Amir Hassan, a 9-year-old Emerson elementary school student is dead, his mother has been hospitalized, and detectives are focusing their investigations on her, police said. 

The tragedy sent shockwaves through the surrounding community. His death was also a shock to students at Emerson, where he was well known to many of the students, Principal Susan Hodge said in a letter provided to parents.  

Berkeley police Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said the San Jose police called Berkeley officers at 9:18 a.m. Wednesday after their department had been contacted by a family friend who reported that the mother had phoned to say that her son was dead and she had been injured. 

On arriving at the wood-shingled house at 3011 Shattuck Ave., three doors south of Ashby Avenue, officers found the son dead and the mother suffering from possibly self-inflicted injuries to her arms and neck. 

Berkeley Fire Department paramedics arrived moments later, and after treating the mother’s injuries, one of the firefighters carried her in his arms, wrapped in a chenille bedspread, to their waiting ambulance. 

She was taken to Highland Hospital, where she was questioned by Berkeley homicide detectives, Sgt. Kusmiss said. 

The Alameda County Coroner’s office completed its autopsy of the youth Thursday morning, but police were withholding the results. 

“Detectives have just left to re-interview the mother based on information they have gathered through their investigative efforts and items of evidentiary value that were seized during the search warrant,” said Sgt. Kusmiss in a statement issued early Thursday evening. 

“Detectives have not ruled her out as a suspect in her son's death. They are focusing their investigative energy on her,” Kusmiss said.  

“He was a wonderful little boy,” said a neighbor, whose own children attended classes with the youth. “But we knew there was tension in the home.” 

“He was so sweet,” said another neighbor, Malong Pendar, the owner of Taste of Africa restaurant next door. “He used to come in and say, ‘Can I wash off your tables and do some dishes?’” said Pendar. “I’d say no, and he’d say, ‘Please?’ So I’d let him do something and then give him a meal. He was just so willing to help people. It hurts me what’s happened, because he was so sweet. And his mom was too.” 

A neighborhood merchant who used to sell the youth chips and sodas used the same adjective, sweet, to describe the youth. 

Another neighbor said the apartment had been visited on several occasions by county social services workers. 

Ken, who works at a barbershop down the street, said police had visited the mother in recent weeks. “I heard she was suicidal. But every time I’ve seen the boy, he was smiling. But you could see he was going through some issues at home.” 

Sgt. Kusmiss said the youth was well known to neighbors, who kept an eye out for him. 

The large wood-framed home where mother and son lived has been divided into apartments, and moments after police and paramedics arrived Wednesday morning, another tenant was on the phone outside, telling a friend that police had been by the home in recent weeks. 

If the event turns out to be, as police suspect, a murder and suicide attempt, it follows on another, the June 18 murder death by gunshot of a North Berkeley family. 

Kevin Morrissey fatally shot his spouse, 40-year-old Albany physician Mamiko Kawai, and daughters, Nikki and Kim, ages 8 and 6, before turning the gun on himself. 

He had told friends that he was worried over losses from his spouse’s medical practice, which he managed. 

Because that crime happened outside city limits, their deaths didn’t add to the city’s murder toll, which will stand at five if Wednesday’s death is ruled a homicide by the Alameda County Coroner’s office. 

The apartment building is called Casa Buenos Amigos, and is a four-unit rental cooperative acquired by the non-profit Northern California Land Trust five years ago. 

The trust, which provides affordable housing for rental and for sale, currently owns 21 rental units in Berkeley, which are reserved for households earning less than 60 percent of the area median income.

The hands putting up the brightly colored rainbows, hearts and flowers on the walls of the library at Emerson Elementary School Thursday belonged to teachers, friends and classmates of Amir Hassan, the fourth-grader who was found dead inside his Shattuck Avenue apartment Wednesday morning. 

There were also those who didn’t know him but had gathered in the room to celebrate his life nonetheless. 

As one second-grader put it, “Amir was everybody’s friend.” 

The school grieved within its four walls Thursday, teachers and students comforting each other and sharing memories of the cute eight-year-old who was no longer among them. 

“I miss you Amir,” was written in almost every color, and some students were still crying. 

When Emerson Principal Susan Hodges broke the news to each classroom Thursday morning, it had sent waves of shock around the close-knit Emerson community. 

“They are all in pretty bad shape,” Berkeley Unified School District spokesperson Mark Coplan told the Planet. 

“It’s hurting really bad. We have very little knowledge of what really happened since this took place out of school. And when it comes to the student we can’t really talk about him.” 

Second graders Raj and Kalyan Vellanki said their teacher had shown a picture of Amir in class Thursday. 

“We were told to draw pictures and put it up in the library if we wanted to,” Raj said as he walked home with his mother. 

“I drew a red cross,” said eight-year-old Jacob, “Amir was a good friend, everyone knew him.” 

Hodges, who had been close to Amir, told the Planet she wasn’t talking to the press.  

Coplan said counseling services had been set up at the school immediately after the news broke.  

“Drop-in centers have been set up where kids can come in and draw, read or sit quietly,” he said. “We will have three or four counselors available to help with the situation. More will be brought in if necessary.” 

According to a letter sent out to Emerson families by Hodges, Hassan had been attending Emerson for the last three years. “This news will be very painful for the children and you,” the letter said. “If your child is having difficulties as a result of this tragic news, please know that the City and the School District are making counselors available here for the support of our students ... We are a strong community, and we will work to take care of one another in this time of grief.” 

A phone message had also gone around to parents asking them to keep kids away from stories in the media about Hassan’s death. 

“We don’t want to confuse the kids,” Coplan said. “No one really knows what happened. Once the police figure out the cause of his death, the counselors will tell the principal and the teachers how to break the news to the students.” 

He added that parents had also been reminded to use every opportunity to remind their children how much they love them. 

Harvey Tureck, the city’s mental health director, said that counselors had been deployed to the school to provide crisis management and support. 

“There’s a mobile crisis team as well as a family and children’s program present at Emerson right now,” he said. “We do this frequently when a tragedy happens. They tell parents how to answer questions from children and provide support.” 

District superintendent Michele Lawrence praised Emerson’s efforts to handle the crisis at the school board meeting Wednesday. 

“I am really pleased with the way the principal brought in the counselors and talked to the children,” she said. “The school was completely in control of the situation.” 

With a smile and a soupçon of praise for the legal talent arrayed before her, Judge Barbara J. Miller retired to her chambers Thursday afternoon to ponder the fate of UC Berkeley’s stadium area development plans. 

The Alameda County Superior Court had just listened to the final day of arguments in her Hayward courtroom by three lawyers challenging the university and the regents’ hired legal gun from San Francisco. 

The last lawyer to speak to the court in the case of Panoramic Hill Association et al. vs The Regents of the University of California was Stephan Volker, whose clients include the California Oak Foundation and Berkeley City Councilmember Dona Spring. 

Volker concluded that his clients will accept the elimination of the 80-year-old and older trees at the grove almost at Memorial Stadium’s western wall and their replacement by three saplings each only “if the university agrees at its next football game that it will field a team of three-year-olds instead of the nation’s number two-ranked team.” 

Earlier Olson had thrown out a few sarcastic one-liners as well, including his admission that the grove “does contain some wildlife, but only after the commencement of this project.” 

His barb was clearly aimed at the tree-sitters who have been occupying the branches in protest of plans to axe the collection of trees, dominated by Coast Live Oaks—a protected species in the surrounding city. 

One short-term tree-sitter, former Mayor Shirley Dean, said she found Olson’s approach offensive. “He’s saying the university can do anything they want,” Dean said. 

One of the university’s most controversial claims is that the regents aren’t bound by the Alquist-Priolo Act, which bars new construction over active fault traces and limits renovations, additions and alterations to existing buildings to half or less of their existing value. 

Not only will Judge Miller have to decide whether or not the law applies to the university, but—if so—just how to calculate the value of the venerable stadium, which is both a city landmark and a structure honored in the National Register of Historic Places. 

But the question of whether or not the university can realize its grand plans for the stadium depends on the judge’s adopting the university’s contention that the stadium should be priced at its replacement cost, not its “as-is” sale value. 

Olson told the court that the university values the stadium at $600 million, but the challengers argue that the figure shouldn’t be considered because it wasn’t cited in the Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) for either the stadium-area projects or the university’s Long Range Development Plan 2020. 

But the lawyers suing the university said that figure was not included in the environmental documents, and couldn’t be considered as evidence in the case. 

Because determining the stadium’s value is a precondition for two of the three phases of construction planned at the stadium itself—the first is the Student Athlete High Performance Center that would cause the destruction of the grove—the challengers said the university’s plans don’t represent a project as defined in the California Environmental Quality Act. 

But Olson contends his figure leaves $300 million as a budget for retrofit, renovations, a new seating array, new lighting, and a raised press box along the western wall. 

He didn’t mention the luxury skyboxes also included in the press box array for corporations and other deep-pocket donors. 

“The bottom line is, there is no evaluation,” attorney Michael Lozeau said earlier in the day. He represents the Panoramic Hill Association, neighbors who live on the slope above the stadium. 

“The facts seem to be quite malleable in the hands of the regents,” he said, charging that Olson was offering grounds for approval of the project that didn’t exist in the record. 

Lozeau and his colleagues have consistently argued that the athletic center, a four-story partly subterranean gym and office complex, is in reality an addition to or alteration of the stadium itself and thus its $120 million cost should also be factored against stadium retrofit costs. 

Not only that, but the lawyers argue that because the gym complex is an extension of the stadium, it probably can’t even be built given the cost restraints of Alquist-Priolo. 

Olson said the stadium has always been designed as a separate structure, and because it doesn’t sit on an active fault trace, nothing precludes it from being built. 

While the university argues that building the gym is a priority safety measure to get athletes and university staff out of the seismically unsafe gym into a new, earthquake-safe structure, Steiner said the city sees things differently. 

If safety were the university’s first concern, they’d refurbish the existing stadium itself, she said. 

Steiner said the stadium project’s EIR was assembled to hide potential impacts of the gym and the stadium in particular, and failed to offer a stable project description as is required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which mandates that projects address significant impacts on the physical and cultural environments. 

Olson said the university had followed CEQA rules when the Board of Regents approved the budget for the gym project and when its Committee of Grounds and Buildings approved the plans and the EIR for all seven of the projects at and near the stadium. 

Other projects include a large underground parking lot near the stadium, a large new meeting and office complex joining staff and functions of the university’s law and business schools, changes to landmarked Gayley Road, demolition of two historic cottages and a lab building and repairs to other buildings. 

Volker argued that the CEQA-mandated project alternatives required of all projects with significant impacts were designed as straw men, intentionally created to fail because they failed to meet vague requirements. 

He cited the example of the rejection of a proposal to building the gym complex near Edwards Field on Fulton Street because it “would not create extraordinary new spaces in the Southeast Campus.” 

Steiner said an alternative that called for relocating the university’s football games to a new stadium located at Golden Gate Fields was also doomed to failure because it called for demolition of the existing stadium, “a poison pill” certain to arouse ire from the community. 

Olson said the university knew in advance that they would face litigation, and had prepared the EIR for the earlier 2020 Long Range Development plan “in full likelihood that we would be sued.” 

Berkeley being Berkeley, he said, a courtroom contest was inevitable. 

While Volker charged that the university failed to give a CEQA-mandated level of concern to the projects’ biological, geological/seismic and archaeological impacts, Olson said the university had followed the dictates of the law and countless court precedents. 

While there are hundreds of court ruling about the application of the CEQA, that’s not the case with Alquist-Priolo. 

While Olson charged that the challengers had improperly conflated the two laws, Steiner, Volker and Lozeau said they had it right. 

The petitioners want Judge Miller to overturn the regents’ approval of the project, while she continues the order barring any work on the project and imposes an injunction while the university is forced to redo the EIR process, which entails drafting a new review that addresses the deficits they allege have doomed the existing document. 

Only then can a revised Draft EIR be recirculated to the public and other public agencies for comments to be addressed in a final EIR. 

The challengers also charge that the regents made a fatal flaw by approving the gym and its budget before the committee had approved the EIR and the plans. They also contend that only the full board—not a subset that contains less than a majority of the full board—can make a legally binding decision to approve the EIR and the plans. 

Judge Miller peppered the attorneys with questions, at one point asking if she could consider taking testimony or affidavits from experts to help her decide the question of whether plans showed the gym was part of or separate from the stadium. 

Olson gave an apparently reluctant assent, but the notion was resisted by all the challengers, who said legal precedent required a ruling based only on the 45,000 or so pages of evidence already before the court.

While the city’s appraiser said the air rights over a rebuilt City Center Garage is worth $850,000, a developer planning a building adjacent to the garage valued the rights the developer would buy at $22,250.  

On Tuesday, the City Council voted 8-1 to guarantee that there would be no building within a strip 20 feet by 89 feet—and above 67 feet—adjacent to a rebuilt City Center Garage. They called the decision a “compromise,” charging developers, SNK Captec Arpeggio, LLC, $200,000. 

Councilmembers Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington lost in a preliminary vote to send the question to the Downtown Area Planning Committee. Worthing-ton voted with the majority in  

a second vote to approve  

the $200,000 price tag; Spring  

dissented. 

In other city business, the council voted unanimously to accept a proposal to expand pubic participation in meetings, approved recommendations from the city auditor to tighten oversight in the Fire Department over controlled substances used by paramedics, supported the Iraq Moratorium’s monthly demonstrations against the Iraq War, and more. The acting city manager removed approval of the firefighter’s contract from the agenda. 

Air Rights 

What the council voted to approve on Tuesday is the sale of air rights over an eventually rebuilt city-owned Center Street Garage to developers of a building at 2025 Center St. The developers would purchase the air rights to a strip 20 feet by 89 feet above a garage rebuilt to 67 feet. This permits SNK to place windows in its adjacent building above 67 feet.  

The developer’s appraiser said the easement was worth only $22,250, in contrast to the city’s much higher appraisal of $850,000. The city’s appraisal was based on lost opportunity for the city to build on the space next to the easement and the added costs the city would incur to design and build in the remaining space. 

“After negotiations,” the developer offered the city $200,000, says a report by City Manager Phil Kamlarz on the question. “These offers represent a compromise between SNK’s appraisal and Yovino-Young’s [the city’s appraiser]...” Kamlarz wrote. The city manager is on vacation and did not attend Tuesday’s meeting. 

Worthington questioned the nature of the negotiations. “It seems like a shadow government is making these presentations to developers,” Worthington said at the council meeting, asking what kind of back-and-forth negotiations had gone on between developers and the city.  

“How did we get to this place?” Worthington asked. 

In an interview with the Planet Wednesday, Spring commented: “Tom [Mayor Tom Bates] gets so much done behind the scenes.” 

According to the Kamlarz report, the city’s appraiser said that despite the fact that the proposed setback easement covers only 5 percent of the air rights, “the actual effect of the easement is clearly equivalent to a limitation on any practical use of the air space over the [67 foot] elevation for the entire garage structure.”  

The developer’s appraiser, however, said, according to the Kamlarz report, that the city can still develop 95 percent of the airspace “to its highest and best use,” and that space could be used for “amenities, such as open space.”  

Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna, sitting in at the meeting for the vacationing Kamlarz, supported the $200,000 price tag. “The city has the right to build as high as it wants to go,” she said, referring to the 95 percent of space not covered by the air rights that would be sold. 

At the council meeting, Councilmember Betty Olds said she would have wanted to read the appraisers’ reports directly, but voted for the $200,000 “compromise.”  

Asking the council not to rush, Spring said: “It’s way too premature to lock in a parking garage at 67 feet.” She urged her colleagues to hold off on the vote and send the question to DAPAC, the Downtown Area Planning Advisory Committee, “before deciding on a million dollar giveaway to a developer.” 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli argued in favor of the resolution: “It’s not a view easement,” he said. “The city reserves the right to build to an unlimited height if it stays 20 feet from Arpeggio.” 

Public comment expands 

Often known as the free speech capital of the world, Berkeley voted to catch up to many other cities—and state law—on Tuesday, unanimously passing a council resolution expanding the ability of the public to address elected representatives at City Council meetings. 

The wording is to be finalized by city staff and brought back to the council at a later date for approval. 

The resolution incorporates the new rules for public comment within the council rules.  

The subject of a number of council discussions over the last year has been the extent to which the public is permitted to address the City Council. Last year SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organized for Library Defense) threatened to sue the city over limiting public comment to 10 speakers chosen by lottery, which their attorneys said violated California’s open meeting laws. 

Disagreement among councilmembers had been focused on when people who wished to speak about items not on the agenda would have a chance to address the council. Worthington had wanted all speakers in this category to speak early in the meeting. The mayor had wanted these speakers to wait to speak until the end of the meeting. 

The compromise position adopted was allowing five speakers chosen by lottery early in the evening and the others at the end of the agenda. 

On the question of public comment on appeals to the council from the planning, landmarks and zoning commissions. Worthington and Spring wanted all persons who wished to do so to be allowed to speak.  

