophy remains the same,” said Gouguet. “The idea is to bring out the likes and differences between two cultures and languages. There are words which have the same origin but others that are totally different.” 

Decorated with charts representing the Founding Fathers, French alphabets and maps, each class tells its own story. 

“I like the multicultural aspect,” said fourth-grader Catherine Gougeln, as the bell rang for school to end.  

“It’s fun because you get to learn two languages. It helps when you want to tell secrets.” 

Stephen Barton, the former housing director who resigned under pressure from the city manager, will be honored tonight (Tuesday) by the City Council. 

While that may seem a contradiction, it is not, said Councilmember Linda Maio who is writing the proclamation. 

“The council is acting on its own perception and initiative” honoring an individual who has been an “extremely valuable resource,” Maio told the Daily Planet on Monday.  

In part, the proclamation Maio will read says: “…acting beyond the role of a staff person in simply carrying out stated policy Stephen Barton has introduced novel and creative programs and has shaped city policy and practice to ensure that Berkeley residents have opportunities for safe, affordable homes in our city….” 

Barton was asked to resign by City Manager Phil Kamlarz in June after City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque wrote reports condemning Berkeley Housing Authority staff, Barton, the city manager, deputy city manager and an interim Housing Authority manager for various problems at the BHA.  

The BHA has since been reorganized to be independent of the City Council, with all of its members now appointed by the mayor.  

Albuquerque is on sick leave until Oct. 1. 

The proclamation will be read at the beginning of the council meeting at 7 p.m. Before that, the council will meet in a workshop format at 5:30 p.m. to discuss new rules for public comment at its meetings. At 6:30 p.m. the council will meet as the Redevelopment Agency and look at creating “quiet zones” for trains—implementing enhanced safety measures while outlawing train whistles. 

At issue at the 5:30 p.m. work session will be questions of when and for how long the public will be allowed to comment at council meetings. Councilmember Kriss Worthington and Mayor Tom Bates have differing opinions, especially on when people should be allowed to comment on items not listed on the agenda. Bates says these items should come at the end of the agenda, at 11 p.m., but Worthington says they should be heard early in the evening.  

Questions on public comment were raised last year when SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organized for Library Defense) threatened to sue the city for violating the state’s open meeting laws by allowing only 10 public speakers per meeting chosen by lottery. 

The council will have an opportunity to enact the new public comment rules during its regular meeting later in the evening. 

Among other actions the council may take are: 

• Adopting its meeting calendar, which provides on average for two meetings per month in a total of 8 months, with a one-month winter break, a three-week spring break and a two-month summer break. 

• Implementing new rules on police asset forfeiture accounts, as recommended by the city auditor. 

• Adopting an agreement with the private College Preparatory High School in Oakland, giving the school regular playing time at the Gilman Street Sports Fields for 25 years in exchange for $600,000. 

• Making a decision on whether to allow a new home to be built at 161 Panoramic Way. 

• Writing a letter to thank the governor of Texas for not executing Kenneth Foster and asking him to modify the law under which Foster was condemned to death. 

• Supporting a boycott of the Woodfin Suite Hotels, which has not complied with Emeryville’s living wage law for hotel workers. 

• Approving the appointment of Carolyn Henry Golphin as library trustee. She is a former president of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce who was selected by the current library board of trustees. 

If the City Council approves a $396,000 grant on tonight’s (Tuesday) council agenda, someone could come knocking at your door, if you live near Telegraph Avenue or San Pablo Avenue, offering detailed information on public transportation services in your neighborhood and even giving you free BART or bus passes to encourage you to try out the services.  

Staff in the city transportation division and the nonprofit they named to pick up the grant funds, Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TLUC), laud the project aimed at getting people out of their cars and into buses and BART and onto their bikes. 

Transportation activist Michael Katz, however, says the taxpayer funds are a gift to TLUC that will be used “to pester Berkeley residents with telephone calls and knocks on the door.”  

And even worse, Katz says, is that the nonprofit slated to get the money could spend it going door to door promoting Bus Rapid Transit, a project it supports but that many Berkeley merchants say they hate. [His full opinion is printed in today’s Commentary section.] The BRT proposal would create a dedicated bus lane and bus stations on Telegraph Avenue. There is general support for the part of the BRT already implemented: rapid buses which make fewer stops and can turn red lights green on Telegraph and San Pablo avenues.  

Associate Transportation Planner Lila Hussain said TLUC will not be hired to do outreach for BRT. “They do a lot of other campaigns, such as fighting (state) cuts in transit,” she said. 

Stuart Cohen, executive director of TLUC, said the young people being trained for the project for the most part don’t know anything about BRT and are not being told about it at all. 

“All of our programs are totally separate, such as safe routes to school,” Cohen said. “It does happen that we’ve been working on BRT.” 

When city staff wrote the original grant application for the federal and regional transportation agencies earlier in the year, they named TLUC the sole source contractor, something that irks Katz, who said there are a number of organizations and consultants that could do the job, including Nelson/Nygaard, the consulting group which wrote the city’s Transportation Demand Management Study. 

Hussain argued that since TLUC is already written into the grant application: “If we don’t give it to them, we don’t get the money.”  

Resident and budget watcher Barbara Gilbert said she has a more general concern: “The city seems to be giving an enormous amount of money to a lobby group,” she said. 

“I’m astounded that the city gives so much money to groups that lobby them,” she said, noting that neighborhood groups that oppose what TLUC wants—transit corridors and the increased density she says they bring—have no funding to lobby against them. 

Katz noted the high cost of the project. The $396,000 targets only 7,500 households—that’s about $84 per family. 

But Cohen said addressing a limited number of households allows the workers in the field to personalize their efforts. For example, in a similar program in Alameda, outreach workers found that people didn’t know a bus ran directly to the Fruitvale BART station just a few blocks from their homes.  

The Berkeley Community Energy Services Corporation is under investigation and its executive director, Nancy Hoeffer, has been terminated. 

The CESC is a 20-year-old nonprofit organization whose board is the city’s Energy Commission appointed by the Berkeley mayor and City Council. The Energy Commission, sitting as the CESC board, “decided to end the employment of an at-will employee” at the end of August, Rae Mary, interim director of housing, told the Daily Planet on Monday. (The Housing Department oversees the city’s Energy Division.”) 

The termination was “not for cause,” Energy Commission Chair Ruth Grimes told the Planet. 

An investigator is being hired to look at “rumors of misuse of funds,” said Mary, who is a retired manager from Oakland’s housing office and who will be directing the Housing Department until a permanent employee is hired to replace former Housing Director Steve Barton.  

Mary said the CESC continues to deliver services to the city while being closely monitored. 

CESC is funded mostly by local and national government entities and by Pacific Gas and Electric; calls to CESC for more precision were not returned.  

According to the city’s energy division website, the nonprofit provides commercial energy conservation services and “is the prime contractor for a $1.3 million, five-year Rebuild America grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The goal of the grant is to influence energy-efficiency projects in eight million square feet of commercial and multi-family floor space in Berkeley, Oakland and Emeryville.” 

CESC is the fiscal sponsor for Sustainable Berkeley, a grouping of organizations and agencies including the Ecology Center, UC Berkeley, “green” health and dentistry businesses, Livable Berkeley, private consultants, the city and the CEAC. Hoeffer was a Sustainable Berkeley board member representing CESC.  

“We have no problem with CESC,” said Sustainable Berkeley spokesperson Catherine Squire in a voicemail message to the Daily Planet. “The problems with CESC have not affected Sustainable Berkeley.” 

An agenda for the Aug. 28 CESC closed-door session that listed “Employee discipline/dismissal” was provided to the Daily Planet by the city clerk. While Energy Commission meetings are posted on the clerk’s website, the CESC board meeting agendas are not; they are posted on the bulletin board in front of the Maudelle Shirek Building (Old City Hall), Grimes said. 

Grimes also noted there have been discussions about concerns with CESC for about a year that included members of city staff, the CESC board and an advisory committee. She declined to name the members of that committee or to discuss the concerns in question. 

Negotiations between the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192 on a two-year contract that expired last June have been extended on a month-to-month basis. 

But with AC Transit officials calling the talk extensions “not unusual,” and with union officials not answering press inquiries, an underground, unaffiliated group of bus operators are worried that their concerns and grievances are not going to be met in the new contract. 

Group members have threatened a walkout if their demands are not met, but it is uncertain how many bus operators they represent, and whether a wildcat strike—not authorized by the union—could succeed. 

For several months, group members have been circulating anonymous newsletters called “The Bus” and “The Open Letter” among the 1,800 operators and mechanics represented by Local 192. Group members say they must stay anonymous for fear of losing their jobs. 

“We don’t know what’s going on with the contract talks,” one of “The Bus” publishers said in an interview last week. “The union’s not letting us know.” 

A spokesperson for AC Transit said that the district would not talk about any of the group’s concerns that might be the subject of the current contract negotiations.  

“It’s really improper to negotiate in the newspaper,” AC Tranist Director of Communications and External Affairs Mary King said this week by telephone. King said, however, that she would personally look into other grievances presented by the group that might not be part of the contract talks.  

“We should find a way to resolve them, or at least lessen their impact on our employees,” King said. 

Two years ago, AC Transit and ATU Local 192 agreed to a two-year deal that gave bus drivers and mechanics a 3 percent raise and a $3 million a year district contribution to a health care trust fund for retired district employees. 

But “The Bus” underground transit newsletter representative said that it is working conditions as well as money that are on bus operators’ minds around the district this year. 

“We’ve got a long list of grievances that aren’t being addressed,” the representative said. 

In a release sent out to media outlets late last month, the group listed an annual cost-of living increase, full compensation for all bus operators (including new hires), “a more sufficient retirement plan,” and a “modified medical plan” as among its grievances. 

“Other concerns,” the group added in its media release, “are the unsafe driving conditions, and unsafe vanpool buses transporting the elderly. We are prepared, if our obligations are not met, to initiate a walkout.”  

Meanwhile, in a leaflet labeled “Contract Issues” that was circulated among drivers earlier this year, the group charged that AC Transit “screws” new drivers to the tune of $8 less per hour and $16,000 less per year during their probationary first year of work with the district.  

“We all do the same work,” the drivers’ group wrote. “Actually, newest drivers do the harder runs in general.” 

The leaflet also charged that under the current contract, drivers receive a written reprimand if they take a sick day off any time their medical leave accrual drops below 24 days. 

One of the specific grievances, the newsletter representative said in the Daily Planet interview, involved what the representative called “unsafe” conditions when drivers use the restroom during late nights on some lines. 

“We get a break during the layover at the end of the lines, and that’s when drivers are able to use the restroom,” the newsletter representative said. But the end of the line layover for the 18 line is at Marin and San Pablo avenues, the representative said, with the only available restroom a two-and-a-half to three-block walk down San Pablo Avenue to a donut shop.  

“That’s dangerous late at night, especially for the female drivers,” the representative said.  

He added that the available restrooms for the 40, the 12, and the 15 lines were even worse. That layover is at 11th and Jefferson, site of the Lafayette Square park.  

“The only restrooms are in the park,” the newsletter representative said. “At night, you’ve got to share them with the prostitutes and the crackheads smoking dope and shooting up.”  

On some lines, some AC Transit bus drivers have been independently observed leaving passengers on their buses at a stop in the middle of the line to go into a nearby fast food restaurant to use the restroom.  

Meanwhile, a leaflet published last March by a group of anonymous drivers signing themselves as the “Emeryville Division Action Committee” charges that AC Transit is skimping on the federally required 30-minute meal period for drives, and that action is causing a safety problem for passengers. 

The leaflet, issued shortly before the new AC Transit schedules went into effect this summer and entitled “RIDER ALERT! Help Us Stop Unsafe Schedules! Drivers are Human Beings—Not Robots” reads in part: “How would you like a job where your longest break all day is SIX MINUTES? SIX MINUTES to eat, SIX MINUTES to walk a block to wait in line to use the restroom, SIX MINUTES to unwind and load passengers again, SIX WHOLE MINUTES—IF YOU’RE ON TIME? Is this job for human beings or ROBOTS?” The leaflet goes on to say that “While longer main lines have longer breaks on paper, there’s more traffic, passengers, questions, and wheelchairs to cut into those breaks, too.”  

One of the contract demands the group has listed in its “CONTRACT ISSUES” leaflet is that all driver runs include a 30-minute meal break and two paid, 15-minute rest periods.  

AC Transit Director of Communications and External Affairs Mary King said that while she had not seen any of the group’s newsletters and had not heard the specific grievances prior to being contacted by the Daily Planet, she was personally familiar with some of the issues that the group had raised. 

“When I first came to AC Transit two and one-half years ago, there was no place for drivers to use the restroom” in the 11th and Jefferson streets area, King said. “The park facilities were locked at night, and city officials didn’t want to have them open for safety reasons. I personally worked out an arrangement with the city to give our drivers access.”  

King said she had not heard of any problems with driver use of the Lafayette Square facilities since then, and thought that the deal with the city included having the restroom facilities locked, with drivers provided a key code. 

She said she was unfamiliar with the allegations about the use of the donut shop on the 18 line and would look into it.  

King said that other issues raised in the group’s newsletters and releases “appear to be matters which are subject to the contract negotiations” and therefore couldn’t be commented on by the district. 

Terry Blount was introduced as the new secretary of the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) when the board met Thursday. 

Blount replaced former landmarks secretary Janet Homrighausen, who will be moving over to policy planning. 

A practicing planner for more than twelve years, Blount most recently worked for the city of West Hollywood as planner-in-charge of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission.  

He has also served as secretary to the commission and was in charge of overseeing the city’s historic preservation program. 

A member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, Blount holds a Master’s degree in planning from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and has undertaken numerous seminars, classes, and training sessions on historic preservation. 

Biofuels project 

The board reviewed the draft environmental impact report (EIR) for the proposed Biofuels Oasis project at 1441 Ashby Ave., which is scheduled to appear before the Zoning Adjustments Board next month. 

Located close to the Berkeley-Oakland city limit, the project proposes to restore the historic use of the site as a fueling station, with the only difference being that it would sell biodiesel instead of gasoline. 

Biofuels Oasis is a women-owned cooperative that now operates a biodiesel filling station on Fourth Street at Dwight Way and sells fuel made from recycled vegetable oil. 

The new station at Sacramento and Ashby would also sell “urban family supplies,” self-serve coffee and pre-packaged food.  

The current site houses a red-painted brick building with a pagoda-style tile roof. 

In order to accommodate vehicles up to 13 feet, the plan proposes to remove the existing fuel pump canopies and build taller canopies with solar panels, a move that most members on the LPC object to. 

The project was first referred to the LPC in June for advisory comments by the ZAB’s Design Review Committee since it is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. LPC members commented then that the heavy horizontal short beams which hold up the tiled canopy roofs were a “distinctive, desirable feature” which should be retained for new canopies. 

LPC members stressed the importance of saving the canopies once again at the meeting Thursday. 

“Raising the roofs drastically changes the proportions,” said LPC Chair Steven Winkle. “It changes the character.” 

“Solar is just not enough of an excuse for losing the feature,” LPC member Carrie Olson told the Planet. “I personally think they should go back to the drawing board and save the island caps somehow.” 

The project has also met with opposition from a group of South Berkeley residents, who say that the nature of the proposed business goes against the South Berkeley Plan’s policy of preservation of African American heritage and businesses in the neighborhood. 

The project threatens to shut down Kandy Mann’s Detail car wash—an African American business which currently operates on the site—because of the increased rent that the competition is offering the property owner. 

In order to convert the current site from a car wash to a fueling station, Biofuel Oasis will first have to obtain a use permit from the city. 

The Cambridge Apartments 

The board landmarked the Cambridge Apartments at 2500 Durant Ave.  

Designed by Berkeley architect Walter Ratcliff, Jr., in 1914, the five-story classical downtown building houses 48 apartments and four ground-floor storefronts. 

It was built for John Arthur Elston and George Clark, lawyers and business partners in the law firm of Elston, Clark, and Nichols. 

Although the building, situated in the Southside Campus neighborhood, was eventually occupied largely by students, a review of the 1916 directory revealed that the building’s tenants included attorneys, merchants, mining engineers, stenographers, clerks and teachers. 

The board praised LPC member Jill Korte’s presentation of the landmarks application and said that it should be made into a prototype for future applications. 

All Saints Chapel 

The board looked at plans to remove the rear portion of an existing seminary chapel at 2451 Ridge Road and construct a new assembly area. 

The Berkeley Zoning Ordinance requires any proposal to demolish a non-residential building which is over forty years to appear before the LPC. 

The proposed project is an Episcopal seminary located on “Holy Hill,” a cluster of religious schools located about one block north of the UC campus formally known as the Graduate Theological Union. 

Since the building doesn’t qualify as a historic resource under CEQA, staff recommended that the board discuss the proposal and give recommendations on the project. 

The board expressed confidence in the proposed additions based on excellent remodeling work done by the church in the recent past.

At around 3:45 p.m. Monday, a Berkeley High student was arrested for attempting to use a knife on a security guard at the school.  

The student was skateboarding into the high school when a security guard stopped him. When a group of security guards noticed a knife on the student, he attempted to use the knife on one of the guards.  

A group of security guards tackled the student while the school secretary phoned the Berkeley Police Department to ask for emergency help.  

Two cop cars arrived within minutes and handcuffed and arrested the young man. No injuries were sustained by the security guards. 

Hazardous metals and chemicals at UC Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station pose potential threats to the health of children who play in its marshland and workers who dig in its soil, state scientists have concluded. 

Their findings are contained in a 99-page report by the California Department of Public Health conducted at the request of the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC). 

Community members advising the state on the toxic cleanup at UC Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station (RFS) meet Thursday to consider the report. 

The meeting, held in Richmond City Council chambers at 1401 Marina Way South, formally opens at 6:30 p.m. 

The Community Advisory Group (CAG) was created at the request of local environmental and health activists after the DTSC took control of cleanup operations at the university site and the adjacent Campus Bay site. 

Both shoreline properties have long histories of contamination by chemical plants that once churned out an array of hazardous substances ranging from pesticides to explosives. 

CAG Chair Whitney Dotson said he’s not satisfied with the state report. “There needs to be a more thorough analysis of some of the issues, including past exposures and the possibility of radiation contamination,” he said. 

The deadline for submission of comments is Sept. 24. 

The final report, which will include all the comments as well as any changes made as a result of the comments, will be posted on the state agency’s website, said Ken August, a spokesperson for the department. 

The report contains no enforcement provisions. “Scientists make findings and sometimes they make recommendations,” August said. Enforcement actions would be up to state legislators or the UC Board of Regents, he said. 

The final report, including comments and changes, will be submitted to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry, the arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services which funded the assessment. 

The document will also be posted on the state website, and may—or may not—be added to the federal agency’s website, August said, adding that the state wasn’t sure why some assessments were posted by the feds while others were not. 

Report findings 

According to the report, public health hazards do exist for children and teenagers who play regularly in West Stege Marsh, where toxic metals and the organic compound PCB are present in groundwater and soil sediments. Because of the risks, marsh access should remain restricted. 

Maintenance workers who regularly dig in contaminated soils also face a variety of risks and should wear respiratory protection equipment during their work. 

The report also identified two areas where health hazards were described as indeterminate, pending further investigation. 

The first involves areas of West Stege Marsh where remediation efforts have already occurred. The potential dangers come from radioactive materials generated at the adjacent Campus Bay site which may have migrated into the imported soils along with other hazardous substances. 

The second potential set of hazards comes from indoor air contamination after two buildings recorded unsafe levels of formaldehyde between September and October 2005. Further studies are needed to determine the source and extent of the potential threat. 

The one area where investigators declared no hazard exists was from past exposures to airborne mercury during cleanup work in the summer of 2003. 

But the authors outlined nine specific areas where more work was needed. They included: 

• Monitoring dust levels during all further work at the site.  

• Conducting additional groundwater tests along the eastern and northeastern margins of the site to determine the potential for water-borne contaminants to appear as vapor inside buildings in the area. 

• A program of annual water and sampling in the shoreline marsh to detect any intrusion of contaminants from the Campus Bay site, which should continue until the sites have been fully remediated. 

• Testing to determine whether radioactive materials from Campus Bay have contaminated soils, sediments and water in West Stege Marsh. 

• Additional tests of the buildings where earlier sampling found airborne formaldehyde. 

• More tests throughout the university property to identify all areas which may have been contaminated, with specific tests called for involving materials used at the university’s Forest Products Lab. 

• Provision of current maps to all RFS staff showing locations of all buildings, present and past, along with levels of contaminants found there. 

• Training programs for workers in the proper ways to handle contaminated soil, and 

• Annual training to help staff identify contaminated iron pyrite cinders that were dumped on the property from the sulfuric acid plant that once existed at Campus Bay. 

Complex history 

Long-standing concerns by Richmond residents, lab employees and people who work and live near the two sites overcame strong resistance to a change in regulatory oversight. 

A university official told the Richmond City Council that calls for a handover at RFS arose from confusion of the site with Campus Bay—a remark that drew gasps from the activists, who had been targeting the university along with the developers of Campus Bay. 

Until the aroused community members began demonstrating, flooding meetings and barraging local and state elected officials with demands for change, cleanup efforts at both sites had been under the supervision of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board. 

Whitney Dotson and his sister Ethel were among the protesters, as were Sherry Padgett and Richmond Progressive Alliance member and future councilmember and present Mayor Gayle McLaughlin. 

Both Ethel Dotson and Padgett have suffered from health problems they suspect are linked to exposure to chemicals from the shoreline sites. 

What initially aroused the activists were the massive dust clouds generated during cleanup operations at the site when the water board was in charge. Their concern turned to anger when they discovered that the regulatory agency didn’t have any scientists on its staff who were experts in toxic substances and the hazards they pose. 

Oversight was handed off to the DTSC, which is well-staffed with experts, after calls by Assemblymembers Loni Hancock and Cindy Montanez and a vote by the Richmond City Council. 

The DTSC brought in the state public health experts soon after the handover. 

The draft report is available on the Internet at www.ehib.org/cma/projects/RFSPHAPC.pdf.

City crews have sealed off part of the main meeting and dining room at the North Berkeley Senior Center while they remove mold from a small portion of the facility, City Manager Phil Kamlarz said Monday. 

The room, which serves as the venue for countless city commission and committee meetings, can continue to be used for meetings and meals, he said. 

“It only affects a small portion of the building,” Kamlarz said. 

The center is located at 1901 Hearst Ave.

One of America’s richest foundations has promised $113 million to UC Berkeley to endow faculty chairs and recruit top graduate students. 

But there’s a catch: The grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation requires $110 million in matching funds from other donors over the next seven years. 

The additional $3 million is to pay for the costs of endowing funds at the university, according to an announcement from the foundation. 

The goal of the grant, announced Monday morning at a press conference, is the creation of 100 endowed chairs to keep the school’s best faculty from migrating to other jobs. 

“This gift is an extraordinary vote of confidence in the contribution that UC Berkeley and all great public universities make to society,” said Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. 

Walter Hewlett, son of the late computer magnate who created the foundation, called Berkeley the “crown jewel of public education—not just in California but in the country.”  

Funds would be used to add to the university’s current roster of 351 endowed chairs. 

Currently, $2 million in funding creates an endowed chair bearing the donor’s name, while an additional $1 million adds the adjective “distinguished” to the chair. 

According to a statement from the university’s media relations staff, the grant and its matching funds will create 80 regular endowed chairs “in all of the university’s 14 schools and colleges” and 20 of the distinguished variety “to advance Berkeley’s multidisciplinary teaching and research.” 

None of the chairs will be named for the Hewletts or their foundation, with the honor going instead to the donors providing the matching funds. 

The Hewlett grant is the largest in the university’s history, more than double the $50 million given anonymously in 1999 to fund molecular engineering studies. 

The next largest grant, $40 million, came in 2005 from Hong Kong industrialist Li Ka Shing’s foundation to fund research by the university Health Sciences Initiative. He is being honored in return by the name of the new building which will house the research—a structure that will replace the existing Earl Warren Jr. Hall. 

University officials pointed to the school’s need for endowments, with its current endowed funding of $2.5 billion trailing schools like Harvard ($29.2 billion), Stanford ($14.1 billion) and MIT ($8.4 billion). 

Prior to the grant announced Monday, the university had a total of $468 million in funds for endowed chairs. 

The Blue Ribbon Commission established by Oakland City Council last year to report on Oakland housing issues is recommending that council adopt an inclusionary housing ordinance targeted to households with incomes at or below 100 percent of area median income. 

But commission members were unable to agree on its second major charge, amending Oakland’s condominium conversion ordinance, and are presenting two minority reports on that issue for council to consider. 

The findings are part of a 105-page report issued by the Blue Ribbon Commission and scheduled to be heard by City Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee today (Tuesday) at the committee’s 4 p.m. meeting at Oakland City Hall. 

The 17-member Commission—composed of representatives of city councilmembers and current Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and former Mayor Jerry Brown with appointees by the city attorney and city administrator as well—was formed last October during a contentious council debate over adoption of an inclusionary zoning ordinance. Consideration of changes to the city’s existing condominium conversion ordinance was added to the commission’s responsibilities two months later. 

The commission met several times during the year to hash out its conclusions and the final report, including one meeting in each of the city’s seven council districts. 

In its report, available on the city’s website, the commission is recommending Oakland adopt inclusionary zoning set-asides for new ownership housing developments of 20 units or more, with an initial five percent inclusionary set-aside if the units are developed on-site, 10 percent if off-site, growing to 15 and 20 percent, respectively, three years after the ordinance is passed. 

In addition, the commission is recommending that Oakland’s Redevelopment Agency double its contribution to the city’s Low and Moderate Income Housing Fund, 25 percent to 50 percent, within five years, that the fund target households at or below 60 percent of area median income with a preference for those households at or below 30 percent, that the City Council sponsor and support a $200 million bond measure to assist both rental and ownership housing, and that real estate transfer tax revenues generated from the first sale of newly constructed housing be used to support affordable housing in Oakland. 

But saying that, “after exhaustive discussion,” members of the commission were “not able to arrive at a consensus recommendation” on condominium conversions. The viewpoints represented in the two minority reports—one that condominium conversions enhance low and moderate income home ownership and should therefore be encouraged, the second that condominium conversions put available housing out of reach of low and moderate residents and should therefore be discouraged—reflect the deep divisions on the council that caused the council to put the issue in the commission’s hands last December. 

Opening my Gmail on Thursday morning, I saw this click-through at the top of the page: 

“Problems with Panhandlers - www.actlocallysf.org - Join Mayor Newsom. Get a blog. Be heard. Shape Policy.” 

For me, as for many, that’s a hot-button issue, though my hot-button is more First Amendment-oriented than some people’s, perhaps. So I clicked through, something I don’t do very often with these Google text ads, though I do regard them as one of the more benign forms of advertising on the web. My click took me into a curious universe, a web page with the URL ActLocallySF.org: part on-line newspaper, part blog, part poll, part petition, and sub rosa, though not exactly hidden, a pitch for the Gavin Newsom for Mayor campaign. The centerpiece of the page is glowing reprints from all kinds of media, (“S.F.’s Red-light Cameras Credited with Big Drop in Accidents,” By Rachel Gordon, San Francisco Chronicle) interspersed with essays purportedly written by (or at least for) the candidate himself. He signs a “Welcome” letter which is reproduced not only in English but in Chinese, Russian, Spanish and Tagalog, which begins:” “Welcome to ActLocallySF.org—a forum for the brightest minds and the best ideas to tackle the unfinished business of making San Francisco a city that works for everyone, and a model for the world.” Oh sure ... 

