Columnists

On the evening of Sept. 19, I had a rare experience: I left a community meeting about a big new project feeling edified and even hopeful. Need I add that the event wasn’t run by the Berkeley Planning Department? Indeed, it wasn’t in Berkeley at all, but at the Albany Veterans Memorial Building. I was there because the project—the renovation and possible demolition and rebuilding of the Safeway at 1500 Solano—is a few blocks from my north Berkeley house. To judge from public comment, most of the hundred-plus people seated in the Memorial Building’s cavernous main hall were Albanians. -more-

The battle over Assemblymember Sandré Swanson’s AB45 Oakland school local control bill has gone inside, behind the locked doors of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office in the state capitol building in Sacramento, where all pretense at open government ends, and a polite, uniformed California Highway Patrol officer always guards the hallway entrance, keeping the public away. -more-

In June 1906, the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company released a three-minute film called “A Trip to Berkeley, Cal.” The short was filmed aboard a moving streetcar on the #4 line of the Oakland Traction Consolidated Company, a precursor of the Key Route System. The #4 line ran between downtown Oakland and the intersection of Euclid and Hilgard Avenues, four blocks north of the UC campus. -more-

Earthquake Tidbits -more-

There’s a house in my neighborhood that’s back on the market again. You know the one. Been on and off the market for years and despite all reason, it’s listing for well over a million dollars. It has big problems: foundation, parking, odd use of space, geological issues and problematic drainage (let’s not even talk about the paint job), but there it is, asking more money than the last time and you know what? They’ll probably do all right. -more-

Judging from the small audience at the screening of In the Valley of Elah I attended, and its limited release—326 theaters—Paul Haggis’s masterpiece isn’t going to be around very long. Perhaps Americans are put off by the title—Elah is the valley where David fought Goliath—or maybe we’re not ready for such an unsparing look at the consequences of the Iraq war. But don’t worry, if you don’t get to see In the Valley of Elah before it closes, you’ll probably get another chance early in 2008, after the Academy Award nominations are announced. -more-

A few weeks back I got a nice e-mail message from Fran Haselsteiner (and belated thanks to you), which read in part: -more-