The question addressed a mandatory preliminary council decision on whether these appeals should get a public hearing, be sent back to the commission they came from or be approved. 

Bates argued that having the public talk extensively at this point is “a public hearing before a public hearing.” 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli agreed. “There is a substantial difference between discussing whether to have a public hearing and the merits of the appeal,” he said. 

Worthington said his reading of the state law required allowing all to speak on appeals who wanted to. A resolution to that effect was supported, however, only by Worthington and Spring. 

Another question raised was to what bodies the new rules would apply. Worthington’s proposal would have applied to all city boards and commissions; the resolution that passed makes the rules apply only to council meetings. Gene Bernardi of SuperBOLD—whose organization originally had targeted inadequate public comment at the Library Board of Trustees Meeting—called on the mayor to expand the rules, but the mayor declined to do so.  

None of the councilmembers took up the challenge offered by Dean Metzger, who, speaking to the Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association, called on the council to “meet weekly and have shorter meetings.” 

At the Council’s Sept. 11 discussion of the public comment issue, Worthington had pointed out that public comment is made difficult by an inadequate council chamber, which is difficult for wheelchair-users to maneuver, too small to hold large crowds that periodically attend council meetings, and not seismically safe. Bates’ proposal asks the city manager to explore other venues.

Alta Bates/Summit nurses and their supporters were walking the picket line Thursday in the second day of what the California Nurse’s Association calls “the biggest RN strike this decade.” 

Nurses at all 15 Northern California Summit Hospitals walked out Wednesday. They are demanding that the hospital write into their contracts state-mandated staff-to-patient ratios; they want relief nurses so they can take breaks; they want help to lift heavy patients and they object to increases in their healthcare costs.  

“I often don’t get to take meal breaks,” Eric Koch, Alta Bates RN, on the picket line in front of the hospital at Ashby Avenue near Colby Street, told the Daily Planet on Thursday. That’s because, he said, usually at least one of his five patients will require his assistance.  

Another nurse standing near Koch, who asked not to be named, said she does her charting after her regular workday because she is attending patients at other times. “If you complain, your supervisor will tell you to organize your time better,” she said. “Many people don’t report their overtime.” 

The nurses say the new healthcare proposals are bizarre. According to retired nurse Judy Lifshag, who was on the picket line supporting the other nurses, the hospital is asking that the nurses either pay a new $90 monthly fee for their benefits or that they go to a health trainer—who is not a health professional—who will make sure they are losing weight, eating better, etc.  

“Six times a year, you have to report to a health coach,” Lifshag said. 

“I will not allow them to invade my privacy, so I’ll pay,” Koch said. 

The nurses had planned to go back to work today (Friday), but Alta Bates has hired replacement workers for five days. They expect to be locked out for three days. The nurses at Alta Bates on Thursday said they would try to go to work anyway. 

Multiple calls over several days to Carolyn Kemp, spokesperson for Alta Bates/Summit Hospital, were not returned by deadline.

A widely publicized recent poll that reportedly showed that Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums is losing support among “likely Oakland voters” was not intended as a poll on success or failure of the Dellums administration, was never intended for release to the public, and the organization which commissioned it is now conducting an internal investigation to see how its results got released to political columnists Phil Matier and Andy Ross of the San Francisco Chronicle. 

The poll, a survey on crime in Oakland, was commissioned by the Oakland-based Better Housing Association for its own internal purposes. 

In an Oct. 1 column “Oaklanders Cool Quickly On Dellums, Poll Finds,” Matier & Ross wrote that “after less than a year in office, the bloom appears to be fading fast on Mayor Ron Dellums’ rose—with a new survey finding Oaklanders deeply divided over his leadership and only modestly confident in his ability to stem the city’s crime problem.”  

Saying that 500 “likely Oakland voters” rated Dellums 3.8 on crime, 3.7 on improving education, 4.2 on providing housing and 4.3 on economic development on a 1-10 scale, the columnists reported that “Binder found that 52 percent of those surveyed feel Dellums ‘has done a good job in his limited time as mayor.’ But a troublingly high 42 percent believe the new mayor is all talk and no action” and “just 45 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for him today.” 

The Matier & Ross column did not identify the organization that commissioned the poll, only calling them “an Oakland business group looking for ways to address the city’s crime problem.” 

And because the Chronicle columnists did not release the full polling data, including how many of the 500 voters surveyed voted for Dellums in last year’s election, it is impossible to say whether the Oakland mayor is actually losing support, or if those Oakland voters who opposed him in June of 2006 continue to oppose him today. 

In an e-mail response to a Daily Planet query on where he got the poll results or if he’d seen the entire poll, Ross replied, “I’m really not at liberty to say how I got the story or what I have or haven’t seen.” 

Meanwhile, the Dellums administration itself said that it does not have a copy of the poll results, and has not read any of those results other than what appeared in the Matier & Ross column. 

“The mayor clearly doesn’t get influenced by polls,” Paul Rose, Dellums’ director of communications, said by telephone. “He is interested in establishing and carrying through programs from which the people of Oakland can benefit.” 

Greg McConnell, president and CEO of the Better Housing Coalition, a real estate developers organization active in Oakland politics over the past year, confirmed that his organization commissioned the Binder crime poll mentioned in the Matier & Ross column, but would not release the poll data or give detailed numbers from those results.  

“Our organization regularly does polls on major policy issues so that we can know how to best educate local officials on ways to grow Oakland’s economy, produce jobs, and increase our housing stock, ” McConnell said by telephone. “We don’t, as a rule, release poll results to the media. We’re not interested in disseminating sensational results. The only reason I’m talking with you now is because [information on the Binder poll is] already out there.” 

And McConnell said in particular that “I really don’t want to comment on Mayor Dellums” in connection with the organization’s poll. “Our organization does not support or oppose individual office holders. We are issue-oriented.” 

McConnell, who most recently served as a member of the Oakland Blue Ribbon Commission on Affordable Housing, said that the Binder poll was commissioned “because we wanted to find out how deep people’s concerns were about crime in Oakland. We wanted to learn if they saw the solution as more police on the street, or more social programs, or some combination of the two. One of the things we learned from the poll is that the voting public in the city sees crime as the number one, number two, number three, and number four issue.”  

McConnell added that it is common in such polls to ask questions about the effectiveness of political leaders, but said that most of the respondents interviewed in the poll surveys “weren’t per se blaming any person for Oakland’s crime problem. They were just trying to get a handle on the problem and its causes.” 

McConnell said his organization would meet with Oakland city leaders in the future to discuss how the Binder poll results can be used to improve Oakland’s response to the city’s crime problem. 

As for how Matier & Ross got its hands on the poll results, McConnell said “We don’t know how it got leaked. We’re doing an internal investigation to find out, so that it won’t happen in the future.”

On Monday, Oct. 1, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier & Ross reported selected results of the David Binder poll concerning Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums. 

The Binder poll got picked up the next day in the Chronicle’s news section, with political writer Carla Marinucci reporting that Dellums’ endorsement of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for president “came as new polls show that his support may not carry the clout it once did. Little more than a year after his election, Oakland voters have become disenchanted with the mayor's leadership.” 

Also on Oct. 2, the Matier & Ross column poll results were quoted in the online version of the National Review, which said that “some days, the left hand of the press doesn't quite keep track of what the other left hand is saying” after noting that the Chronicle was reporting that Dellums’ popularity was dropping while the Associated Press was simultaneously reporting that Dellums is a “widely respected black leader,”  

On Oct. 3, Off The Bus political blogger Mayhill Flower, writing in the Huffington Post about the Dellums endorsement of Clinton, said that Dellums’ “popularity as Oakland mayor has been declining,” linking the statement back to the Matier & Ross column. 

Two days later, the poll reference was picked up in a KQED Television online blurb announcing its “This Week In Northern California” program. Referring to a segment titled “Dellums Endorses Clinton as Poll Numbers Drop,” the blurb says that Ron Dellums' popularity in Oakland has dropped since he was elected to City Hall, and refers back to the Oct. 2 Marinucci story in the Chronicle as one of its sources. 

None of the news organizations or blogs that referred to the Binder poll following the original Matier & Ross story gave any indication that its reporters or bloggers had seen the original Binder polling data.

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums meets with North Oakland residents this Saturday, holding a city charter-mandated community town hall meeting from 10 a.m. to noon at the Peralta Elementary School, 460 63rd St. 

The town hall meeting is being held in conjunction with the regular Community Advisory meeting of Councilmember Jane Brunner, who represents the North Oakland area. 

If Saturday’s meetings follow Dellums’ earlier town halls, the mayor will make a presentation of a half hour or so, and then answer questions from residents. City department heads were present and available to answer questions at the previous Town Halls. 

Development and crime are expected to be two of the key North Oakland concerns to be addressed at Saturday’s meeting.  

—J. Douglas Allen-Taylor 

UC Berkeley plans a major overhaul of landmarked Bowles Hall, and they’re looking for an architect to show how to do it. 

The search marks the end of a controversial plan to convert the massive 1928 concrete edifice into posh quarters for corporate executives attending seminars at the Haas School of Business. 

The collapse of that project has paved the way for a more modest proposal to renovate the hall for its traditional use as a male-only residential hall. 

Retired IBM Bob Sayles, who has been leading the drive to preserve the hall for students, said he’s pleased with the news. 

Announcement of the Haas plans had triggered a powerful backlash from dedicated “Bowlesmen,” who launched a campaign to preserve the venerable building as student quarters. 

Sayles, president of the Bowles Hall Alumni Association, has been joined by 300 dues-paying alumni in an ongoing effort to restore the hall to its former glory. 

Joining them in their worries was Berkeley Planning Director Dan Marks, who had called the project “really distressing,” especially when considered along with other major projects planned at and near UC Memorial Stadium. It is those other projects the city and a group of other plaintiffs are challenging in a Hayward court. 

Among the alumni Sayles recruited is former U.S. Rep. Robert Matsui, whose successor in Congress was Tom Campbell, dean of the Haas School of Business—the architect of the executive education proposal. 

The Campbell plan called for transformation of the hall into 70 suites, with construction of a nearby semi-subterranean suite of meeting rooms. 

The new facilities were to include “state of the art instructional and conference spaces for up to 300 participants in residential and nonresidential programs,” along with “up to 100 guest rooms; and requisite support facilities.” 

Haas abandoned the plan in August, within days of Campbell’s announcement that he was stepping down as dean. 

One potential stumbling block to the business school’s plans was the structure’s proximity to the Hayward Fault—and one map shows a trace of the active fissure running beneath a corner of the building. 

While the university has argued in the current court case challenging other nearby UC Berkeley projects that it’s not bound by a state law that severely limits new buildings and renovations within 50 feet of active faults, that issue remains in question. 

The Alquist-Priolo Act bars new construction and limits renovations and alterations to half of a structure’s value—which might have raised legal issues given the extensive interior gutting called for by the executive education program plans. 

The only case which has tested the Alquist-Priolo involved another UC Berkeley residential property, Foothill Housing. 

The university has issued a new request for qualifications (RFQ) to find a designer to conduct a feasibility study for the overhaul of the venerable “collegiate gothic” structure sited on a stretch of scenic hillside between Memorial Stadium and the Greek Theatre. 

According to the RFQ, “The goals of the renewal are to upgrade student living areas; correct code deficiencies, including accessibility and life safety; increase security; address deferred maintenance issues, including roofing and waterproofing; reduce operating costs; and increase revenue.” 

Bowles was conceived by donor Mary Bowles, Robert Gordon Sproul (later UC President) and George Kelham, chief architect of the 1915 Pan Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, successor to John Galen Howard as architect for the university. 

The 1988 announcement of a proposal to demolish the building motivated then-current and former residents to launch a preservation drive. 

As a result of their effort, the building was declared a City of Berkeley landmark on Oct. 17, 1988, and the structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 16, 1989. 

Sayles said the alumni have high hopes that Bowles can be restored to its historic role. He has met with Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Harry Le Grande and said he is planning on more meetings with university officials to discuss the institution’s future.

Visitors to Berkeley High School will now have to show photo identification to enter the campus. 

The change, being implemented this month, comes with the introduction of added security measures at BHS, following a survey of high school safety in neighboring school districts. 

“It’s to make sure people visiting the campus are checked in and we know who they are and where they are going,” Berkeley High principal Jim Slemp told the Planet. “We are in the middle of a large urban area and the children are in our protection. Let’s say there is a parent who has a restraining order. We need to make sure we don’t let them on campus. Or maybe it’s someone who has no business being on campus. The safety of our students and staff comes first.” 

Slemp added that although some school campuses hold on to visitor IDs until people signed out, Berkeley High would only require them during check-in. 

“If a visitor does not have any kind of an ID or has forgotten it at home, we’ll probably talk to them,” he said. “It’ll be dealt with on an individual basis.” 

Until now, only Berkeley High staff was required to have photo identification on them. Students carry IDs but are not generally required to show them. 

When parents visit, volunteers at the front desk check their last name with that of the student and provide them with a stick-on badge. When officers see the visitor’s badge, they are allowed to pass through the hallways uninterrupted. 

“We get 30 to 40 people dropping by everyday,” BHS parent coordinator Janet Huseby said last Friday. “Today we had representatives from three or four colleges, the elevator repair guy and parents picking up transcripts. There’s a huge list of people ... it’s just like a small city.” 

BUSD spokesperson Mark Coplan said that the school also got a lot of press and visitors from other schools. He added that no one under 21 was allowed to visit the campus without an adult. 

“In the past, it’s always been adequate,” Coplan said. “But evidently the time has come for change. You can’t just come to the high school and wander around. You have to have a reason to be there.” 

Reactions to the new policy—aspects of which already have been implemented and will be announced to the school community in the next couple of weeks—has been mixed.  

“Since we have had assaults on campus I think it’s a good idea,” said BHS parent Liz Scherer, “but if they had a way to make sure that non-students don’t have easy access to the school that would be even better. I am more in favor of student IDs that can be quickly shown when kids come into the campus since police often fail to identify suspects involved in fights.” 

School board student director Rio Bauce said the policy should be been put through an evaluation period. 

“I understand the concern for making sure that people from outside don’t come into the school, but at the same time it’s a big measure,” he said. “Parents often do not carry their IDs with them and it would be an awful waste of time if they had to go back to their house to get them. And what about those who do not have any kind of photo ID?” 

Board president Joaquin Rivera said that the policy was in line with what other schools did for security measures. 

“It’s for the safety of the children,” Huseby said. “I don’t know how it will turn out, we will have to wait and see.” 

BHS parent Laura Menard told the Planet that the new rule was a violation of confidentiality. 

“Last week I was required to log in the reason for my visit at the front desk but this week I had to disclose it to a parent volunteer,” she said. “Parent volunteers should not be in a position to decide if campus access is authorized for another parent. Parent confidentiality could be violated by this new practice.” 

Menard added that the real threat comes from the easy access for non-students to sell drugs around the school’s perimeters. 

“Targeting parents who come in and voluntarily register will not solve the problem,” she said. 

BHS Parent Teacher Student Association president Mark Van Krieken echoed her thoughts, “The students face more risk from high school students who come in from other campuses than from parents,” he said. “Visitors need to feel comfortable when they come to school. Right now, parents often face a lot of language and cultural barriers which keep them away.” 

Slemp acknowledged that many of the security incidents on campus this year were due to non-students coming into the campus. 

“We are one of the few schools that have an open campus,” he said, “Some officers from the Berkeley Police Department would like us to tell students to wear their IDs on campus, but it just doesn’t seem the right thing to do. I don’t want to repress anybody, I just want to make sure we are protecting people.” 

Slemp added that the BHS safety officers could identify all the students on campus. 

“They have a pretty good sense of who is a non-student,” he said. “The idea of having visitor IDs came from parents themselves. A group got together and decided this was a little way of doing what we can to make the campus safer. We don’t have a problem with people visiting the campus. But when someone tries to sneak into the campus, then it’s definitely a problem.”

The Binational Health Week, organized locally by the Berkeley Organizing Congregation for Action (BOCA), starts today (Friday) to promote mental health and physical fitness in the city. 

Events include an annual series of health promotion and education activities that include workshops, insurance referrals and medical screenings for Latino families. 

According to Belen Pulido, BOCA community organizer, the events emerge annually from networks created among agencies and organizations working on migrant health issues which help to foster ongoing collaborations. 

The week will kick off with “Dance for your Health”—a health fair with food and dance for the community—at the West Berkeley Senior Center from 7 to 9 p.m today (Friday). 

All the workshops will be in Spanish and held at the West Berkeley Senior Center from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. For a schedule of workshops or more information see www.berkeleyboca.org or call 367-0654. 

Hugo Lucero, city mental health officer, told the Planet that mental illness is considered a stigma among the Latino community. 

“We call it a bad case of the nerves,” he said. “Latinos often deny that they have mental problems. This is a good way to raise awareness and help them open up.” 

Lucero said that 80 adults and 40 child-ren were expected to attend the workshops, which are being organized in collaboration with the City of Berkeley and partner agencies.  