Clicking on “contact us” produces a page where the media contact is listed as Eric Jaye at storefrontpolitical.com. The Storefront Political Media site reveals that it is a “Democratic” political consulting firm started by a former associate of Clint Reilly, with centrist Democratic clients like Ellen Tauscher, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Micela Alioto-Pier. Reading subheads on Storefront’s “about” page we learn that: “The Ultimate Product Is Victory.” They promise clients “An Ongoing Discussion with Voters...Using Every Communication Tool.” And they’ve delivered. 

As an old campaign manager myself, I have to say that it’s stone brilliant. The page designers have managed to corral every new form of political organization that has appeared in the last 10 years for their site, or perhaps the right verb here is co-opt. They’ve taken leaves from the Move-On playbook, the Howard Dean meet-ups, the best online blogs like Daily Kos and Huffington Post and more, and turned the whole megillah into a very credible simulation of political participation. Is there anything wrong with this? I’m not sure. 

One thing I am sure of, though, is that no one who clicks on the ActLocallySF.org page will be shaping any policy, especially as regards problems with panhandlers. The whole apparatus adds up to a very elaborate new implementation of the hoary political concept of a push poll: one that seems to ask for your opinion, but is actually designed to persuade you on behalf of a particular candidate or proposal.  

There have been a lot of indignant letters and commentaries and a few news stories in these pages in the last few months about various local manifestations of the tactic of soliciting opinions as a disguised way of pushing product. The Kitchen Democracy website has taken a big share of these complaints, from people annoyed that it received city funds from Councilmember Gordon Wozniak’s budget and then functioned to create pressure for projects favored by Wozniak’s supporters and campaign contributors, often accompanied by promotional propaganda on the KD site signed by Wozniak himself. But citizens have also criticized more objective-appearing promotional efforts which have been enmeshed in public funding in various ways.  

The “Sustainable Berkeley” organization got some city funding to promote greenhouse gas reduction, and was slated to get more until critics pointed out that spending public money should be supervised by public bodies like the Energy Commission, not by private groups. Now there seems to be some problem, as yet unspecified, with the Berkeley Community Energy Corporation, which is supervised by the Energy Commission, so that might not be the total solution. And last week we got a bunch of letters about the city’s passing more than $300,000 in grant money through to the advocacy group Tranportation and Land-use Coalition, from people strongly suspecting that taxpayers’ money would be used to shill for Bus Rapid Transit, a proposal which is very unpopular in some quarters. Other recent targets of reader wrath have been the West Berkeley Community Development District and the North Shattuck Plaza promotions.  

The shared thread which links all of these brouhahas is the use of pseudo-surveys as a way of influencing public policy. If public funds get tangled up in the pre-decision promotional process it makes people even madder.  

The ActLocallySF.org website is more upfront than any of the Berkeley examples, and no public money is used. Its connection to a candidate isn’t a secret, but since Newsom is running essentially unopposed the site also functions as a less-than-candid way of influencing future policy for San Francisco. Which brings us full circle to the original question: Is there anything wrong with all this?  

As a card-carrying First Amendment absolutist I must defend the constitutional right of citizens to try to influence public policy by any means necessary, but I also believe in truth in packaging, especially when The Ultimate Product is Victory. And, of course, ultimately it’s not personal victory for Gavin Newsom (or Tom Bates or Gordon Wozniak) that we’re talking about here, it’s victory for what their moneyed backers want. When Newsom was first elected, knowledgeable people said that he was just the front man for a small clique of rich folks and their corporations (what Upton Sinclair would have called “the interests”) and that turns out to be true, despite a few feel-good moves like the gay marriage moment.  

The teaser about panhandlers which lures visitors to the Newsom site is the best clue to what the real product is. In a brief phone conversation, Eric Jaye of Storefront Political told me that the goal of the site was to “blur the line between politics and policy-making.” He said that several thousand people had interacted with it in the nine months it’s been up, and that Newsom is a “voracious consumer” of their input.  

But what Gavin Newsom does about panhandlers as Mayor of San Francisco (or what Tom Bates is proposing to do about panhandlers as Mayor of Berkeley in the next week or so) will never be determined by any genuine open inquiry into public opinion. In both cities the sponsors, the big property owners and other corporate campaign contributors, will ultimately get what they want, the same thing their Manhattan counterparts got from Rudy Giuliani: unsightly poor folks off the streets in the areas they care about, out of sight and out of mind. 

And when was it ever else? It may be using new technology, but it’s the same old dominant paradigm. 

The King in The King and I says “It’s a puzzlement!” when confronted with something he doesn’t understand. That line occurred to me last week when the publisher and I took in the Berkeley Repertory Theater’s 40th anniversary opening night performance of Shaw’s Heartbreak House, characterized by our reviewer as “sumptuous,” courtesy of comps provided by the theater’s PR department.  

The Rep has been in town even longer than we have, having started in an old house on College Avenue about six years before we moved into our old house on Ashby. Our kids used to walk to their matinees unsupervised by parents. Their current artistic director, Tony Taccone, taught two of our daughters in young people’s theatre programs with great results: one is now a college professor, a notable branch of the performing arts when done well, and the other is an opera singer. I think our name might even be on one of the bricks which memorialize contributors to their first new building. And the Planet under the four years of our ownership has faithfully publicized the Berkeley Repertory Theater’s efforts with the same previews, reviews and calendar listings which we provide for all local arts organizations free of charge. 

At the Solano Stroll, once again I thought “it’s a puzzlement” as I stopped off to check out the lineup of the many local theater groups in booths soliciting patronage and donations. Most of them are non-profit, which means that no dividends are dispensed to investors, though the compensation for staff and performers varies a lot. But even non-profits have to do something to let the audience know what they’re currently staging, and for that they’re dependent on the press.  

A significant segment of the press on which local theater companies depend is also “non-profit” in a different sense, that is to say not making any profit even though the form of organization would allow profits in theory. That’s true of the Chronicle as well as of the Planet, and I suspect it’s also true of the Express, even under its new ownership structure. Newspaper advertising revenue is declining, and as a result many papers are drastically cutting arts section staff and reviewing fewer and fewer productions. It’s a classic chicken-and-egg proposition: arts organizations are tempted to decide that they don’t have to advertise because they can get free “white space” publicity, but eventually that goes away if there’s no one at all willing to pay for it with advertising dollars.  

The Planet does have some faithful local arts advertisers: Ashkenaz, the Berkeley Opera, the Berkeley Arts Festival, the Berkeley Symphony, the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive and the San Francisco Mime Troupe among others are consistent, and they report getting good results from their ads. It’s hard, therefore, to understand why some of the other companies think that they can build audiences without advertising. And also why they think they can continue asking for local community donor support when they seem to feel no obligation to give back to the local community by spending some of their advertising dollars locally. Some don’t advertise anywhere because they are chronically broke, but not all of them. 

The Berkeley Repertory Theater does advertise in the Chronicle, and probably in other publications as well, but they have consistently refused to advertise in the Berkeley Daily Planet. As executive editor, I’m not supposed to worry about advertising sales, but as one of the owners (read “funder”), when a succession of sales managers complains to me that it’s impossible to get the Rep to advertise, I can’t help wondering why.  

It’s not that they don’t advertise anywhere, but they tell Planet sales people that our readers “aren’t the right demographic.” If that’s really true, at some point wearing my editor’s hat I begin to wonder why we bother with reporting on productions which our readers by the theater’s own definition don’t seem to be interested in.  

The owners of this paper have always supported local arts organizations in many different ways. We have regarded publicizing performances in the Planet as an extension of this long-time effort. And providing excellent arts coverage is also part of our commitment to our readers to produce the best possible paper given limited resources. But now we’re wondering if we’re making the right use of those resources, especially when many of the better-heeled organizations which we regularly review and list choose to use their advertising budget to support other publications.  

We’d like to hear from our readers on this topic. We can’t afford much market research: A really thorough survey would probably cost more than we pay all of our excellent reviewers in the course of the year. But we’d appreciate it if readers would write in and tell us what kind of arts coverage they want.  

And another topic for another day is a similar discussion with the local real estate industry. The editorial content of our home and garden section, launched last year, seems to be a tremendous success with readers, judging by the letters we receive about Ron Sullivan’s gardening and nature columns, Matt Cantor’s home maintenance column, our stories about historic buildings and interesting open homes and our new web-based features: the open homes directory and the map of zoning permit applications. But with a few outstanding exceptions the home and garden section has had lackluster support from the real estate advertisers we’d hoped would pay for it. 

Our major ongoing emphasis continues to be on local “hard news,” which is what distinguishes the Planet from some of the other publications distributed in the East Bay. But we’re also proud of our arts and home sections, and we’d like to keep on producing them if we can. Should we continue to offer them, and if so what should be in them? Readers, please let us know what you think. 

ABAG HOUSING ALLOCATIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The housing that the Association of Bay Area Governments is pressuring the city to build would do nothing to reverse the trend of lower-income Berkeley residents being priced out of the market, since virtually all of the so-called “affordable” rental housing constructed in Berkeley by for-profit developers is rented at market rates. 

The currently allowed rents for “affordable” studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments are $961, $1,160, and $1,375 respectively. Despite this being the hardest time of year to find an apartment (since UC Berkeley students just returned from summer break), craigslist.org’s Berkeley listings include cheaper apartments in all three categories. 

Outside of buildings owned by nonprofits, the supply of genuinely affordable (that is, below-market-rate) housing is limited by the city’s Section 8 budget. 

Robert Lauriston 

• 

BUSD MOUTHPIECE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Is Riya Bhattacharjee on BUSD’s payroll, or is she just building up a portfolio for a job as BUSD’s official spokesperson? Her article on Superintendent Lawrence’s retirement announcement read like a cheerleading piece. I don’t think that with all the money we pour into our public schools that having test scores 1 percent above the state average is anything to crow about. (Not that the article mentioned anything untoward.) Neither is the fact that Berkeley has one of the highest achievement gaps between white and black students, and a very high drop-out rate at the high school. From my review of the recently released achievement scores, our high school has dropped significantly achievement in the scant six years of Lawrence’s tenure. I am reminded of how unfriendly and unneighborly our school district is every time I drive down MLK and see that lovely green field completely fenced off. Maybe it’s time to do a balanced piece that is well researched. I guess if one is on the “friends” list for the Planet, one can do no wrong. I guess it takes more than newsprint to be a real newspaper.  

Sandra Horne 

• 

A PAGE FROM THE  

GOP’s PLAYBOOK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The debate over the UC stadium renovation plan has taken on a surreal quality in which the extreme left is lifting pages out of the play books of the extreme right. During any of the Bush election campaigns, Karl Rove would have drooled at the chance to manipulate such a compliant group as those willing to believe that UC is an evil and corrupt institution bent on destroying the environment and taking over the city, among other evils. However, in this case, it is the liberal left, not the right, that must confront some “inconvenient truths."  

First, the trees by the stadium are not an ancient or rare grove of oaks. In fact oaks are quite common in the Berkeley flatlands at places including Live Oak Park, John Hinckle Park and the UC campus. Take a stroll across the Cal campus and then out into the town of Berkeley and ask yourself who is a better guardian of trees, UC or the city of Berkeley. While I’m at it, trees are a renewable resource, there are no burial grounds near the stadium, and the oaks are not a memorial grove, but are the landscaping for a memorial stadium. When the city and other activists claim that the project designed by one of the best engineering schools in the world to improve student and public safety is actually compromising safety, one is reminded of the Swift Boat Veterans propaganda claiming that Bush was a war hero and Kerry was a coward. And when the mayor paints a scenario of doom in which the stadium’s structure fails with catastrophic consequences, a picture of Colin Powell addressing the UN with a small vial of white powder emerges. Clearly, the city has on its agenda a confrontation with the University over this issue just as Bush had on his agenda an invasion of Iraq. 

People in the end will believe what they want to believe. However, no matter how many times a lie is repeated, it is still a lie. What might motivate the city to take on the university over these contrived issues? The answer is simple. Demonizing the university and challenging its aspirations is red meat for the tofu set, who are convinced that the greatest public university in the world is actually an evil organization. Moreover, a confrontation with UC makes heroes of the city’s leaders to the extreme leftists that currently dominate City Hall. Until a voice of reason emerges in our city government, we will be left with a legacy of deep wounds in city- university relations, and taxpayer dollars will continue to enrich the pockets of the lawyers representing both sides. 

David Drubin 

• 

TEDFORD AND OAK GROVE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m a big fan of Coach Tedford. How nice it is to see 70,000 smiling and excited people headed to and from the stadium. As opposed to the dreary and dispirited sad-sacks from the previous regime. Tedford is a brilliant football coach, by any standard. And yet, football coaches, with their obsessive attention to the minutiae of Xs and Os, endlessly studying the smallest detail of film, deep in the bowels of sports complexes, are also notorious for suffering from tunnel-vision. Very few coaches—such as the beloved Bill Walsh—combine that attention for detail with a vision of the bigger picture, a picture that encompasses the entire community, and not just wons-and-losses on a stat sheet. 

I don’t now much about the oak grove issue, except that those oak trees nestled in front of the stadium are a lot of what gives that stadium its rustic charm. To have some monstrosity of modern architecture jammed in there, all the way to the sidewalk—against the will of the majority of the Berkeley community—would be a fatal mistake. And might I remind you, Coach Tedford, that its a community that includes not just a bunch of scruffy punk and hippie protesters, but a former mayor of Berkeley, as well as countless other prominent Berkeley citizens who stand firmly against this ill-fated, and poorly thought-out project. 

What is the average tenure of a Pac 10 football coach? About three or four years? Soon, Coach Tedford, you’ll be going on to bigger and better and higher paying things. Do you want your permanent legacy in Berkeley history to be that of a carpet-bagger? Please reconsider your position.  

Ace Backwords  

• 

THE FOLLY OF UC’S  

MEMORIAL STADIUM PLAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Kudos to Hank Gehman for so cogently spelling out the folly of the university’s plans to intensify use of the Memorial Stadium site, and for pointing out that this beloved but very dangerous building is occupied by hundreds of students and employees every day contrary to the university’s own advisors.  

After reading a July 9 San Francisco Chronicle op-ed by two eminent architects, a geologist, and a structural engineer—all retired—about the perilous condition of the stadium, I visited it myself. Like a recent visitor from Tennessee quoted by the Chronicle, I was shocked by what I saw. Throughout the structure I witnessed exposed aggregate and rusting rebar, twisting girders, and rotting wood seating and decking. How did this building reach such a state of decay, and why is it daily occupied, let alone with tens of thousands of people at a time? Is the university unaccountable to any official charged with protecting public safety?  

As Gehman states, I suspect that the university does not want to reveal its plans for retrofitting the stadium because that is impossible. Nothing but a virtually new replica of the present structure will suffice to make it somewhat safer in that location than what is there now, and the priority and cost of that would shine klieg lights on what the “greatest public university in the world” has, in fact, become.  

Gray Brechin 

• 

PETITION TO PUT AL GORE ON CALIFORNIA PRIMARY BALLOT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Petition to put Al Gore on California Primary Ballot 

Starting in early October, the California Draft Gore Ballet Initiative will begin collecting signatures in the East Bay and all other congressional districts in California. We need 50 signatures per district to get Gore on the California Primary Ballot in February 2008.  

Many people admire Gore for his integrity, his strong stand against the Iraq war before anyone else and his climate change campaign. He has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Many other states are also mounting a Gore Ballot Initiative. Check out the website at www.california4gore.org or join us at a meet-up on Saturday, Oct. 13 at Central Perk Cafe, (next to the El Cerrito Speakeasy Theater) at 11 a.m. We need your help getting signatures. 

Maureen Farrell 

• 

THOUGHTS ON THE UNIVERSITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

First of all, why is UC Berkeley so intent on killing all those trees for six football games a year? The 49ers and Cal need a new football stadium; if they build one together it will be 14 games a year not including Niner playoff games. Earthquakes never happen on Saturday afternoons anyway. 

The Golden Gate Bridge District is going broke. Why can’t they just give the bridge to Caltrans? It is the easiest solution. 

Imagine $10 to cross the McDonalds Golden Arches Bridge. All the toll takers would be required to dress like Ronald in clown suits. 

At the expense of the rest of downtown Berkeley Telegraph is looking better. Five blocks of retail shopping. If you get off the BART train in downtown Berkeley you have to walk by countless storefronts that sit empty before you get to Telegraph. Every empty store front reeks of urine. You get the old Telegraph crowd hanging out on Shattuck panhandling for change but smoking pot all day long. Downtown Berkeley is not just Telegraph. 

UC Berkeley needs to support the downtown area . All those Tennessee fans going to the game walking around the downtown area got to see all of the above. Not everyone takes that glorious route to the stadium. From the Claremont Hotel driving buy all those big houses, wow, what a nice town. 

To all you Cal students from out of town, please look before you cross the street because the campus ends at Bancroft, Fulton and Heinz. When you get hit by a car it will hurt if your lucky. 

To the Berkeley Police Department, if you’re going to enforce the pedestrian laws by the campus you need to enforce them on the rest of Berkeley.  

Enough said. 

Sergio Blandon 

• 

A PROPOSAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m proposing that UCB construct an elevated/dedicated “express” bike pathway to connect Memorial Stadium with the existing Recreational Sports Facility and Hass Gymnasium. The distance is so short the ramp would provide a connection between these facilities of perhaps 60-90 seconds bicycle ride. The ramp could be beautifully landscaped with ivy or other plantings to be aesthetically pleasing. The new bikeway (and a fleet of dedicated to this purpose bikes) to issue the athletes could all be done and paid for with less than 10 percent of the monies the distinguished Mr. Barclay Simpson so generously donated, particularly since it would need to bear little weight and could be constructed quickly and cheaply with “recycled” green plastic lumber, which is extremely light and durable. Students might even volunteer to create this beautiful solution to an ugly controversy. 

This would provide “exercise” for the athletes, excellent lessons in mobility and ecology by bicycle, and save the university millions in cash, greenhouse gas credits for less cement, fewer trees cut down, injured and stressed town/gown relations, damaged public relations, Academic Senate exhausting controversy, and major legal expenses for UC to defend a rash of pending lawsuits. The saved funds could and should be plowed into desperately needed scholarships.  

Canadian bicycling advocates have seen to such bikeways, and UCB’s distinguished Canadian Chancellor Birgenau should be well aware of the many, many exercise and ecology benefits of bicycling by now. Also he should be aware of the statewide prohibitions on construction within “Special Studies Zones” for seismicity, created years ago by the state Legislature to prevent dangerous and wasteful construction in, on, or directly adjacent to, very active earthquake zones, via the Alquist-Priolo Act. Whether or not the proposed “Athletic Sports Facility” violates the letter of that law within a few inches or not, it certainly violates the spirit of the law. The Geological Survey (USGS.gov) has deemed the Hayward Fault one of the fastest “creeping” faults known on earth. A recent string of major tremors on that Hayward fault during the very controversy of these senior oaks, adds emphasis to the truths of this letter. 

I studied the charter of the University of California recently in Doe Library; the very purpose of UC as decreed by the Legislature is to provide higher education free to any California student who shows promise and works hard. My theory as to how this has disintegrated to a situation where students graduate with as much as $50,000 in debt for a BA (allowing for tuition, books, room and board) is that somehow the cement industry, developers, and the highway robbery, er lobby, have mesmerized the California Legislature, particularly in the peculiar era of our Sen. Don Perata, to spend itself into earthquake-risky cement oblivion with bonds for highways, bridges, and tunnels (to accommodate gasoline tanker trucks?) instead of spending on education and ecology. 

This tragedy does not have to be; nor does an entire grove of remarkable senior oak trees showing natural resistance to Sudden Oak Death Syndrome have to be clearcut. Sudden Oak Death threatens to wipe out oaks throughout California and arborists are mystified, horrified, and helpless against it to date. 

James G. Doherty 

• 

FOUR MORE YEARS... 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If another Republican is elected to the White House in 2008 this is what you can expect. Four more years of war, death and destruction thanks to unrelenting pressure from the GOP. Another Republican president will bring in new lifetime justices shifting the Supreme Court all the way to the right for a generation. There will be four more years of lies and dirty tricks and secrecy from the Republican executive in the Oval Office. The Constitution will continued to be trampled be a party that cares more about its ideology than the American people.  

Four more years of a Republican president and you can kiss Roe v. Wade good-bye. A word of caution for Democrats, independents, progressives, liberals—join together, work together. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley 

• 

FLOURIDE IN THE WATER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“In August 2007, over 600 medical, dental, scientific, academic, public health and environmental professionals signed a petition to Congress urging a moratorium on fluoridation until hearings and additional research are conducted. Signers include Dr. Arvid Carlsson, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Medicine, who said, “Fluoridation is against all principles of modern pharmacology. It’s really obsolete.” (FAN 2007.)” www.ewg.org/reports/cafluoride. 

The Environmental Working Group reports that the fluoride in drinking water is linked to bone cancer in children, the 3rd most common cancer for children. “the American Dental Association (ADA), scientists at Harvard University, and the prestigious National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences have all raised serious concerns about the safety of fluoridated water for infants and young children. This steady stream of science represents a growing consensus within the mainstream public health and dental community that the health risks of fluoride in tap water may substantially outweigh the modest dental benefits of tap water fluoridation.” 

It is time for our government to rethink the mandatory addition of fluoride into our drinking water. Please sign a petition asking the government to end fluoridation of our drinking water. www.actionstudio.org/public/page_view_all.cfm?option=begin&pageid=8276. 

Yolanda Huang 

• 

BERKELEY REP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My husband and I are regular readers of the Planet. We usually go to at least two shows a year at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. We often bring family and friends. I am not sure why the folks at the Rep believe that Planet readers don’t go to the Rep. 

This is not the only example of the Rep’s misguidedness. At one point, we stopped going to the Rep after their fundraising staff persisted in asking us for money even after we informed them of the impending death of a loved one. After the incident, we e-mailed the Rep and received no response. 

Ultimately, we decided not to fault the actors, writers, and other artists who put together the Rep’s wonderful offerings for the behavior of its fundraisers.  

However, I believe the Rep has a lot to learn about how to treat its patrons and its community. 

Debra Sabah Press 

• 

A NOBLE CAUSE, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SIDE EFFECTS? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This open letter is to discuss the drawbacks associated with Berkeley’s new combination garbage/green collection plan. While the idea and urgency of reducing our total landfill volume is quite noble and probably essential, this new approach seems fraught with potential problems. Just imagine, for example, that after each weekly pickup of the green can(s), there will be the possibility of dripping debris of un-packaged foodstuffs coming off the garbage trucks here and there throughout the city. 

What an image. 

Then, too, there will always be some food residue remaining inside the green can after pickup. Assuming we’re really diligent and would like to keep our cans really clean after they’ve been picked up, we’d hose out the can periodically. But, where will we dump the water after it’s flushed out of the can? Oh, that’ll go into our garden(s) or may run down the gutter in front of our home or apartment. Now we have food residue everywhere. If we don’t clean out the can regularly, things could get even more scary. Either way, how exciting it’ll be for the rodents and other crawly critters! I don’t even want to imagine the havoc that would likely ensue. We already have rodent issues throughout the city, though they’re rarely openly discussed or acknowledged; we’re near water, so rodents are always about. But to invite them this way seems reckless and foolish. 

My suggestion is to continue disposing of any/all foodscraps and food-soiled paper, etc. the usual way, into our regular gray garbage cans or dumpsters. The garbage would, hopefully, continue to be enclosed in some sort of bag and not loosely thrown into a can, as is proposed and condoned by the new “green scheme.” 

This whole project needs much more review and more thorough re-evaluation. Yes, the goal of reducing total landfill is noble, but the very real side-effects are too serious and risky to ignore and must be considered. 

Doris Nassiry 

• 

A WAR OF CHOICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For four years, the Bush administration keeps on asking for more time, and a lot more money, to keep its failed war-of-choice going. It is always the same prediction, “in 12 to 18 months the Iraqis will be able to govern without us." The truth is that we can not “win” this war. No “victory” is possible for us in Iraq, only continued shame.  

Yet, Sen. John McCain has a point when he says that leaving Iraq in retreat would be a disaster. So, what is the way out of this mess that Bush and Cheney put us in? 

We should separate ourselves, our government, and our country, from the corrupt leaders who got us into this war through their deception and lies. We should prosecute these officials, who usurped our government, for being the war criminals that they are. Then we can leave Iraq in an orderly manner, with apologies for having confused Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden, and find redemption through bringing to justice the people who committed these war crimes in our name.  

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

• 

PERSISTING IN FOLLY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I don’t read the Planet for lifestyle coverage or entertainment news, unless one deems the antics of the Planning Palace entertaining. It’s the hard news stories generally uncovered elsewhere that make me pick up the Planet first thing in the morning. 

As for the reviews, the Planet needn’t focus on the already well-publicized organizations with large budgets. The smaller, perhaps semi-amateur or struggling groups are particularly worthy of coverage. The gardening, building and preservation articles are also real gems.  

As the author a few years ago of an article on “The Celebration of Roses,” the festival held every May in El Cerrito, I urge the Planet to persist in its folly.  

John McBride 

• 

SIDESHOW LAW 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you so much for J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s article on State Sen. Don Perata’s SB67 sideshow vehicle tow bill. I share his concern about the unwillingness of most media to examine this bill’s proponents’ unsupported claims that it has kept Oakland safe, or safer. I am so thankful that this excellent writer and the Daily Planet are paying attention. 

Our rights are now so fully eroded that I often feel as though I’m watching a wave go out to sea that doesn’t ever seem to come back. 

Carol Denney 

• 

FOOD ALLERGIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As you read this letter with your breakfast or lunch, more than 11 million Americans are carefully watching what they eat and how their food is prepared. You may be thinking that they are trying to lose weight, but that’s not the reason—it’s because they suffer from life-threatening food allergies.  

The statistics are frightening—particularly among children. Each year, allergic reactions result in 30,000 emergency room visits and over 150 deaths. The average school has 10 children suffering from food allergies. Between 1997 and 2002, the number of children under age five who suffer from food allergies doubled. 

Food allergies are a disease, and there is no cure. The only recourse is total avoidance of the foods that generally cause these allergies—everyday foods like milk, peanuts, eggs and shellfish. This is easier said than done. If your child attends a birthday party, the home-made milk- and egg-free chocolate chip cookies may have been baked in a pan that once cooked peanut brownies. Or perhaps her classmate spills a drop of milk on the school bus—if she touches or even inadvertently smells that dried drop, it could cause her severe harm. The favorite family restaurant? Out of the question for most people with severe food allergies. 

Everywhere you go and everything you do, you must be on guard. One slip-up could be fatal.  

Why have scientists been unable to develop a cure to a disease that has become so prevalent? It’s not for lack of trying, and it’s not for lack of hope. Using existing science developed to treat asthma, airborne allergens and bee sting allergies, researchers are confident that a vaccine for major food allergies can be found within a decade if the research receives sufficient funding. 

And that’s the catch—funding. Our federal government must treat this disease with greater urgency by dedicating needed funding to finding a cure. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends less than $10 million per year on food allergy research; by comparison, Attention Deficit Disorder receives $107 million and Diabetes receives $1.2 billion per year. These are all important diseases that deserve attention. 

It is much more cost-effective to fund needed research than to continue asking families and schools to unilaterally shoulder the burden of this burgeoning public health danger. Congress should take action now to help millions of American families and children who live in constant fear—and give them hope that soon they, too, can enjoy a carefree meal while they read the newspaper. 

Dr. Peter Xiao Jian 

San Francisco 

• 

ANTENNA PROTEST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A growing body of scientific studies indicates that radio frequency radiation (RF) emitted continuously from cell phone antennas may pose a health risk to residents, particularly children, who live close to them. With 14 antenna locations in South Berkeley and an unknown number of emitters at each location, we already suffer unequally from this form of pollution.  

Yet, Verizon is suing the City of Berkeley. It claims the city’s ordinance, which seeks to protect residents from unnecessary antennas, is unconstitutional. It also demands that applications for permits at the following three locations be approved: 2721 Shattuck Ave., 1540 Shattuck Ave., 2002 Acton St. 

It believes it has the right to put up antennas anywhere and everywhere in order to expand its business as long as emissions from these antennas are within Federal Communication Commission (FCC) guidelines.  

However, many concerned citizens, as well as many scientists, believe that these guidelines (100 times less protective than Switzerland’s) are too permissive and outdated.  

We urge the following actions: 

1. Boycott Verizon in Berkeley. 

2. Defend Berkeley’s Telecom Ordinance and our Zoning Board’s decision to deny unnecessary permits to telecom companies. 

3. Denounce the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the FCC’s standards as unsafe. 

4. Support the Precautionary Principle and the right of citizens to protect their health and safety. 

5. Demand full disclosure of health studies of wireless technology and discussion of safer alternatives. 

Stop Verizon from bullying the City of Berkeley with slap lawsuits and subverting the democratic process of local government. If you have a Verizon contract, please call the Verizon store. Tell its representatives to drop its lawsuit against the City of Berkeley. Beware: If we don’t stop them here, radiation will soon come to your neighborhood too!!  

A protest against more cell phone antennas in South Berkeley will be held from 10”30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 15 at UC Storage, 2721 Shattuck Ave. For more information, e-mail BNAFU at: JLLIB2@aol.com. 

Michael Barglow

The foundation of our freedom is the right to petition the government. Every Fourth of July, we celebrate the Declaration of Independence, a petition, and this right is protected by Article One, Section One of the United States Constitution. Are Internet polls a legitimate form of petition, and can they be used to measure public opinion? 

Berkeley taxpayers have financed Kitchen Democracy, and the results of their web polls have been endorsed by Berkeley officials as legitimate measures of community opinion. This encourages and perhaps demands that citizens participate in these polls. Unfortunately for our community, volunteer polls like Kitchen Democracy can only shape our opinions, they can never measure them. 

Kitchen Democracy polls their membership to gain their opinion on community issues, and then they publish “decisions” based on these polls. No matter how enthusiastic they are to decide things, Kitchen Democracy’s voters can only represent themselves. There is no reason to value a citizen’s vote on the Kitchen Democracy website over another’s signature on a petition, or over their upraised hand or voice-vote at an assembly. Unlike volunteer polls, petitions and assemblies are constitutionally protected. Unlike web polls, petitions require signatures, not disclaimers. 

According to AAPOR, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, “Polls based on submissions to websites...may be good entertainment but have no validity...If such unscientific pseudo-polls are reported for entertainment value, they must never be portrayed as accurately reflecting public opinion.” 

The vote in the North Shattuck area regarding the plaza provides a vivid example of what’s wrong with volunteer polls in general, and Kitchen Democracy in particular.  

Kitchen Democracy conducted an unpublicized election regarding our neighborhood project. Though I visit the North Shattuck Plaza area nearly every day, I’ve never seen a poster, flyer or any other public promotion regarding the plaza vote. 

On Sept. 5, Kitchen Democracy published a “decision” in favor of the North Shattuck Plaza, complete with a green checkmark symbolizing their affirmation. The culmination of a two month election, this “decision” masks significant neighborhood opposition to the Plaza which was revealed by the Kitchen Democracy election itself. 

Since Kitchen Democracy does not publish a time-based record of their election, I have used downloaded files and dated comments to reconstruct the voting pattern.  

Simply stated, a surge of votes and comments arrived in the last few days of the election, mostly favoring yes, and mostly from people listed as living over one mile away from the North Shattuck Plaza. This just-in-time manufactured consent produced a 199 to 180 margin, apparently justifying Kitchen Democracy’s “decision” favoring the plaza. 

This “decision” does not acknowledge neighborhood opposition to the plaza proposal, for the majority of Kitchen Democracy voters living within one mile of the plaza voted against the project. Despite the lack of public promotion of the vote in the neighborhood, and despite the last-minute surge, the plaza neighbors still managed to defeat the Kitchen Democracy proposal 132 to 119. So how should Kitchen Democracy’s plaza “decision” be received by the press, public and city? 

Last month I contacted the president of AAPOR, Nancy Mathiowetz, and requested her opinion, were Berkeley’s leaders abridging our right to petition the government directly by inferring undue value to Kitchen Democracy’s web-based polls? I described how their poll results had been used by the Zoning Adjustments Board in the Wright’s Garage case. She assigned two aides to investigate. 

On Sept. 9, I received a reply from AAPOR Standards Chair Charlotte Steeh, who examined the Kitchen Democracy website with her associate. Ms. Steeh’s response included, “It is unfortunate when a governing body takes the kinds of data produced by websites like Kitchen Democracy as measures of legitimate opinion.” 

She writes, “There are many examples of websites similar to Kitchen Democracy. As long as these sites do not try to promote the data collected on them as scientific and representative, they do not violate the AAPOR Code...We suggest you point the council to our code where we publicize the fact that these sorts of results do not have general validity and should not be regarded as if they do.” 

Ultimately, though web-based polls like Kitchen Democracy may provide citizens a new and legitimate means to petition the government, the results of volunteer elections should not be used to gauge the public’s opinion. Because they do not represent the general population and because they may produce deceptive results, I believe the City of Berkeley should formally discourage the use of volunteer polls, particularly those used to measure support for construction projects. I suggest it’s time for the press, the public and the city to regard all of Kitchen Democracy’s “decisions” with appropriate skepticism. 

David Cohn is a Berkeley resident.

The Planning Commission last week demonstrated commendable wisdom by removing auto dealerships from consideration in the thriving artisan, light industrial and building supply community in the MU-LI District south of Ashby Avenue, thus heading off the area’s destabilization. The same sort of clear thinking should also guide the commission’s approval in concept of auto sales as a permitted use in the Manufacturing District at the foot of Gilman Street. The Planning Commission will now consider the conditions under which that will happen. It can be done in a way that will benefit everyone in Berkeley, or it can be done in a way that could put all industry in that area at risk.  

Frontage Road is the only place that is perfect for auto sales. The current self-storage facilities there contribute very little to the city, and would meet with almost unanimous support if replaced by auto sales. The closed Flint Ink site is another possibility, but more problematic, since it is blocks from the freeway. The nine acre Recycling Center area should be entirely removed from the new regulations. 

Key to the West Berkeley Plan, passed unanimously by City Council in 1993, is industrial retention and preservation of manufacturing and artisan/art spaces, which were threatened by unregulated market forces. The zoning ordinance was later revised to conform to the plan, dividing West Berkeley into four districts, based on the existing level of industrial use: Manufacturing, Mixed Manufacturing, Mixed Use-Light Industrial, and Mixed Use-Residential. At th0e top of the scale, in the M District, all change of use away from manufacturing was prohibited. Self-storage was made a permitted use, but only in new construction.  

In the other districts, some flexibility of change of use was allowed. In the MU-LI and MU-R, up to 25 percent of manufacturing space in a building could be converted to a different permitted use; but over that amount, change of use could be made only with a finding that “appropriate mitigation has been made for the loss of manufacturing, warehousing or wholesale trade space... through providing such space elsewhere in the city, payment into the West Berkeley Building Acquisition Fund, or by other appropriate means.” The replacement space provision also applied to the MM District. The concept here is that of giving something appropriate back to the industrial and artisan/art community for what is being removed. 

Similar provisions for replacement space or mitigation payment were not included in the M District because there was no permitted use there that manufacturing space could be converted into. Since there was no problem, there was no need for a solution. Now the proposal to make auto sales a permitted use in the M District creates for the first time the possibility of change of use away from manufacturing in that district. This necessitates examining the proper conditions under which that conversion could be made. 

Among the Purposes of the Manufacturing District are “To the greatest degree possible, retain the stock of manufacturing and industrial buildings and sites, especially large buildings and sites, for manufacturing and industrial uses,” and “Encourage development of a manufacturing district dedicated unequivocally to manufacturing and industrial uses, so that manufacturers and industrial businesses will not be interfered with by incompatible uses.” How can we permit auto sales and yet be true to the purposes of the M District? 

Replacing self-storage with auto sales is in conformity with the district, and should not pose an issue. But unrestrained replacement of industrial sites with sales puts all manufacturing space at risk, because retail generates much higher rents than industries.  

In keeping with the concepts of the West Berkeley Plan, if auto sales are made a permitted use in the entire M District, then provisions similar to the replacement space or mitigation payment in the other districts should be placed into the M District regulations. With these provisions in place, for example, a self-storage site could be changed into an auto dealership with no replacement space or mitigation required. However, if Flint Ink or another manufacturing space were to be changed into auto sales, an appropriate mitigation payment would be required. This mitigation payment “into the West Berkeley Building Acquisition Fund, or by other appropriate means” would be intended to help purchase buildings or otherwise retain buildings for light industries and artisans/artists. This enforces the concept of giving something appropriate back to the industrial and artisan/art community for what is being removed. 

John Curl is a cabinetmaker and chair of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC). 

At next Saturday’s Peoples Park Peace Rally (September 15) you and everyone else are invited to play an active role. There will be speeches and music starting at 1 PM, and at about 3:40 we will all be given a choice of participating in 11 different discussion and action circles. And you will be able to form your own discussion group if you can announce it from the stage with three people. The discussion circles planned so far are as follows: 

1. Organizing for demonstrations and actions, Iraq Moratorium (third Fridays, Sept. 21) and others.  

2. Research, Publicity and Media. Get together to prepare articles, letters to the editors, talk radio and TV. 

3. Outreach to Military and Veterans. Counter-Recruiting. Support Returning Vets. 

4. Campus Organizing. UC and elsewhere. 

5. Congressional and Electoral Action, and Impeachment. (Impeachment may want to be separate.) 

6. Religious and Spiritual Contributions to the peace movement. With churches and faith and spiritual groups. 

7. Mediation & Non-Violent Conflict Resolution. 

8. Neighborhood Food and Gardens. Permaculture. Neighborhood Sustainability. 

9. Transportation and Sustainable Energy to End the War. 

10. Homelessness and Poverty.  

11. Supporting and Organizing in Diverse Communities. And Peace Making Projects in our City Streets. Hope to discuss such projects as “Oakland Parks for Peace,” “Silence the Violence,” and other community organizing efforts. 

There will also be two other participatory events at the rally. At noon, before the mike comes on we will have a meditation followed by a discussion. And at 5, after the mike goes off, bring your instruments. We’ll play some acoustic music, and perhaps a discussion of guerrilla music and theater. 

After four and a half years of illegal war the peace movement needs a change of strategy. In February 2003 millions of people around the world, and 200,000 in San Francisco, couldn’t stop the lies or the invasion; and now the clear majority of Americans who want a definite timetable for withdrawal can’t get Congress to vote for it, or to cut off funds when the Bush administration stands in the way. Our democracy is not working. 

The peace movement, therefore, has to be a democracy movement. It is not an impossible task. Oligarchies worse than ours have fallen to the democratic people: Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and some of the Eastern European countries have become vastly more democratic. But how do we do it? 

The answer is that we work on two levels. On the institutional level we need honest elections, election reforms including campaign finance reform and instant runoff voting; and we need an independent media and controls on corporations. But we also have to realize that none of this is going to happen unless we have democracy where we live—neighborhoods, jobs, schools, everywhere. And that is up to us.  

Unless we first have a society in which people talk to each other our political opinions are irrelevant. Political democracy cannot exist without community democracy. And that is our job. 

The average American spends four hours a day watching television. Can we create a community alternative for some of that time, starting with ourselves? 

We won’t stop wars, this one and the next few they are planning, we won’t save a livable planet, and we won’t restore American democracy, by listening to speeches by movement heavies. We have to participate, each one of us in our own favorite creative community. If we can create communities which are more fun than television, and more fun than right wing church picnics, we will win. 

Not that I have anything against good speeches. Come listen to Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Dan Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers), David Hilliard (Black Panthers), and many others. And listen to the music of the “Funky Nixons,” and “Beatbeat Whisper,” and others. But always remember that a meeting or a rally is never complete until everyone has an opportunity to leave with a job to do and someone to do it with. If we stay active and keep communicating we will have a movement which is continually expanding. 

Laurence Schechtman is a Berkeley activist. 

Several of us from Save the Oaks at the Stadium took our marching trees to the Solano Stroll last weekend, and we got an overwhelmingly positive response to our “Go Green, Save the Oaks!” message. We quickly ran out of our flyers, and were repeatedly stopped by people along the way who wanted to hear the latest about the oaks campaign. We got encouraging words from across the political and demographic spectrum: young and old, male and female, local and out-of-town. Many Cal alumni joined in showing their support for our cause, and teens (who seem to be wearing a lot of tie-dye shirts these days) were by far our most enthusiastic supporters. It was very uplifting. 

There was one incident I want to mention, though. As I was passing through the crowd, an angry Cal Bears fan reached up high and snatched my “Save the Oaks” sign right out of my hands and tried to walk away with it. I was able to grab it back from him, but this seemed to make him even angrier. He stuck his face right in front of mine and yelled at me repeatedly, “Get that sign out of here!” The people in the crowd stared at him and noticed how out of control he was. I honestly thought he was about to hit me. Fortunately, he decided to walk away without any further incident. 

But this caused me to reflect on the sad fact that anger is frequently a big part of the emotional response of many sports fans—even on the collegiate level. And this anger is often purposely inflamed by rally committees and yell leaders—and sometimes even by coaches and university administrators—in the hope that it will be channeled against the current week’s hated foe. For the Cal fans, it was Tennessee last week, and soon it will be another team. But anger is a very powerful emotion to invoke, and it is difficult to manage once it has been unleashed. I witnessed how poorly some of the Cal students treated the Tennessee fans, and I was shocked by the level of verbal abuse that was directed at them—even after Tennessee had lost the game and their somber fans were heading home. What ever happened to good sportsmanship? Any true Cal supporter ought to be ashamed of these disrespectful incidents; they are a very poor reflection on the reputation of the University of California. 

Even more important, though, is this: once this anger is whipped up to a frenzy, it cannot be channeled exclusively against the opposing team; it sometimes becomes a volatile fuel added to the frustrations that some individuals experience in their everyday lives, and they act out in aggressive and dangerous ways. This is one of the aspects of the current football emphasis that is prevalent on the Cal campus, and it is important for us to consider the implications of it for our community. 

I think it would be helpful if Chancellor Robert Birgineau, Athletic Director Sandy Barbour, and Coach Jeff Tedford would address their fans publicly to encourage more civil behavior toward the guests that come to our campus—not to mention toward their fellow alumni who may feel differently from them about the appropriateness of current construction plans. It would be a step in the right direction, and it would help all of us Cal alumni and supporters feel greater pride in our team and our university. 

Doug Buckwald is a UC Berkeley graduate (1982) and a Cal Bears fan.  

Were it not for that distinctive T-shirt, it’s doubtful I would ever have known about the White Rose Society. But meeting a friend recently, I was attracted by his T-shirt. At the top there was a line of Arabic script, beneath that the phrase, “We Will Not Remain Silent.” I was informed that this motto dated back to 1943, when a small group of students at the University of Munich, sickened by the atrocities of the Nazi’s, especially the persecution of the Jews, formed a resistance movement, which they named “The White Rose Society.” The origin of that name has never been determined, though one historian wrote that the color white represents purity. Perhaps it was that romantic-sounding name that sparked my interest. In any event, I found myself utterly engrossed in the story of these idealistic and heroic young intellectuals. 

Spending almost an entire day at the Berkeley Public Library, and assisted by a reference librarian who was equally intrigued by this Society, I unearthed a wealth of materials, the most valuable being the book, “A Noble Treason: The Revolt of Munich Students Against Hitler.” Thanks to the librarian’s computer skills, I was provided with a print-out of all four leaflets written by these students—leaflets calling for German youth to overthrow the regime. "The name of Germany will be dishonored forever lest German youth finally rise to smash [Hitler’s] tormentors and invoke a new, intellectual and spiritual Europe.” These leaflets were not the rabid ravings of wild-eyed radicals, but rather were beautifully-written, scholarly documents with quotations from Aristotle, Friedrich Schiller, Goethe and Lao Tzu. I was especially taken by the opening sentence in the First Leaflet: “Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be ‘governed’ without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that every honest German is ashamed of his government.” Given today’s shameful Iraq war debacle, might we not substitute “honest American” for “honest German"? 

Members of this newly formed resistance movement were Hans Scholl, his sister, Sophie Scholl (perhaps the most dedicated and effective of all), Christoph Probst, Alex Schmorell, and Kurt Huber, a psychology professor and their spiritual guide. This small group assembled several evenings a week, working on their leaflets, which were cranked out, one by one, numbering in the thousands on an ancient mimeograph machine. It was Sophie who purchased the paper and envelopes, going from store to store so as not to arouse suspicion by the large number of supplies. 

Circulating the leaflets was a perilous task, but Sophie, carrying them in a valise, wisely mailed them from other cities, such as Stuttgart and Augsburg to divert attention from Munich. Soon the leaflets appeared in cities all over Germany, even Salzburg and Vienna. The Munich Gestapo was understandably in a state of high alarm and it set out to search for the resistance group. 

On Feb. 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie entered the University for the last time, carrying a bag crammed full of leaflets. After scattering many of them in the halls and lecture rooms, they climbed to the roof, throwing the remaining leaflets onto the university courtyard. They were observed by a janitor who immediately informed the Gestapo. Reaction was swift. A “People’s Court", in an electrically charged trial, ruled that Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst, in defaming the Fuhrer “are sentenced to death.” That same day, the three marched bravely to the Guillotine. Before being executed, Christopf shouted “We will meet each other in a few minutes.” Hans responded, “Long live freedom.” Sophie followed calmly. So—the death of these three spelled the death of the “White Rose.” Yet their message endured. “We shall not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The white rose will not leave you in peace!” 

Absorbed as I’ve been with the dramatic account of these heroic young resistance leaders, I’m left with the disturbing question: Why are today’s university students not rebelling at the Iraq war and other injustices? Except for a tepid demonstration against Boalt Hall Law Professor John Yoo and his defense of torture tactics by the present administration, there have been few protests. Am I foolish to dream of a White Rose Society in this country to restore our honor and atone for the needless loss of American military and innocent Iraq’s?  

Dorothy Snodgrass is a Berkeley resident. 

HEALTHCARE BILL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We don’t need a special legislative session. Tell your senator: Sheila Kuehl’s AB 840, the California Universal Healthcare Act—is the single payer plan that serves everyone, is affordable, and does not interfere with provision of medical services. Private insurers do not provide broad access to healthcare. The government can—as in Canada, France, and Britain—by eliminating private insurance’s duplication of bureaucracies and profits. California businesses will benefit by being relieved of the costs of paying into employee health insurance plans. AB 840, passed by the legislature but vetoed last year, has passed the Assembly again and is before the Senate. The Legislature’s obligation is to the people of California, not to private health insurers. They should pass AB 840 now by a veto-proof two-thirds majority and show us who they’re working for. 

Charlene M. Woodcock 

• 

BROWN ACT VIOLATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was surprised to read in the Sept. 7 Daily Planet (“Council Postpones Vote on Contentious Community Benefits District Plan,” Sept. 7) that the meetings of the West Berkeley Community Benefits District steering committee have not been public. Since the City Council authorized $10,000 in funding, and the steering committee is acting as an advisory group for the City Council with regard to the proposed district, that is a violation of the Brown Act. 

Robert Lauriston 

• 

KANGAROO PRODUCTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Earlier this week the state Assembly, to its ever-lasting shame, and despite major public opposition, voted 44:27 to overturn the 37-year-old ban on the importation of kangaroo products into California. Senate Bill 880 (by Ron Calderon, D-Montebello) now awaits the governor’s signature. Or veto. 

The kangaroos (Australia’s national symbol) are spot-lighted at night (illegal in the United States), then massacred. Many wounded escape, to suffer a lingering death. The joeys (babies) have their little heads crushed, with governmental approval. Endangered species are likely to get into the mix, too, for once dead and skinned, it is nigh-impossible to tell one species of kangaroo from another. Enforcement will be a nightmare. And for what, pray? Soccer cleats, pet food and “novelty” items, God help us. Are you ready for coin purses made from kangaroo scrotums, or backscratchers and bottle openers made from severed forelimbs? They’re coming. Imagine the public outcry if we so crassly commercialized our own national symbol, the bald eagle. 

EVERY organization supporting this travesty has vested financial interests: various chambers of commerce, sporting goods stores, soccer clubs, etc. Reportedly, Adidas has spent nearly $4 million in recent years promoting this abomination and buying off legislators. Must money and greed always trump decency and ethics? So it would seem. Democrats and Republicans alike have lost their moral compass on this one, no thanks to term limits. 

Urge Governor Schwarzenegger to veto this cruel and regressive legislation. Call his office at (916) 445-2841, then press 1, then 5. You can express your concerns to a live person. Or fax the governor at (916) 445-4633. Rumor has it that Arnold plans to run against Barbara Boxer for the U.S. Senate. His signing this bill won’t help that campaign. May compassion rule. 

Eric Mills 

Coordinator, Action for Animals 

Oakland 

• 

LAPDOG OR WATCHDOG? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Funny how The Daily Planet goes to so much trouble to defend Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums against criticism of his relations with the press, with columns by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor and Randy Shaw, yet no mention anywhere in the paper of the resignation of the mayor’s press secretary a few weeks back or of the many other staff changes reported in the San Francisco Chronicle. I thought the role of the press was watchdog, not lapdog. 

Steve Reichner 

Oakland 

• 

KITCHEN DEMOCRACY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Steve Martinot’s discussion of Kitchen Democracy misses the point. For Berkeley residents, Kitchen Democracy is a way to express their opinions and be more involved in city issues. The City Council can use Kitchen Democracy as a way to gauge public opinion on a topic in the same way it uses public hearings. I doubt that many people “voting” on Kitchen Democracy think they are “taking part in any formal decision making process.” They are simply making their voices heard on issues that matter to them in an arena in which they feel comfortable. Many residents do not attend Berkeley City Council meetings because they occur at inconvenient times and because there are often many people that are uncomfortably hostile to those with opposing views. Thus, many people’s voices are not heard. Kitchen Democracy is simply another outlet for those attempting to take part in the democratic process. I am appalled at Steve Martinot’s attempts to marginalize this new democratic medium. 

Dave Schlessinger 

• 

NOTHING SAYS ‘SKID ROW’ BETTER THAN A BUNCH OF PREACHERS WITH  

MICROPHONES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

While the mayor’s office, the city manager’s office, the Office of Economic Development, the Police Department, the City Council, area residents and merchants are doing everything they can to help bring about a glorious comeback for Telegraph Avenue, out-of-town evangelical preachers and their sizable entourage of prosthelytizers regularly pull a $35 permit to disrupt traffic and business at Telegraph and Haste. 

With a full-scale PA system, keyboards, guitars, microphones, and large signs indicating there is but one way to find “god,” these folks manage to alienate absolutely everybody who comes near that corner. 

Too bad if you’re a merchant on that same corner paying over $30,000 a month in rent (that’s a thousand dollars a day, every single day). Too bad if you’re one of the many area merchants working hard to make something great happen down there. Too bad if you happen to work outside anywhere near that corner, as many do. Too bad if you’re one of a number of newly opened businesses in the immediate area. Too bad if you’re one of the hundreds of residents who live within earshot (many of whom, like the merchants, have been complaining about this for many years—anyone remember Andy Ross and Cody’s Books?) Too bad if you’re anyone in Berkeley who’d love to see Telegraph keep improving, as it has done this past year. Maybe someone at City Hall can figure out what to do? 

Marc Weinstein 

• 

IMPEACH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On Saturday, Sept. 15, from 1-2:30 p.m., I and hundreds of others will once again be using our bodies to spell out the word “IMPEACH” (and probably a couple of others), this time at Crissy Field, in San Francisco.  

In the introduction to his 1974 book Impeachment, a Handbook, Yale professor Charles L. Black, Jr. noted that “the Framers of our Constitution very clearly envisaged the occasional necessity of this awful step, and laid down a procedure and standards for its being taken. Their actions on this matter were, as the records of their debates show, very carefully considered.”  

If the devastating assaults on our Constitution during the past six years aren’t enough to instigate impeachment proceedings, I can’t imagine what would be. As a naturalized citizen, I completely disagree with our elected representatives who argue that pursuing impeachment would be at the cost of important legislative action. I appeal to my fellow citizens to join me and to give voice to millions of others in telling Congress that there is no business more important right now than rescuing and preserving our Constitution.  

No, we won’t be naked! Of course, if we were, the mainstream media would probably cover us (figuratively speaking). However, the more of us who gather to speak up for this country’s highest values, the more likely it is that the event will be reported and thus stimulate our fellow citizens everywhere to demand that Congress fulfill its duty and save this nation’s future as a democracy, once again being governed by the rule of law. A helicopter flying over the event will create video and photos of the event, with our beautiful Golden Gate Bridge in the background.  

You surely don’t need me to remind you that if we all sit back and say “Nothing can be done,” nothing will be done. Contact info can be had at volunteerforchange.org. Video of two previous events is at beachimpeach.org.  

Hope to see you on the 15th!  

Nicola Bourne 

• 

MUSCLE-HEADED JOCK SCHOOL? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There are a lot of good reasons not to build a new sports training center adjacent to Memorial Stadium, including saving some irreplaceable trees and the fact that this stadium is a seismic disaster waiting to happen. But let’s take this one step further. At the risk of being run out of town by a gang of over-zealous football fans, I suggest that UC Berkeley, in the interest of education and research, eliminate its inter-collegiate football program all together. Take the step the University of Chicago took in 1939 by the forward thinking President Robert Maynard Hutchins who felt that big time athletics detracts from academics. Let’s take a lesson from Hutchins. Education isn’t about beating UCLA at football. How much of the resources of this school are being wasted on this one game? Are the players getting an education? Is Berkeley becoming a muscle-headed jock school? 

Name withheld by request 

• 

TOWN-GOWN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Sharon Hudson’s Sept.. 7 commentary, “The Myth of Cooperation,” is the clearest most realistic assessment of the continuing relationship between the ever-expanding behemoth called the university, and the relatively less powerful City of Berkeley. 