The events will conclude with a Family Activity Day at Cesar Chavez Park on Oct. 20 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Soon oh very soon, we’re going to change this world. 

—From a song by Bruce Thomas, as sung by the Freedom Song Network 

For a quarter of a century members of the Freedom Song Network (FSN) have raised their voices for justice and freedom, singing on picket lines for workers’ rights and in the anti-apartheid struggle, bringing their music to prisons, rat-infested stairwells in SROs, BART trains and even performing on stage with a symphony orchestra. They’ve taken their music to Cuba and to the School of the Americas in Georgia. 

Their history will be told in stories and song on Saturday, Oct. 13, when the FSN celebrates its birthday with “An evening of hope and solidarity,” 7:30 p.m., La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, $10-$50 sliding scale. 

The network grew out of a 1982 workshop conference called Art Works for the People. At first, labor didn’t welcome music on the picket line; that’s when the Secretary/Treasurer of the SF Labor Council was the head of the Morticians’ Union, according to NFS notes on its history. With the advent in 1984 of Walter Johnson heading the SF Labor Council, the singers were invited to the picket lines—and have been ever since. 

Bay Area musician and political activist Jon Fromer was among the network’s founders. In a phone interview with the Planet on Wednesday, Fromer talked about the importance of music in political struggle. 

During a prolonged action, such as a long strike, when the media’s gone home and spirits begin to sag “music is the life-blood of the movement … It’s food for the struggle,” Fromer said. Music “can capture the beauty and power of a struggle that speakers often can’t.”  

One of the picket lines Fromer remembers best is when members of the network joined the longshoremen picketing as they refused to unload goods from ships coming from apartheid South Africa. One of the favorite songs on the picket line of the time was: “I don’t care if I go to jail, if it’s for freedom then I gladly go…”  

There were times during the anti-apartheid fight that activists were arrested as picketers sang that song. 

It was around 1984 that Dave Welsh, a Berkeley resident and then-member of the Letter Carriers Union, started singing with the network. Some of his favorites are “zipper” songs, where new words of struggle are “zipped” into old songs, Welsh told the Planet in a phone interview on Tuesday. Some of those songs are: “You’ve got to roll that union on,” and “Which side are you on?” 

Welsh was the author of “Let the Little Yellow School Bus Go.” He wrote the song in 1993 when a bus on its way through Mexico to Cuba was seized by U.S. border agents. The trip had been organized by Pastors for Peace to confront the U.S. blockade against the Castro government. 

People who had been on the bus, including Welsh’s daughter, went on a hunger fast for 23 days until the bus was released. Welsh’s song was recorded by a KPFA reporter and sent to community stations all over the country.  

“The song turned into a weapon for the release of the bus,” Welsh said.  

Welsh has sung with the network on numerous picket lines. Without the music, people on the street would walk by, Welsh said. “It makes a big difference.” The music makes a “direct connection” with people, he added. 

Welsh recalls that connection being made during the first Iraq war, when the Freedom Song Network thundered out its anti-war message at BART stations and rode the trains, where they sung as well. “Almost everyone was cheered by it—people joined in,” Welsh said, underscoring the participatory nature of the network’s activism. 

Continuing with song and struggle, the Freedom Song Network is planning its next event: On Oct. 27, the group will march and sing with the labor contingent at the anti-war demonstration in San Francisco.  

Some Berkeley school board members expressed concern that Berkeley High School (BHS) did not meet the benchmark for the 2007 Academic Performance Index (API) scores. 

Berkeley Unified School District’s API for 2006-07 was 747, five points less than the previous year. Ranging from a low of 200 to a high of 1,000, the API reflects a school’s or district’s performance level based on the results of statewide testing. The statewide API performance level goal for all schools is 800. 

This year’s performance index was based on scores from 6,017 students, a participation rate of approximately 97 percent for elementary and middle schools and 84 percent for high school students. 

According to a report from Neil Smith, assistant superintendent of BUSD educational services, and P.J. Hallam, director of assessment, evaluation and research, Berkeley High’s California standardized testing participation rates had decreased in 2006-07 in spite of efforts to increase student participation. 

The report states that adequate participation rates for testing varied by group over the past three years. 

While African Americans and socioeconomically disadvantaged student did not reach adequate paricipation percentages in 2005 and 2006, Latino and white student subgroups did. 

In 2007, none of the groups met participation rates. 

School board vice president John Selaw-sky expressed concern at this trend. “I don’t know how we are going to keep track of that,” he said. 

“We need to work harder to make progress throughout the year in subgroups,” said board president Joaquin Rivera. “Schools which have been more successful than the others need to share their methods with others.” 

Berkeley High principal Jim Slemp told the Planet Wednesday that California was the only state in the nation that permitted parents to opt out of the state required testing.  

“The federal No Child Left Behind law says we are rated by how well the kids do in the state test and you have to have 95 percent of the kids take the test,” he said. “However, state law says that we have to let parents and kids know that they aren’t required to take the test. Why would anyone smart enough want to spend four mornings sitting for tests? It puts us in a lose-lose situation. It’s the law that makes it happen.” 

According to Smith and Hallam’s report, the law creates a “fundamental dilemma for a school system when they are penalized for not meeting federal criteria and are equally obligated to inform parents of their right to opt out of testing.” 

“We have 99 percent participation in the state exit exam,” Slemp said. “The API doesn’t count for anything. It just checks how schools are doing all over. If you look at SAT and exit exam scores Berkeley High is doing a great job ... The way the law works doesn’t work for us.” 

The board discussed the possibility of a Berkeley API which would put together different assessments and look at the progress or lack of progress in schools. 

“The overarching note is that all our school sites show progress from 1999, when the test first started,” said Selawsky. “However, it’s surprising that progress of African Americans in King Middle School is flat.” 

Board member Karen Hemphill said that she expected King students to improve. 

“I think we are optimistic that principal Jason Lustig’s experience at Cragmont Elementary School will help transfer the results to King,” said Superintendent Michele Lawrence. 

Justig took over as principal of Martin Luther King Jr. School in fall.

A student at Emerson Elementary School in Berkeley is dead, his mother has been hospitalized, and police are questioning her as the suspect in the boy’s death. 

Berkeley police Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said the San Jose police called Berkeley officers at 9:18 a.m. today (Wednesday) after their department had been called by a friend of the mother. The woman told the San Jose police that the mother had phoned her to say that her son was dead and she had been injured. 

On arriving at the wood-shingled house on Shattuck Avenue three doors south of Ashby Avenue, officers found the son dead and the mother suffering from possibly self-inflicted injuries. 

Berkeley Fire Department paramedics arrived moments later, and after treating the mother’s injuries, one of the firefighters carried her in his arms wrapped in a chenille bedspread to the waiting ambulance. 

She was taken to Highland Hospital, where she was being questioned by Berkeley homicide detectives, Sgt. Kusmiss said. 

“He was a wonderful little boy,” said a neighbor whose own children attended classes with the boy. “But we knew there was tension in the home.” 

Another neighbor said the apartment had been visited on several occasions by county social services workers.

Native Americans and their supporters rallied on the UC Berkeley campus Friday, demanding that the university return the remains of Indian ancestors so that they can be buried according to custom. 

“This is a human rights issue; this is a social justice issue,” Mark LeBeau, a Pitt River tribal member told the noontime crowd that swelled to about 300 people in front of Sproul Hall.  

“Our ancestors are sitting in boxes. They’re treated like lab rats,” Douglas Mullen from the Greenville Rancheria told the rally. 

At issue are the remains of some 13,000 humans currently at Phoebe Hearst Anthropology Museum on the UC Berkeley campus, the second largest collection in the country of remains believed to come from Native Americans. The largest collection is at the Smithsonian Museum. 

The museum staff formerly included a semi-autonomous unit led by Native Americans, which helped tribes prepare claims to these remains and artifacts under federal law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA). 

The university recently integrated the museum’s NAGPRA unit into the regular functions of the museum, displacing Native American scholars who had supported the efforts of the tribes to establish their claims. This created an outcry among Native Americans and led to the formation of the NAGPRA Coalition that sponsored the rally. 

University spokesperson Marie Felde told the Planet last week that the reorganization improved efficiency of the process and was patterned on the way other museums evaluate claims under NAGPRA. 

But the Native American protesters say the non-native anthropologists the university has now charged with carrying out NAGPRA want to keep the remains at the museum for research purposes. 

“They have the scientific curiosity that has made them do this—robbing our ancestors’ graves for scientific study,” Lalo Franco, of the Santa Rosa Rancheria Tachi Yokut tribe said, speaking at the rally.  

The protesters said they have asked several times to meet with Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who is Canadian-born and of French and Native American descent.  

“The Indian man refuses to meet with us,” said Reno Franklin of the Kashia Pomo tribe, speaking at the rally. “We’re not the ones being disrespectful … Tell the chancellor to wake up and be an Indian again.” 

Carrying signs that included messages such as, “Want research—use your own granny,” and “Berkeley—what part of sacred don’t you understand,” the protesters left Sproul Hall and marched to California Hall, where the chancellor’s office is located, to ask for a meeting.  

The coalition has been asking to meet with Birgeneau since July. Associate Chancellor John Cummins responded that he would meet with individual tribal representatives, but not with the coalition representatives of eight tribes as a group. 

Assistant Chancellor Beata Fitzpatrick stepped outside California Hall, listened to Mark LeBeau speak and addressed the crowd, saying that the chancellor has “great respect” for the issue of the ancestral remains.  

“He is himself a native person from Canada,” she said, going on to say, however, “We believe the university is in compliance with the law.” 

Responding to Fitzpatrick, LeBeau said if the chancellor continues to refuse to meet with the coalition and to resolve the issue, the next step could be to bring a lawsuit against the university for violating NAGPRA. 

The question of public comment at council meetings is back before the council today (Tuesday), with Mayor Tom Bates adding greater opportunity for public comment than in earlier iterations of his plan, but not enough to satisfy SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organized for Library Defense), the organization that had threatened to sue the city for skirting the state’s open meeting laws with inadequate opportunities for the public to speak at public meetings. 

Competing proposals by councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Dona Spring are also on the agenda. 

Also on tonight’s agenda is an audit showing the need for better oversight of controlled drugs used by paramedics, the firefighters’ new contract with the city and more. 

The meeting begins at 5 p.m. in closed session with the council discussing litigation filed against the city by GTE Mobilnet and Verizon and a conference with labor negotiators on labor negotiations with the police association. The public can comment before the meeting is adjourned to executive session.  

At 6 p.m. the city will hold a workshop on city efforts in economic development over the last three months. The regular meeting begins at 7 p.m. 

Public comment 

The mayor’s item on public participation before the council is the third version of Bates’ efforts to expand public comment in accordance with the Brown Act. 

Still at issue, according to Gene Bernardi of the SuperBOLD steering committee, is the public’s ability to address the council on items that do not appear on the agenda. 

According to Bates’ revised recommendation, those people wishing to speak early in the meeting on items not on the agenda must submit a card to the city clerk before the meeting begins. The clerk will choose five members of the public at random to speak at that time. Those not chosen must wait until the end of the meeting to speak. 

In Worthington’s competing recommendation, public comment on non-agenda items would be heard directly after councilmembers approve the consent calendar, where the council approves non-controversial items in a single vote. 

“We prefer Kriss Worthington’s recommendation,” Bernardi told the Planet on Monday. “Non-agenda items should be on the agenda early in the evening.” 

According to Spring’s recommendation, five members of the public chosen by lottery would be able to speak on non-agenda items before the public addresses items on the consent calendar, which is early in the evening.  

In earlier versions of his plan, Bates had all public comment on non-agenda items as the very last item of business, around 11 p.m. His new recommendation appears to be a compromise. 

New chambers 

Bates also added a search for a new council meeting place to the public comment proposal, something Worthington had brought up at the Sept. 11 meeting. “City Council meetings are held in one of the few public buildings in Berkeley that has not been seismically retrofitted,” the mayor wrote, noting that costs to retrofit the Maudelle Shirek Building would exceed $30 million.  

The Council Chamber is also small, allowing only 125 members of the public and is difficult for people using wheelchairs to navigate. A new venue needs to accommodate radio and television transmission, the mayor’s item says. 

Audit: Fire Department controlled substances  

The city must increase its oversight of the controlled substances carried by paramedics, including morphine, valium and diazepam, says City Auditor Ann Marie Hogan in a report that will be before the City Council tonight. 

While Hogan wrote that the audit didn’t find any misuse or misappropriation of substances, “there appeared to be opportunities for misuse or misappropriations,” she wrote in her report, citing incomplete inventory records and a lack of procedures to ensure controlled substance records are accurate, complete and readily retrievable. 

For example, Hogan writes that the ending balance on the June 2006 log was 66 vials of valium and the beginning balance on the July 2006 inventory log was 51 vials. “The beginning balance of the day should match the ending balance of the previous day,” Hogan wrote. 

The auditor further reported poor documentation on disposal of expired or damaged controlled substances. “Purchase records were not consistently maintained or filed,” she wrote, further noting a lack of supervisory review and monitoring of controlled substances. 

Hogan noted that the city did not require drug testing for paramedics or firefighters. In his response, City Manager Phil Kamlarz said the city “intends to implement pre-employment drug testing for all fire new hires effective with the next recruit class.” Kamlarz’ response further indicates that the city will continue to meet and confer with the association with respect to “a program of reasonable suspicion, post accident and return-to-duty drug and alcohol testing.”  

While it appears that drug testing was raised during negotiations, it was not included in the finalized contract recommendation. 

“Firefighters said, ‘what does this have to do with our contract?’” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington, reached by phone on Monday.  

The city manager’s comments in the audit report indicate that negotiators will go back to the firefighters to try to implement drug testing when there is “reasonable suspicion” of the use of drugs and alcohol and after a vehicle accident. 

In June, the City Council voted to rescind the city prohibition against drug and alcohol testing of employees, giving negotiators the option of negotiating for testing with employees. 

The question of the need to test arose after the conviction in 2006 of former police Sgt. Cary Kent of felony theft of drugs from the police drug vault he was charged with guarding. 

The city manager wrote in the audit report that the other concerns were in the course of being addressed. 

Firefighters contract 

After more than 30 negotiating sessions since February 2006, the Berkeley Firefighters Association and the city have tentatively agreed to a multi-year contract retroactive to July 2006 and continuing through June 2010. The City Council will be asked to ratify the contract tonight. 

The new contract for the 120 city employees, including firefighters, paramedics, fire prevention and hazardous materials response services, will boost the department salaries 13 percent over the four-year life of the retroactive contract. The total staffing and benefit costs to the city for employees represented by the association over the four-year term of the contract is $52.6 million, representing an increase of $5.96 million over the four years of the contract. 

Also before the council this evening is: 

• An audit of the senior and disabled home rehabilitation loan program; 

• Hiring a library information systems administrator at a range of about $7,000 to $9,000 per month plus benefits and a watershed specialist at about $5,000 to $6,500 per month plus benefits; 

• An increase in the percentage of bio-diesel fuels used in city vehicles; 

• Writing a letter of support to the governor of Louisiana for the Jena 6, the black students accused of beating a white student after altercations arising from nooses hung on a “whites-only” tree, which the black students sat under. 

• The sale for $200,000 of an easement to SNK Captec Arpeggio for fire separation purposes above the Center Street garage. 

Anti-tobacco advocate Stan Glantz spoke about tobacco money and tainted research at the University of California at last Tuesday’s Talkin’ Tobacco De-Cal class at UC Berkeley. 

On Sept. 20, UC Regents voted to continue accepting tobacco industry funding for scientific research but stated that such funding would require more oversight. 

In the wake of UC Berkeley’s accepting a $500 million biofuel research grant from oil giant BP, the issue of whether UC should continue to accept research funds from the tobacco industry has sparked debate on campus. 

Facilitated by students Betty Yang and Laura Miller, the class aims to coordinate on-campus anti-tobacco advocacy events this semester. Others involved in the class include Project TOBAC (Tobacco Out of Berkeley And Cal), UC Berkeley University Health Services and the City of Berkeley Tobacco Prevention Program. 

Marcia Brown-Machen, the city’s tobacco prevention program director, said that students would pressure the UC regents to reveal the truth behind the controversial “secret research” taking place at UCLA through a $6 million adolescent smoking cessation grant from cigarette-maker Philip Morris. 

Kim Homer of the California Youth Advocacy Network (CYNA) said she finally got a copy of the proposal used to win the grant money by UCLA. 

“It took UCLA four months to send me a copy of the heavily censored 200-page paperwork after I submitted a public records act,” Homer said. More than half of its pages were censored or missing, making it difficult to understand the exact nature of the grant, she said. 

“Under ‘Specific Aims, the document released by UCLA states that ‘The goal of this project is to develop a...,’” she said, pointing out the redacted sections to the students. 

“I was told that the university did not want to release information to us because there were animal experiments being done and they wanted to protect their faculty against harassment and attacks,” said Homer. “But it had nothing to do with animals. They were testing 14-22 year-olds ... Moreover, if they were so scared of being attacked by animal rights activists, why didn’t they white out the part which said they were testing animals?” 

The application also censored the names of the researchers, the experiments that will be conducted and the hypotheses that are being tested. 

“This is technically supposed to be a transparent record,” said Homer. “Is this transparent? What is UCLA trying to hide?” 

She said that the experiment was being conducted by prominent neuropharmacologist Edythe London, who has conducted research for Philip Morris in the past. 

Glantz, a professor of cardiology at UCSF, said that the experiment plans to take kids who smoked and do a brain scan on them to see what kind of changes took place when they smoked. 

“If you are interested in designing a cigarette for teenagers, this is exactly the kind of information you would be looking at,” he said. “Most people think that a cigarette is just nicotine wrapped up in paper. It is in fact a highly engineered product. Cigarette companies control the delivery of nicotine puff by puff. They do lots of experiments to maximize the addictivity.” 

Glantz added that the main reason behind UC accepting funds from tobacco companies was that the university was in a catastrophic financial condition. 

“If the university says no to tobacco, it means saying no to business,” he said. “People are frightened about where they are going to get the money to run this place.” 

Homer said she expected the full contract between UCLA and Philip Morris to be released this week.

While the reaction to AC Transit’s ambitious Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) proposal has not stirred up the sort of public controversy in Oakland and San Leandro that it has in Berkeley, interviews with city officials show that the transit district may have a way to go before the development of a BRT plan will win approval in those cities as well. 

City officials in San Leandro have already told AC Transit that the city would “most likely not support a fully dedicated bus lane from beginning to end” of the project in that city. 

AC Transit is proposing establishing a BRT line along the streets currently operating the district’s 1 and 1R lines, south down Telegraph Avenue through Berkeley and North Oakland into downtown Oakland, then along International Boulevard / East 14th Street to terminate either at the San Leandro or the Bayfair BART station. The BRT proposal includes establishing dedicated bus-only lanes down the middle of Telegraph and International/East 14th, as well as traffic lights timed to allow the immediate passage of buses in order to speed BRT buses along those corridors.  

According to the district’s environmental impact report on the project, BRT is proposed in order to improve transit service and better accommodate existing bus ridership, increase transit ridership by providing a viable and competitive alternative to auto travel, improve and maintain the efficiency of transit service delivery, and support local and regional cgoals to enhance transit-oriented development. It is the district’s major development project. 

AC Transit has proposed mixed-flow lanes—sharing BRT lanes with autos and non-BRT buses—in three areas of the project. In Oakland, non-dedicated lanes are proposed for Broadway between 11th and 20th streets as well as along 12th Street, as in runs between Lake Merritt and the Kaiser Convention Center. In downtown San Leandro, AC Transit has offered the city the option of operating dedicated BRT lanes or mixed-flow lanes. 

In other parts of the BRT project, including along Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, where contention over the proposal has been at its highest, mixed-flow lanes were not originally offered as an alternative. 

Public hearings on the BRT EIR concluded this summer, and transit district officials are currently involved in discussions with officials and city staff members in the three affected cities. 

“We’re taking suggestions for possible alterations from them, and trying to figure out how those can be accommodated into our final design plan,” said AC Transit Public Information Officer Clarence Johnson. 

The accommodations are crucial because once the EIR process is completed and the BRT design is finalized, since the plan involves major street developments, the project must go before City Council in each of the three East Bay cities for final approval. 

Already, San Leandro has turned thumbs-down on BRT bus-only lanes in its downtown. Last July, the San Leandro City Council directed the mayor and city staff to send a letter supporting only those BRT alternatives which provided for mixed BRT, regular bus, and auto use. 

Only a few years ago, San Leandro re-striped and put in significant streetscape improvements in its downtown E. 14th Street corridor, by far the most congested traffic area of the city. 

“Based upon the information in the draft EIR, council believed that dedicated BRT lanes would have significant impacts in the northern end of our city,” Public Information Officer Jane McCray of the San Leandro City Manager’s office said by telephone. “We’re concerned about the major impact the dedicated lanes would have on businesses along E. 14th street, particularly because it would necessitate the elimination of on-street parking. Since then, AC Transit officials have met with us to try to get a better understanding of our concerns and to possibly come up with alternatives we could live with.” 

McCray said that “perhaps” one accommodation might be to have the BRT dedicated lanes set down in “limited sections” in the San Leandro downtown area. 

Another area where BRT dedicated lanes would have a major effect is in Oakland’s Fruitvale District, where the city only recently made streetscape improvements in connection with the Fruitvale Transit District. At some times of the day between Fruitvale and 38th avenues, along the heavily congested International Boulevard, traffic has been at a virtual standstill because of the improvements. 

Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, who represents the Fruitvale district and supports BRT, says he has been in negotiations with AC Transit officials about proposed changes to BRT in the Transit Village area adjoining the Fruitvale BART station. 

“Some of the business owners around 34th and 38th avenues had some concerns, particularly about where the buses are intended to stop, and we’re trying to work that out,” De La Fuente said by telephone. “We want to make sure that the impact on our area is beneficial. I’ve already been able to work out some of those concerns, and some of them, we are still working on. The good thing is that we have plenty of time to work this out.”  

In a letter sent to AC Transit General Manager Rick Fernandez, De la Fuente listed six “concerns” he had about BRT in the Fruitvale. On affordability, he wrote, “AC Transit already has some of the most expensive bus service in the Bay Area, and Oakland households have among the lowest incomes in the Bay Area. … The new Bus Rapid Transit service should a) be affordable to those who need it most and b) not do anything to increase the price of local service.” On the matter of service: “The level of service for both the BRT and feeder lines should be higher than what it is now at all hours of the day.” And on median landscaping: “The City/Redevelopment Agency has made a significant investment in the median strip on International Boulevard. The median provides for green public space and traffic calming. Any alterations the BRT project makes to the median should be at the expense of the East Bay BRT Project and should not result in any net decrease in public space and greenery in that immediate area.” 

In his letter to Fernandez, De La Fuente also said he had concerns about the impact BRT would have on congestion and the loss of parking along the Fruitvale-International Boulevard corridor. 

In a telephone interview, De La Fuente said that bringing rapid transit along International Boulevard is “essential” to the community, an “integral part” of both his and the city’s goal of bringing “transit-oriented development” to Oakland. But the council president said that it was “important to integrate AC Transit’s plans into what we already have.”  

In other parts of Oakland, city officials have either tried to re-write its streetscaping proposals to accommodate the proposed BRT, or else held up proposals altogether while waiting to see if BRT goes through. 

Stephanie Floyd Johnson, an economic development/redevelopment program manager with Oakland’s Redevelopment Agency, said that BRT’s proposal has affected city plans for four International Boulevard streetscape improvements south of the Fruitvale.  

“I won’t say I attribute all of the delay of those projects to AC Transit,” she said, “but the longer the city has waited to move forward with those projects, the more BRT has had an effect.” 

Johnson said that in the late ‘90s, Oakland allocated money for streetscape improvements in four “nodes,” in that area—40th to 44th avenues, 72nd to 75th avenues, 80th to 89th avenues, and 105th Avenue to the San Leandro border. Only one of those “nodes” was completed—the Durant Square area near the San Leandro border, where a median was put in along with other improvements. A median, along with landscape bushes and trees, was put in on International in the 80th to 89th avenue node, but completion of the project was stopped after AC Transit’s BRT proposal was introduced. 

“The city had plans for that area that would have improved pedestrian safety,” Johnson said, “including traffic calming measures, improved pedestrian traffic lights, and sidewalk bulbouts to make pedestrians more visible to vehicles, and to lessen the amount of street that they have to cross.” 

But Johnson said that the bulbouts, in particular, were not compatible with AC Transit’s plans for dedicated center bus lanes, and that after AC Transit expressed its concerns, “it made it difficult for the city to move forward to get additional funding to complete the projects. Because the bids were coming in higher than we expected, we had to supplement the city funds with other funding. We had been pursuing federal funds through the Metropolitan Transit Commission, but that’s when AC Transit began proposing BRT, which was not compatible with everything the city was proposing, and when your local transit agency is not in full support of your transit plans, it’s like waving an orange flag in front of the funders. The murkier the situation gets, the more the funders feel they should take a step back until the water clears. It’s difficult for the city to get a plan approved under those circumstances.” 

In addition, Johnson said Oakland held off on some of its streetscape improvement plans because part of the AC Transit BRT proposal is to also do streetscape improvement. “We decided it was better to wait to see what portion of their project was able to get funding,” she said. 

The city went through with the Fruitvale Transit Village improvements on International, according to Johnson, because the median width that the city placed in that area would accommodate a BRT dedicated center lane when and if such a lane is installed. 

Johnson said that meanwhile, the city has redesigned its four-node East Oakland plan to be consistent with AC Transit’s BRT. Those plans are currently being vetted by Caltrans and, if approved, would go out to bid by the end of the year. 

But BRT would be the death knell for at least one major portion of Oakland’s streetscaping project already completed in East Oakland. 

“It would pretty much take out the trees we’ve put in the median” from 80th to 89th avenues, Johnson said. “We would have to redesign that area to move some of the trees to the sidewalks.” 

Johnson said that the city funding for the International Boulevard streetscaping project is still in the budget, and “we’re still hopeful that the nodes will still happen.” 

Unable to defeat Tom Bates in a challenge at the polls last year, Berkeley tree-sitter Zachary Running Wolf launched a second campaign Monday, this one aimed at a recall election to unseat the mayor. 

But if the results of last year’s mayoral race are any indication, he has a formidable challenge ahead. 

In the contest held last November for a two-year mayoral term, incumbent Bates locked up 25,680 votes to Running Wolf’s 1,880. Challengers Zelda Bronstein won 12,652 votes and last-place finisher Christian Pecaut collected 517. 

But Running Wolf said that while he considers the vote totals suspect, given that a court has ordered a new election on the medical marijuana measure, a more important consideration is a shift in public opinion.  

“Things have gotten a lot worse, and he’s been opening up the city to UC and the big developers,” said the once and future candidate.  

“I don’t think it has a snowball’s chance in Hades,” said City Councilmember Laurie Capitelli, a frequent ally of the mayor in council votes. “It’s a terrible waste of energies on some people’s parts that could be better used in working toward something positive.” 

Running Wolf has garnered a higher profile in the last year after taking up residence in the branches of a redwood just west of California Memorial Stadium. 

The Native American activist climbed the branches Dec. 2, before sunrise on the day of the annual football Big Game with Stanford. 

He has said his protest is both to protect trees and to save the Native American remains he suspects are buried in the soil beneath the grove. 

Though he has been frequently grounded by a series of arrests by university police, fellow tree-sitters have occupied arboreal perches in their campaign to stop UC from building a high tech gym and office complex at the site of a grove dominated by venerable specimens of Coastal Live Oak. 

The 44-year-old Blackfoot said he formally launched the 75-day recall period Friday when he posted a registered letter to the mayor, who has 10 days to respond. 

With the mayor out of the country, Running Wolf said he believes he’ll be left with 61 to 62 days to get the 10,000-plus signatures he needs to account for a quarter of Berkeley’s registered voters. 

“He has to be stopped from giving away the city. With the downtown plan the university wants, we’ll be giving up our tax base so UC can build its tax-exempt buildings in the city,” he said. “It’s like the Oklahoma land rush, where the Sooners raced their covered wagons into Indian Territory to grab up all the land—except in this case, there’s only one wagon, and it’s called UC Berkeley.”

Registered nurses plan to walk off their jobs at two Berkeley hospitals in Berkeley starting at 7 a.m. Wednesday as the start of a two-day job action. 

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center at 2450 Ashby Ave. and the associated Herrick Campus at 2001 Dwight Way are part of the Sutter Health chain, which is the target of the action by members of the California Nurses Association (CNA). 

CNA represents 5,000 nurses at the 15 Sutter hospitals in Northern California. The chain is headquartered in Sacramento. The walkout is scheduled to end at 7 a.m. Friday, according to CNA spokesperson Charles Idelson. 

The union said members will hold noon rallies on both days of the walkout at the Ashby Avenue hospital. 

But will the walkout last two days, or will the hospital chain respond with a lockout, extending the absence of union workers by another three to four days? That possibility is raised by ads placed by two agencies specializing in providing strike-breakers which are looking for temporary nurses to fill the vacant slots. 

Participating in walkouts at the two Berkeley hospitals and Oakland’s Summit Medical Center will be 1,700 nurses, said CNA spokesperson Liz Jacobs. 

Among the key issues behind the action, Jacobs said, are the union’s calls for better staffing ratios, adequate nursing coverage during breaks, creation of a “lift team” at each hospital to assist in patient handling and instituting rapid response teams including a critical care nurse and a respiratory therapist to handle emergencies. 

Pay has not been an issue in negotations, said Idelson. 

Jacobs said that as of late Monday afternoon no new talks between the hospital chain and the union were planned. 

“We met with a mediator Friday, but there was no progress and nothing more has been scheduled as of this moment,” she said. 

Jacobs said U.S. Nursing, a Colorado-based firm which specializes in temporary staffing during strikes, has been advertising for nurses to replace the strikers. 

According to the firm’s website, the company, created in 1989, specializes in “working with healthcare facilities and nursing professionals to provide staffing solutions during labor disputes.” 

The site advertises for five-day positions in California and promises a $1,000 payoff if the strike is settled by the time the replacement nurses arrive.  

Another recruiter may be closer to home. The union is distributing copies of a flyer which lists a phone number that belongs to another agency which also specializes in providing strike-breakers: HealthSource, with offices on Howard Street in San Francisco. 

The flyer offers RNs the chance to earn $2,340 in four days, with a requirement for a commitment of four to six days. 

“We pay for your transportation and luxury accommodations. You are driven to the hospital from your luxury hotel,” it says. A footnote at the very bottom of the flyer adds, “A LABOR DISPUTE MAY EXIST.” 

Repeated calls to Alta Bates Summit spokesperson Carolyn Kemp were not returned as of deadline Monday.

The Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) holds its 43rd meeting next week, with the topic a perennial hot button issue: the role of historic buildings in tomorrow’s downtown cityscape. 

While the meeting is a joint session with the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the decision on the proposed chapter drafted by a DAPAC/LPC subcommittee will be up to the DAPAC members themselves. 

The public will be asked to weigh in three days later during a three-hour workshop that will begin at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 20, in the Berkeley High School Library. 

Following the workshop, four more are scheduled before the committee’s mandate expires Nov. 30: 

• Oct. 29, to discuss results of the workshop and to adopt chapters on environmental sustainabilty and the much more controversial proposals on land use. 

• Nov. 7, for adoption of the economic development and housing and community health/services chapters. 

• Nov. 12, for work on the committee’s final report and to consider and adopt any final revisions—if any—to the sustainabilty chapter. 

• Nov. 26 will be the committee’s 48th and final meeting, with members considering any last-minute changes to the final report.

When Nicole Sawaya steps into place as Pacifica Radio’s executive director—part-time in mid-November and full-time in December—she’ll have a couple of things that former executive director Greg Guma wished he’d had: one is a unanimous board solidly behind him and the second is a multi-year contract. 

Guma has sat in Pacifica’s executive director slot since January 2006. He left at the end of September, having worked in the tenuous position of “at-will” employee without a contract, answering to a board very different from the one that appointed and supported him, he told the Planet on Friday in an interview at a south Shattuck café.  

The problem, he said, is that some members of the 22-member national board change every year. 

The board, which appoints the executive director, is elected by the local station boards of the five Pacifica stations, plus two representatives of the 125 affiliate stations, which carry some Pacifica programs. Local station boards are elected by listener-sponsors. 

While the idea behind electing local station boards is to promote democracy, only 10 percent of the listener-sponsors vote in local station elections, Guma said. The result is that on local and national levels, board members “do not represent the broad spectrum of the network,” he said. 

Of the board members that originally selected Guma—divided on his selection from the outset—only five or six people of that board remain. Having lost the support of the board majority, Guma said he chose to step down earlier than he had planned, turning in his resignation several months ago. 

The division among the national board members is related to, in part, the members’ differing vision for the station. The question they face is whether the station acts as a cohesive network that includes strong national programming, which Guma favors, or whether it is what Guma calls a “feudal system,” with each of the five stations doing its own programming and rarely coming together with national programming. 

“My vision was in conflict with more local-focused people,” said Guma. 

For network-wide programming to take place, the local advisory boards of all the stations have to want it; support for it has to be built into their budgets, Guma said. At present, each of the local boards develops its budget and programming in a vacuum, he said. 

Consistent and focused national programming that would include a national Pacifica news show, national specials and network-wide editorials would allow Pacifica programming to impact national media and the national debate, Guma said. 

This cannot happen with fragmentation among the stations, where “one week you serve this group, the next week another,” Guma said.  