Like a company town that dominates the economic and social rules for its workers, the university comports itself like the colossus it has become. The current legal arrangements of responsibilities between the two entities were formulated a long time ago when neither the city nor the university were growing at the current pace and the demands for infrastructure—water, fire, police, sewage—were far more modest and could be accommodated. Since this earlier time, the university was exempt from taxes and by law the city provided these services gratis. 

In terms of numbers of buildings, persons, and services this is no longer the case, and although the university does provide a percentage (how big?) of actual cost it is made on a ‘voluntary’ basis. A perfect example of noblesse oblige. True cooperation for mutual satisfaction on both sides has not appeared despite the essential interdependence of the two entities. Where oh where is the fairness element in these two clusters of well informed, highly sophisticated people in our small geographical space? Thank you, Sharon Hudson, for making the obvious even more obvious. 

Joan Levinson 

• 

GETTING ONE’S VOICE HEARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Within the past few weeks I wrote a letter to Barbara Lee, whom I hold in some respect. I received no answer. How does one make one’s voice heard in this so-called democracy of ours? Below is my letter for any reader who may have some special access. 

Dear Congresswoman Barbara Lee, 

My wife and I, who reside in your district, would like you to introduce a bill in Congress that would obligate President Bush to inform, consult with, and have a vote of approval from Congress before he carries out a major aggressive act against Iran (a pre-emptive strike, euphemism for a sneak attack). Even if you are the only one voting for your own bill, it would mean that you are the only Member of Congress who understands our Constitution and what our country is supposed to be all about. You have been in a similar spot before. 

Whatever the practical consequences as far as Iran would be, such a bill would force each Congressman out of the closet on the various Iraq issues, serve as a general litmus test for credibility, and focus voters’ attentions in the coming November elections. In The Declaration of Independence where the obligation of people to oppose tyranny is discussed, it states “.....when a long train of abuses and usurpations...evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, their duty to throw off such Government.” The tyrannous misuse of power is exactly what we are witnessing in our country at this very moment. The Founding Fathers would not be very happy. Nor is the present electorate at all satisfied with Congress standing by. 

Bennett Markel 

This summer UC has been using a campaign of misinformation and erroneous statements to convince the City of Berkeley to withdraw from the lawsuit to stop UC development on the Hayward Fault. The most important deception in this campaign is UC’s efforts to make it appear that the university is only asking for the approval to build the workout/office facility (the SAHPC). This is a red herring. The lawsuit is not only about the SAHPC but also includes the proposed new stadium and other buildings to be situated at the fault. If the suit is stopped for the purpose of allowing the SAHPC to go forward, the rest of the projects including the new, expanded stadium also would be automatically approved. The SAHPC and the new stadium are legally inseparable. This sleight of hand is why UC is so eager to restrict the focus of the debate to the gym. If people knew the truth that UC is planning to transform Memorial Stadium from football-only to one of the Bay Area’s largest entertainment venues, approval of these projects would come under more intense scrutiny. A quick, insider deal with the city would be more difficult and UC would be left with fighting an uphill battle in court. 

In their campaign to politically defeat the lawsuit, UC is also making an erroneous and dangerous claim that, since the site for the gym is more than 50 feet from the Hayward Fault it is as seismically safe as if it were two miles away. That statement is only true in certain locations and is unlikely to be the case at the stadium site where the damage zone is likely to be wider. This claim also conceals the true seismic risks by hiding the fact that it is local conditions that typically determine the amount of destruction from a major earthquake. Memorial Stadium is built on fill and is officially identified by the USGS as a liquefaction zone. In addition to the forces of the lateral tearing apart and the huge ‘S’ wave that would pass through the fault zone, this fill would reverberate like a bowl of jello in an earthquake. According to UC geologist Patrick Williams, the adjacent hills are seismically compressed and “can probably produce a larger moment-magnitude earthquake than previously estimated.” It is this uncontrolled shaking that is the most dangerous for large structures. The SAHPC is attached to and is the principal foundation for the stadium and being merely more than 50 feet from the fault will not isolate the SAHPC from these destructive forces. Also, UC’s own geologists (Geomatrix) have found faulting directly under the footprint of the SAHPC. Originally, when the Alquist-Priolo Act, California’s law intended to reduce human occupancy at earthquake faults was written, these faults were considered “active.” Since then the law was changed and now only the most recent faults are defined as “active.” But “older” faults can present an equal danger. It is reasonable to expect that these faults which branch off of the Hayward Fault will be activated when the main fault erupts. The university is a public institution and has an obligation to Californians to reveal the true magnitude of the risk. 

Another misleading claim of UC’s PR campaign is that the university has to build the SAHPC to protect the safety of the athletes and employees now at the stadium and portrays those who oppose building on the fault as the ones endangering these people. In fact, even before 1981 when the university first started moving these people to the facilities under the stadium, UC’s own experts have been very critical of this move and have repeatedly called for Cal to move these people away from the stadium. Yet, after 26 years of lack of concern, UC still keeps these people there. Now they are using their dangerous situation (created by UC itself) as an argument for development at the fault. UC should instead obey Alquist-Priolo and do everything it can to reduce occupancy at the fault. The students and employees currently under the stadium should be immediately moved out and no longer held hostage as a “talking point.” 

UC is also emphasizing that no public money will be used for the SAHPC or the stadium. This argument is deceptive. These projects will end up damaging UC’s financial health. Private donations that could be going towards education are being diverted to football. Also, since no insurance company would insure anything at that location, UC has no choice but to be self-insured (with state money). This means that California taxpayers will be left holding the bag after the earthquake. As expensive as rebuilding or decommissioning the stadium and gym would be, the cost to California of paying out the huge personal injury lawsuits that would follow the earthquake could be even greater. 

Hidden in the shadows by the constant focus on the SAHPC are UC’s plans to build a new stadium designed to transform Memorial Stadium from a football-only stadium to a multi-use entertainment venue. In the EIR UC says that they will have seven capacity night time concerts (most likely rock concerts) and also an unlimited number of smaller events. This expansion of use could bring an additional 600,000 to 700,000 people a year to the new stadium from outside Berkeley. Also, these events will be spread out over much of the year. Under this new plan there will be many more people in the vicinity of the fault and they will be there more often. Put together, this would greatly raise the risk of a human disaster. The purpose of Alquist-Priolo is to curtail development and to limit human occupancy at California’s faults. UC wants to do exactly the opposite. No other state or federal agency or private company could build there. Only the university can do it because—in order to protect academic freedom!!—UC is immune from normal governmental regulation. 

It now has been revealed that UC is planning to float bonds or some similar debt instrument to fund the construction of the new stadium. This would explain why UC is so adamant about having these concerts. They will be necessary to pay for the bonds. The new stadium will be very expensive. UC claims that they are merely “retrofitting” the stadium but that is misleading. Except for the outer wall which is being preserved for legal and aesthetic reasons as a façade, the stadium will be completely gutted, excavated and rebuilt anew. The stadium may well cost upwards of $250-$300 million. The university knows that it would take many years to raise that level of money by traditional means like ticket surcharges and booster donations. Issuing bonds lets UC more quickly get the necessary funds. But UC’s debt obligations would be so great that revenue from these concerts and events would be required to service the debt and retire the bonds. The covenants of the bond would surely legally require UC to continue with these concerts as long as necessary. That could be 20 years! Remember the McCartney concerts and the Raiders! The negative impacts on all the city of Berkeley would be enormous, probably permanent and the city would be powerless to stop it in the future. Just imagine the gridlock, the scramble for parking and the day-into-night partying that would result. The citizens of Berkeley would truly lose control of their city. Going forward with this development on the fault would also have a very negative impact on the public safety response for the rest of Berkeley. When the earthquake comes, with the landslides and fires, the police and fire personnel would be diverted from the neighborhoods of Berkeley to the stadium where the damage and injury would likely be the worst. 

How is it that a major institution like UC could be making such reckless decisions? No doubt there is more than one cause of UC’s clouded judgment, but one reason for UC’s obsession with big-time football is that this emphasis on the circus diverts the public’s attention away from the failing California higher education system. There are no new educational initiatives at UC—only tuition increases and big-time football. Emphasizing football works to give the UC leadership a pass on their failure to drive forward higher education in California. 

Today UC acts like an imperial institution, the natural result of almost no accountability to the public. UC’s irresponsible decisions flow from the dictum that, “We do it because we can.” Our city’s lawsuit is a great opportunity to change that and must not be dropped like what happened with the LRDP. It’s time that California had leadership that was obsessed with education and not football. Richard Blum says that he wants to reform and refocus UC. Wisely investing UC’s resources and immediately stopping these projects would be a good first step. 

Hank Gehman is a former Ivy football player and Cal graduate student.  

Imagine Berkeley’s City Council inadvertently pouring fuel on a burning controversy by granting almost $400,000 to an advocate for one side. Worse, imagine the money going to the dispute’s less popular side, in a “sole-source,” no-bid contract (the kind the Pentagon signs with Halliburton). And, worst of all, paying them to pester Berkeley residents with telemarketing calls and uninvited house visits. 

That’s the scenario lurking behind tonight’s Council item 29, a contract to promote the “Travel Choice—Berkeley” program. 

The underlying controversy is AC Transit’s proposed Bus “Rapid” Transit (BRT) route in Southside and downtown. BRT wouldn’t actually make buses much more rapid—AC Transit already took its best shot at that on June 24, when it gave us the promising new 1R Rapid Bus line. But BRT would certainly slow down everyone else, by removing half the lanes from Telegraph Ave. and other streets. 

The opponents include, not surprisingly, almost everyone around the proposed BRT route. Downtown and Telegraph merchants overwhelmingly oppose AC Transit’s lane grab. So do thousands of their customers and neighbors, who’ve signed petitions against it at Moe’s and Caffe Strada. 

Tonight’s agenda item is a $396,000 city contract for the Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC). This Oakland group is a busy advocate for AC Transit’s BRT plan, having received a major grant to promote BRT in East Oakland. TALC’s Berkeley contract involves encouraging “walking, bicycling, transit use, and ridesharing.” 

Everyone favors those automobile alternatives, but subsidizing a booster of the controversial BRT proposal seems an unwise move for elected officials. Even more unwise are the contract’s specified activities: “telephone outreach during weekday evenings and weekends, as well as door-to-door, in-person outreach.” In other words, telemarketing calls and uninvited knocks on the door. 

How much do you enjoy those dinnertime interruptions? Now imagine learning that the fresh-faced college student on your phone, waxing on about the wonders of buses and biking, has been paid to disturb you by your elected officials, using your regional tax dollars. 

The contract, I should clarify, says nothing about promoting BRT. But it specifically targets residents living within a half-mile of BART stations or “the Telegraph and San Pablo corridors.” TALC’s idealistic young telemarketers and canvassers will be sorely tempted to abuse these calls and visits to propagandize for BRT. 

I’m not out to demonize TALC, a well-intentioned group that’s achieved some good things. I served on a nonprofit’s board for years with its executive director, and know him as a highly effective organizer. 

But TALC is dead wrong in cheerleading for this BRT route, a $400 million boondoggle that would pay AC Transit to basically duplicate the adjacent BART tracks. 

Our city should not be lavishly subsidizing the wrong dog in this fight. BRT has only a tiny number of supporters in Berkeley. They’re an energetic group, whose bylines keep popping up in these pages. And they’ve used some outsized connections to postpone the AC Transit proposal’s inevitable demise. Even so, BRT is so radioactive that not one City Councilmember has (to my knowledge) endorsed it. 

If the city wants to promote the general, consensus goal of transit usage, it could competitively bid out a contract to professional consultancies that have no direct stake in the BRT controversy. Bidders might include, among other examples, San Francisco’s highly regarded Nelson/Nygaard group. 

Nelson/Nygaard very capably conducted Berkeley’s Transportation Demand Management study, and is now completing a Berkeley transportation mail survey. Its staffers are professional enough to avoid mixing planning services with issue advocacy. 

Most importantly, if the city wants to coax residents out of their cars, it shouldn’t be harassing us with telemarketing calls or visits. No one should be subsidizing such invasions of our privacy—least of all taxpayers ourselves. 

The city should choose less intrusive methods, like an attractive mailed brochure. That’s something city staff clearly knows how to do well, even without expensive outside consultants. Having once volunteered with staff to create a city mailing to promote bicycle safety, I’d guess that writing, design, printing, and mailing could all be done for way under $396,000. 

Look again at that fee. Assuming the targeted neighborhoods include some 6,500 households (an educated guess), TALC’s contract would pay it a whopping $61 per contacted home. 

Heck, I’d be willing to step up to the plate again. I’d gladly write about the virtues of straphanging, biking, unicycling, or even backwards walking. Let’s say $1 for my fee, and well under $96,000 for production and postage. 

The leftover $300,000 could subsidize my European travel budget for life. Then I could tell you about how efficient, attractive transit really ought to work.  

Here’s a preview from my self-financed summer research in Copenhagen and Berlin: Imagine buying advance transit tickets at your convenience, for about $2-$4 a ride. Punch your own ticket when you board, and you could transfer to absolutely anything for the next 90-120 minutes: any regional bus, BART, or even Caltrain. And those trains would run once every two minutes. 

To make automobile alternatives truly mainstream, that’s the level of service, integration, and convenience we need. For now, we need to invest our pennies efficiently, and to avoid provoking public backlash. 

Quashing AC Transit’s wasteful $400 million sideshow is an excellent intermediate step. Stopping TALC’s $400,000 sweetheart deal to harass us with telemarketing is the obvious first step. 

Michael Katz is a Berkeley civic watchdog and freelance writer. Thanks to Merrilie Mitchell and Barbara Gilbert for sniffing out Item 29 and its background. 

Here's a footnote to the Save the Oaks demonstration, sent in on Friday evening by a veteran of the Free Speech Movement, using a pseudonym for reasons which will be obvious. 

Three hours ago, I joined some other veterans of UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement in a show of support for Berkeley students who are fighting UC's plans to tear down a wonderful stand of towering oak to build a $150 million sports facility on an active faultline.  

Half a dozen students spoke and then the microphone was passed to one of the first of the tree-sitters, a lithe young lady names Jessie, who was asked to say a few words. Jessie tried to speak but words wouldn't come. Instead, she stood upright, clenching the microphone before her lips as her face began to tremble. She held the microphone -- and the audience -- in her grip for several emotional minutes before whispering quietly, "These trees saved me," and stepping down.  

FSM leader/author/teacher Michael Rossman recalled how the students of the 1960s faced the same unresponsive corporate UC administration tactics. He pointed out the importance of the oaks not only as an ecological keystone species but as an important link in the social ecology of the city -- a grove dedicated to the memory of the fallen soldiers from WWI that became a place where students have gathered for generations to enjoy a riff, a tipple, and the serenity of nature close-at-hand. The grove became an important place for friends to gather and socialize and for individuals to settle for quiet contemplation. Rossman recalled how he ventured to the groves to read and study.  

Rossman mentioned another infamous UC Berkeley fence — the one that was erected around Peoples Park. And, making sure to note that he was in no way suggesting any form of direct action, Rossman recollected how one day buttons and fliers started to appear around town with a mysterious message. Nothing more than the words "Peoples Park", a date and a time. On that date and at that time, 3,000 people spontaneously walked to the park, surrounded the site and pulled the steel fence down with their bare hands. No one was hurt, the park was liberated and it remains an open space today.  

At the end of the speech-making, 20-plus students — young men and women all wearing orange t-shirts reading "Free Speech" and "Free Trees" — announced that they were going to "exercise" their rights to free expression. "Are you ready to exercise?" the dynamic young spokeswoman announced and, to the surprise of the onlookers, the students suddenly turned, leaped over metal police barricades, sprinted to the hurricane fence and climbed over to join the "imprisoned" tree-dwellers.  

It was a joyous act of civil disobedience that reminded us FSM vets of the afternoon we walked into Sproul Hall with Joan Baez, faced arrest and brought the university to a standstill. 

Somewhat swept away by the students' spontaneous and joyous act of defiance, found myself also climbing over the barricade and jogging toward the fence. I figured it would be fitting for a representative from the FSM Generation to support the students in full-measure. So I clambered over the fence and joined them.  

In the process, however, I punched two holes in my left hand as I swung over the sharp metal spikes on atop the fence. After a minute inside, helping the students clean up the site, I notice that my hand (and my pants) were covered in blood where the fence had ripped my palm open. I had to beat a retreat. In the process of climbing back over the fence, I managed to punch another hole in my hand. Zachary Running Wolf patched me up at the scene.  

As I climbed out (with the assistance of some members of the tree-sit support team) a reporter asked my name. I pointed out that, since I had technically just broken the law, I'd prefer not to give my name. He allowed me to use an alias and I chose "George." What I failed to reveal was that I was not just some aging geezer with a bloodied hand, but I was an FSM vet, a former draft resister, a troop train protester, a Port Chicago vigiler and a tax rebel. And there was one last thing I should have told that reporter: Dang, but if felt good to break the law again!  

This is the summer of disquiet and discontent for supporters of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and for those who may not have supported him in the last election, but still want him to succeed as mayor. 

It has been many weeks since the great, singular triumph of the Dellums administration, when reporters crowded the City Hall rotunda outside the mayor’s office to hear representatives of the Teamsters union and Waste Management, in turn, take the podium to praise Mr. Dellums for being the driving force that ended the garbage workers lockout. That bright and shining moment confirmed all the assertions made by his supporters during last year’s mayoral campaign that Mr. Dellums was willing to do the backbreaking, detailed work necessary to the mayor’s office, and that his legendary powers of persuasion and ability to forge unlikely coalitions through creative compromises would be valuable tools to work out solutions to Oakland’s deep problems. 

But Mr. Dellums is not in the position of a Henry Kissinger, the secretary of state and national security advisor under Nixon, who could disappear for weeks on end without public notice or concern, and then emerge, triumphant, with a China agreement in hand. The mayor is the face of a city. When things are going badly, the citizens want to see that face on a regular basis, and be constantly reassured that the mayor is on the job, working on their problems. 

And so we have people like NovoMetro editor-publisher Alex Gronke calling for Mr. Dellums to publish his daily calendar online, so we can see what the mayor is doing with his time.  

“The cynical, cheap shot response” to Mr. Dellums’ failure to post an online calendar, Mr. Gronke writes in a Sept. 8 blog, “would be to say that … [this] is probably an accurate reflection of his daily doings. Rather than hiding from the public a daily schedule of back room dealing, he is concealing long afternoon naps and occasional speech making in other cities.” 

My friend, Mr. Gronke is right. That is a cheap shot. Local politicians tend to dismiss the demands and concerns of the local media to the extent that we in the media are often far more interested in making an issue of the demand than we are in the actual receipt and dissemination of the information itself. 

Former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown started out religiously posting his calendar online. Nobody seemed to care, to the extent that when Mr. Brown’s staff failed to update it between September of 2005 and March of 2006, and then belatedly published the December and January schedules four months late before stopping, again, altogether, no one in the press (besides myself) raised a stir. 

And when a public records request by PUEBLO of Mr. Brown’s actual calendar—not the one he was posting online—revealed that the former mayor was listing significant time during the day to do fund-raising calls in support of his two private, independent charter schools as part of his daily activities, again, this column was the only place where it was mentioned that the mayor might have been using his time-on-the-clock working on things which actually involved his duties as mayor. 

Meanwhile, remember all the stink in the press about Mr. Dellums’ office allegedly hiding the results of last summer’s various task force meetings and demanding that the reports be made available to the public? Well, the mayoral task force reports have been available to the public for several weeks now, posted on the city website. Having received full access to those reports, many of my media colleagues who howled so loudly to get that information have failed to write a single article or column on what the reports contained. 

A good friend of mine, a long-time political observer and sometimes-activist, often tells me she believes the differences in the way the media scrutinized Mr. Brown and Mr. Dellums amounts to a double standard that has a strain of anti-black racism at its core. While anti-black racism can never be fully discounted in American life—it is, after all, as much a part of the fabric of this nation, from its onset, as was all of our constitutional, capitalist, and revolutionary, principles—I think there is another dynamic at work in how Mr. Dellums and his accomplishments, or lack of accomplishments, are being currently perceived in Oakland, and that stems from both a contradictory duality within the new mayor, some significant differences between how work gets done in Washington and how work gets done in Oakland, and some misconceptions on our own part as to how Mr. Dellums was able to make his mark in the past. 

Mr. Dellums won last year’s election over two tough, veteran city councilmember opponents in large part on the strength of a soaring message of hope that Oakland was a jewel of a city with significant assets—especially among its population—and whose fortunes could be turned around. Mr. Dellums’ high rhetoric—along with his international stature—raised expectations about what his administration would accomplish far and above what would have been looked for in a De La Fuente or a Nadel administration. 

That setting of high goals did not end with the casting of the votes last year. Once, when I was asking Mr. Dellums for details on his proposals to make Oakland into “a model city,” he reminded me, pointedly, was that his goal was to make Oakland “the model city.” 

But the problems facing Oakland—as Mr. Dellums fully knows, and informed any of us who were actually listening in detail—are not those that can be solved with clever strokes or flying phrases. There are significant differences within this city on the three major issues before us: how to lessen the violent crime on our streets, who should live in the city and who should city government serve, and in what form should residential and commercial development proceed. 

We are now hearing a rising chorus of I-told-you-so’s, presumably from supporters of Mr. De La Fuente in the late contest, who are eager to remind us that Mr. De La Fuente would have been a hands-on mayor, and if he had been elected, things would have been off and running in the city. That, however, is something like being told, after you reach the airport to find that your Southwest flight to Los Angeles is delayed, that an Alaska Airlines plane to Seattle is currently boarding and will soon to take off. Yes, the Alaska Airlines staff may be efficient and the flight on-time, but if it is not taking you where you want to go, what’s the point? 

In some areas, Mr. Dellums has waited to establish the city’s direction until citizens of the city—many of whom were left out of such direction-setting decision-making in the past—get the chance to weigh in on how we want our city to work, and what we want our city to be. That was one of the purposes that led to the creation of mayoral task forces, a process that Mr. Dellums believes did not end with the publication of the various reports, but is ongoing. Members of several of the task forces, in fact, are currently identifying themselves by that membership as they participate in the various debates and struggles over Oakland policy issues, and indicating that at least some of the task forces may be on the way towards institutionalizing themselves as both a citizen sounding board and a vehicle for community action. That, in itself, will pay benefits to this city in years to come. 

In some areas, Mr. Dellums appears to have a clear idea of where he wants to go, but cannot get there immediately until some roadblocks are removed. That is certainly the case with Oakland’s violent crime problem. OPD Chief Wayne Tucker has developed a new deployment plan that Mr. Dellums believes will help the police department make significant inroads into creating a community police presence and, in the long run, abating Oakland’s violent crime. But the Oakland Police Officers Association, the police union, is opposed to Mr. Tucker’s plan, and that debate is the subject of the ongoing city-union contract bargaining talks. One can assume that just as in the Waste Management workers lockout, Mr. Dellums is using his significant powers of persuasion to try to win concessions from OPOA and settle the contract talks. But until that is done, and some form of Mr. Tucker’s plan can be implemented, the reorganization of the police department cannot move forward. 

In some areas, such as conforming the city’s zoning code to its General Plan, there are no significant roadblocks, just many months of detailed work in front of city staff. That work was neglected—some say deliberately neglected—under Jerry Brown, and resulted in the sort of hodgepodge development we currently see in Oakland, with enormous subsidies to developers in some areas that will eat up redevelopment funds for years to come, while other large sections of Oakland go to seed. 

With the caveat that he has grown older—as have all of us—and can no longer put in the enormous hours himself that he once did, Mr. Dellums actually appears to be attacking Oakland’s problems in the same way he won international acclaim, successfully attacking problems while in Congress, combining periodic high-rhetoric and stirring speeches to shore up morale and get supporters to work harder with the detailed, background, behind-the-scenes commitment necessary to forge compromises, agreements, and legislation. 

The difference is that while nobody believed that apartheid could be toppled in a day, and saw it as a long-term fight, Oakland residents want solutions to their problems now, or at least some indication that there is significant work being done to solve their problems. That is just the nature of medium-to-big city politics. Along with Mr. Dellums’ own rhetoric, that has caused many citizens of this city to expect both immediate and sustained progress towards meeting the goal of “turning Oakland around.” When questioned about why that has not immediately happened, Mr. Dellums cannot get by with calling us “cynical,” as he so famously did to a television reporter during last month’s press conference announcing his public safety policy. Instead, the mayor must use the same patience with us that he is requesting we give to him, realize that these concerns are genuine and legitimate, and help give the public a better understanding of what is actually going on with the city and his administration, and what we can now reasonably expect. 

Among surviving Victorian homes in Berkeley, the 1877 Bartlett House, 2201 Blake St. at the corner of Fulton is rare, possibly unique. There are similar houses in San Francisco, and others in Oakland and Alameda, but not in Berkeley. 

It’s a substantially unchanged 130-year-old home, particularly on the outside. Retaining a spacious lot in a built-up district, it is designated a City of Berkeley landmark. 

The house is for sale for $1,349,000.  

The listing agent is Arlene Acuna, Marvin Gardens Real Estate, www.2201Blake.com, or 510-206-0793. There’s a real estate open house this coming Sunday afternoon, Sept. 16, 1-4 p.m. 

“The Bartlett houses, in their original setting with virtually no exterior alterations, no structures added to the site since 1892, and with some of the earliest accessory buildings which have survived in the city, are probably the most pristine representation of Victorian Berkeley still in existence,” the landmark nomination notes. 

The Italianate Victorian is a tall, deep and narrow, wooden two-story house with a hipped roof flattened on top and once provided with a widow’s walk observation platform. A formal front porch facing Blake Street leads to a double entrance door, adjacent to a window bay. The wide roof overhang is somewhat out of the ordinary. 

Inside, there’s the standard Victorian entry hall with a steeply impressive staircase rising straight to the second floor. The ground floor has two parlors, the second, inner, one provided with a marble fireplace and pocket doors. 

The hall and the second parlor open into a large room across the width of the house with bay window on the west. Here, things get architecturally interesting. 

This room was once divided in half, with kitchen on one side and dining room on the other. The partition is now gone and this is an airy space with marble fireplace, but kitchen fixtures, including sink, stove, and a closet-like pantry remain along the east wall. 

Directly behind this room there’s the original kitchen space, now fitted out as a bedroom or dayroom and opening to back porch and to a side hallway converted into a downstairs bathroom (note the pass-through from the pantry towards the hall-turned-bathroom). 

Off the rear covered porch there’s a narrow, freestanding, one story structure, reputedly once for servants. 

Spare a thought for Berkeley’s early domestic working class, often immigrants, living very simply in tiny rear or upstairs rooms like these. Their labors and quarters literally lay behind the comfortable lifestyles of the middle and upper classes. 

Other early features—a carved railing, a wall mounted wire mesh pie safe, a side storage room for firewood and coal, and laundry sinks—complete the back porch. 

Round the corner and across the yard is the original stable building. 

Venerable pear trees shed their autumn fruit. A new property line is reportedly being established to divide the freestanding houses at 2201 and 2205 Blake into two parcels for separate sale. 

There’s an ornate recessed side entry on the west of 2201 facing Fulton Street, almost a second front door to the house, approached between the trunks of two large cedars.  