Nonetheless, he feel Pacifica is doing much that is right. “Despite battles, disagreements, and limitations, Pacifica does produce some of the most politically significant, culturally diverse and educational radio available in this country. And its boards, despite any shortcomings, try their best to reflect constructive values and guide the organization—often at great personal sacrifice,” he wrote in an essay on his experience at Pacifica. 

Guma’s not sure what’s next for him. He could go back to Vermont, though he said his partner likes the Bay Area. He will most certainly write. 

Write about Pacifica? Guma said he might do that, though the story would best be told in fiction. “I could tell the essence and be less likely to be sued,” he said. 

Most of his writing and editing has been nonfiction. He co-founded the Vermont Guardian in 2004, edited Toward Freedom, an international newsletter, and is the author of books including Uneasy Empire: Repression, Globalization, and What We Can Do and The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution. He’s produced a documentary film, written plays, managed and owned bookstores and run non-profits.  

Guma said he is hoping for the best for Sawaya. With the solid consensus of the board behind her and a five-year contract in place, Guma said he thinks she may be able to make some of the changes he was unable to do. 

It won’t be easy, he cautioned, “She’ll have to stick her neck out.”  

More of Guma’s thoughts on Pacifica can be found at http://kpft.wordpress. 

com/2007/09/28/ed-report-on-pnb and 

at http://kpft.wordpress.com/ 

2007/10/01/the-greg-guma-interview. 

Berkeley developers Ruegg & Ellsworth will ask the city zoning board for a permit to construct a 34,158-square-foot, five-story building with 44 apartments, 18 parking spaces and retail space at 2526 Durant Ave. after moving the historic Blood House from the site to 2508 Regent St. 

The project proposal was first submitted to the planning department in 2000 and has since gone through several modifications, the most recent being the proposed removal of the entire structure to make room for mixed-use development. 

Under CEQA, moving a structure designated as a historic resource is supposed to be considered as a significant impact equivalent to demolishing it. 

Originally constructed as a single-family home, the modified 1891 Queen Anne style building has been altered throughout its history and is now used as an office building. 

Designed by architect Robert Gray Frise, the house was built for Mrs. Ellen Blood, who first came to Berkeley in 1889. It is flanked by two other landmarks—the Albra and the Brasfield buildings. 

Although it was built for residential use, the building was illegally converted to commercial use in the late 1980s. 

The units in the house were previously rent-controlled, but it is not clear whether relocating the house would affect their rent control status. 

The Blood House was declared a structure of merit by the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission in September 1999. Ruegg & Ellsworth’s appeal of the designation failed at the City Council a month later. 

The zoning board had previously denied the demolition of the historically designated structure and had wanted the developers to explore other alternatives which would help preserve it. 

The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association suggested as a compromise a 40-unit project which would retain the house on the site. The concept was approved by ZAB but has since been abandoned by the developers. 

Ruegg & Ellsworth presented the idea of relocating the Blood House to an empty lot at Regent Street and Dwight Way owned by developer John Gordon at a May 2004 ZAB meeting. 

According to a January 2007 addendum to the project’s environmental impact report, because “the residential character of Durant Avenue has been considerably altered, moving the building to another more residential location could mitigate to a less-than-significant level impacts to this historic resource.” 

If the proposal is approved, the house would be lifted from its first floor, using floor joists with steel beams, and lowered onto a trailer which would proceed north to Durant Avenue. After arriving at its location, it would be placed on blocks while the foundation and utility wirings were installed. 

The relocation would take place on a Sunday and local traffic would be detoured to alternative routes briefly. 

Plans to move the UC Berkeley-owned landmarked John Woolley House, at 2509 Haste St., to the same empty Regent Street lot to allow Ken Sarachan to build on the site, which is adjacent to another site he owns at the corner of Haste and Telegraph, are also being explored.

The Berkeley Board of Education will appoint six students to the city’s youth commission at Wednesday’s school board meeting out of the 13 that have applied to the district. 

The list consists of 12 high school students and one middle school student, said district spokesperson Mark Coplan. 

The Berkeley City Council and the school board are each responsible for appointing nine representatives to the youth commission. 

“Some are very young and they don’t have a lot of leadership experience,” Coplan said. “The board looks for any kind of previous involvement in the community and their reasons for becoming youth commissioners.” 

The commission’s principal role is to look at issues affecting youth in the district as well as the city. 

School safety plans 

The board will vote on whether to approve the school safety plans.  

State law requires that every public school in California have a safety plan which combines community, agency and school resources to respond during an emergency. 

Standard school safety site components range from emergency action plans to policies and procedures for sexual harassment and school and after-school disturbances, fights and assaults. 

Amer-I-Can 

The board will vote on whether to approve $20,000 in funds for Amer-I-Can, a life management skills curriculum, at King Middle School. 

Founded in 1988, the program has trained thousands of students and currently operates in 16 cities. It has proved effective in improving students’ grades while decreasing their absences and disciplinary incidents. 

Amer-I-Can will provides one-to-one counseling support to approximately 10 selected students who either need more intensive support or follow-up from earlier session. 

Public hearing 

The board will hold a public hearing to gather input about possible pay raises for bus drivers and custodians who are represented by Stationary Engineers Local 39. The public hearing is scheduled to start at 8:30 p.m. 

When Native America Calling—a live, daily call-in radio program based in Albuquerque, N.M.—started more than 12 years ago, they had a hard time gaining people’s trust. 

“The phones barely rang,” says host and producer Harlan McKosato. “The native communities weren’t just going to call in right away because of their distrust of the media for painting them as ‘savages’ and ‘redskins.’” 

Today, the show airs in 15 states and two countries on 52 stations, attracting some 500,000 listeners with topics ranging from the light-hearted (“Rezzed-Out Weddings”) to serious community issues like meth babies. 

“Our job is really to be in tune with Native America, and then being able to articulate that over the air waves,” says McKosato. “Now that they trust us, it’s just a matter of pushing the button to get people to talk.” 

But Native America Calling’s national success in connecting tribal communities doesn’t solve the lack of telecommunications infrastructure that plagues Indian Country. 

The communications landscape hasn’t changed for Native Americans in the last decade, according to Loris Ann Taylor, executive director of Native Public Media, an organization dedicated to strengthening Native American media capacity. 

“On some Navajo land, they still don’t have telephone lines and sometimes people can’t afford cell phones—and even if they can, reservations are often black holes for cell phone service. A lot of reservations are nowhere near connecting to the Internet,” Taylor says. “In this landscape, the radio is their information highway.” 

That’s why Taylor—dubbed the “Gospel Woman of Radio”—has been working to ensure that there is a radio station in each tribal community. She says that mainstream America is unaware of how important locally produced radio is to the health and safety of Native communities. 

On the weekly radio program “House Calls,” for example, which airs on a Hopi radio station in Arizona, a local doctor answers questions from listeners and discusses Native health issues. “This show is so important because it is connecting the community with a local health care specialist,” Taylor says. “It’s not a program that’s designed for them somewhere else.” 

But these shows are scarce in a media environment that largely ignores Native news. At a recent conference of tribal leaders in California, Taylor recalls, “they talked about how the mainstream media still did not carry stories about their communities. They said it was like writing 5,000 press releases and maybe getting one reported.” 

Native America Calling may have half a million listeners, she adds, but it is not enough. 

“We have 562 tribal nations in this country,” she says, “and they want the same freedom that the rest of America wants: the freedom to express themselves.” 

The national show sees itself as a connector between the local radio stations that dot the Native media landscape. “At the beginning, the whole idea was to create a conversation that would link these tribal stations in remote areas—because they don’t have the Internet, they don’t have cable,” says McKosato. “What they have is radio.” 

The program now serves primarily as a way to bring Native news to audiences in cities like Spokane, Billings, Boise and Flagstaff, McKosato says. “Even though the show’s become an urban thing—most of our listeners are in D.C.—they want to be connected back to the Rez.” 

In the last decade that McKosato has been working on the radio show, he says the core issues of the Native community haven’t changed. “It’s about identity, first and foremost. That’s the core issue. It’s about our relationships with non-natives, our relationships with state and federal governments, and with other minority communities.” 

Cristina Azocar, president of the Native American Journalists Association, says the strength of Native America Calling comes from its recognition of diversity. “They help recognize the differences among us, which mainstream media don’t when it comes to Native issues,” she says. “You can really see the diversity of opinions around Indian Country by listening to the show.” 

They aren’t afraid of controversial topics, either, she adds. “I was on a show a year and a half ago talking about Native American identity issues. We were talking about Rez life versus non-Rez and blood quantum issues and what makes someone an Indian. It got really heated and that made it really interesting.” 

In order to bring more Native broadcasters into conversations like this one, Native Public Media is pushing tribal nations to take advantage of the Federal Communications Commission’s window to apply for a non-commercial educational broadcast FM license, which is open from Oct. 9 to Oct. 15, 2007. 

But it isn’t as easy as it sounds. 

“What’s happening is that [radio] spectrum is a finite resource like land and water,” Taylor says. Available FM radio spectrum goes between 88 and 108 megahertz, and once those frequencies are secured in a certain area, there aren’t any left for Native communities. “The likelihood of getting frequencies in Phoenix is low. There are other areas where it’s locked out. The Cherokee in North Carolina are locked out; there aren’t any frequencies available.” 

Taylor says her group has been trying to educate Native American representatives about the importance of securing frequencies for Native radio stations, but they are concerned with more pressing issues like housing and education. Because Native Public Media only started working on this two years ago, she adds, they are “playing catch-up.” 

Native Public Media, however, will testify on Native telecommunications issues in front of Congress on Oct. 24. “This means that while the FCC’s rules on media ownership are being forged, we’re still working on education,” Taylor says. “It’s like we moved into the house while it was still being built.” 

Taylor says if they aren’t able to secure radio stations for all the tribal nations, they will have to look at new platforms of communication and delve into the FCC conversations on broadband and Internet neutrality. “It’s like this whole universe just opened up and there’s this critical conversation going on, but we’re just a small voice at the table.

This is one of the most stressful parts of the year for seniors at Berkeley High School. This is the time where first semester grades really count, this is the time where the idea of college hits you. This is the time where everything you do will make a difference for the next four years of your life. 

Probably one of the most annoying questions that high school seniors can get is, “So where do you think you are going to college?” Many of us get really annoyed because not only do we have to worry about going off to college, we also have to talk to everyone about how indecisive we are.  

Well, even though we do get really stressed out about college, we have some great resources at our school. A wide variety of resources exist at the College Career Center. There is a box with information about various scholarships in the center. Essay workshops are held there in the morning. Also, there are many essay readers available. We have two full-time college counselors, Ms. Abrams and Ms. Price, who work in the center. Altogether, they meet with each and every senior at our school for a half-hour. They also do drop-in appointments during lunch and after school. In addition, since the beginning of the school year, our counselors have coordinated college visits to our school (two to three different colleges every day). The counselors have been coming into English classrooms with handouts about the college application process.  

We all ask ourselves a lot of questions during this time. Did we take our senior portraits? Are all our absences cleared? Did I ask two teachers to write recommendations? What’s the CommonApp? How much does college cost? Can I afford it? Do I want to go to school in California? New York? Wisconsin? Germany? What am I going to do after college? When is my essay due? But don’t I have three tests today in AP Gov, AP French, and AP English? And I also have a student government meeting after school? How should I divide up my school work and college work? Where do my parents want me to go? Where do I want to go? Do I want to play sports in college? How many extra-curriculars should I do? Should I get a job? Can’t I just relax? Do I even need to go to college? And this is only a partial list.  

For many, this is one of the most hectic times that they will face. So, parents, try to give your kids a break. They have worked really hard in school for the last 12 years. Let them know that they’re doing well and maybe reward them.

Just before the turn of the last century, the United States entered into a war with Spain which was to cost the lives of more than 4,000 Americans and many more Cubans. Spaniards and residents of the Philippines, and which would lead to decades of colonial domination by the United States. It is generally conceded that a major factor which precipitated the entry of this country into the Spanish-American war was the role of what was called “the yellow press,” the sensationalist newspapers which with lurid headlines and passionate front page editorializing whipped up a popular frenzy against Spain. The Hearst newspaper empire played a major role in this effort, which was a guaranteed circulation builder in those days. 

In the last couple of weeks San Francisco newspaper readers have been subjected to a minor-league version of the same kind of campaign. The San Francisco Chronicle, in its older and better incarnation assigned Kevin Fagan in 2003 to do a moving series on the plight of the homeless in that city which won a number of prizes. But that was then, and now the Hearst Corporation is firmly in the saddle at the Chronicle, and it seems to be up to its old tricks. Now the target is even easier than Spain: It’s the poor and sometimes crazed people who are still to be found on the streets of San Francisco, as they were in 2003 and as they have been for 30 years or more. 

Instead of assigning a real reporter like Fagan to the story, this time they’ve chosen a columnist, a former sports columnist even, C.W. “Chuck” Nevius. Chuck’s series of front-page diatribes against homeless people, which started last spring, aren’t burdened by difficult facts, or even by many interviews with knowledgeable people who don’t toe the official Hearst line. 

The Chron’s headline writer delivered the takeaway message on Tuesday:  

“ ‘Enough is enough,’ S.F. says of homeless. 

Residents of a famously liberal city appear to be changing views.” 

Chuck followed up in the body with lines like this: “Indications are that residents have had it with aggressive panhandlers, street squatters and drug users.” And what supporting data does he have for these “indications”? Precious little: a couple of number-free quotes from market research firms bolstered by illiterate burps from Blogsville: “In an informal poll by SFGate.com, 90 percent of respondents said Mayor Gavin Newsom’s crackdown South of Market was a great idea.”  

Yes, about 800 cowards have been eager to sign phony names on an SFGate (Chron online) blog to anonymous attacks on the poor and the crazy who can still be found hanging out on the streets of San Francisco. This is not news. The New Testament said that we will always have the poor with us, and we’ll always have those willing to cast the first stone at the poor too. There’s no way of knowing whether these fulminators even live in San Francisco, though Chuck himself confesses that he lives in the deepest boob-burbs. 

In contrast, the Chronicle’s letters page, where writers usually sign their own names and are perhaps required to, has had much more nuanced, balanced and compassionate letters about how to deal with the problems of street people. Anonymous e-mail seems to bring out the worst in people, or perhaps to bring out the worst people. That’s why the Planet only publishes letters from people courageous enough to sign their real names. 

The whole series could be used as a textbook in J-school for how not to report the news. Except, of course, on the sports pages where Nevius used to work, where “It is Us vs. Them” is considered a good lead for a so-called news report. The few decent real reporters who still survive at the San Francisco Chronicle after the recent purges must be deeply ashamed that prime front-page space has been turned over to this stuff. 

Nevius was a guest on Wednesday for part of Michael Krasny’s Forum program on KQED. The point was made, by him and others, that a lot of fancy new housing has been built South of Market, and those who’ve paid big bucks to live in it are tired of stepping over the homeless. Well, sure, but who was there first? Those pricey condos south of Market have replaced shabby but cheap single-room-occupancy residential hotels.  

As a decent number of Chronicle letter writers are starting to point out, disturbing street behavior started at a particular point in history for easily understood reasons, and nothing has been able to stop it since.  

Here’s Melissa Batchelder of Richmond: “Thirty years ago I worked as a volunteer at Napa State Hospital. The people I step over on the streets of SF each morning are the next generation of the same people, the difference being that ‘way back then’ there were places for the mentally ill to be housed. This isn’t a conservative, progressive, leftist or centrist issue - it’s a health issue, both in terms of public safety and for those who are ill.” 

Veterans damaged by the Vietnam war have added to the number on the streets, and the soaring housing prices in the Bay Area have contributed to the problem. And despite the claims of politicians like San Francisco’s Gavin Newsom and Berkeley’s Tom Bates, the social resources to take care of the indigent, needy, and, yes, badly behaved population just haven’t been provided at any level of government. Trent Rohrer, SF’s executive director of its Human Services Agency, admitted as much on KQED’s Forum. Yet Nevius’s tag ending on Thursday quoted Rohrer saying, “Right now we have a lot of carrot and not much stick”, and Chuck himself piled on with “That needs to change.”  

The teaser on the web version of the piece summarized the moral of the tale for slow readers: “How about going after chronic inappropriate behavior by forbidding folks to stake out SF sidewalks and sleep there for the day?” Perhaps Nevius didn’t see the piece in yesterday’s L.A.Times which pointed out that the Ninth Circuit has ruled against anti-sleeping ordinances in cities like San Francisco and Berkeley which offer inadequate alternatives to those who are weary but have no bed to sleep in. In response to this ruling, homeless advocates and police in L.A. have just agreed on a set of rules allowing the needy to sleep on certain sidewalks at certain times, though merchants in the designated areas are understandably apprehensive.  

According to the Times story, “the LAPD last year increased the number of officers deployed to skid row. Police Chief William J. Bratton said that effort had greatly reduced crime there but also had pushed homeless to other parts of the city.” 

We’ve been trying something similar in Berkeley, and it hasn’t worked here either. Because of complaints from a few merchants, many Telegraph regulars have been chased off the Avenue, but they’ve reappeared in the Elmwood, as those of us who take walks in both districts know. Moving street people around is not a real solution, it’s a tin fiddle.  