Next to this entry you can see, through a west-facing window, a steep and extremely narrow staircase. Upstairs though, no stair appears; it’s concealed beneath a trap door in the floor of a second floor porch. 

The second floor begins at the south with a window-bayed master bedroom that spans the full width of the house. It’s furnished with a ponderous but impressive dark wooden bedroom set, scaled to the large, high, dimensions of the room. 

Along the east wall there’s a connecting bedroom (reportedly an original bathroom), then a smaller current bathroom. Tucked between the two is a closet-like room with built-ins and a winding stair to the attic (not 

open for viewing). A drawer in the bathroom wall is extremely deep and double-ended, opening to the closet on the other side. 

The back of the second floor contains two bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a glassed-in side porch. From the front staircase a narrow hallway with rounded corner walls zigzags towards the back of the house; it’s a bit like a passageway on a ship. 

In the 1940s the upstairs was apparently converted to two residential units, sharing the bathroom. 

The house retains many of the features that make Victorians special (and 

also sometimes hard to heat). There are high ceilings, large vertical double-hung windows, three window bays, two marble fireplaces, refinished wood floors, and decorative ornamentation. 

One feature of the house that was talked about for years in local historical circles is now irretrievably gone. The original wallpaper and floral ceiling decorations have vanished, replaced with a blandly pleasant interior paint job in neutral white, creams, and light yellows. 

Outside, the house has been painted a deep gray, with lighter trim, consistent with its color for many years. Sitting well back from the street behind a shadowy screen of large evergreen trees—deodar, atlas, incense cedars—the dark house has seemed mysterious for generations. 

A long-time neighbor says that in the 1970s it was called the “haunted house” and she met people who had called it that in the 1920s. 

Stately and reserved perhaps, but haunted, no.  

The house was built by Alfred Bartlett, born in 1841 on an English farm. He did a stint in the British Navy then stowed away to New York at age 15, learned carpentry and retailing, and worked his way aboard a ship to San Francisco in 1857.  

He bought a wagon and turned an early love of books into a career as a traveling bookseller. This brought prosperity enough to buy property and in 1868—the year the University of California was founded—he married Teresa Whitney, a New Yorker who would remain his “faithful and affectionate wife” for more than half a century. 

In 1876, Bartlett bought the Blake Street property at auction and the following year he built 2201 Blake and moved his family there “for the sake of the health of my wife and two daughters.” 

This is a recurrent theme in East Bay history—moving across the bay, glad to get away from chilly, foggy, San Francisco. 

Bartlett continued in book selling and real estate. The landmark nomination for 2201 Blake says the family was “frequently mentioned in the local newspapers, and appear to have been well-liked.” Bartlett even ran for town marshal, unsuccessfully, and two of his three daughters earned degrees from nearby UC. 

In 1892 the Bartletts built the house next door at 2205 Blake, apparently as a rental property. They eventually spent much of their time living in Fresno. Alfred died in 1924, Teresa in 1919. 

In the 1920s the Schendels purchased 2201 Blake. Howard Coleston, Sr. who grew up on Fulton Street, married into the family in the 1940s, the same decade the Bartlett House was reportedly converted to apartments. 

The adjoining houses descended through the Schendel/Coleston family until the present day. 

Alfred Bartlett had written once to his future wife, “You may like a city for a while, but I expect you would soon long for the liberty and natural pleasures of a country life.” Semi-rural Berkeley in the 1870s probably fit that bill. 

The Bartlett House stands on one of 140 “residence lots” put up for auction in October 1876 by Francis Shattuck, subdividing property homesteaded by Berkeley pioneer George Blake. 

This was just a few years after the University of California had moved to its Berkeley site, and the same year Berkeley was formally incorporated as a town. 

Shattuck had arranged for a steam train line to run up his property tract, and rail service began in 1875. The trains made a stop at “Dwight Way Station” just a block northwest of the Bartlett House site, and for years property owners and merchants around that nexus tried hard to make it the center of Berkeley’s growing Downtown. 

The neighborhood escaped that fate, meaning that many early buildings, commercial and residential and including the Bartlett House, survive on the surrounding blocks. 

As the 19th century wore on to a close, the neighborhood was a pleasant residential district of Victorian family homes, both substantial and modest, convenient to campus, commerce, and transportation. 

In the early 20th century, remaining vacant lots filled in with additional houses in newer architectural styles. Depression and World War II resulted in the subdivision of many larger, older, houses into smaller units, while the University population grew and rental demand increased. 

By the 1950s and ‘60s this was sometimes dismissed as a district headed towards dereliction, unfashionable in those days of “suburban flight.” On every block some houses were torn down and replaced with large apartment buildings, including some of Berkeley’s most intrusive stucco “ticky tacks.” 

By the 1970s this was also a district where grassroots neighborhood activism and revival began to emerge. There were rent strikes, communes, and residents successfully protested the “Fulton Freeway”, then a congested southbound commute route to Ashby Avenue. One of Berkeley’s earliest traffic barriers blocks Fulton next to the Bartlett House. 

Not unusual for a district so close to a large university campus, the neighborhood contains many multi-unit structures and short term residents. However, there are a surprising number of long-term residents, both owners and renters. 

For a feel of the neighborhood—-and the really significant collection of early Victorians it contains—stroll a block or two in each direction from the Bartlett House. 

The Bartlett House is well worth a visit on Sunday to see the fine traditional Victorian interior and setting.  

But if you think about buying it, I hope you are someone who truly wants to live in a classic Victorian and make it comfortable without unsympathetic modernist “updates”, “improvements”, and “remodels.” 

And I also hope you value a large, level, yard for its gardening potential, not as a place to build. 

Although this property is privately owned, it’s also a true community cultural treasure.  

Photograph by Steven Finacom. A path framed between cedars approaches the west entrance of the Bartlett House. 

I have always enjoyed looking at houses. I think it started in my childhood, when we used to visit open houses on Sundays after church. As an adult, I have chosen a profession in which I can get access to many, many homes.  

But it has come to my attention that there are others like me, and I think maybe it’s time to start a 12-step program for house junkies. Do you qualify? Answer these simple questions and find out.  

1. When you go on vacation you pick up the real estate magazines at the supermarket and check them to see what houses cost in that area. 

2. You sit on your front porch staring at the house across the street and consider various new color schemes for it. 

3. Your idea of a good time is a trip to the hardware store. 

4. Cabinet hardware excites you. 

5. You joined the National Trust for Historic Preservation just so you could look at the real estate ads in the back of the magazine, and imagine yourself buying a log house from 1790 or an abandoned insane asylum. 

6. While other people are out having brunch on Sundays, you’re on the computer perusing the Daily Planet’s fabulous interactive Open Homes and planning your strategy for touring them. 

7. You would be willing to buy a totally falling down house in the middle of nowhere if it was architecturally fabulous. 

8. If you know a house is vacant, you sneak up and peer through the windows. 

9. You are ecstatic if you find a house with an original kitchen. 

10.Your vacation photos consist entirely of pictures of window muntins. 

11. This line in a real estate ad would get your attention: “ First time on market in 80 years.” 

The good news is that it’s a fairly benign addiction, unless, of course, you act on it by buying the house even though you already have a house.  

Otherwise, 12-step meetings would consist entirely of discussion of houses seen, maybe with photos, and trading notes on which agents will let civilians in during the broker’s tour. Oh, and snacks. 

Photograph by Jane Powell  

The finest house in Ferdinand, Idaho, population 125. The author would have bought this had cooler heads not prevailed. 

Jane Powell is the author of Bungalow Details: Interior and an unreformed house junkie, though she swears she hasn’t bought anything in two years. She can be reached at janepowell@sbcglobal.net. 

We’ll have our usual autumn hot spell, and things will get all dusty and drab, and we’ll all want to grow something green where we can. We’ll plant winter veggies and herbs and something to flower in December maybe, camellias and manzanitas and azaleas.  

This year we’ll need to beware water rationing. It’s odd how mild the recent warnings and requests from EBMUD and the other water districts have been; the reservoirs that I and others who talk to me have seen are scarily low, and the idea that we’ll have a deep-snowpack winter, never mind a locally rainy one, is practically a fantasy.  

So why am I telling you about fountains? I’ve found it’s aesthetically and psychologically wise to concentrate the water you do have, and establishing watering zones—most of the supplemental watering done in one small area, usually close to the house, and more water-thrifty plants taking up the rest of the garden—is Step One.  

Step Two might reasonably be water at play, a focus for the eye and ear of moving water. I suspect it’s a human universal to enjoy the movement, sound, light refraction and diffraction and reflection, and cool hospitable atmosphere of dancing water. 

Given what I saw at TAG Fountains Garden Pottery (the business card has those last three words equitably arranged around the shop’s name; maybe the idea is not to play favorites?) the zone-planting idea is also a necessity if you include a fountain. They all splash a little, but not quite so predictably that you can count on that for the surrounding plants’ supply.  

I myself like fragrant-leafed plants where they can be jostled now and then and release their scent. The majority of such plants seem to be droughty desert- or chaparral-dwellers whose fragrant oils are part of their water-retaining capacity, holding moisture in the leaves and also discouraging herbivores from making a main dish of them. 

Notable exceptions are mints, and a ring of whatever mint strikes your fancy around a fountain—carefully contained of course, given their invasive tendencies—would be twice hospitable, throwing out the occasional zing of fragrance and garnishing (or composing) a cool drink. 

This TAG place has quite the variety of shapes to choose from: pillars, balls, nymphs, abstracts, your basic spitting lionhead, and one that struck me as startling, an apparent Buddha-head of the hobnail hairdo variety with water flowing smoothly from his topknot to veil his entire face and head.  

I guess it tweaked my attention because, though there are Jesus and Mary statues among the various sculptures there, they aren’t plumbed. No weeping Immaculate Heart, and the lamb The Good Shepherd carries in the crook of his arm isn’t piddling on him. Think of the possibilities left unexplored! 

Lots of pots, mostly large; ornaments to stand or hang, from Green Man to gazing ball; hanging votive-candle lamps with a dressy jeweled look; a chiminea and an alleged tiki that looks more like one of the moai from Rapa Nui.  

(For local tiki carving, go on down to the Templebar at 8th and University and see what Kem Loong Jr. has been doing.)  

TAG Garden Pottery Fountains 

725 Gilman St. 

849-1514 

http://www.tagpottery.com 

10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily 

My wife and I have been arguing about our house for 20 years. I know this isn’t unusual but it’s noteworthy and I’m going to take the long way ‘round in proving the point.  

People fight about houses. They fight about what color to paint, who gets to put a painting up on a particular wall, what repairs to make and how clean to keep it. It’s hard enough when one person owns and cares for a house but when two try to negotiate the arrangement of space, it’s congressional oversight 24/7. 

I, for one, feel like I’m having a serious debate every time I try to decide where to place a piece of furniture in a room. I’m quite capable of having an argument with myself (“stop that!”, “no, you stop that!”). 

Carl Jung argued, some 90 years ago, that I do this because I’m really whole bunch of neatly packed into one anatomy, and further, that I’m also identifying with the table, the room, the floor and the cat. So, it’s not so much that I’m rearranging the room, it’s more like I’m fixing my hair and deciding how tanned I should be. When the table isn’t just so, I look wrong. Just imagine when we get to painting the room! 

Berkeley is an exciting and wonderful place and due, in no small part, to our bountiful and delicious university. Nearly 30 years ago, I had the good fortune to study here and among the fascinating soldiers of knowledge I encountered on the field of battle was one Clare Cooper Marcus, a student of both Jung and of Architecture. 

Clare talked in class about what would eventually become ink in House As a Mirror of Self (published in 1995, some 15 years later. The paperback came out last year).  

She posits the notion that we experience the built world as an extension of ourselves. This perspective both enriches and also complicates our relationship with our houses, huts and garages. It also provides a valuable tool for looking into our relationships, particularly those we share real estate with. 

If I see my house as an extension of myself (Does this porch make me look fat?) and my partner sees the SAME house as an extension of herself, how the hell do we manage to remodel anything. Anyone who’s been through the arduous remodeling process with a partner can attest to the strain it can put on the relationship. In fact, while I’ve never seen any statistics (and would love to), I’m quite sure that a major remodel is one of the primary causes of a breakup or divorce. I say this simply having been around the remodeling (and marital) world for decades and having seen a shocking number of these in my own field of vision (or as stories shared by friends and colleagues). 

When two people are trying to express their own inner selves on the canvas of home, it’s a trial of mythological proportion. All the demons and homunculi come out, put on their little tiny tool belts and go at it, tearing down walls, throwing spaghetti and tiny balls of fire. Our distant pasts collide and can either blend into artistic visions (as in the case of the great collaborations of art and science history) or rail and raze the cities of our inner and outer lives. 

Again, this is hard enough when one person is involved. As a recovering remodeling contractor I can say with authority that helping a single person remodel their home is often quite trying. Remodelers usually try to keep their personalities out of the work and let the client have all the say (at least on what it looks like since how it’s built should be their domain) so you would think that this would simplify things. Well, it surely does but it’s still hard. Mr. Jung and Ms. Cooper Marcus have shed some light on why this is. Allow me to take this light and focus it a bit. 

If we accept the theorem that the house is a symbol of the self (Your self for example) what happens when someone starts remodeling your house is that they begin moving your nose a little to the left, your hairline backward or down to your eyebrows or your knees up to your hips. 

O.K., let’s set this grotesqueness aside for a second in favor of another. Remodeling is physically like surgery on your house, full of incisions, joint replacements and catheterizations. When we rewire your house, is this neurosurgery? When we replumb, is it a triple bypass? 

Remodeling is, in some psychological way, a reshaping of the person, people or relationships that exist inside the space. Even if we set the Zen-crystal-macrobiotic stuff aside for the moment, it’s not hard to see the Cartesian (republican) equivalents. Cutting up my house is disruptive and the dust and mess and lack of peace is harsh, dude.  

Nevertheless, I’m actually convinced that there IS something deeper going on and the test is in the identification that people clearly have with the smallest details in their homes.  

Anyone who has ever spent time with a really ob-com (obsessive compulsive) person can tell you that the relocation of the smallest object or the tiniest mess can set them off into flights of mania. This is due to the fragility of their inner I.D. When we have a deep, strong sense of ourselves and are grounded in a profound understanding of our place in the universe, a dirty car is not a big deal. When we’re not, we need to build masks that hold our identity (house, car, income) over the void of doubt. 

This suggests that in some sort of way, a remodel is a radical therapy, forcing the inner self to the surface and into the light of day. Remodeling contractors know this even if they don’t know that they know it. They know that at some point, even the nicest, sanest client is going to lose it when they’ve been deprived of their serene space for 10 weeks.  

When I was in the business, I used to interview clients and pay close attention to the neatness of the house. If it was fussy-perfection clean, I would find a way to avoid taking the job. This was the client that was going to go ballistic at some point when their image of the world (self, house) had literally crumbled into plaster dust.  

Now, that said, there are people who are just the opposite, looking for the extreme psychic makeover. The adventurous person who will go on Nepal treks or change jobs at the drop of a hat. Younger people more often fit this profile but that is definitely a generalization that wears thin fast. You get the point. The free and open-minded do better when we begin the psychic surgery of remodeling and the tight-as-a-drum go catawampus. 

If no other good comes out of this area of inquiry, I’m certain that the remodeling industry can gain greatly. Of course, they don’t tend to listen to this sort of thing so it will have to be “hammered” into them by academics, clients and writers so in say, 100 years, I think we’ll be good to go. 

This week’s column is dedicated to my old aerobics classmate Anita Feder-Chernila. Anita, a Berkeley gestalt therapist, consulted with Clare Cooper Marcus in the early years of Clare’s development of her theories and I’m certain that all those leg lifts and Cyndi Lauper records must have somehow insinuated themselves into Clare’s theories. Or maybe it only proves that Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. 

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

Maybe a bit early like so many things this year, the vine maples at the Botanic Garden in Tilden Park are putting on their quiet fireworks show.  

One of our short list of native maples, vine maple, Acer circinatum, is way too uncommon in the gardened landscape. I suspect that people haven’t had enough practice with it as a tame plant to know its best habits and favorite conditions, though they’re easy enough to see in the wild.  

They do need water and a moist atmosphere. They’re native mostly to coastal places north of the Bay Area up through British Columbia; my favorite spot to meet them, though, is along the creek in the understory at Burney Falls, up north of Mount Lassen. They get respectably big there, posing picturesquely over a trail or peering into their dancing and shapeshifting reflections in fast-moving Burney Creek; they also grow in the fashion that gave them their name, sprawling in a trappy tangle underfoot.  

Burney Falls is a most unlikely place: an oasis in the north taper of the Central Valley, a good place to repair to on a hot day. The temperature difference from the top of the trail to creek below is at least ten degrees Fahrenheit and feels like more. Hot and dry up there, cool and moist down here in the mist thrown off by the waterfall—the reverse of what one comes to expect after spending time on a mountain—and the “up there” is the normal surface of the surrounding landscape.  

A mossy Douglas-fir forest carved into the sagebrush desert isn’t the only odd feature of Burney Falls. The waterfall itself, a big roaring rainbowmaking vapor machine, is inhabited by black swifts.  

These little birds nest and rear their young in niches in the rock under the gravity curtain of the falls, flying through tons of pounding water many times every day, forcing their way by sheer speed and bluff through that seemingly impassable kinetic moat to feed their kids and maintain their nests.  

They’re being respectable and domestic as any suburban play-date organizers, but the effect as the groups roar off and return spiraling from their bug-gathering expeditions is of tiny little motorcycle gangs ripping circles overhead and yelling “Yeeee-hah!”  

In such engagingly paradoxical places grow the southeastern ambassadors of this mostly northern little tree. It’s most common along the coast here in its California province, in the rich understory of the big-tree (not to be confused with Big Tree, one of several confusing vernacular names for the Sierran Sequoiadendron giganteum) forests, the northernmost redwoods and Douglas-fir and true fir.  

We don’t have a lot of native maples in the West; offhand I can think of only four in Califirnia, and only two we see much in the wildlands here: bigleaf maple, Acer macrophyllum, and boxelder, Acer negundo, which doesn’t look much like a maple until it grows the maple-nose seed structures called samaras.  

“Nose?” Snap one in half, split the seed and the resulting protuberant appliance will stick nicely to your nose for as long as you care to look silly. I don’t understand why the mythical Green Man doesn’t wear one. Symbolic wood-ha’nts ought not to be solemn. 

When it’s not sprawling over the ground and tripping hikers, vine maple stands up nicely as a multitrunked or single-trunked tree, its habit strongly resembling Japanese maple’s. In leaf, it is nearly identical to the Japanese native moon maple or full-moon maple. More confusion: Japanese maple, common in cultivation here and with dozens of cultivars, is Acer palmatum, while moon maple is Acer japonicum.  

Vine maple has those rounded, rickrack-bordered leaves like moon maple’s; I don’t trust myself to tell the two apart at a glance.  

Vine maple might have a more general inclination towards red than moon maple has; it certainly makes vine maple stand out in its native habitat. Its leaves are reddish to bronzed-gold in fall; red-tinged new foliage in spring; with red leaf pedicels and some reddish leaf-edges always. It’s paradoxically warm-looking in a cool green-shadowed forest.  

It’s more closely related to the Asian maples than to its North American neighbors. This sort of distributional oddity occurs in a good handful of other plant species like our redwoods who have a remnant living cousin in China, the dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides. Follow the family trees of the magnolias and the rhododendrons for more examples of the surprised wrought by continental drift and eons of climate change. 

There are a couple of vine maples on the UC campus, passing for Japanese maples until you take a second look. The best place to see them en masse, though, is the Tilden Botanic Garden. In fact, that’s a good place to go get a taste of what the California landscape in its original state has to offer in this dusty, desiccated, drawn-out season. 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. 

Vine maple leaves in Tilden Park's Botanic Garden, August 22, 2007.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 14 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Urinetown, The Musical” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through Oct. 6. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Hysteria” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Sept. 30. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822.  

Black Repertory Group “Secret War” Fri. at 8 p.m., Gala on Sat. at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $25-$45. 652-2120.  

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Rumors” by Neil Simon, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sundays at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave. at Moeser, El Cerrito, through Oct. 14. Tickets are $11-$18. 655-8974. www.cct.org 

Impact Theatre “Sleepy” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Oct. 13. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Masquers Playhouse “The Shadow Box” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. matinees, at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Runs through Sept. 29. This show is not recommended for children. Tickets are $15. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Ragged Wing Ensemble “Alice in Wonderland” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Envision Academy, 1515 Webster St., Oakland, through Oct. 13. Tickets are $15-$30. 800-838-3006. www.raggedwing.org 

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat” Fri.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd., Oakland, through Sept. 16. Tickets are$23-$36. 531-9597.  

EXHIBITIONS 

New Works by Carol Dalton and Emily Payne Opening reception at 6 p.m. at the Cecile Moochnek Gallery, 1809-D Fourth St., upstairs. 549-1018. 

“Garnish” An exhibition of wearable art. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at the ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. www.accigallery.org 

FILM 

Midnight Movies “The Big Lebowski” Fri. and Sat. at midnight at Piedmont Cinema, 4186 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Cost is $8. 464-5980. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

John Curl and Marianne Robinson read their poetry at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave., at Hearst. 841-6374. 

Richard Schwartz describes “Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher read from “Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas” at 7 p.m. at Beebe Memorial Cathedral, 3900 Telegraph Ave., Oakland.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Rafael Manriquez at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$15.. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

Ras Igel, Razorblade, Carl McDonald, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention with Tom Sauber, Brad Leftwich & Alice Gerrard, Lee Stripling Trio, Heidi Clare at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

Polkacide, Fuxedos, Japonize Elephonts at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Dr. Know, Circle One at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

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

Hiroshima at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 15 

CHILDREN  

“Mexica: An Aztec Tale” Sat. and Sun. at 12:30 and 3:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave. 452-2259 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Inside Out” New works by painter Cheryl Finfrock and sculptor Michael Pargett. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Float Gallery, 1091 Calcot Place, Unit #116, Oakland. www.thefloatcenter.com 

Positively Ageless A Celebration of Art & Aging at 6 p.m. at 4th Street Studio, 1717 Fourth St. Cost is $25. Benefits Adult Day Services Network of Alameda County. www.fourthstreetstudio.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Nelson Peery discusses “Black Radical: The Education of An American Revolutionary” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

“Addicted to Hope” with comic Mark Lundholm at the California’s Writer’s Club, at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble Event Loft, Jack London Square. 272-0120. www.berkeleywritersclub.org 

East Bay Lesbian Poets read at 7 p.m. at Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru at Lincoln, Alameda. Open mic follows. 523-6957. www.frankbettecenter.org  

Robin Romm reads from her short story collection “The Mother Garden” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

String Band Contest and performance by Gallus Brothers at 11 a.m. at Berkeley Farmers’ Market, MLK and Center St.  

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention with The Tallboys, Dram County and Knuckle Knockers at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15, children ages 5-18, $5.. 525-5054.  

Interreligious Art & Music Festival from 1 to 5 p.m. at Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley, Ave. Free and open to the public. http://drbu. 

org/research/iwr/festival/ 

Araucaria, traditional Chilean music and dance, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

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

Five Eyed Hand at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Don Villa & Ethan Bixby, guitar, at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Jack Williams & Ronny Cox at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Royal Hawaiian Serenaders at 9 p.m. at Temple Bar Tiki Bar & Grill, 984 University Ave. 548-9888. 

Serenity Fisher, Zach Fisher at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. 

Triple Ave. at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

The Unreal Band, Pat Nevins and Stu Allen of Workingman’s Ed at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Charles Wheal & the Excellorators at 9 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810.  

Ghoul, Funerot, Oskorei at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 16 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Face of Place” mixed media by Janet Brugos, opening reception from 2 to 5 p.m. at L’Amyx Tea Bar, 4179 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. www.lamyx.com 

FILM 

Tomu Uchida: Japanese Genere Master “Policeman” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Conversations on Art “Music, Liturgy and Cultural Fusions: The Making of Revisions Shahrokh Yadegari Through Music” at 2 p.m. at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $10-$12. 549-6950.  

Rhoda Curtis introduces “Rhoda: Her First Ninety Years, a Memoir” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Lauren Bank Deen demonstrates crafts and recipes from “Kitchen Playdates” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sundays @ Four Chamber Music with Axel Strauss, violin and Miles Graber, piano at 4 p.m. at Crowden Music Center. Tickets are $12, free for children. concerts@crowden.org 

Americana Unplugged with Berkeley Old Time Cabaret at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

The Snake Trio at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10. 228-3218. 

Cabaret in the Castle with Mark Gilbert & Friends, in a fundraiser for Berkeley City Club at 4:30 p.m. at The Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $45-$55. 883-9710. 

Araucaria, traditional Chilean music and dance, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Vasen, Swedish folk revivalists, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

Quejerema & Quarto Latino Americano de Saxafones at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

MONDAY, SEPT. 17 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ernest Bloch Lecture Series with Martha Feldman on “Of Strange Births and Comic Kin” 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Tea Party Magazine reading with poet Craig Santos Perez at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Suggested donation $10. 849-2568.  

David Leavitt introduces “The Indian Clerk” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with Jan Steckel and Stephen Kopel at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Classical at the Freight with the Stern/Simon Duo at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. 

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

Lavay Smith & The Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $16. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, SEPT. 18 

CHILDREN 

Daffy Dave the Clown at 6:30 p.m. Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. For ages 3 and up. 524-3043. 

FILM 

“It’s a Funny, Mad, Sad, World: The Movies of George Kuchar” with filmmaker George Kuchar at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

David Barsamian will discuss his book “Targeting Iran” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic featuring Eva Schlesinger at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761.  

Ian Klaus describes “Elvis is Titanic: Classroom Tales from the Other Iraq” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Book. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Gator Beat at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun/Zydeco dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Christian Scott at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 19 

EXHIBITIONS 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Opens with a curator’s talk at noon at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way, and runs through Dec. 23. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. 

FILM 

“Amax: La Memoria del Tiempo” on the 1932 genocide of the Nahua-Pipil of El Salvador, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$20. 849-2568.  

International Latino Film Festival “O Casamento de Romeu e Julieta” at 7 p.m. at Richmond Public Library, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. 620-6555. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt describe “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donations accepted. 559-9500. 

Lucy Jane Bledsoe reads from her new novel, “Biting the Apple,” at 7 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Andrew Helfer introduces “Ronald Reagan: A Graphic Biography” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jazz Masters Concert with Calvin Keys, jazz guitarist, at noon at 12th and Broadway, Oakland.  

Wednesday Noon Concert, Jazz Faculty Recital at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Whiskey Brothers, old-time and bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

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

Mazacote at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Rebecca Griffin at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Le Vent du Nord, music of Quebéc at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. 

Christian Scott at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 20 

EXHIBITIONS 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Guided tour at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. 

Works by Ocean Quigley Artist reception at 7 p.m. at Artbeat Salon & Gallery, 1887 Solano Ave. 527-3100.  

FILM 

“Fall of the I-Hotel” a film and panel discussion on the evictions in Manilatown, San Francisco in 1977, at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. 238-2022. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Peter Dale Scott reads from “The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire and the Future of America” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Randall Robinson discusses “An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President” at 6:30 p.m. at Allen Temple Baptist Church, 8501 International Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$20 and are available from Marcus Books, 3900 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, Oakland. 652-2344. 

Writing Jewish History with Frances Dinkelspiel at 6:30 p.m. at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. 549-6950. www.magnes.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Melanie O'Reilly and pianist John R. Burr, jazz and Irish traditional music at 12:15 p.m. in the Art & Music Room of the Central Library, 2090 Kittredge at Shattuck. 981-6100. 

Dubconscious, reggae with guest Kaptain Harris, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13-$8. 525-5054. 

Mark Morris Dance Group “Mozart Dances” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$72. 642-9988.  

Old Blind Dogs at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Kitt Weagant CD Release Party at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Citta di Vitti, Rubber City at 10 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. 

Larry Harlow and the Latin Legends Band at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

“Motion picture stars bowing to admiring throngs and stopping before microphones to extend greetings. Dazzling klieg lights, brighter than a torrid desert sun. Powerful searchlights piercing the darkness above with sudden flashes. Music and flowers.” 

It would be, the Berkeley Daily Gazette said, “Hollywood transplanted here” and “the greatest theatrical event in the history of Berkeley.” 

That was 75 years ago, Sept. 16, 1932, as Berkeley’s new United Artists theater opened on Shattuck Avenue, just south of the Berkeley Public Library. 

The opening was big news in Depression-era Berkeley, which preened in the assurance that a national corporation was willing to invest in the community, despite economic hardship. 

Then, as now, there were several movie theaters downtown, but the new building with its fluid sculptural facade, enormous marquee with hundreds of lights, and towering sign that proclaimed “United Artists” in neon up and down Shattuck Avenue, changed the commercial and physical landscape. 

Berkeleyans flocked to the spectacle. 

“Every one of the 1,800 luxurious seats in the theater was filled within five minutes after the doors opened,” reported the Berkeley Daily Gazette the next day. “Twice as many filled the foyers, waiting for an opportunity to obtain seats for the second show.” 

“A solid mass of stargazers” outside ogled the celebrities who arrived in “a fleet of new sedans,” after dining at the Berkeley Country Club. Actors and actresses “mingled with their local admirers, laughing and 

chatting and writing autographs on anything that would take ink or lead pencil.” 

They included “beautiful blond Josephine Dunn” and “the vivacious Spanish dancer, Senorita Conchita Montenegro,” both splendid in evening gowns and “costly outer wraps.” Male stars included “broad-shouldered, swaggering George Bancroft,” “youthful Marty Kemp, suave Lou Cody” and “crooning, good looking, Bing Crosby,” who rushed over from a performance in Oakland to attend the opening. 

“Outside as late as 10 o’clock several thousand persons stood in the street.” Police and firemen managed the crowds, not only on Shattuck but around the corner of Bancroft where a “great throng” waited to see movie stars emerge from the stage door. 

Inside the theater, Bancroft recited a monologue and comic actor “Stuttering Roscoe” Ates paired with Kemp on “an impromptu dialogue which even had Master of Ceremonies Cody laughing.” 

Berkeley Mayor Thomas Caldecott came forward to “extend the City’s greetings to the United Artists and the Fox West Coast Theaters corporations for giving Berkeley such a magnificent theater.” 

Caldecott had earlier posed with two “pretty usherettes” to sign the “biggest proclamation in the world” which had noted “life in Berkeley and its surrounding communities takes on a new and bright aspect” with the opening of the theater. 

“Practically every city official and civic leader of Berkeley and the East Bay district was in the audience, including the entire City Council.” 

United Artists was founded by powerhouse stars Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith to make films and, as was typical of the time, show them in its own corporate theaters. 

Berkeley’s UA Theater “was an early link in the United Artists chain,” and “fairly deluxe,” says Gary Parks, southwest director of the Theater Historical Society of America. Southern California had several similarly designed UA theaters. 

Berkeley, though, has the only one where the allegorical figure of “Artistry” is on the left on the facade, “Unity” on the right. “Let’s hear it for Berkeley non-conformity,” Parks says. 

“The Berkeley UA was the work of Clifford Balch, with Walker & Eisen,” he notes, while the interior painted decoration were done by the Heinsbergen Decorating Company of Los Angeles. 

The Berkeley theater is perhaps the only one of its type still directly connected to United Artists, which merged with Regal Cinemas and Edwards Theaters to form Regal Entertainment Group, which runs 6,368 screens in 529 locations around the country and calls itself “the largest motion picture exhibitor in the world.” 

When the $300,000 UA Berkeley opened, it had a single screen and the filmgoer was offered a spectacle extending from curb to commode.  

“The brilliantly illumined marquee and the lobby give no idea of the beauty and space within,” the Gazette reported at the opening. 

The theater originally had a tile-floored atrium open to the street, with a four-sided dome; it’s now enclosed and carpeted. 

“Once through the outside doors patrons will be delighted with the artistic outer foyer with its high, richly toned ceilings, the great French plate glass mirrors on either side, the delicate warmth of color and the great black and gold illustrated panels, depicting above, on and below the earth,” the Gazette wrote. 

There was no concession counter. “Theatres in the 1930s in some cases did experiment with things like candy machines, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that concessions became common,” says Parks. 

From the lobby, “straight ahead the artistic mezzanine looms up with its polished aluminum railings like glistening silver” the Gazette wrote. “Then further ahead is the inner foyer with its wonderful murals depicting the drama. To the right is the main lounging room, replete with comfortable and handsome furniture, a gigantic solid mahogany table on which is mounted a beautiful silver statuette. Here there are roomy Chesterfields in Spanish and modernistic design sufficient to seat comfortably nearly 100 persons.” 

Within the theater one found, the Gazette said, “the massive stage, the artistic contours and decorations of the proscenium arch, the golden console and generously large orchestra pit which extends outward so far that it makes the front row of seats desirable ones at a distance sufficient from the silver screen.” 

The stage, 25 feet deep, had a dozen adjacent dressing rooms, and was equipped “to present all kinds of stage attractions at any time there is demand to offer vaudeville here.”  

Patrons could also luxuriate in non-theatrical amenities. 

The “ladies’ parlors” included “overstuffed furniture, lounges and individual chairs, beautiful French plate glass mirrors” and “inviting” lighting. The main women’s lounge has “smoking stands” and a “cosmetic room” with dressing tables. 

The men got their own smoking room with walls “stenciled with various sports—football, baseball, track, polo, hunting and fishing, tennis and basketball.” 

Many of these features are now gone or covered up. In the 1970s the main auditorium and balcony were partitioned to provide four separate screens, although liniments of the original spaces can still be seen. 

Further renovations in the early 1980s caused worries that the lobby would be compromised, and heartfelt appeals were made to the management. As a result, the original glass and wood entrance doors, set back from the street, were preserved, a matching new mural was added, and the lobby stayed intact. 

“The high standards of the original design are something that future generations would appreciate as theaters of this type are becoming increasingly rare,” wrote architectural historian Michael Crowe to the president of United Artists in 1982. 

“The glittering, labyrinthine Aladdin’s Cave of a lobby, belying the building’s small street facade, still conveys the feelings of surprise and splendor that were part of the great days of movie-going. This must not be lost now,” wrote the Berkeley Historical Society. 

The theater now has now seven screens serving about 1,400 seats, according to Regal Entertainment representatives. 

Outside, the original marquee is gone along with the neon tower. In the 1960s and ’70s, Parks says, civic and architectural distaste for neon brought about the demise of numerous theater signs, including Berkeley’s. 

The facade retains its original flowing Art Deco character but has been painted. It’s one of the more prominent and important architectural compositions from its era in Berkeley, complementary to the Deco-style Berkeley Public Library, just up the block. 

Some original furnishings are at the Oakland Paramount, while others are scattered among private collectors. The theater organ is now privately owned and may end up, Parks says, in a theater in Astoria, Ore. 

On opening night in 1932 the organ was central to the entertainment, with four virtuosos offering solos as a prelude to “a typical theater opening program” on film. 

A Will Rogers comedy, Down to Earth, was the feature film. “There was one of those almost tragically funny ‘Screen Souvenirs,’ a Magic Carpet Travel, a Mickey Mouse cartoon and the Metrotone news.” 

Tickets cost 30 cents for general admission and 40 cents for loge seats at matinees, 45 cents and 69 cents on evenings, Sundays and holidays, and “children 10 cents any time.” 

“Those who waited in the foyers were loud in their praise of the wonderful lounging rooms, the artistic decorations. Hundreds stopped to congratulate Manager Clarence L. Laws on the beauty of the theater and the wonderful service rendered by the house staff.” 

Back then, elaborately uniformed staffers ushered patrons to their seats and even posed for publicity photos. Today’s staffers are practically invisible in comparison and there’s no such thing as an usher, only an employee who slips in silently after each showing to clean up. 

In 1932 Councilmember Reese Clark said the theater “is one of the beauty spots of the downtown district.  

“Berkeley at one time was known as a ‘show town’ and, if the theaters continue to express their confidence in Berkeley with such luxurious structures, it again will assume that role.” 

Berkeley Police Chief Greening added “bright lights are a deterrent to crime—criminals fear them more than any other one thing. That is exactly what the new … theater has brought to the downtown business area—bright lights and plenty of them.” 

“Berkeley citizens are entitled to the best that the show world has to 

offer,” Greening concluded.  

And that’s just what they enjoyed on that brilliant night, 75 years ago. 

Photograph Courtesy Regal Entertainment 

In late 1966 the theater still had its original marquee, below the neon sign tower that dominated the façade.  

It’s only appropriate, after a play about Freud’s last days in England (“Freudian slips,” shots of morphine and meeting Salvador Dali), that what’s remembered breaks down to obsessive, recurrent actions and images, signaled by the insistent tapping of an unexpected visitor on a glass door leading from a study into a garden. 

Terry Johnson’s Hysteria, now on-stage at the Aurora, with Joy Carlin directing, is subtitled “or Fragments of an Analysis of an Obsessional Neurosis,” a sliver that cuts both—or all—ways. Swinging back and forth between a serious look at the Father of Psychoanalysis facing the immediacy of mortality while attempting to continue till the end, exiled in England after the Anschluss has driven him from Vienna, and a crazy, slapstick farce of pretension and self-deception, it’s a very English thing, strung out between a Cambridge seminar and an uptown music hall.  

In some ways, Johnson pulls out the stops on Stoppard, at least in posing a theatrical conundrum that’s a projection of its audience’s grasp of the subject at hand. 

And what better subject for a conundrum than a riff off the actual meeting between the investigator into the psychic meaning of slips of the tongue, jokes and riddles and the premier illustrator, mid-20th century, of the mental state which produces them? 

The encounter between Freud and Dali takes the form of a bad daydream, a mirage of how Freud might have felt about meeting the self-parodying autofarceur of Surrealist painting, who liked to grandstand in both personal meetings and public appearances. 

That stellar meeting is, however, sandwiched between a less explicable intrusion, that of a strange woman at the rainy garden door, who alternately seems to be seeking something or seeking to deliver something else, both threatening and vulnerable in both her tenacity at remaining in the master’s presence despite his commands for her to leave, and her determination to doff her clothes.  

The scene itself is hysterical, and becomes the unlikely, if eponymous, ground for an inquiry into the case which helped decide Freud’s shift in the theory of “family romance” from the more confrontational positing of widespread child molestation to the later complexities of “infant sexuality,” the repressed incidents explained as what the seeming victim imagined or desired to happen. 

It’s a heady brew both the actors and audience bolt down, like Alice sampling the bottle marked “Drink me” (and, as in Surrealism itself, besides English domestic life, there are many other reminders of “Alice” at odd moments during a roller-coaster evening.) 

The cast is top notch—Warren David Keith a stalwart yet bumbling Freud (without, alas, the charm exhibited in his books and remarks to the press, but with what Sherlock Holmes, that other intrepid unraveler of mysteries, dubbed “a pawky humor” in his otherwise straight man sidekick, Dr. Watson). The Dr. Watson of this adventure is a composite physician, administering the shots which will eventually euthanize Freud, and Jewish scholar, delivering another kind of shot, chiding the master for his agnostic Moses and Monotheism, produced at a desperate moment for those other Jews still stuck in the Reich from whence they fled. Charles Dean plays Abraham Yahuda with an admirable, dry poise, anchoring the antics of the rest of the bunch. 

The chimerical Salvador Dali is nicely portrayed with spread-eagled waxed mustache, an overwrought flourish and comic swagger worthy of Danny Kaye by Howard Swain, who hilariously makes every self-regarding move seem like both an entrance and an exit. 

But the most elusive, shadowy character, whose historical antecedents are legion, victims and children of victims all—Jessica the erudite intruder—is the most fully, profoundly portrayed, by splendid Nancy Carlin. Perhaps freed of the necessity (and temptation) to make up a half-historically accurate caricature, like the others, she is the catalyst, the reagent, for the strange alchemy that makes the play work, that takes it past the status of a Monty Python or Beyond The Fringe camping and into the realm of real theater. As Freud intones at the end, “The year I looked into myself is the year that is killing me!” 

The production values are practically seamless. All add to the total effect, constantly jostled by the seesaw dynamics and sometimes burlesque tone. The cast was still playing with the very British timing and humor the first weekend, but was out of the gate and running with it. They’re thoroughbreds—it can get to be muddy going, but the only slip will be Freudian—and this time, intentional. 

HYSTERIA 

8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 30 at Aurora Theater, 2081 Addison St. $40-$42. 843-4822.  

The names and their general significance may still be familiar, but the details of the lives and trials of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti have faded over time. The names have become shorthand for injustice, for political persecution, for America’s tendency to at times fall disastrously short of its ideals. Yet while these two men remain potent symbols, symbols do not live and breathe.  

Sacco and Vanzetti, an excellent documentary by Peter Miller, newly released on DVD, restores the humanity to these men, these Italian immigrants who came to America in search of the land of liberty and opportunity, only to find that much of the American Dream was just that.  

They found themselves faced with the conundrum of a nation of immigrants that despised immigrants, and Italians were ranked among the lowest of the low. They found a land where economic exploitation was rampant, and where opportunity was plentiful only for those who could afford it.  

The film uses photographs and archival footage of Sacco and Vanzetti as well as first-hand accounts and impassioned testimony from historians to paint a picture of the men, the times, the turmoil and fallout of their trial and persecution. But the most moving device is the readings, by John Turturro and Tony Shalhoub, of letters written by the two men from their prison cells. Vanzetti at one point wrote to his sister back home in Italy, telling her, “This is no longer the America that excited your imagination. America, dear sister, is called the land of liberty, but in no other country on Earth does a man tremble before his fellow man like here.” Other letters to family and friends reveal the two as men of great dignity and resilience, facing death with bravery, honor and sadness—sadness not for themselves but for their loved ones and for the wayward path of their adopted homeland. They spoke little to no English upon their arrival, yet by the time they faced execution each man had acquired an eloquence rarely attained by many native speakers.  

They were anarchists, non-violent as best anyone can tell, whose politics stemmed from first-hand experience of capitalism run amok. They came with dreams of democracy, liberty, opportunity and, perhaps above all, fairness and the rule of law. Yet what they discovered was the grim reality behind the facade, and in their search for answers to these vexing problems they settled on anarchism as the ideal solution.  

Some details may come as a surprise to many viewers. For instance, though it is readily apparent that neither of the men was involved in the murder for which they were convicted, it is not only possible that they knew the murderers but that they may have had knowledge of the crime before it occurred. The fact is, much of the case is still shrouded in mystery. 

What is known, however, is that two men were targeted for their ethnicity and their political beliefs, that evidence against them was falsified, and that neither man received anything resembling a fair trial. The story, of course, contains many parallels with modern-day America, links that are clear and obvious. But that doesn’t stop the filmmakers from hitting the point with excessive force in the final moment. It is a forgivable misstep in an otherwise fluid and informative documentary that gives shape, shading and meaning to one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in the land of the First Amendment.  

Blood in the Face, another documentary examining the face of American bigotry, just released on DVD, was made in 1991. And if its subject matter no longer seems shocking or even surprising, that’s hardly the filmmakers’ fault. A film about neo-nazis and the threat of terrorism from within America’s heartland just doesn’t pack quite the punch in might have in the days before the Oklahoma City bombing. 

The title comes from a racist leader’s description of who should control America: white people, he says, those who can “show blood in the face,” and he demonstrates this by slapping his cheek to bring about a rosy blush. 

Filmmakers Anne Bohlen, Kevin Rafferty and James Ridgeway enlisted the newly famous Michael Moore to assist in interviewing a stunningly ignorant group of American fascists, but don’t expect a Michael Moore film here by any means. In fact, the man is barely recognizable in voice or profile. There is a bit of humor here, some confrontation and some point-blank questioning, but nothing like the style Moore has employed since 1989’s Roger and Me. It’s just not necessary. This is a group of people so misguided, so foolish, so narrow-minded and mean, that all one has to do is give them the rhetorical rope and let them hang themselves from their own burning crucifixes. So we just watch and wait and sigh as these self-proclaimed chosen ones struggle to choose their words, stumbling more often than not into rhetorical labyrinths that twist and turn and fold back on themselves, eventually spitting the speaker out at exactly the point where he entered. “Why are whites superior?” they ask themselves, and the answer, distilled from rambling rants about Hitler, the Bible and Manifest Destiny, repeats the question: “Because they’re white.” Or, more accurately, “Because I’m white,” as, oddly enough, there seems to be little support for their cause among non-whites. 

Image:  

Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco as depicted by artist Ben Shahn.

Among surviving Victorian homes in Berkeley, the 1877 Bartlett House, 2201 Blake St. at the corner of Fulton is rare, possibly unique. There are similar houses in San Francisco, and others in Oakland and Alameda, but not in Berkeley. 

It’s a substantially unchanged 130-year-old home, particularly on the outside. Retaining a spacious lot in a built-up district, it is designated a City of Berkeley landmark. 

The house is for sale for $1,349,000.  

The listing agent is Arlene Acuna, Marvin Gardens Real Estate, www.2201Blake.com, or 510-206-0793. There’s a real estate open house this coming Sunday afternoon, Sept. 16, 1-4 p.m. 

“The Bartlett houses, in their original setting with virtually no exterior alterations, no structures added to the site since 1892, and with some of the earliest accessory buildings which have survived in the city, are probably the most pristine representation of Victorian Berkeley still in existence,” the landmark nomination notes. 

The Italianate Victorian is a tall, deep and narrow, wooden two-story house with a hipped roof flattened on top and once provided with a widow’s walk observation platform. A formal front porch facing Blake Street leads to a double entrance door, adjacent to a window bay. The wide roof overhang is somewhat out of the ordinary. 

Inside, there’s the standard Victorian entry hall with a steeply impressive staircase rising straight to the second floor. The ground floor has two parlors, the second, inner, one provided with a marble fireplace and pocket doors. 

The hall and the second parlor open into a large room across the width of the house with bay window on the west. Here, things get architecturally interesting. 

This room was once divided in half, with kitchen on one side and dining room on the other. The partition is now gone and this is an airy space with marble fireplace, but kitchen fixtures, including sink, stove, and a closet-like pantry remain along the east wall. 

Directly behind this room there’s the original kitchen space, now fitted out as a bedroom or dayroom and opening to back porch and to a side hallway converted into a downstairs bathroom (note the pass-through from the pantry towards the hall-turned-bathroom). 

Off the rear covered porch there’s a narrow, freestanding, one story structure, reputedly once for servants. 

Spare a thought for Berkeley’s early domestic working class, often immigrants, living very simply in tiny rear or upstairs rooms like these. Their labors and quarters literally lay behind the comfortable lifestyles of the middle and upper classes. 

Other early features—a carved railing, a wall mounted wire mesh pie safe, a side storage room for firewood and coal, and laundry sinks—complete the back porch. 

Round the corner and across the yard is the original stable building. 

Venerable pear trees shed their autumn fruit. A new property line is reportedly being established to divide the freestanding houses at 2201 and 2205 Blake into two parcels for separate sale. 

There’s an ornate recessed side entry on the west of 2201 facing Fulton Street, almost a second front door to the house, approached between the trunks of two large cedars.  

Next to this entry you can see, through a west-facing window, a steep and extremely narrow staircase. Upstairs though, no stair appears; it’s concealed beneath a trap door in the floor of a second floor porch. 

The second floor begins at the south with a window-bayed master bedroom that spans the full width of the house. It’s furnished with a ponderous but impressive dark wooden bedroom set, scaled to the large, high, dimensions of the room. 

Along the east wall there’s a connecting bedroom (reportedly an original bathroom), then a smaller current bathroom. Tucked between the two is a closet-like room with built-ins and a winding stair to the attic (not 

open for viewing). A drawer in the bathroom wall is extremely deep and double-ended, opening to the closet on the other side. 

The back of the second floor contains two bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a glassed-in side porch. From the front staircase a narrow hallway with rounded corner walls zigzags towards the back of the house; it’s a bit like a passageway on a ship. 

In the 1940s the upstairs was apparently converted to two residential units, sharing the bathroom. 

The house retains many of the features that make Victorians special (and 

also sometimes hard to heat). There are high ceilings, large vertical double-hung windows, three window bays, two marble fireplaces, refinished wood floors, and decorative ornamentation. 

One feature of the house that was talked about for years in local historical circles is now irretrievably gone. The original wallpaper and floral ceiling decorations have vanished, replaced with a blandly pleasant interior paint job in neutral white, creams, and light yellows. 

Outside, the house has been painted a deep gray, with lighter trim, consistent with its color for many years. Sitting well back from the street behind a shadowy screen of large evergreen trees—deodar, atlas, incense cedars—the dark house has seemed mysterious for generations. 

A long-time neighbor says that in the 1970s it was called the “haunted house” and she met people who had called it that in the 1920s. 

Stately and reserved perhaps, but haunted, no.  

The house was built by Alfred Bartlett, born in 1841 on an English farm. He did a stint in the British Navy then stowed away to New York at age 15, learned carpentry and retailing, and worked his way aboard a ship to San Francisco in 1857.  

He bought a wagon and turned an early love of books into a career as a traveling bookseller. This brought prosperity enough to buy property and in 1868—the year the University of California was founded—he married Teresa Whitney, a New Yorker who would remain his “faithful and affectionate wife” for more than half a century. 

In 1876, Bartlett bought the Blake Street property at auction and the following year he built 2201 Blake and moved his family there “for the sake of the health of my wife and two daughters.” 

This is a recurrent theme in East Bay history—moving across the bay, glad to get away from chilly, foggy, San Francisco. 

Bartlett continued in book selling and real estate. The landmark nomination for 2201 Blake says the family was “frequently mentioned in the local newspapers, and appear to have been well-liked.” Bartlett even ran for town marshal, unsuccessfully, and two of his three daughters earned degrees from nearby UC. 

In 1892 the Bartletts built the house next door at 2205 Blake, apparently as a rental property. They eventually spent much of their time living in Fresno. Alfred died in 1924, Teresa in 1919. 

In the 1920s the Schendels purchased 2201 Blake. Howard Coleston, Sr. who grew up on Fulton Street, married into the family in the 1940s, the same decade the Bartlett House was reportedly converted to apartments. 

The adjoining houses descended through the Schendel/Coleston family until the present day. 

Alfred Bartlett had written once to his future wife, “You may like a city for a while, but I expect you would soon long for the liberty and natural pleasures of a country life.” Semi-rural Berkeley in the 1870s probably fit that bill. 

The Bartlett House stands on one of 140 “residence lots” put up for auction in October 1876 by Francis Shattuck, subdividing property homesteaded by Berkeley pioneer George Blake. 

This was just a few years after the University of California had moved to its Berkeley site, and the same year Berkeley was formally incorporated as a town. 

Shattuck had arranged for a steam train line to run up his property tract, and rail service began in 1875. The trains made a stop at “Dwight Way Station” just a block northwest of the Bartlett House site, and for years property owners and merchants around that nexus tried hard to make it the center of Berkeley’s growing Downtown. 

The neighborhood escaped that fate, meaning that many early buildings, commercial and residential and including the Bartlett House, survive on the surrounding blocks. 

As the 19th century wore on to a close, the neighborhood was a pleasant residential district of Victorian family homes, both substantial and modest, convenient to campus, commerce, and transportation. 

In the early 20th century, remaining vacant lots filled in with additional houses in newer architectural styles. Depression and World War II resulted in the subdivision of many larger, older, houses into smaller units, while the University population grew and rental demand increased. 

By the 1950s and ‘60s this was sometimes dismissed as a district headed towards dereliction, unfashionable in those days of “suburban flight.” On every block some houses were torn down and replaced with large apartment buildings, including some of Berkeley’s most intrusive stucco “ticky tacks.” 

By the 1970s this was also a district where grassroots neighborhood activism and revival began to emerge. There were rent strikes, communes, and residents successfully protested the “Fulton Freeway”, then a congested southbound commute route to Ashby Avenue. One of Berkeley’s earliest traffic barriers blocks Fulton next to the Bartlett House. 

Not unusual for a district so close to a large university campus, the neighborhood contains many multi-unit structures and short term residents. However, there are a surprising number of long-term residents, both owners and renters. 

For a feel of the neighborhood—-and the really significant collection of early Victorians it contains—stroll a block or two in each direction from the Bartlett House. 

The Bartlett House is well worth a visit on Sunday to see the fine traditional Victorian interior and setting.  

But if you think about buying it, I hope you are someone who truly wants to live in a classic Victorian and make it comfortable without unsympathetic modernist “updates”, “improvements”, and “remodels.” 

And I also hope you value a large, level, yard for its gardening potential, not as a place to build. 

Although this property is privately owned, it’s also a true community cultural treasure.  

Photograph by Steven Finacom. A path framed between cedars approaches the west entrance of the Bartlett House. 

I have always enjoyed looking at houses. I think it started in my childhood, when we used to visit open houses on Sundays after church. As an adult, I have chosen a profession in which I can get access to many, many homes.  

But it has come to my attention that there are others like me, and I think maybe it’s time to start a 12-step program for house junkies. Do you qualify? Answer these simple questions and find out.  

1. When you go on vacation you pick up the real estate magazines at the supermarket and check them to see what houses cost in that area. 

2. You sit on your front porch staring at the house across the street and consider various new color schemes for it. 

3. Your idea of a good time is a trip to the hardware store. 

4. Cabinet hardware excites you. 

5. You joined the National Trust for Historic Preservation just so you could look at the real estate ads in the back of the magazine, and imagine yourself buying a log house from 1790 or an abandoned insane asylum. 

6. While other people are out having brunch on Sundays, you’re on the computer perusing the Daily Planet’s fabulous interactive Open Homes and planning your strategy for touring them. 

7. You would be willing to buy a totally falling down house in the middle of nowhere if it was architecturally fabulous. 

8. If you know a house is vacant, you sneak up and peer through the windows. 

9. You are ecstatic if you find a house with an original kitchen. 

10.Your vacation photos consist entirely of pictures of window muntins. 

11. This line in a real estate ad would get your attention: “ First time on market in 80 years.” 

The good news is that it’s a fairly benign addiction, unless, of course, you act on it by buying the house even though you already have a house.  

Otherwise, 12-step meetings would consist entirely of discussion of houses seen, maybe with photos, and trading notes on which agents will let civilians in during the broker’s tour. Oh, and snacks. 