More “stick”—attempting to turn homeless or crazy people into criminals—doesn’t work either. Defecating on the sidewalk is not a political statement or a lifestyle choice, it’s an obvious sign of either insanity or desperation. Decent housing or at least available restrooms and adequate, appropriate mental health care aren’t “carrots.” They’re basic human rights, and until they’re available to everyone on the street who needs them it’s obscene for Hearst’s Chronicle to pander to the worst kind of readers with titillating talk about punishment.

At a concert on Sunday night we encountered a friend in the seat behind us who has been active on multiple city commissions for many years. I asked him if I’d missed anything, since I’d been in Pasadena over the weekend. He said he didn’t know, because he’d been out of town too. I asked if it was a vacation. “It was outside of Berkeley,” he said. “That’s all it takes to make it a vacation.” But at intermission time I spotted him chatting with another commissioner, and threatened jokingly to bust them for a violation of the Brown Act, California’s open meeting law.  

It’s not illegal for two commissioners to chat about city problems at a concert, but perhaps I should be reporting them to a 12-step program for incurable optimists instead. They’re the kind of people who can’t stop hoping that hired planners and elected officials will be persuaded by reasonable arguments backed by impeccable statistics—regular Candides, in other words. They asked me if Pasadena was anything like Berkeley. 

I lived in Pasadena for my four high school years and spent summers there while I was in college, but I haven’t been back much in the intervening years. This weekend was my 50th high school reunion, but only the first one I’ve attended, so I was curious to see how Pasadena had changed since I’d been away. It gets great PR in urban conservation circles for managing to grow (now closing in on 150,000) without destroying its historic urban fabric. Well, at least for not tolerating any worse destruction than was inflicted by the Northridge earthquake or by Caltrans, which punched a freeway right through some pleasant neighborhoods I remembered from my youth. (Neighboring South Pasadena escaped a similar fate thanks to the labors of local hero attorney Antonio Rossmann, who teaches at UC Berkeley.)  

I was particularly anxious to experience the joys of “Old Pasadena,” a neighborhood which as far as I could remember didn’t exist in my high school days. Checking its obligatory web page, I found the history section , which had click-throughs to paragraphs for the decades in the late 19th century through the 1940s, and then again for the 1970s and forward, but nothing about the time my family had lived there, the late ’50s and early ’60s.  

It turns out that “Old Pasadena” is just what we used to call “downtown” when I was in high school. Its center is Colorado Street, which has historically had the same role in downtown Pasadena that Shattuck has in Berkeley—the street that Woolworth’s was on. Downtown Pasadena was threatened by redevelopment (planners’ code term for demolition of old buildings and relocation of undesirables) in 1971, but angry citizens fought back and managed to save it. 

The crowded reunion schedule left us a couple of free hours on Saturday afternoon when we were planning to walk around and take a close look at the result of their labors. This turned out to be impossible, however, since the city was completely overwhelmed by an enormous game in the nearby Rose Bowl. The participants were some combination of UCLA, USC, Stanford and Notre Dame—we could never figure out which two of the four were playing in Pasadena and which in Los Angeles—but whoever they were, their fans were numerous, noisy and driving massive SUVs. Every square inch of downtown had been consumed by their parking and their parties (it is Southern California, after all), so we finally gave up and spent the afternoon rocking on the porch of our early 20th century bed and breakfast, much pleasanter than trying to visit the stores which make up the new Old Pasadena.  

We did get a cursory look at the area at night, on our way to and from celebratory events. For Berkeleyans, the most unusual characteristic is the strong dominating presence of what some around here call “mall stores. That’s everything from Pottery Barn to Tiffany’s—many chains that I think of as “catalog stores” since I seldom go to malls. Evidently the Shop Local movement hasn’t caught on much in Pasadena. That might just be the inevitability of successful urban preservation, since you see the same national retailers in, for example, the much-praised Portland.  

Great big off-street parking garages were also evident. Shoppers don’t seem to have abandoned their cars, but at least they can get them off the streets. The garages offer 90 minutes of absolutely free parking, enough time to do a lot of shopping. On-street meters, on the other hand, charge $2 an hour, so drivers are motivated to use the garages. And if they’d like to spent more time just walking around, there’s a “Unified” valet parking service with stands all over downtown which serve all the area businesses. It lets you leave your car at one stop and pick it up hours later at another one.  

My old classmate who was with us, the one who has lived in New York City for most of her adult life, could hardly believe that one. She hadn’t rented a car, and was hoping to find a “car service” or “taxis” somewhere to get around, but those Manhattan exotica aren’t any more available in Pasadena than they are in Berkeley or El Cerrito, so she rode with us for most of the weekend. 

Yes, Virginia, we rented a car. Eager beaver Berkeley friends, transit groupies, had assured us that the LA Metro would render that unnecessary, but of course that’s still fantasyland. The Metro does whisk you from Pasadena to downtown LA if that’s where you happen to want to go, but it did nothing for my friend, who needed to get home to her sister’s house in the old bedroom suburb of Altadena from a Mexican restaurant in central Pasadena after the reunion dinner. A quick check of the online map for Pasadena Area Rapid Transit Service (ARTS) showed mostly buses running along big streets (“corridors”) in commute hours, just as AC Transit’s buses like to do. That’s cold comfort for a woman of 69 with a residential destination late at night. 

Inevitably, my thoughts turned to what I know about the progress, or lack of it, on the revisions to Berkeley’s downtown plan which have been forced on the city by the University of California’s insatiable appetite for expansion. The latest nasty rumor is that before he went to Europe the Mayor met privately with a couple of small groups of the true believers on DAPAC (Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee), notably the transit fans and the creek people. If you believe the stories, he told both sets that they wouldn’t get what they wanted, specifically Bus Rapid Transit in all its splendor and/or a water feature on Center Street, unless they agreed to allowing a forest of 16-story “point towers” to be built downtown. (And no, phallic jokes are off-limits in a serious discussion of public policy.)  

That’s the very plan which has been submitted—SURPRISE!—by the hired gun planner for DAPAC rubber-stamping this week.  

Is there any chance this group will be able to do even as well as Pasadena with the university’s heavy thumb on the scale and the electeds firmly in the pocket of the other major downtown landowners? Not very likely, particularly since the more public-spirited commissioners seem to have started bickering among themselves.  

One BRTaholic on the commission who met with the Mayor subsequently circulated an email charging Councilmember Kriss Worthington with being a tool of the dread NIMBYs just because he’s asked a few questions about possible BRT flaws. Said commissioner lives in the most barriered neighborhood in Berkeley himself, of course, but he wants more big busses for the rest of us who don’t have barriers. Even people who’d actually like to be able to take buses more often were annoyed by that one.  

Oh yes, and how was the reunion? That’s another story for another time, but let me just say here that they were all nice girls in our youth, not a mean one in the whole bunch, and they don’t seem to have changed much. It wasn’t Berkeley, that’s for sure—a real vacation, in other words. 

UNIMPEACHABLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

So it turns out that there were WMDs in Iraq. Got it from an unimpeachable source.  

Thanks, Pelosi. 

Bill Booth 

• 

ELMWOOD DISTRICT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Sick and tired of power politics in Berkeley? Up to here with multi-millionaire developers calling the shots in our neighborhoods? Here’s a way to fight back and have a good time to boot. Mal Sharpe’s Big Money in Jazz and Eric and Suzy Thompson will give a benefit performance for the Elmwood Neighborhood Association on Monday, Oct. 15 at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Come and join the fun, hear some great music by world-class performers, and help the Elmwood Neighborhood Association fight City Hall for ignoring our neighborhood preservation ordinances. Doors open at 7 p.m.; music starts at 7:30. Your $20 donation supports ENA in its lawsuit against the city for approving a 5,000-square-foot restaurant and late-night bar and lounge in the old Wright’s Garage at Ashby and College in the heart of the historic Elmwood. 

David Esler 

• 

STREET SWEEPING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley should really rethink its street-sweeping strategy at Addison and Bonar. It is unreasonable to shut down one side of the street in the whole neighborhood. The parking load is too great. How are these things decided? Has there been a recent survey? 

I counted 11 cars ticketed along two blocks of Addison alone. This took three meter maids. What was the total ticket count for this sweeping event on the morning of Sept. 7? These are serious questions and I would like some answers. Does this not indicate that the system is broken? 

What is the total revenue from street-sweeping incidents in the city? The city should not be looking to parking tickets as a source of operating revenue. This is a predatory practice. 

I notice little difference in debris between streets that have parking restrictions and those that don’t. Why does the sweeping happen at 9 a.m. when everyone is showing up for work and yoga classes here? We don’t have any rain this time of year so it’s not like the storm system is getting clogged. Please help me understand how this is the best solution. 

Douglas Sornberger 

• 

GARY KING’S DEATH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Sam Herbert responds to an article in the Berkeley High School Jacket and makes her opinion known in the Berkeley Daily Planet letters column. She tries to suggest that Oakland Police Sergeant Gonzales was being slandered because the student paper questioned the way young Gary King was shot in the back and killed. She also tries to suggest that young Gary “pulled a gun” on this officer, which is a flat out non-truth. Nowhere, even in Sgt. Gonzales’ account, did it say or even imply that Gary King “pulled a gun. The sergeant said “he felt the presence of a gun and that as young Gary King was trying to get away Sgt. Gonzales thought he made a furtive movement” which caused him to fear for his life, and that is why Sgt. Gonzales shot and killed young Gary King in the back. Later a gun was supposedly found but no gun was “pulled” on Sgt. Gonzales. 

Robert C. White 

• 

TOBACCO MONEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Today’s article regarding the debate at Cal over acceptance of tobacco research money reminded me of the day I walked into the Faculty Club in 2006 and discovered that Altria Corporate Services, Inc. was sponsoring a symposium there entitled “Women In Politics: Seeking Office and Making Policy.” I was horrified to discover that this event was hosted by none other than the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies chaired by Professor Jack Citrin. The blurb for this series asks the incisive questions: 

What barriers face women who choose to enter political life? How can young women be inspired to consider taking an active role in political affairs? Do women bring a special or unique perspective to politics and policy-making? 

I contacted Professor Citrin’s office and IGS during this time and they just couldn’t understand what the issue was. Considering Altria (aka Philip Morris USA) is the maker of Virginia Slims cigarettes, I’m surprised they didn’t use that unforgettably condescending pitch line that welcomed lung cancer into the bodies of thousands of “liberated” women: “You’ve come a long way, baby.” 

Michael Minasian 

• 

PELE DE LAPPE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For Pele de Lappe, her family, comrades, friends, and fans: If there is a Marxist or commie artist’s heaven, I’m sure you are already there, enjoying a martini (or whatever you do there) with Decca Treuhaft (Jessica Mitford), Byron Randall, Donna Davis, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and many other special people of your mutual choosing. 

Congratulations for a life well lived. Thank you for the example you set. I do the best I can. I hope, when my time comes, that you will let me into your club. I love you, and you will never be dead as long as I’m living. 

Much love and best wishes in your afterlife. I hope you be a Buddhist and come back soon. I miss you already. How are we gonna make the revolution without you? We’ll give it our best effort, as did you. 

Jim Ginger 

• 

BRT BOONDOGGLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It was quite helpful for Charles Siegel to remind us in his Oct. 5 letter to the Daily Planet that we really do need to improve transit access to BART. We should have feeder buses that provide free or low cost connection service to BART stations so that more people can use this efficient, comfortable regional transit system. What we don’t need is another regional transit system—such as the $400 million dollar BRT boondoggle—to parallel the BART line and compete with it for passengers. That would be poor transportation planning, and a big waste of taxpayer dollars.  

And now here is today’s quiz question: Can you guess the total number of BRT proponents who have agreed to accept my offer to have a public debate about this issue? I won’t keep you in suspense any longer: the total number is zero. So far, it appears that they only like to talk in forums that they have complete control over, with strict limits on citizen participation. Apparently, that’s their idea of democracy. 

Doug Buckwald 

• 

HALAL MARKET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to thank Glen Hauer for writing the lovely goodbye memory article on Naim and Faiza and family’s Halal Market. I loved to go in there to say hi. As Glen said, you were always “Brother” or “Sister.” I know it’s just a manner of speaking, but it felt real coming from them. After my shock at knowing of Naim’s illness and the imminent closure of the store, I selfishly wondered where I’d buy delicious, fresh pita bread for 69 cents, and big glass jars of tahini. Those days are gone now. The article brought a rush of warm memories. I always came out knowing more then when I went in. Faiza once told me about how she was in line at another store, when another shopper, assuming Faiza wouldn’t understand, started lecturing her friend about how Muslim men mistreat their women by making them wear veils, using Faiza as an example. Finally, Faiza , always polite and warm, got tired of this. She surprised the ladies by telling them, in perfect English, how her husband had tried for three years to get her not to wear the veil in the store. Of course, she always wore it there. Another time, finding her not in the store, I was told by one of her sons, that she had been up all night catering a big halal meal for Muslim prisoners at a local prison. All their children are wonderful, too. The little one, Amir, is the spitting image of his father, except for masses of wild wavy brown hair. The last time I saw him, I noticed he looked different. Faiza told me he had gotten scissors and given himself a very unique haircut. Anyway, I’ll miss them a lot. Maybe they’ll open another store someday—Inshalla. 

Barbara Henninger 

P.S. I’m sorry if I misspelled anyone’s name! 

• 

LOTS OF VOTES, MONEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

General Petraeus cannot betray us because he doesn’t work for us. He works for Daddy Warbucks, whether he realizes it or not. Granny D, at age 90, walked across the country to point out that “campaign contributions,” or “bribery,” were responsible for most of our country’s policies and problems. I can’t help suspecting that the newly elected Democrats were met at the door by some of Daddy Warbucks’ minions smiling and waving big, big checks, accompanied by threats to contribute to the opposition next time around. We can write and demonstrate all we want without having much effect unless we can deliver lots of votes or lots of money. The money is used, of course, to advertise and influence...votes. That’s our hope: numbers. Then maybe we can eliminate the personhood of corporations and their huge influence. 

A more beautiful subject is the delightful editorial featuring birds. I’d like to recommend a good birdbook and Golden Gate Audubon’s free slideshows and birdwalks to make life even more lovely. www.goldengateaudubon.org. 

Anyone notice the decreasing number of ladybugs this year? Maybe that’s why there’s more stickiness on sidewalks, since ladybugs eat aphids. I hope they’re OK. 

Ruth Bird 

• 

MAXIMIZING JOBS FOR  

OAKLAND RESIDENTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Alert! Action needed now! The Oakland Chamber of Commerce is priming its allies to lobby the Oakland City Council to give priority industrial land consideration to the spin-offs from the British Petroleum (BP) deal at UC Berkeley! 

Not only is the BP research of limited value as a means to reduce global warming (because it will gobble up land needed for feeding people and continue the industrial structure that is about shipping liquid fuels great distances) but also the spin-offs from that research will provide only very very limited opportunities for jobs for those Oakland residents who are in the greatest need for employment. 

This is another tragic mis-direction of Oakland’s precious economic development resources into a industry area that will mainly benefit fat cats that do not live in Oakland. Don’t let Oakland be a patsy again! Please, write a counter-letter to the Oakland Planning Commission and the Oakland City Council that says, “Yes, give a priority to Industrial Zoning for green technology but make true green technology the criteria and make it those sectors that will maximally provide jobs for Oakland residents.” There are only bottle-washer and sweeping jobs in the bio-fuels’ labs that the Chamber is proposing. Please do not put it off; do it now! 

Wilson Riles 

Former Member of the Oakland City Council 

• 

HEALTH CARE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s good to see the California Legislature is finally ready to address the pressing health care needs of our state. Of special importance is the extension of comprehensive coverage to all children. 

Children with health insurance are healthier, are at less risk of suffering from preventable illnesses, and are better able to access needed health care services. 

They also perform better academically: miss fewer school days, are more attentive in the classroom, and have an easier time learning than children without health insurance. 

Children are our common future. It is the responsibility of all to ensure them healthy lives and productive futures. 

Sophie Hahn 

• 

REBUTTAL TO BUCKWALD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Apparently I managed to touch a nerve with Doug Buckwald, as he spent seven full paragraphs responding to my two paragraph letter. Yet like most reactionaries in politics, he sticks to his guns in supporting the Big Lie rather than effectively rebutting a challenge to his position. 

For example, Mr. Buckwald claims that my letter used “disrespectful language” that “confuses issues, rather than illuminates them.” Of course, I must have shed some light on the situation given the length of his response. The facts as I set them out were clear: 1) The plaintiffs suing the university are putting the lives of student-athletes, coaches and fans at risk by delaying much needed improvements to Memorial Stadium. 2) Doug Buckwald is no Cal fan. 3) The behavior of Mr. Buckwald’s allies in the trees is disrespectful of the rule of law. Mr. Buckwald fails to rebut a single one of those facts. 