Photograph by Jane Powell  

The finest house in Ferdinand, Idaho, population 125. The author would have bought this had cooler heads not prevailed. 

Jane Powell is the author of Bungalow Details: Interior and an unreformed house junkie, though she swears she hasn’t bought anything in two years. She can be reached at janepowell@sbcglobal.net. 

We’ll have our usual autumn hot spell, and things will get all dusty and drab, and we’ll all want to grow something green where we can. We’ll plant winter veggies and herbs and something to flower in December maybe, camellias and manzanitas and azaleas.  

This year we’ll need to beware water rationing. It’s odd how mild the recent warnings and requests from EBMUD and the other water districts have been; the reservoirs that I and others who talk to me have seen are scarily low, and the idea that we’ll have a deep-snowpack winter, never mind a locally rainy one, is practically a fantasy.  

So why am I telling you about fountains? I’ve found it’s aesthetically and psychologically wise to concentrate the water you do have, and establishing watering zones—most of the supplemental watering done in one small area, usually close to the house, and more water-thrifty plants taking up the rest of the garden—is Step One.  

Step Two might reasonably be water at play, a focus for the eye and ear of moving water. I suspect it’s a human universal to enjoy the movement, sound, light refraction and diffraction and reflection, and cool hospitable atmosphere of dancing water. 

Given what I saw at TAG Fountains Garden Pottery (the business card has those last three words equitably arranged around the shop’s name; maybe the idea is not to play favorites?) the zone-planting idea is also a necessity if you include a fountain. They all splash a little, but not quite so predictably that you can count on that for the surrounding plants’ supply.  

I myself like fragrant-leafed plants where they can be jostled now and then and release their scent. The majority of such plants seem to be droughty desert- or chaparral-dwellers whose fragrant oils are part of their water-retaining capacity, holding moisture in the leaves and also discouraging herbivores from making a main dish of them. 

Notable exceptions are mints, and a ring of whatever mint strikes your fancy around a fountain—carefully contained of course, given their invasive tendencies—would be twice hospitable, throwing out the occasional zing of fragrance and garnishing (or composing) a cool drink. 

This TAG place has quite the variety of shapes to choose from: pillars, balls, nymphs, abstracts, your basic spitting lionhead, and one that struck me as startling, an apparent Buddha-head of the hobnail hairdo variety with water flowing smoothly from his topknot to veil his entire face and head.  

I guess it tweaked my attention because, though there are Jesus and Mary statues among the various sculptures there, they aren’t plumbed. No weeping Immaculate Heart, and the lamb The Good Shepherd carries in the crook of his arm isn’t piddling on him. Think of the possibilities left unexplored! 

Lots of pots, mostly large; ornaments to stand or hang, from Green Man to gazing ball; hanging votive-candle lamps with a dressy jeweled look; a chiminea and an alleged tiki that looks more like one of the moai from Rapa Nui.  

(For local tiki carving, go on down to the Templebar at 8th and University and see what Kem Loong Jr. has been doing.)  

TAG Garden Pottery Fountains 

725 Gilman St. 

849-1514 

http://www.tagpottery.com 

10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily 

My wife and I have been arguing about our house for 20 years. I know this isn’t unusual but it’s noteworthy and I’m going to take the long way ‘round in proving the point.  

People fight about houses. They fight about what color to paint, who gets to put a painting up on a particular wall, what repairs to make and how clean to keep it. It’s hard enough when one person owns and cares for a house but when two try to negotiate the arrangement of space, it’s congressional oversight 24/7. 

I, for one, feel like I’m having a serious debate every time I try to decide where to place a piece of furniture in a room. I’m quite capable of having an argument with myself (“stop that!”, “no, you stop that!”). 

Carl Jung argued, some 90 years ago, that I do this because I’m really whole bunch of neatly packed into one anatomy, and further, that I’m also identifying with the table, the room, the floor and the cat. So, it’s not so much that I’m rearranging the room, it’s more like I’m fixing my hair and deciding how tanned I should be. When the table isn’t just so, I look wrong. Just imagine when we get to painting the room! 

Berkeley is an exciting and wonderful place and due, in no small part, to our bountiful and delicious university. Nearly 30 years ago, I had the good fortune to study here and among the fascinating soldiers of knowledge I encountered on the field of battle was one Clare Cooper Marcus, a student of both Jung and of Architecture. 

Clare talked in class about what would eventually become ink in House As a Mirror of Self (published in 1995, some 15 years later. The paperback came out last year).  

She posits the notion that we experience the built world as an extension of ourselves. This perspective both enriches and also complicates our relationship with our houses, huts and garages. It also provides a valuable tool for looking into our relationships, particularly those we share real estate with. 

If I see my house as an extension of myself (Does this porch make me look fat?) and my partner sees the SAME house as an extension of herself, how the hell do we manage to remodel anything. Anyone who’s been through the arduous remodeling process with a partner can attest to the strain it can put on the relationship. In fact, while I’ve never seen any statistics (and would love to), I’m quite sure that a major remodel is one of the primary causes of a breakup or divorce. I say this simply having been around the remodeling (and marital) world for decades and having seen a shocking number of these in my own field of vision (or as stories shared by friends and colleagues). 

When two people are trying to express their own inner selves on the canvas of home, it’s a trial of mythological proportion. All the demons and homunculi come out, put on their little tiny tool belts and go at it, tearing down walls, throwing spaghetti and tiny balls of fire. Our distant pasts collide and can either blend into artistic visions (as in the case of the great collaborations of art and science history) or rail and raze the cities of our inner and outer lives. 

Again, this is hard enough when one person is involved. As a recovering remodeling contractor I can say with authority that helping a single person remodel their home is often quite trying. Remodelers usually try to keep their personalities out of the work and let the client have all the say (at least on what it looks like since how it’s built should be their domain) so you would think that this would simplify things. Well, it surely does but it’s still hard. Mr. Jung and Ms. Cooper Marcus have shed some light on why this is. Allow me to take this light and focus it a bit. 

If we accept the theorem that the house is a symbol of the self (Your self for example) what happens when someone starts remodeling your house is that they begin moving your nose a little to the left, your hairline backward or down to your eyebrows or your knees up to your hips. 

O.K., let’s set this grotesqueness aside for a second in favor of another. Remodeling is physically like surgery on your house, full of incisions, joint replacements and catheterizations. When we rewire your house, is this neurosurgery? When we replumb, is it a triple bypass? 

Remodeling is, in some psychological way, a reshaping of the person, people or relationships that exist inside the space. Even if we set the Zen-crystal-macrobiotic stuff aside for the moment, it’s not hard to see the Cartesian (republican) equivalents. Cutting up my house is disruptive and the dust and mess and lack of peace is harsh, dude.  

Nevertheless, I’m actually convinced that there IS something deeper going on and the test is in the identification that people clearly have with the smallest details in their homes.  

Anyone who has ever spent time with a really ob-com (obsessive compulsive) person can tell you that the relocation of the smallest object or the tiniest mess can set them off into flights of mania. This is due to the fragility of their inner I.D. When we have a deep, strong sense of ourselves and are grounded in a profound understanding of our place in the universe, a dirty car is not a big deal. When we’re not, we need to build masks that hold our identity (house, car, income) over the void of doubt. 

This suggests that in some sort of way, a remodel is a radical therapy, forcing the inner self to the surface and into the light of day. Remodeling contractors know this even if they don’t know that they know it. They know that at some point, even the nicest, sanest client is going to lose it when they’ve been deprived of their serene space for 10 weeks.  

When I was in the business, I used to interview clients and pay close attention to the neatness of the house. If it was fussy-perfection clean, I would find a way to avoid taking the job. This was the client that was going to go ballistic at some point when their image of the world (self, house) had literally crumbled into plaster dust.  

Now, that said, there are people who are just the opposite, looking for the extreme psychic makeover. The adventurous person who will go on Nepal treks or change jobs at the drop of a hat. Younger people more often fit this profile but that is definitely a generalization that wears thin fast. You get the point. The free and open-minded do better when we begin the psychic surgery of remodeling and the tight-as-a-drum go catawampus. 

If no other good comes out of this area of inquiry, I’m certain that the remodeling industry can gain greatly. Of course, they don’t tend to listen to this sort of thing so it will have to be “hammered” into them by academics, clients and writers so in say, 100 years, I think we’ll be good to go. 

This week’s column is dedicated to my old aerobics classmate Anita Feder-Chernila. Anita, a Berkeley gestalt therapist, consulted with Clare Cooper Marcus in the early years of Clare’s development of her theories and I’m certain that all those leg lifts and Cyndi Lauper records must have somehow insinuated themselves into Clare’s theories. Or maybe it only proves that Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. 

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

FRIDAY, SEPT. 14 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Eugenie Scott on “The Evolution of Creationism” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925.  

Emergnecy Free Speech Rally in the Memorial Oak Grove to protest the ten foot chainlink fence around a dozen tree-sitting environmental protesters and the chilling effect UC’s actions are having on free speech at 1:30 p.m. in the Oak Grove next to Memorial Stadium, Piedmont Way north of International House. www.saveoaks.com 

“Don’t Fall for It” Learn the right ways to maintain good balance and prevent falls at 10 a.m. at Salem Lutheran Home, 2361 East 29th St. Free individualized screening after the talk. 534-3637. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Children’s Hospital, Outpatient Center Basement, 747 52nd St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Conscientious Projector Film Series “When the Levees Broke” by Spike Lee at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donation requested. 528-5403. 

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 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253.  

SATURDAY, SEPT. 15 

Coastal Cleanup along the Berkeley Waterfront from 9 a.m. to noon. Meet at 9 a.m. behind Seabreeze Market at the corner of University Ave. and Frontage Rd. For other coastal clean-up sites see www.coastforyou.org 

Oakland’s Creek to Bay Day Volunteers need to remove litter and non-native invasive species at 16 locations in Oakland. For details about locations call 238-7611 or see www.oaklandpw.com/creeks 

Creek to Bay Day at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park A creek clean-up and beautification event. Tools, water and snacks provided. Bring sunscreen, hat, gloves and rubber boots. From 9 a.m. to noon at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. 532-9142. 

Albany Waterfront Trail Cleanup Meet at 9 a.m. at the foot of Buchanan, west of 880. Bring water and be dressed to get dirty. 759-1689. 

Community Peace Rally & Concert from 1 to 5 p.m. at People’s Park with music, speakers, tables and action circles. peacerally07@hotmail.com 

Walking Tour of Historic Oakland Churches and Temples Meet at 10 a.m. at the front of the First Presbyterian Church at 2619 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www. 

oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Oakland Point Meet at 10 a.m. at Cypress Feeway Memorial Park, Mandela Parkway between 13th and 14th St. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Historical and Botanical Tour of Chapel of the Chimes from 10 a.m. to noon at 499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. RSVP to 228-3207. 

Chalk4Peace A chalk art project for children midday at Museum of Childrens’ Art, 538 9th St., Oakland. 465-8770, ext. 310. and at Cragmont Elementary School, 830 Regal Rd. 644-8810. www.chalk4peace.org 

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” Oakland Outdoor Movie Series at 8:30 p.m. on Ninth St. between Broadway and Washington, Oakland. Filmgoers are encouraged to bring thier own chairs and blankets. 238-4734. 

Free Earthquake Retrofit Seminar sponsored by the Association of Bay Area Governments from 10 a.m. to noon at Albrier Community Center, 2800 Park St. 418-1676. http://quake.abag.ca.gov/fixit  

Interreligious Art & Music Festival from 1-5pm at Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley, Ave. http://drbu.org/ 

research/iwr/festival 

Vegetarian Cooking Class “Demystifying Tofu, Tempeh, and Seitan” from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $45 plus $5 materials fee. To register call 531-2665. www.compassionatecooks.com  

Positively Ageless A Celebration of Art & Aging at 6 p.m. at 4th Street Studio, 1717 Fourth St. Cost is $25. Benefits Adult Day Services Network of Alameda County. www.fourthstreetstudio.com 

Friends of the Albany Library Book Sale from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Edith Stone Room of the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 16. 

Chapel of the Chimes Historical and Botanical Tour at 10 a.m. at 4499 Piedmont Ave. RSVP to 228-3207. 

Kidpower Parent Child Workshop for chidren aged 4-8 to learn everyday safety skills, from 2 to 4 p.m. in Berkeley. Cost is $60, no one turned away. Email to register and for location. safety@kidpower.org www.kidpower.org 

“Crazy, Sexy Cancer Tips” with author Kris Carr at 3 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Saturday Music Classes for Children and Youth in Choir, Marimba, bands, drumming and dance begin at the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. 836-4649, ext. 112. www.opcmusic.org 

AAU Boys Basketball Tryouts for 12U, 13U and 14U teams from noon to 2 p.m. at the Downtown Berkeley YMCA, 2001 Allston Way. For information call 665-3264.  

Fast Pitch Softball for Adults at noon on Saturdays in Oakland. For information call 204-9500. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 16 

Bike Against the Odds for the Breast Cancer Fund at 6:30 a.m. at Lakeside Park, Lake Merritt, Oakland. Cost is $50-$75. To register see www.breastcancerfund.org/bao2007 

Transit to Trails Meet at the Downtown Berkeley BART station at 9:30 a.m. for an AC Transit bus ride to Tilden, followed by a guided walk through the park. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Mortar Rock Ivy-Pull Help clean up this historic site in North Berkeley from 10 a.m. to noon at 901 Indian Rock Ave. 848-9358. 

Musical Block Party at Peralta Community Garden hosted by the Friends of Westbrae Commons. Meet at 1 p.m. at 1400 Peralta Ave., by the corner of Hopkins to celebrate three community gardens. 524-2671. 

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m., Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. 526-7377. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of the Eichlers 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.  

Sycamore Japanese Church Bazaar with Japanese food, Taiko drumming, crafts and activities for children from noon to 5 p.m. at 1111 Navellier St., El Cerrito. 525-0727. 

Retromobilia Classic Auto Show 60+ vintage cars and the latest alternative fuel vehicles, food, fun, music from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the 1800 block of Fourth St. between Hearst and Virginia Sts. 526-6294.  

CodePINK Women for Peace Newcomer Orientation at 10 a.m. at the CodePINK Office, 1248 Solano Ave., Albany. Please RSVP to 524-2776. 

Green Sunday on Oakland’s Green Economic Development: How it is Being Affected by the BP Deal With the University of California and the “Progressive” Dellums Administration’s Partnership with the Oakland Chamber of Congress at 5 p.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. at 65th in North Oakland. 

Mac Lingo “Reflections on My Religious Journey” at 10 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

East Bay Athesists meets to watch the documentary “The Attack on Science” at 1:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 222-7580. 

“Updating Engels” a discussion of the achievements in Anthropology since Engels published “Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State” Led by Gene Ruyle, emeritus prof, CSULB at 10 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. 595-741. www.tifcss.org 

Urban Living Tour Benefit for Rebuilding Oakland Together. A self-guided tour of some of the most interesting living spaces and historical landmarks in the East Bay. From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Starts at the Central Station, 14th & Frontage Rd. (adjacent to Historic 16th Street Train Station), Oakland. Costs $20. www.UrbanLivingTour.org 

Bike Tour of Oakland around the Fruitvale District on a leisurly paced two-hour tour that covers about five miles. Meet at 10 a.m. at the 10th St. entrance to the Oakland Museum of California. Reservations required. 238-3514.  

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club, Berkeley Marina. Wear warm, waterproof clothing and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. www.cal-sailing.org 

Martial Arts Around the World A Family Exploration Day from 1 to 4 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. 238-2022. 

Introduction to Wellness Integration at 11:30 a.m. at Pharmaca, 1744 Solano Ave. 527-8929. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 17  

Free Boatbuilding Classes for Youth Mon.-Wed. from 3 to 7 p.m. at Berkeley Boathouse, 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Classes cover woodworking, boatbuilding, and boat repair. 644-2577.  

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at West Pauley Ballroom MLK Student Union, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 18 

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 Garreston Point. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Memorial Ceremony at the Oak Grove with Country Joe McDonald and veteran’s groups to honor the Californians who gave their lives in World War I. At noon at the Oak Grove in front of Memorial Stadium, Piedmont Way. www.saveoaks.com 

Join in the “Living Graveyard” Bring a white sheet and join in the legal street theater to make visible the reality of the deaths caused by the war, at noon at Oakland Federal Building, 1301 Clay St. 655-1162.  

Constitution Day at the Free Speech Cafe with Daniel Farber on “Bong Hits 4 the Constitution: Free Speech Rights of Students Today” and Loweel Bergman on “Lots of Talk and No Action: Free Speech in the New Millenium” at 6 p.m. at Free Speech Movement Cafe, UC Campus. 643-6445. 

Berkeley Garden Club “Color, Texture and Water in the Garden” with Paul and Robin Cowley at 1:30 p.m. at Epworth Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 845-4482. 

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Open House from 10 a.m. to noon at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. RSVP to 642-9934. olli.berkeley.edu 

Writer Coach Connection Volunteers needed to help Berkeley students improve their writing and critical thinking skills from noon to 3 p.m. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org 

“High Crimes and Atrocities” A documentary on the lies of the Bush administration’s to justify the invasion of Iraq, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 6 to 8 p.m. in Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165.  

“Sleep? I Wish!!!” Why people with Fibromhyagia, ME/CFS and related conditions do not get full and restful sleep and what can be done about it, with Andrew Greenberg, MD, of the California Center for Sleep Disorders at noon at Maffly Auditorium, Herrick Campus, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 2001 Dwight Way. 644-3273. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577.  

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 19 

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.  

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Colloquium with Margaret Crawford on “Everyday Urbanism” at 1 p.m. at Wurster Hall, Room 315A, UC Campus. All welcome. laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium  

“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foriegn Policy” with John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donations accepted. Sponsored by Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

“Amax: La Memoria del Tiempo” a film on the 1932 genocide of the Nahua-Pipil of El Salvador, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Writer Coach Connection Volunteers needed to help Berkeley students improve their writing and critical thinking skills from noon to 3 p.m. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org 

Free Estate Planning Seminar at 7 p.m. at Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society, 2700 Ninth St. RSVP to 845-7735, ext. 19.  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. 548-9840. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 20 

Emergency Benefit for Street Spirit Editor Terry Messman and Ellen Danchik with poetry readings, art and music at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Church, 1600 Sacramento St. at Cedar. www. 

freedomvoices.org/streetspirit 

“Local History of the Codornices Creek Watershed” with Richard Schwartz at 6:30 p.m. at Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford St. 759-1689. 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll hunt for spiders, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will hunt for spiders from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Fall Plant Sale from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755, ext. 03. 

Students United For Peace “Committee on UnAmerican Activities” documentary by Robert Carl Cohen, also “Operation Abolition” at 7 p.m. in Dwinelle Hall, room 145, UC Campus. studentsunitedforpeace@gmail.com 

“An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President” with Randall Robinson at 6:30 p.m. at Allen Temple Baptist Church, 8501 International Blvd., Oakland. Advance tickets available at Marcus Books 3900 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, Oakland, $5-$30. 652-2344. 

“Two Rings Around the Bay: The Bay Trail and the Bay Ridge Trail” A slide talk with Bill Long at 7 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Sponsored by Berkeley Path Wanderers. 848-9358. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Border Patrol & Immigration Issues at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Cost is $5. 642-9460. 

“Places Seen-Places Imagined: Reflections on Xuanzang’s Xiyu-ji” with Max Deeg, Senior Lecturer in Buddhist Studies at Cardiff University, Wales, at 5 p.m. in the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Flr. Sponsored by the Center for Buddhist Studies. 643-5104. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from noon to 1 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

“Fall of the I-Hotel” a film and panel discussion on the evictions in Manilatown, San Francisco in 1977, at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. 238-2022. 

Center for Elders Independence Gala “‘S Marvelous!” with food and music by the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra, at 5:30 p.m. at Historic Sweet’s Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $125. RSVP to 839-3100. 

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 noon at the Latina Center, 3919 Roosevelt Ave., Richmond. 981-5332. 

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. in the cafeteria at the LeConte School, corner of Russell and Ellsworth. karlreeh@aol.com 

Easy Does It Board of Directors Meeting at 6 p.m. at 1636 University Ave. 845-5513. 

“Andropause: The Male Menopause” at 5:50 p.m. at Pharmaca, 1744 Solano Ave. 527-8929. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon., Sept. 17 at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers.644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

City Council meets Tues. Sept. 18, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www. 

ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., Sept. 19, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6601. 

Commission on Aging meets Wed., Sept. 19, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center.  

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed., Sept. 19 , at 7 p.m. at the South Branch Library. 981-6195.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed. Sept. 19, at 7:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., Sept. 20, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7415.  

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 20, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7010.  

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 20, at 7 p.m., at the West Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7520.

In the Sept. 11 issue, the nonprofit corporation for which the city’s Energy Commission sits as the board of directors was misidentified: its name is the Community Energy Services Corporation. The headline should have read: “CESC Under a Cloud, Director Terminated.” 

• 

A story in the Sept. 11 issue about an incident between a security guard and a man with a knife at Berkeley High School misidentified the man. He was not a student, but a 20-year-old non-student.  

• 

The photograph of the 30-year celebration of Ecole Bilingue on the front page of the Sept. 11 issue was taken by Karoline Robbins. 

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 in, working in or enjoying various neighborhoods in our area. We are looking for essays about the Oakland neighborhoods of Temescal and around Lake Merritt, Fourth Street in Berkeley, and the city of Alameda. Please e-mail your essays, no more than 800 words, to firstperson@berkeleydailyplanet.com. We will publish the best essays in upcoming issues in October. The sooner we receive your submission the better chance we have of publishing it.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 11 

THEATER 

Lynn Manning “Weights” A one-man show of narrative and poetry on Mnning’s experiences as a blind man, at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Sponsored by UCB’s Disability Studies Program and Institute for Regional Development. Tickets are $15-$25. 925-798-1300.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash An Open Reading for Peace at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College auditorium, 2050 Center St. 525-5476. 

Celine Parrenas Shimizu author of “Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

Daniel Cassidy describes “How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Courtableu at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Singers’ Open Mic with Kelly Park at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Bethany & Rufus at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. w 

Carioca, Brazilian guitariat, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 12 

EXHIBITIONS 

New Works by Carol Dalton and Emily Payne opens at the Cecile Moochnek Gallery, 1809-D Fourth St., upstairs. 549-1018. 

“Wall Writings” A photographic investigation of abandonned buildings by Michelle Nye. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at The Light Room Gallery, 2263 Fifth St. 649-8111. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

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 

Jazz Masters Concert with Danny Caron, blues guitarist, at noon at 12th and Broadway, Oakland.  

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Kevin Yu, cello and Chen Chen, piano, at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Ravi Abcarian Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Obeyjah and Buxter Hooten, benefit for Berkeley Television, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Pellejo Seco 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.  

Brass Liberation Orchestra, Lloyd Family Players, Gamelon X, March Fourth Marching Band at 8 p.m. at Lobot Gallery, 1800 Campbell St., Oakland. All ages. Cost is $8-$15.  

Kids and Hearts at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

John Lester, Michael Manring at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Chuchito Valdez at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 13 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention Panel discussion with Donna Ray Norton, Rich Hartness, Lee Stripling at 11:30 a.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. www.BerkeleyOldTimeMusic.org 

“The Port Chicago Mutiny” by Robert L. Allen Presentation, film clip and Q & A with author at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books 2425 Channing Way at Telegraph, under the Sather Gate Parking Garage. 848-1196. 

Peter Thomson describes “Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention with Donna Ray Norton, Rich Hartness & Frineds, Todalo Shakers at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761.  

Linda Zuliaca & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Chris Jones at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Hiroshima at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 14 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Urinetown, The Musical” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through Oct. 6. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Hysteria” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Sept. 30. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Black Repertory Group “Secret War” Fri. at 8 p.m., Gala on Sat. at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $25-$45. 652-2120. www.BlackRepertoryGroup.com 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Rumors” by Neil Simon, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sundays at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave. at Moeser, El Cerrito, through Oct. 14. Tickets are $11-$18. 655-8974. www.cct.org 

Impact Theatre “Sleepy” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Oct. 13. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. 

Masquers Playhouse “The Shadow Box” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. matinees, at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Runs through Sept. 29. This show is not recommended for children. Tickets are $15. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Ragged Wing Ensemble “Alice in Wonderland” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Envision Academy, 1515 Webster St., Oakland, through Oct. 13. Tickets are $15-$30. 800-838-3006. www.raggedwing.org 

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor® Dreamcoat” Fri.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd., Oakland, through Sept. 16. Tickets are$23-$36. 531-9597. www.woodminster.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

New Works by Carol Dalton and Emily Payne Opening reception at 6 p.m. at the Cecile Moochnek Gallery, 1809-D Fourth St., upstairs. 549-1018. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

John Curl and Marianne Robinson read their poetry at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave., at Hearst. 841-6374. 

Richard Schwartz describes “Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher read from “Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas” at 7 p.m. at Beebe Memorial Cathedral, 3900 Telegraph Ave., Oakland.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Rafael Manriquez at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$15.. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

Ras Igel, Razorblade, Carl McDonald, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention with Tom Sauber, Brad Leftwich & Alice Gerrard, Lee Stripling Trio, Heidi Clare at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

Polkacide, Fuxedos, Japonize Elephonts at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Dr. Know, Circle One at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

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

Hiroshima at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 15 

CHILDREN  

“Mexica: An Aztec Tale” Sat. and Sun. at 12:30 and 3:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave. 452-2259 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Inside Out” New works by painter Cheryl Finfrock and sculptor Michael Pargett. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Float Gallery, 1091 Calcot Place, Unit #116, Oakland. www.thefloatcenter.com 

Positively Ageless A Celebration of Art & Aging at 6 p.m. at 4th Street Studio, 1717 Fourth St. Cost is $25. Benefits Adult Day Services Network of Alameda County. www.fourthstreetstudio.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Nelson Peery discusses “Black Radical: The Education of An American Revolutionary” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

“Addicted to Hope” with comic Mark Lundholm at the California’s Writer’s Club, at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble Event Loft, Jack London Square. 272-0120. www.berkeleywritersclub.org 

East Bay Lesbian Poets read at 7 p.m. at Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru at Lincoln, Alameda. Open mic follows. 523-6957. www.frankbettecenter.org  

Robin Romm reads from her short story collection “The Mother Garden” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

String Band Contest and performance by Gallus Brothers at 11 a.m. at Berkeley Farmers’ Market. MLK and Center St.  

Berkeley Old Time Music Convention with The Tallboys, Dram County and Knuckle Knockers at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15, children ages 5-18, $5.. 525-5054.  

Interreligious Art & Music Festival from 1 to 5 p.m. at Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley, Ave. Free and open to the public. http://drbu. 

org/research/iwr/festival/ 

Araucaria, traditional Chilean music and dance, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

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

Five Eyed Hand at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Don Villa & Ethan Bixby, guitar, at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Jack Williams & Ronny Cox at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Royal Hawaiian Serenaders at 9 p.m. at Temple Bar Tiki Bar & Grill, 984 University Ave. 548-9888. 

Serenity Fisher, Zach Fisher at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. 

Triple Ave. at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

The Unreal Band, Pat Nevins and Stu Allen of Workingman’s Ed at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Charles Wheal & the Excellorators at 9 p.m. at Downtown, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810.  

Ghoul, Funerot, Oskorei at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 16 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Face of Place” mixed media by Janet Brugos, opening reception from 2 to 5 p.m. at L’Amyx Tea Bar, 4179 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. www.lamyx.com 

FILM 

Tomu Uchida: Japanese Genere Master “Policeman” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Conversations on Art “Music, Liturgy and Cultural Fusions: The Making of Revisions Shahrokh Yadegari Through Music” at 2 p.m. at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $10-$12. 549-6950.  

Rhoda Curtis introduces “Rhoda: Her First Ninety Years, a Memoir” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Lauren Bank Deen demonstrates crafts and recipes from “Kitchen Playdates” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sundays @ Four Chamber Music with Axel Strauss, violin and Miles Graber, piano at 4 p.m. at Crowden Music Center. Tickets are $12, free for children. concerts@crowden.org 

Americana Unplugged with Berkeley Old Time Cabaret at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

The Snake Trio at Jazz at the Chimes at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10. 228-3218. 

Cabaret in the Castle with Mark Gilbert & Friends, in a fundraiser for Berkeley City Club at 4:30 p.m. at The Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $45-$55. 883-9710. 

Araucaria, traditional Chilean music and dance, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Vasen, Swedish folk revivalists, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Quejerema & Quarto Latino Americano de Saxafones at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

MONDAY, SEPT. 17 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ernest Bloch Lecture Series with Martha Feldman on “Of Strange Births and Comic Kin” 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Tea Party Magazine reading with poet Craig Santos Perez at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Suggested donation $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

David Leavitt introduces “The Indian Clerk” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with Jan Steckel and Stephen Kopel at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Classical at the Freight with the Stern/Simon Duo at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

Lavay Smith & The Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Well, I was walking up 

Euclid Avenue 

this morning 

hand in hand 

with Galileo 

toward the Rose Garden 

and my old house on Oak Street path ... 

—Robin Blaser 

Poet Robin Blaser, cofounder (with Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer) of the Berkeley Poetry Renaissance in the 1940s—predecessor to the famed San Francisco Renaissance of a decade later—will give a benefit reading for the Poetry Center at 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 16, Knuth Hall Theater in the Creative Arts Building at San Francisco State University.  

Blaser will be honored by Small Press Traffic with a lifetime achievement award. The reading is also a celebration of his books The Holy Forest and The Fire, collected poems and essays, respectively, published last year by UC Press. Admission is $20, $10 students. Information: (415) 338-2227 or www.sfu.edu/poetry. 

Blaser, who wrote the poem that opens with the lines above during a visit to Berkeley in 1995, was born in Denver in 1925, and grew up in Blaser, Idaho. He came to Berkeley as a UC student in 1944, staying in the Hotel Durant, then on Channing Way and later at 2520 Ridge Road.  

The next year, Jack Spicer, newly arrived from Los Angeles, was brought to Blaser’s apartment as a potential roommate by Spicer’s musician friend Gene Wahl. “He arrived at the door in trench-coat, Hollywood dark glasses, sandals and carrying an umbrella ... his feet were stained purple with treatment for athlete’s foot ... He had a mustache, which disappeared a year later. He stood startingly and threateningly at the door, and I slammed it shut. Only to open it again when I heard his laughter,” Blaser wrote in The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, which he edited a decade after Spicer died in 1965. 

The next year, Spicer met Robert Duncan, an Oakland native, on the F train coming back from a Wednesday night anarchist meeting in San Francisco, partly presided over by poet Kenneth Rexroth.  

“Duncan was the really established one,” Blaser said from the steps of his Vancouver home in a phone interview. “I think Duncan was the one who thought of it as a kind of renaissance. He thought himself as the leader of all this, which annoyed Jack. But it was our renaissance. We were readers, and, joined into that import, had the sense of a movement of some kind.” 

The scene around the university and in San Francisco included many students on the G.I. Bill, as well as former conscientious objectors who’d had art and poetry presses in the conscientious objectors camp at Waldport, Ore. The university was the center and it was two teachers in particular who made a difference to the young poets. 

Ernst Kantorowicz, author of The King’s Two Bodies, who had been involved with poet Stefan George’s circle in Germany before the Nazi ascension made him a refugee, taught courses in medieval history. “It was taking Kantorowicz’s courses where we really came together,” said Blaser. “It gave us a context, an ability to think historically, to know how large the world is ... fundamental in working against that American thing that works ahistorically and pretends that there isn’t really anything but a kind of progression ... We took everything of his we could get. It even drew Duncan in.” 

In 1950, Kantorowicz helped lead a group opposing a loyalty oath at the University of California. When the cause failed, he went to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. “’I’d take you with me—but you’re poets!’ he told us when he left,” Blaser recalled, “and all of us dying to go with him!” 

The other teacher was a poet herself, the only woman in the English Department, “Josephine Miles, not to be forgotten ... not interested in the Middle Ages, but more interested in whether you use your own language,” said Blaser. “And Jo Miles agreed with our renaissance movement, which was kind of surprising, as she usually tried to calm things down!” 

Off-campus readings and meetings were often held at the home of Janie and Hugh O’Neill, 2029 Hearst, where Robert Duncan lived.  

Hugh O’Neill was a correspondent with poet Ezra Pound, incarcerated at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C.—something Jack Spicer remembered in the opening to one of his “Love Poems” in his book, Language (1964): “ ‘To come to the moment of never come back to the moment of hope. Too many buses that are late.’ Hugh O’Neill in our ‘Canto for Ezra Pound.’ The ground still squirming. The ground not fixed as I thought it would be in an adult world ...” 

Robert Duncan talked about modern poetry there, and a group met to study Finnegan’s Wake. Blaser commented that it was where his own attachment to Mallarme’s poetry began, and—with readings by Puerto Rican Rosario Jimenez—Spicer’s love of Garcia Lorca’s poems. 

In The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, author James Herndon reminisces about playing pinball at the White Horse, “the violent and very obscene Cal rooting section at games” (which Spicer loved) and their show on KPFA, “the Most Educational Folk-Song Program West of the Pecos,” as Spicer would introduce it. 

The scene gradually scattered. Blaser went to work at the Widener Library, Harvard. Spicer taught in Minnesota after refusing to sign the loyalty oath, later living briefly in New York, then working at a job Blaser arranged for him at the Boston Public Library. 

“There was a strong separation between West and East in those days,” Blaser said. “We didn’t know much about the East. Jack couldn’t find a spot, couldn’t find a community there. Not a square foot. It was the unhappiest I ever saw him. He wouldn’t even dress for it. One day I was walking behind him and saw the snow going down his collar, running down his neck ... It was provincialism, but also a way of protecting the ground where one stood, a defense against not being recognized ... he just didn’t like the style of it.” 

By the late ‘50s both Blaser and Spicer were back in San Francisco, integral to the more famous poetry scene there—also known as “The Renaissance” for a while—their poems included in Evergreen Review’s San Francisco issue and in The New American Poetry, both edited by their old friend, Donald Allen. Also ironic was the location of the renowned 6 Gallery reading, where Allen Ginsberg premiered “Howl.” The “6” referred to Jack Spicer and five of his students from the San Francisco Art Institute, who took over an experimental art gallery on Fillmore near Union, which Robert Duncan had helped start. If Blaser and Spicer hadn’t been back East, they might well have been on the roster of readers that fabled night. 

“Poetry in San Francisco was built by Jack and Duncan—they wouldn’t have somebody else building it. A lovely thing about San Francisco, that sense of being specially elected,” said Blaser. 

Spicer died in 1965. Relations between Duncan and Spicer had been strained; Duncan would also harshly criticize Blaser’s translation of Gerard de Nerval’s “Les Chimeres.” Blaser moved to Vancouver, where he taught at Simon Fraser University, retiring in 1986. The first edition of The Holy Forest, a narrative composed of shorter poems (in the style Spicer called “the serial poem”) was nominated for the prestigious Canadian Governor-General’s Prize. In 2000, Blaser’s libretto for Harrison Birtwhistle’s opera, The Last Supper, addressing the AIDS epidemic, premiered in Berlin and played at Glyndebourne, London and on the BBC. 

Photograph by Kenneth Taranta 

Poet Robin Blaserin 1993. 

Help give the Berkeley City Club a lift. That’s the purpose, literal and symbolic, of a special party this coming Sunday, Sept. 16, at the venerable Durant Avenue landmark  

The Landmark Heritage Foundation—the non-profit organization dedicated to preservation of the building—is hosting “Cabaret in the Castle,” an “afternoon social” event with live music, food and drink, prize drawings, and a guest expert on the architect of the building, Julia Morgan. 

And it’s all for a “lift,” meaning a second elevator.  

When Morgan designed the City Club for Berkeley women’s organizations nearly eight decades ago, she provided space for a second elevator in anticipation of future expansion.  

The expansion never occurred, but the elevator is now needed as part of the ongoing renovation and refurbishment of the historic structure. 

Proceeds from the Sunday event will help fund the project. Festivities start at 4:30 in the afternoon and continue through 6:30 p.m. 

The cabaret theme is built around live, danceable music from five musicians, Mark Gilbert and Friends. Guests are encouraged, but not required, to wear “cabaret costume or dress.” 

Those not inclined to dance can wander at will through the two main floors of the building, from lounges to auditorium to dining rooms to baronial stair hall, indoor swimming pool, covered terraces, and secluded interior gardens where luxuriant vines twine and luminous lighting glows. 

Hors d’oeuvres and a complimentary beverage will be provided. 

Drawing prizes include theater tickets, a 10-hour expert design consultation for bathroom or kitchen remodel, up to a week at a Bed and Breakfast in Italy (airfare not included), books, guest stays at the City Club itself, and other donations. 

Attendees interested in learning more about Julia Morgan can sit down to a talk by scholar Karen McNeill, who wrote her thesis on Julia Morgan.  

“She places Julia Morgan in a historical period,” says Mary Breunig, head of the Landmark Heritage Foundation. Her emphasis is not so much the architecture as it is a special “period of women’s development in California.”  

The talk will be short to allow time for questions and follow-up conversation. 

Piece by piece the City Club and the Landmark Heritage Foundation are refurbishing the complex building. “Our goal is to be a National Trust Historic Hotel,” says Breunig.  

The City Club was constructed to house both long-term residents and short-term guests, along with extensive space for events and the sponsoring women’s organizations to hold their meetings. 

Breunig adds that extensive dining facilities were included, in part, to lure Berkeley women to shop nearby on Telegraph and in Downtown, then get together at the Club with friends for lunch. Even back then—the 1920s—civic leaders and local businesspeople carped that Berkeleyans tended to go out of town to shop. 

Renovation and repair work so far has included replacing the ancient boilers, repairing many of the leaded glass windows throughout the huge structure, and redecorating the rooms used for hotel guests. 

Breunig recently went before the California Cultural and Historical Endowment Board to make the case for funding for additional projects. The water delivery system in the building needs work, exterior repairs are required, and the original furnishings—designed by Julia Morgan—need refurbishment after decades of use. 

A grant was recently received from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to address the building’s interior decor, and a completed survey of the interiors will be on view at the event. 

And as for that elevator? A design consultant experienced in historic buildings has been hired, and once the money is raised, the elevator can be custom built to fit with the City Club’s architecture and Morgan’s intentions. 

Space is still available at the event. Tickets cost $50 per person, or $275 for a table of six, with advance reservations. You can also just show up on Sunday, for $55 a person.  

Drawing tickets are $5 each (discounts for larger bulk purchases) and available at the event. 

If you’re lucky enough to be the owner of a Julia Morgan house, your admission costs only $45. 

Call 510-883-9710 or e-mail the Landmark Heritage Foundation at lhfjmorgan@earthlink.net to reserve.  

Maybe a bit early like so many things this year, the vine maples at the Botanic Garden in Tilden Park are putting on their quiet fireworks show.  

One of our short list of native maples, vine maple, Acer circinatum, is way too uncommon in the gardened landscape. I suspect that people haven’t had enough practice with it as a tame plant to know its best habits and favorite conditions, though they’re easy enough to see in the wild.  

They do need water and a moist atmosphere. They’re native mostly to coastal places north of the Bay Area up through British Columbia; my favorite spot to meet them, though, is along the creek in the understory at Burney Falls, up north of Mount Lassen. They get respectably big there, posing picturesquely over a trail or peering into their dancing and shapeshifting reflections in fast-moving Burney Creek; they also grow in the fashion that gave them their name, sprawling in a trappy tangle underfoot.  

Burney Falls is a most unlikely place: an oasis in the north taper of the Central Valley, a good place to repair to on a hot day. The temperature difference from the top of the trail to creek below is at least ten degrees Fahrenheit and feels like more. Hot and dry up there, cool and moist down here in the mist thrown off by the waterfall—the reverse of what one comes to expect after spending time on a mountain—and the “up there” is the normal surface of the surrounding landscape.  

A mossy Douglas-fir forest carved into the sagebrush desert isn’t the only odd feature of Burney Falls. The waterfall itself, a big roaring rainbowmaking vapor machine, is inhabited by black swifts.  

These little birds nest and rear their young in niches in the rock under the gravity curtain of the falls, flying through tons of pounding water many times every day, forcing their way by sheer speed and bluff through that seemingly impassable kinetic moat to feed their kids and maintain their nests.  

They’re being respectable and domestic as any suburban play-date organizers, but the effect as the groups roar off and return spiraling from their bug-gathering expeditions is of tiny little motorcycle gangs ripping circles overhead and yelling “Yeeee-hah!”  

In such engagingly paradoxical places grow the southeastern ambassadors of this mostly northern little tree. It’s most common along the coast here in its California province, in the rich understory of the big-tree (not to be confused with Big Tree, one of several confusing vernacular names for the Sierran Sequoiadendron giganteum) forests, the northernmost redwoods and Douglas-fir and true fir.  

We don’t have a lot of native maples in the West; offhand I can think of only four in Califirnia, and only two we see much in the wildlands here: bigleaf maple, Acer macrophyllum, and boxelder, Acer negundo, which doesn’t look much like a maple until it grows the maple-nose seed structures called samaras.  

“Nose?” Snap one in half, split the seed and the resulting protuberant appliance will stick nicely to your nose for as long as you care to look silly. I don’t understand why the mythical Green Man doesn’t wear one. Symbolic wood-ha’nts ought not to be solemn. 

When it’s not sprawling over the ground and tripping hikers, vine maple stands up nicely as a multitrunked or single-trunked tree, its habit strongly resembling Japanese maple’s. In leaf, it is nearly identical to the Japanese native moon maple or full-moon maple. More confusion: Japanese maple, common in cultivation here and with dozens of cultivars, is Acer palmatum, while moon maple is Acer japonicum.  

Vine maple has those rounded, rickrack-bordered leaves like moon maple’s; I don’t trust myself to tell the two apart at a glance.  

Vine maple might have a more general inclination towards red than moon maple has; it certainly makes vine maple stand out in its native habitat. Its leaves are reddish to bronzed-gold in fall; red-tinged new foliage in spring; with red leaf pedicels and some reddish leaf-edges always. It’s paradoxically warm-looking in a cool green-shadowed forest.  

It’s more closely related to the Asian maples than to its North American neighbors. This sort of distributional oddity occurs in a good handful of other plant species like our redwoods who have a remnant living cousin in China, the dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides. Follow the family trees of the magnolias and the rhododendrons for more examples of the surprised wrought by continental drift and eons of climate change. 

There are a couple of vine maples on the UC campus, passing for Japanese maples until you take a second look. The best place to see them en masse, though, is the Tilden Botanic Garden. In fact, that’s a good place to go get a taste of what the California landscape in its original state has to offer in this dusty, desiccated, drawn-out season. 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan. 

Vine maple leaves in Tilden Park's Botanic Garden, August 22, 2007.

TUESDAY, SEPT. 11 

Code Pink, Women for Peace Strike to demand that Congress vote no more funding for war, from noon to night at the Federal Bldg., Oakland. 524-2776. 

Emergency & Disaster Preparedness Workshop for People with Disabilities at 10:30 a.m. at West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 Sixth St. Sponsored by the Center for Independent Living and the West Berkeley Senior Center. All are welcome. 841-4776, 981-5180. 

The 9/11 Truth Film Festival showing “Hijacking Catastrophe,” “The Reflecting Pool,” “Zeitgeist,” “Let's Get Empirical,” “9/11: Press for Truth,” and “9/11 Mysteries” from 1 to 10 p.m. at the Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Donation $5-$10. 

“War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” A documentary at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club Forum “The Caring Economy” with Ruth Rosen and Fred Block, senior fellows at the Longview Institute, at 7:30 p.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave.Cost is $10. 339-9811. www. wellstoneclub.org 

“Confluence, Confusion, or Catastrophe: Prospects for Ending the Delta Stalemate” with John Cain, director of restoration programs of the Natural Heritage Institute at 5:15 p.m. at Wurster Hall, Room 112, UC Campus. 642-2666. 

Food and Farming Film “Harvest of Shame” on dislocation in agricultural landscapes, sprawl, immigration and crisis, with panelists: Christopher Cook (author, Diet for a Dead Planet); Ann Lopez ( armworkers Journey); Jason Mark (farmer, journalist), Carey Knecht (Greenbelt Alliance) at 6:40 p.m. at the Hillside Club 2286 Cedar Street at Arch. www.agrariana.org 

Womansong, PeaceSong An evening of participatory singing for women at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Small Assembly, 2345 Channing Way, at Dana. Donation $15-$20. 525-7082. betsy@betsyrosemusic.org 

BellaMusica Rehearsals begin at 7 p.m. and are held every Tues. at St. Mary Magdalen Church, 2005 Berryman St. www.bellamusica.org 

Berkeley High School Governance Council meets to discuss BSEP Changes, WASC Plan, Update on UC Approved Courses and other issues at 4:15 p.m. in the Berkeley Community Theater. 644-4803. 

Writer Coach Connection Volunteers needed to help Berkeley students improve their writing and critical thinking skills from noon to 3 p.m. To register call 524-2319. www.writercoachconnection.org 

Tilden Mini-Rangers Hiking, conservation and nature-based activities for ages 8-12. Dress to ramble and get dirty. From 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

“How to Realize Helping Others is Helping Yourself” A public teaching with Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Master Dzogchen Khenpo Choga Rinpoche at 7 p.m. at Upaya Center for Wellbeing, 478 Santa Clara Ave., Suite 200, Oakland. Suggested donation $20. 525-5292.  

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Baby-friendly Book Club meets to discuss “Little Earthquakes” by Jennifer Weiner at 10 a.m. at Kensington Library. 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library. 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 12 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. at the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Healthy Aging Fair with health screenings and health and wellness information for seniors, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Centennial HAll, 22292 Foothill Blvd., Hayward. Sponsored by the Alameda County Commission on Aging. 577-3532. 

Students United For Peace shows the documentary “Berkeley in the Sixties” by Mark Kitchell at 7 p.m. in Evans Room 60, UC Campus. 848-8320. 

Poetry Writing Workshop with Alison Seevak at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

“Voices from Puerto Rico and Hawaii” Women resisting militarism at 6:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Colloquium with Todd Gilens on “Endangered Species” of urban activity, at 1 p.m. at Wurster Hall, Room 315A, UC Campus. All welcome. http://laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium  

Recording African American Stories Add your voice to the Library of Congress and the National Museum of African American History, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., by appointment, at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. For appointment call 228-3207. 

Center for Buddhist Education presents Rev. Ken Yamada at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple, 2140 Durant Ave. at Fulton. Cost is $15. 809-1460. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. 548-9840. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 13 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 3 to 4 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

“Lebanon, A Year Later” Lecture and slideshow by Zeina Zaatari on the aftermath of Israel’s War on Lebanon and the sectarian dilemma at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. 849-2568.  

Community Meeting on Plans for Children’s Hospital Oakland at 7 p.m. at North Oakland Senior Center, 5714 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. 428-3367. 

“Climate Change and Health” at 6:30 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. Hosted by the Community Health Commission. 981-5437.  

“What is a Podcast and How Can it be Used in an Educational Environment?” with Mojdeh Emdadian at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Cost is $5. 642-9460. 

East Bay Mac Users Group meets to discuss Word Processor Shoot Out: A Comparison of Options at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. http://ebmug.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Kaiser Center, 2nd floor lobby, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

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 noon at the Latina Center, 3919 Roosevelt Ave., Richmond. 981-5332. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 14 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Eugenie Scott on “The Evolution of Creationism” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925.  

“Don’t Fall for It” Learn the right ways to maintain good balance and prevent falls at 10 a.m. at Salem Lutheran Home, 2361 East 29th St. Free individualized screening after the talk. 534-3637. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Children’s Hospital, Outpatient Center Basement, 747 52nd St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Conscientious Projector Film Series “When the Levees Broke” by Spike Lee at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donation requested. 528-5403. 

Berkeley Rep Book Club meets to discuss “Against All Enemies” by Richard A. Clarke, at 6 p.m. at 2081 Center St. RSVP to 647-2916. 

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 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253.  

SATURDAY, SEPT. 15 

Coastal Cleanup along the Berkeley Waterfront from 9 a.m. to noon. Meet at 9 a.m. behind Seabreeze Market at the corner of University Ave. and Frontage Rd. For other coastal clean-up sites see www.coastforyou.org 

Oakland’s Creek to Bay Day Volunteers need to remove litter and non-native invasive species at 16 locations in Oakland. For details about locations call 238-7611 or see www.oaklandpw.com/creeks 

Creek to Bay Day at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park A creek clean-up and beautification event. Tools, water and snacks provided. Bring sunscreen, hat, gloves and rubber boots. From 9 a.m. to noon at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. 532-9142. 

Community Peace Rally & Concert from 1 to 5 p.m. at People’s Park with music, speakers, tables and action circles. peacerally07@hotmail.com 

Walking Tour of Historic Oakland Churches and Temples Meet at 10 a.m. at the front of the First Presbyterian Church at 2619 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www. 

oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of Oakland Point Meet at 10 a.m. at Cypress Feeway Memorial Park, Mandela Parkway between 13th and 14th St. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Historical and Botanical Tour of Chapel of the Chimes from 10 a.m. to noon at 499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. RSVP to 228-3207. 

Chalk4Peace A chalk art project for children midday at Museum of Childrens’ Art, 538 9th St., Oakland. 465-8770, ext. 310. and at Cragmont Elementary School, 830 Regal Rd. 644-8810. www.chalk4peace.org 

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” Oakland Outdoor Movie Series at 8:30 p.m. on Ninth St. between Broadway and Washington, Oakland. Filmgoers are encouraged to bring thier own chairs and blankets. 238-4734. 

Free Earthquake Retrofit Seminar sponsored by the Association of Bay Area Governments from 10 a.m. to noon at Albrier Community Center, 2800 Park St. 418-1676. http://quake.abag.ca.gov/fixit  

Interreligious Art & Music Festival from 1-5pm at Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, 2304 McKinley, Ave. http://drbu.org/ 

research/iwr/festival 

Vegetarian Cooking Class “Demystifying Tofu, Tempeh, and Seitan” from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $45 plus $5 materials fee. To register call 531-2665. www.compassionatecooks.com  

Positively Ageless A Celebration of Art & Aging at 6 p.m. at 4th Street Studio, 1717 Fourth St. Cost is $25. Benefits Adult Day Services Network of Alameda County. www.fourthstreetstudio.com 

Friends of the Albany Library Book Sale from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Edith Stone Room of the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 16. 

Chapel of the Chimes Historical and Botanical Tour at 10 a.m. at 4499 Piedmont Ave. RSVP to 228-3207. 

Kidpower Parent Child Workshop for chidren aged 4-8 to learn everyday safety skills, from 2 to 4 p.m. in Berkeley. Cost is $60, no one turned away. Email to register and for location. safety@kidpower.org www.kidpower.org 

“Crazy, Sexy Cancer Tips” with author Kris Carr at 3 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Saturday Music Classes for Children and Youth in Choir, Marimba, bands, drumming and dance begin at the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. 836-4649, ext. 112. www.opcmusic.org 

AAU Boys Basketball Tryouts for 12U, 13U and 14U teams from noon to 2 p.m. at the Downtown Berkeley YMCA, 2001 Allston Way. For information call 665-3264.  

Fast Pitch Softball for Adults at noon on Saturdays in Oakland. For information call 204-9500. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 16 

Bike Against the Odds for the Breast Cancer Fund at 6:30 a.m. at Lakeside Park, Lake Merritt, Oakland. Cost is $50-$75. To register see www.breastcancerfund.org/bao2007 

Transit to Trails Meet at the Downtown Berkeley BART station at 9:30 a.m. for an AC Transit bus ride to Tilden, followed by a guided walk through the park. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Musical Block Party at Peralta Community Garden hosted by the Friends of Westbrae Commons. Meet at 1 p.m. at 1400 Peralta Ave., by the corner of Hopkins to celebrate three community gardens. 524-2671. 

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m., Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby & Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. 526-7377. 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Walking Tour of the Eichlers 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 

Sycamore Japanese Church Bazaar with Japanese food, Taiko drumming, crafts and activities for children from noon to 5 p.m. at 1111 Navellier St., El Cerrito. 525-0727. 

Retromobilia Classic Auto Show 60+ vintage cars and the latest alternative fuel vehicles, food, fun, music from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the 1800 block of Fourth St. between Hearst and Virginia Sts. 526-6294. www.fourthstreet.com 

Green Sunday on Oakland’s Green Economic Development: How it is Being Affected by the BP Deal With the University of California and the “Progressive” Dellums Administration’s Partnership with the Oakland Chamber of Congress at 5 p.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. at 65th in North Oakland. 

Mac Lingo “Reflections on My Religious Journey” at 10 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

East Bay Athesists meets to watch the documentary “The Attack on Science” at 1:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 222-7580. 

Kensington Farmers’ Market Bring your donated items for the Goodwill, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 

Bike Tour of Oakland around the Fruitvale District on a leisurly paced two-hour tour that covers about five miles. Meet at 10 a..m. at the 10th St. entrance to the Oakland Museum of California. Reservations required. 238-3514.  

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club, Berkeley Marina. Wear warm, waterproof clothing and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. www.cal-sailing.org 

Martial Arts Around the World A Family Exploration Day from 1 to 4 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. 238-2022. 

Introduction to Wellness Integration at 11:30 a.m. at Pharmaca, 1744 Solano Ave. 527-8929. 

Sew Your Own Open Studio Come learn to use our industrial and domestic machines, or work on your own projects, from 5 to 9 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Cost is $3 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.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, SEPT. 17  

Free Boatbuilding Classes for Youth Mon.-Wed. from 3 to 7 p.m. at Berkeley Boathouse, 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Classes cover woodworking, boatbuilding, and boat repair. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at West Pauley Ballroom MLK Student Union, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

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. 

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 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., Sept. 11, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Sept. 12, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5426.  

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Sept. 12, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. 981-6740.  

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs., Sept. 13, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5428.  

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 in, working in or enjoying various neighborhoods in our area. We are looking for essays about the Oakland neighborhoods of Temescal and around Lake Merritt, Fourth Street in Berkeley, and the city of Alameda. Please e-mail your essays, no more than 800 words, to firstperson@berkeleydailyplanet.com. We will publish the best essays in upcoming issues in October. The sooner we receive your submission the better chance we have of publishing it.