In an effort to rebut the charge that he and his cronies are willing to put lives at risk in order to serve their environmental extremist agenda, Mr. Buckwald argues that the university is to blame for not shutting the doors on Memorial Stadium. I agree with Mr. Buckwald that it is tragic that the university allowed Memorial Stadium to fall into such disrepair. But Chancellor Birgeneau is taking action to solve that problem, while Doug Buckwald is taking action to make it worse. As for the suggestion that Memorial should be shuttered and everyone moved to “safe, temporary facilities now,” where exactly would those be built? When the State of California realized that bridges and overpasses were seismically unsafe, did it shut down all the roadways? No, the state retrofitted its infrastructure as quickly as possible—which is what the university would be doing this very moment were it not for the meritless lawsuit that Mr. Buckwald and his allies have filed on behalf of trees that the university has every legal right to turn into office furniture. Mr. Buckwald’s attempt to shift the blame to Chancellor Birgeneau is simply shameful. 

Next, Mr. Buckwald continues to claim he is a Cal fan, citing to his years of watching bad football as proof. Yet when Mr. Buckwald states that “public statements” should “be made at the beginning of every home football game” that “encourage more civil behavior toward the guests that come to our campus,” he ignores the fact that those statements are in fact made by Coach Tedford and his players in a video shown on the video screen at Memorial before every home game—including our most recent victory over the University of Arizona. Where were you Mr. Buckwald? Certainly not in the stadium it seems. As for understanding what he is talking about when it comes to having “stuck it out through those dismal years,” I most certainly do. I grew up in Berkeley and sat through my share of losing seasons long before ever becoming an alum. Unlike Mr. Buckwald, however, I have no desire to stick it out through more dismal years in the future because we have refused to give our coaches and student-athletes the tools they need to compete in a safe and modern facility. It is sad that a “Cal Bears fan” would join with Zachary Running-Wolf, Ayr, Tom Bates and the NIMBYs on Panoramic Hill, all of whom would be happy to see Cal return to the days of 3-8 seasons and 38,000 fans in the stands on a good Saturday. 

Finally, when it comes to “anger” and “hysteria,” Mr. Buckwald and his allies still take the cake. I am hardly consumed by my anger—but I am annoyed by your respect for the rule of law. A judge of the Alameda County Superior Court has confirmed the University’s right to clear the trees of trespassers. So I challenge you to publicly call for all those currently violating state law and a court order to respect the decision of the Court and come down from the trees. Until you do, you have no business lecturing anyone on the concept of respect. 

Jeff Ogar 

• 

SCHIP VETO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This doesn’t make sense. Bush vetoes a five-year $35 billion expansion of the children’s health insurance program while at the same time demanding $200 billion a year for war in Iraq. The children’s insurance program would have helped millions of lower and middle-class children, who incidentally make up the bulk of young military recruits. For Bush to veto the health insurance program is like a person cutting off their nose to spite their face. Let’s hear another round of applause for the “compassionate conservative.” 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley 

• 

ANTIDOTE FOR LIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As president Bush limps toward his final year in office the world of political punditry begins to ponder his legacy. What changes hath W. wrought? What are the accomplishments of our 43rd president?  

In the fullness of time Bush’s complete and true impact will take shape. Meanwhile, a pattern is discernable, a template that will outline whatever legacy historians decide to assign.  

Bush found it necessary to make plans in secret and was therefore obliged to lie when he decided to activate those plans. Thus, the invasion of Iraq was justified by lying about weapons of mass destruction and then occupation was justified by the lie that Hussein harbored al Qaeda terrorists, and so on.  

For decades this nation witnessed a lot of lying at the top echelons of government and sometimes the practitioners have been made accountable. What we’ve never seen before is what the Bush administration does after the lies are discovered and his “spin doctors” have failed to repair the damage.  

Bush and his team cover up the lies with bullshit. 

Bush likes to acknowledge his aptitude for bullshit and did so again last week in a speech to a friendly audience in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In typical self-deprecating style, having talked for over an hour, he said, “I can keep on blowing hot air until the time runs out.” (Source: Huffington Post.).  

Although Mr. Bush is the chief bullshit artist, there are many other gifted practitioners on his team. Rove was perhaps the best but Rumsfeld was a close second. Consider, for example, how Rumsfeld answered a journalist’s question a while back with permutations on knowing and not knowing, to wit, “There are known knowns, …known unknowns… and also unknown unknowns…”  

When it comes to collective bullshiting Congress wins first place: a) every Congress member stood on the steps of the capital building early one morning and solemnly pledged allegiance to the flag with special stress on the words “under God”; b) Congress suspended proceedings in order to allow members the time to take a stand against disconnecting life support for Terri Schiavo; and c) Congress voted overwhelmingly to condemn the full page MoveOn ad containing a pun on the name of the originator and leader of the surge in Iraq, to wit, “…General Betray Us.”  

H.G. Frankfurt, distinguished moral philosopher, wrote in his bestselling book on the theory of bullshit that “liars at least acknowledge that truth matters” whereas bullshiters, because they don’t care, are the greater enemies of truth.  

Given the pace-setting pattern of secrecy, lies and bullshit the Bush team has set, our government is adrift between no moral compass and spiritual death.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

Two pieces of e-mail arrived in my inbox on Sunday. One was about the recently-launched effort to recall Mayor Tom Bates. It asked “What is Tom Bates doing wrong?” The second was for an Oct. 15 benefit for the Elmwood Neighborhood Association, which is suing the city for its approval of the huge restaur-ant and bar complex at the old Wright’s Garage. I couldn’t help but laugh, because this e-mail had so simply answered the question posed by the first. If Tom Bates had been doing his job, ordinary people wouldn’t have to sue our city to get justice. They wouldn’t have to stage benefits when a letter to the mayor would have sufficed.  

Don’t get me wrong, I like a good party, and I’d love a chance to hear Mal Sharpe’s Jazz Band and Eric and Suzy Thompson. For people who don’t know, these musicians live right in our neighborhood, and they must really care about what’s happening to donate their time this way. That really makes me want to make the effort to go down to Anna’s Jazz Island and contribute to this cause, but I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say that my anger towards Mayor Bates is also motivating me to go. 

Our City Council representative is no better than our mayor, maybe worse. Gordon Wozniak gave this moronic idea high praise on Kitchen Democracy, but when it comes to taking care of the people who live in the Elmwood, he remains silent. He ought to be recalled, too. 

Last week was a sad week in the Elmwood. The hardware store closed for renovations and may not open again. We have lost the kind of businesses the people in the Elmwood want to patronize. We once had a shoe repair store, a produce market, and a health foods store. Now we’re going to get a big fancy overpriced restaurant for people outside the neighborhood, and oh yeah, it will have a big lounge, too. So now after these people take up all the parking in the neighborhood, they’re going to endanger us all when they get behind the wheel to drive home. 

Personally, I don’t move as quickly as I used to, and I don’t like dodging cars in the crosswalk. The traffic is getting worse, and the pollution is unspeakable. I’m sweeping dust and grime off my porch on a daily basis. A restaurant and bar of this size (5,000 square feet) is not going to be filled with neighborhood diners; it’s going to be patronized by people driving here and leaving intoxicated late at night. They’re going to be loud, crude, and rude. We’re going to pay the price for the developer’s profits. 

How did developer John Gordon get this project past the City Council and Zoning Adjustments Board? I refer back to my first e-mail. Tom Bates is not doing his job. Mayor Bates should have sent this project back to the zoning board, but instead he insisted that this item be heard last on the City Council agenda. Then he kept trying to shut the meeting down before residents had a chance to finish their statements. Is it any wonder that people want to recall him? A mayor who has such disdain for citizens and their concerns shouldn’t be surprised when people finally get fed up. 

Even if this recall effort fails, I hope it sends a message to Mayor Bates, Councilmember Wozniak, and the other anti-neighborhood members of the council: Citizens are sick of paying high taxes and being treated with contempt, as if our concerns were a nuisance to you and your developer friends. 

Gus Lee is an Elmwood resident.

As Halcyon Neighborhood Association (HNA) celebrates its 15th anniversary, we’d like to share with the larger community the principles that have allowed us to achieve so much in our corner of south Berkeley. 

One of our foremost achievements has been creating a park, Halcyon Commons, where there was once a parking lot. The four-year process of envisioning, designing, and helping build and plant the park truly brought the neighborhood together. Our Steering Committee avoided polarization by inviting everyone to participate. We took the time to do extensive outreach to involve nearby neighbors. By asking people to share hopes and concerns rather than take premature pro or con positions, we encouraged neighbors to invest in and take ownership of the project. Anyone who so desired had an opportunity to participate in the evolution of park plans. 

We did surveys, held meetings, and conducted hands-on design workshops. We even held mock-up parties on-site. Concerns raised in response to questionnaires and at meetings were taken seriously and addressed in detail through research and modifications to the project. Subcommittees investigated everything from the decibel level of children playing (a concern raised by work-at-home residents in a nearby apartment building) to real parking needs and the potential impact on crime. Bruce Wicinas, one of the founders of HNA, artfully called this approach “preemptive concern addressing.” 

By the time we appeared before the Parks and Recreation Commission and City Council, 94 percent of neighbors had signed a petition supporting the project, and most of the rest weren’t opposed but simply didn’t like to sign anything. While one neighbor came to the commission meeting in opposition, once he heard the enthusiastic support of dozens of others he changed his mind. 

Since HNA was born out of our collaborative planning process for the park, it was natural for us to continue to take a collaborative approach to neighborhood organizing. While many of our Steering Committee members have been active politically as individuals, as a neighborhood association we do not take stands on controversial issues. Our Steering Committee and membership include neighbors from across Berkeley’s political spectrum, from Shirley Dean supporters to Don Jelinek or Tom Bates supporters, from those who favor the principles of new urbanism to those who are concerned about the effect of increased density on quality of life. Individuals have plenty of ways to participate in local politics, but we’ve come to appreciate an organization like HNA that offers an oasis from repeated struggles over divisive issues and allows us to work effectively on shared interests. 

HNA’s approach may be uncommon among neighborhood groups, but it has served us well and we hope it will spread, given the constructive changes it could bring to other neighborhoods as it has brought to ours. Over the past years, in addition to creating the park, we’ve held multiple work parties every year; we’ve planted over 100 street trees; we’ve held regular community-building potlucks; we’ve won a disaster supply cache from the city and a Chancellor’s Community Partnership Grant from UC for park improvements; and we’ve involved hundreds of residents in neighborhood watch through National Night Out Against Crime events, town hall meetings with the police and the Office of Emergency Services, and an evolving disaster preparedness plan.  

A neighborhood that once didn’t even have a name now provides a sense of place and enjoys a reputation for strong community. Our original printed newsletter has morphed into an electronic version that reaches over 340 immediate neighbors and another hundred-plus in the larger commun-ity, and we also keep people informed through flyers that reach close to a thousand. In focusing on our common interests, especially living in community and neighborliness, and working practically toward this end, we’ve enjoyed many accomplishments these past 15 years. 

In closing, we would like to share HNA’s Guiding Principles, which summarize what we’ve been cultivating here in our collective front yards: 

HNA is a community group dedicated to stewardship of the Halcyon Neighborhood in South Berkeley (bounded by Telegraph, Ashby, Adeline, and Woolsey). We encourage positive, proactive, partnership-oriented approaches to improving the well-being of our neighborhood, with an emphasis on the following goals: 

• Community building (such as regular potlucks, special events in the park, mutual support among neighbors, and multiblock yard sales). 

• Ongoing care of Halcyon Commons (a park conceived of and created by the neighbors who founded HNA) under the nonprofit umbrella provided by Berkeley Partners for Parks and in partnership with the City of Berkeley. 

• Continued greening and care of the neighborhood (planting trees, cleaning litter off streets, removing graffiti, and helping maintain public landscaped features). 

• Strengthening neighborhood watch (crime watch, community safety walks, emergency preparedness, and disaster supply cache). 

• Networking with the larger Berkeley community (nearby neighborhood groups, neighborhood businesses, city staff, and elected officials). 

• Sharing information and empowering residents to become proactive in addressing neighborhood needs and in expressing individual viewpoints regarding civic affairs (spreading news through meetings, flyers, and the HNA E-Newsletter, and providing contact information). 

To fulfill these goals, HNA provides a sanctuary from partisan politics so that neighbors with diverse viewpoints feel welcome to participate. Thus, HNA only takes stands on larger issues when there is near-unanimity among neighbors. By focusing on immediate local concerns, we find we can have a greater impact and get better results from the time we invest. 

Guided by these principles, HNA invites neighbors who are willing to work together in a spirit of partnership to participate at whatever level makes sense for them. Opportunities for serving on our volunteer Steering Committee and project-oriented committees are available to neighbors who are willing to roll up their sleeves and work together in a nonpartisan spirit. Neighbors are invited to step forward into leadership positions defined by the work they do in accordance with HNA’s primary goals and guiding principles. 

We invite other neighborhoods to borrow freely from these principles and goals and try them out. We believe you’ll find the results as fruitful and convivial as we have. 

Nancy Carleton and John Steere are the co-chairs of HNA, and Dawn Trygstad Rubin is HNA’s neighborhood watch coordinator. 

Last May, in my daughter’s Berkeley High School music class, a fellow classmate, Herbert, walked out the door with my daughter’s laptop computer, iPod, Timbuktu bag and cell phone. The other students said, “Oh, he is always stealing.” She saved for a year working at the Pacific Center and back stage at school to buy the laptop; I am a single mom. The teacher witnessed it and reported it to the school security guard.  

I was told the next day by the security guard that no police report was made. The school on-site officer was unavailable. Three days later no report had been made and I had to call the central police station and make the report myself. It took four months to get a copy of the police report. The offender was a juvenile and no one at the police station could figure out how to give me the report without compromising his identity.  

Furthermore, it took several months to get the report completed by the reporting officer—he wrote my name down incorrectly, etc. Finally, after five Friday visits to the Police Department on my day off, I suggested that they use white-out to eliminate the name and address of the offender. I also had to enlist the help of the Internal Affairs Department. Finally I got the report and submitted it to my insurance company. Five months later and after paying a $250 deductible (that I didn’t have) to my insurance, my daughter got another computer. Meanwhile, Herbert spent a summer unfettered by investigating officers.  

I know the Berkeley police are busy but maybe once a month they could have visited the offender’s home—he is 15 years old—to find and arrest him. No charges had apparently been filed despite his committing grand theft. School started again this fall and Herbert reappeared, stating to the vice principal that he would return the laptop if he could stay in school (he actually didn’t have it, he was just bargaining). Hearing that this child had committed grand theft on the grounds of Berkeley High School and now was attending school frustrated me, to say the least. I contacted the principal’s assistant who informed me that no warrant was issued for his arrest. Then I contacted the youth services officer assigned to the case, and left messages three times, with no return call. A month later, I was able to contact him in person on the phone. He stated that there should be a warrant out for this child and he reassured me that the on-site officer would find the child. The on-site officer apparently interviewed him last week—Herbert again confessed to the crime.  

Well, Herbert is still walking around Berkeley High School today ready to steal the next classmate’s belongings. The on-site officer says no warrant has been issued. Probably because he “ammended” the report to state that Herbert had actually admitted to the crime-even though it was witnessed last May: videotape documentation as well. The on-site officer could not tell me what would happen next: “It’s probably on the desk of a probation officer,” and gave me the name of his sergeant to contact—the same sargeant who didn’t return my call several months ago when I was trying to find out the disposition of the case. I’ve left another message. I await a call from the principal’s assistant regarding my questioning of Berkeley High’s policy of allowing a student to attend classes after committing grand theft on Berkeley High School property. He was never suspended or expelled. He said he would call me back with an answer. Surely there is a written policy he can refer to?  

Meanwhile, my daughter has learned that she just has to adjust to being a victim. That the law is useless if it is not enforced and she has watched her mother appeal to the enforcers without advocacy or accountability on their part. It appears that there is no accountability. It is also humiliating to pay some of the highest property taxes in the state, as a single mother, and have this kind of service from these two institutions. I cant even try to recoup my $250 deductible from the child’s mother in small claims court because the time involved in getting the demographic information to serve papers on a juvenile (confidential) is beyond my limit. The lessons that have been taught to both my daughter and this young thief are so wrong. I would have thought that in a supposedly enlightened city like Berkeley themes such as justice and advocacy for victims would be held in high regard. Think again. 

Ellen Mates is a Berkeley resident. 

CORRECTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for mentioning my book in your recent article on Nicole Sawaya. The correct title of the book is Uneasy Listening: Pacifica Radio’s Civil War, not Easy Listening... . 

Matthew Lasar  

• 

ERRATUM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have a correction to your Oct. 2 article, “The Theater: ‘Turn of the Screw’ Set in Louisiana” by Jaime Robles. The article said: 

“After two months of auditions, the role was double cast for two pairs of children: Brooks Fisher and Madelaine Matej, and Nick Kempen and Kelty Morash. All four children have sung the roles before; Nick and Kelty appearing in the 2007 Adler Fellows production at the Lincoln Theater in Napa.” 

Madelaine has not sung the role before—this is her first solo role. 

Elisabeth Thomas-Matej 

• 

SCHOOLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Yolanda Huang most certainly is entitled to her opinion, expressed in her Oct. 5 letter to the editor. In fact, she was on an interview panel of community members that the school district put together, and had ample opportunity to express those views. 

However, I want to point out to those not familiar with Ms. Huang’s history with BUSD that she actively campaigned against our recent measure ensuring reduced class sizes, teacher training, music and art in our schools, library services and other programming for our Berkeley public schools. Her words of concern for our kids do not seem to correspond to any real financial support. And lest anyone believe the State of California adequately funds our public schools, our children and our teachers, I have one fact as witness against: California is 44th of the 50 states in per pupil monetary support. 

John Selawsky 

Vice President, Berkeley School Board 

• 

HUMAN FAMILY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his “Open Letter To Code Pink,” Captain Richard Lund rhetorically asks what he has done to be considered a traitor. Certainly Mr. Lund has shown “honor, courage and commitment” to his country. However, we are all living members of the human family as well as being Americans. In our larger, more inclusive family, we also have a responsibility of honor, courage and commitment. We also value peace, love and unity above war, hate and division. At our dinner table, Mr. Lund sits alone. 

Michael Bauce 

• 

DEATH OF GARY KING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Too bad Sam Herbert had a restless night from the noisy helicopters. I have a “strong hunch” the friends and family of Gary King have more than their share of wakeful nights. I read the Berkeley High School Jacket report of the killing and thought it was excellent. Ms. Herbert objects of their use of the word “murder” to describe the killing of Gary King, age 20, shot twice, in the back, by an Oakland police sergeant. Perhaps that is not technically, legally correct. Maybe the word should be execution. Whatever you call it, that child is dead. Yes, I’ll call him a child. My own grandkids are not that much younger.  

Ms. Herbert accuses the Jacket of being “tortuous and libelous.” Yet, she herself states that young Mr. King drew a gun on the officer. To my knowledge that has not been confirmed. An unnamed police spokesman stated that a gun was found at the scene. The story from the police is that the policeman thought King was a murder suspect, and was trying to question him. As it turned out, he was not the suspect at all. Ask yourself why would King attempt to fire on a policeman when he knew he was not the suspect in question. This is the third shooting by this policeman. Two have resulted in death. The third is permanently paralyzed.  

Ms. Upstanding Citizen Herbert, you may think Gary King and his ilk are just worthless criminals. Why don’t you go down to the corner of 53rd and MLK and take a look at the lovely shrine of flowers and candles that remain to this day? Apparently, this boy was loved. Now he’s dead. Sleep on that. 

Barbara Henninger 

• 

SUMMER OF LOVE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After the Summer of Love, police dragnets swept Haight, rousting homeless youths as well as drug dealers. Many escaped to Telegraph. Moe (of Moe’s Books fame) raised money to fund the Heroin Emergency Life Project (H.E.L.P.) which sponsored the Berkeley Free Clinic. Janis Joplin died at a Los Angeles hotel in October 1970 at the age of 27 owing to an injection of too-pure heroin. “The stampede of misfits to the Bay Area, the heavy drugs that were passed, the lack of human services,” says the caption to an article published in the Cal alumni magazine, “all contributed to the Summer of Love’s short-lived celebration.” Country Joe was indeed one of the “more concerned and prescient and cause-committed of our generation.” The “summer” may be said to have started Jan. 14, 1967 at the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park, and may be said to have finished January 30, 1968 at Pauley Ballroom, where Country Joe, Mad River and Charlie Musselwhite raised a tidy sum for H.E.L.P. I know because they needed to form a Cal student club to reserve Pauley, and Moe buttonholed me for the job because he knew I was then enrolled.  

Incidentally, the Berkeley Lothlórien co-op is but the pale shadow of the notions popularized in the ’60s, although maybe they embody the hippie virtues: drugs, free love, vegetarianism, and rock n’ roll.  

Richard Thompson 

• 

HUMAN RACISM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding the response to “Cheers to Edna by Jerry Landis: Mr. Landis, if you truly believe your own words, and are a man of your convictions, then by all means lead the way by example for population reduction, otherwise your convictions carry no weight in reality. This kind of self-loathing is the ultimate in human racism. There are indeed terrible people, environmental degradation, catastrophe and “stubborn breeders,” as you say. There has also been, in the last 120 years, amazing advances in medicine, science, agriculture, technology, spirituality and a myriad host of other amazing, life giving and life enriching leaps forward. I might also add, importantly, that these things do not come without sacrifice, without ill side effects or birth pangs. Goodness does not operate in a vacuum, and yes, the road to hell is often paved with good intentions, so to speak. Our human experience will ultimately be weighed by our efforts to minimize the strain we place on ourselves and our planet while moving forward, but make no mistake, we are moving forward, albeit awkwardly and at times stumbling backwards. The minds we have been blessed with (the only ones in nature with the ability to self loathe, as Mr. Landis so tactfully demonstrated) are a miracle of evolution, precious, fragile and filled with promise. Let’s use them for more than musing upon the desire to self destruct. 

Ernest Grouns 

Minneapolis, MN 

• 

SCHIP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As the great Fats Waller famously remarked, “One never knows, do one?” Certainly one never knows just what veto power President Bush will exercise next. This week it was the Children’s Health Insurance Bill, which comes as no great surprise. Having requested nearly $200 billion dollars in supplemental financing for war operations, no way was our “Decider” going to approve this insurance bill which would increase the program’s cost by $38 billion over five years. 

Democrats have pointed out that this equals the cost for about three months of operation in Iraq. Many prominent Republicans have expressed their dismay at this veto. 

Claiming that the bill is too costly, that it would amount to government-run health care, Bush callously dismissed the fact that 10 million poor children in this country are in need of health insurance. So what if there’s an alarming rise in the rate of children afflicted with asthma, birth defects and autism? This is of little concern to Mr. B., who chooses to sacrifice thousands of American military and wreak havoc in Iraq in his determination “to bring democracy” to a country which fervently wishes we’d get out! 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

NOT A VOYEUSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a recent issue, Robert White writes a disingenuous response to my report about offensive behavior on Shattuck Avenue. Since I reported that a man stood around with his hand inside his pants on his crotch in downtown Berkeley for two hours, he assumes I stood there for two hours continually watching the man and makes a personal attack on me based on this disingenuous assumption. Robert, would you also term “voyeuristic” the unfortunate San Francisco pedestrians who observe and report to police the sex acts or urination/defecation taking place in public on San Francisco sidewalks, as described in stories on the homeless in this week’s San Francisco Chronicle?  

In this case I saw the offensive behavior three times during a two-hour period and it is a reasonable assumption that the behavior was constant during that period: a period during which hundreds of other people were also confronted with this man’s lewd behavior as they unfortunately had to walk by him. Having a forum as the Daily Planet provides for public discourse is quite valuable. I suggest that people bring their best selves and thoughtful writings to this forum, rather than using it to make personal attacks or disingenuous comments.  

Deborah Cloudwalker 

• 

LETTERS POLICY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a recent issue of the Planet, you printed a letter from one reader (Robert White) which attacks another reader (Ms. Cloudwalker). I feel strongly that media should not publish letters which are absent of meaningful argument and whose sole purpose is to make snide remarks or mean-spirited accusations about another individual, particularly someone who is not a public/political figure.  

Robin Goldman 

• 

ALQUIST PRIOLO ACT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your reporting of the three lawsuits about the student high performance center and other South East Campus projects is far superior to that of any other newspaper. Thank you. The lawsuits in part assert the university violates the Alquist Priolo Act. The Alquist Priolo Act governs construction on or near earthquake faults.  

Curiously, although the university in its environmental impact report states that the university is subject to the provisions of the Alquist Priolo Act, university counsel asserts in court that the university is not subject to the act. Which is it? It cannot be both.  

Certainly the university did not comply with the Alquist Priolo Act when they built the Foothill Housing Project on top of the Louderback trace of the Hayward Fault. Most likely, the parents of students living there were never informed. I bet they would like to have known that fact before they signed contracts for the most expensive student housing at UCB. 

Now, some 20 years after that violation, and in face of all the increased knowledge about earthquake faults and the damage and loss of life from earthquakes, the university asserts its right to violate this safety act once again. 

Apparently, the euphoria of a winning football team so intoxicates and drugs the public and the reporters, they are blind to the violation of good public policy and common sense. To them I say: “Get real!” The football team can train and win anywhere, if indeed winning football games is the most important activity for a university. 

Ann Reid Slaby 

• 

BIOFUELS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It would be nice if the news media would at least scratch the surface of the issues. It only takes a moment’s thought to see the folly of the “biofuels” promises. 

1. It’s obvious that no amount of biofuels can begin to replace our huge appetite for oil. Just look at the number of vehicles on the road, and multiply by the number of roads and the number of cities in the world. 

2. It’s obvious that the growing of biofuels has to replace either (a) wildlife habitat or (b) land used for producing food. Neither is in such large supply that we can afford to lose it. 

3. It’s well known that invasive, exotic species are one of the major causes of the worldwide extinction crisis. Switchgrass should be left where it is native (China?), and not let loose in other environments, where it would be impossible to contain it. 

4. Solar energy is also no panacea. Unless solar panels shade only man-made structures (e.g. roads and rooftops), they will destroy more wildlife habitat. 

That leaves conservation as the only feasible solution to the alleged “energy crisis.” 

Mike Vandeman 

San Ramon 

• 

TRASHING THE NEIGHBORHOOD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Would you consider buying an elegant home from realtors with garbage filling the walk outside their offices? Or patronize a bakery, in the same office building, with so many fragrant garbage and recycling cans in front, six days out of seven, that patrons and passersby play dodge-can to get through? Would you then eat your goodies on a bench ogling and sniffing this heavenly delight? Apparently, for some people, the answer is, yes. Amaze your senses. Walk up Colusa to Solano. Check out the scene. 

Unfortunately, resident neighbors in this mixed use area have all too ample opportunity. Andronico’s and a six-unit condo on the same block manage to avoid a public health, safety and pollution problem simply by bringing cans out at collection time, then putting them away. Several of us have suggested this to tenants and landlord on our corner—several times. Any ideas? 

H. Bruner 

• 

PUBLIC TOILETS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Almost everybody in Berkeley agrees that the city’s street dwellers should not be allowed to defecate or urinate on the sidewalks. The City Council won’t take action against this practice until there are enough public toilets meet the need. This should be a very easy problem to solve. There are already many portable toilets around the UC stadium. Surely, the university would allow the street people to use some of these. The city could install others in People’s Park and on public property near downtown. Portable toilets are not expensive to rent; the supplier would service them; and there are many suppliers who could deliver and install them on a couple of day’s notice. 

This would be a stop-gap measure. Permanent public toilets could come later. The city needs some, especially if it wants to realize its dream of becoming a world-class convention city. 

John G. McGarrahan 

• 

OAKLAND METRO OPERA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We were faithful attendees of Oakland Metro Opera, performing in an old bar at First and Broadway, until the hot, crowded, airless Sunday afternoon Bob passed out (doc called it “just old church-lady syndrome”) and we decided we had to give up the work of this fine company. 

But then last week’s Daily Planet alerted us to their new venue at 630 Third St. at MLK Way, a big old warehouse that still presents formidable challenges and minor discomforts, but not suffocation. Their performance of Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw there is truly impressive. This is not a review, so I won’t go into detail. I just urge everyone to go and enjoy the work of these talented, accomplished folks before Turn of the Screw closes Sunday, Oct. 14. 

Dorothy Bryant 

• 

POOLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley needs a new vision to reinvigorate our public aquatics programs. As of Oct. 6, two of Berkeley’s three outdoor public pools will be closed once again for seven months for the winter. The outdoor pools have serious deferred maintenance problems that could require any one of them to be shut down at any time because of safety issues. Attendance at Berkeley’s outdoor pools has been taking a plunge for over two decades; due to neglect, shorter hours, schools neglecting aquatics, elimination of fun features like high dives, and more. 

Meanwhile, the Warm Water Pool, used by many for warm water therapy, must move from the Berkeley High campus and find a new home and the money to build it. 

Berkeley’s public pools are on school sites and were built to teach children to swim. Unfortunately, BUSD has largely abandoned the pools. King and Willard students have perfunctory “swim lessons” a few times a year by their gym teachers, not aquatics coaches. Many if not most children sit out. 

Pool users have noticed some recent improvements in management, staff and day-to-day maintenance. However, small changes will not be enough. Berkeley needs a new vision for its pools that will reinvigorate public aquatics and make it a source of water competence, fun, exercise, and community for a much larger portion of our population. 

We think the existing outdoor pools will need to be fixed up, but that won’t be enough. Berkeley’s weather is cool in the winter, and a year-round aquatics center with an indoor element, fun features for the kids like slides, and plenty of room for aquatics exercise classes and lap swimming for adults would attract several times more users than our existing aquatics system. For example, the City of Newark, population 42,000, has an indoor Aquatic Center that attracts 180,000 visits per year and has lap swim 15 hours a day, extensive aquatics classes, and a line out the door for recreation swim. 

The most likely location for an aquatics center is BUSD’s West Campus site on University Avenue. The City already runs an existing outdoor pool at the site, the site has plenty of room for expansion, and a large part of the site is potentially BUSD surplus. Shared parking, freeway, transit and bike path access, and proximity to West Berkeley, with the largest concentration of Berkeley’s children, are all pluses. 

We need you, swimmers and non-swimmers alike, to help create and promote a vision to reinvigorate Berkeley’s aquatics programs. Please come to our public meeting about the West Campus aquatic center concept this Wednesday, Oct. 10, at 7 p.m. at the City of Berkeley Corporation Yard Public Meeting Room, 1326 Allston Way. More information can be found on our website at poolsforberkeley.org 

Bill Hamilton, Barbara Steuart,  

Stephen Swanson 

Pools for Berkeley 

• 

YAY! GREEN BINS! 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thanks Berkeley for the food scrap recycling service. I second Jennifer Steele’s suggestion (Letters, Oct. 4) to use BioBags from Elephant Pharmacy to line the small green food waste bins. I leave my green pail on the kitchen floor next to my chopping table. It’s simple to toss scraps in the bin as I cook. The bio bags make it easier to take out scraps to the large green trash outside before they get too ripe smelling. 

I’ve always wanted to compost food scraps, but never mastered the backyard compost business, so thanks Berkeley for helping out! Nice to have those green bins picked up every week as well. 

Robin Kirby 

• 

COMPOST BINS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Little green compost bins are a good idea. When I put it under the kitchen sink, two days later there was a loooong trail of ants in there, ugh! So then it went on the back porch, off the kitchen. Still ants, and the neighbor’s cat came to investigate. So the little green bin got washed, and put in a closet to store rags.  

Now, I take my small covered plastic bin with “compostables” every day and put that into the big green debris bin, which works fine. I do notice that some folks in the apartment up the street think one is to put out that little green bin for the recycle guys to pick up; they don’t get the “put into the large green debris bin” concept! 

Colleen Houlihan 

• 

TEXTBOOK PRICES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Today’s college students face many responsibilities throughout their college lifetime: grades, social life, and of course, textbook affordability. That’s right. A recent study conducted by the California Public Interest Research Group concluded that textbook prices have risen at twice the rate of national inflation, and the average public university student spends a quarter of his/her tuition on textbooks. The problem lies with the fact that many textbook companies frequently print unnecessary new editions, bundle extra materials, or fail to disclose their prices to faculty. Only 38 percent of the 287 surveyed professors reported that sales representatives always released their prices. This omission of information seems trivial, but in fact, violates a basic freedom, or the ability to make informed decisions based on information provided. An overwhelming 94% of professors said that they would choose a cheaper textbook if given two similar options. To combat this disturbing trend, a bill called The College Textbook Affordability Act, SB 832 (Corbett), has been introduced and is sitting in the governor’s office right now. As a college student, I believe that the Governor should sign this bill because it will give professors the opportunity to make a comprehensive decision while keeping their students’ best interests at heart. 

Xiao Song 

A far-reaching attack on the zoning protections of West Berkeley is being contrived by a small group of developers and real estate brokers. It is coming at us disguised as a either a new West Berkeley Business Improvement District (BID) or a Community Benefits District (CBD), which the organizers would control and use to lobby for zoning changes to gentrify the industrial areas. This lobbying would be financed by taxes collected from the many West Berkeley businesses and residents opposed to their goals. That’s the cleverest part of their plan: it makes the potential victims pay for it. And they’ve already gotten $10,000 from the city to organize it. The group behind it calls themselves the West Berkeley Business Alliance (WBBA), but their organization does not in any way represent industries, artisans and artists, which make up the majority of businesses in that area.  

The original proposal clearly stated that funds collected would be used to lobby the city on “economic development strategies. Outreach to political reps, city officials, ...attend public hearings. Hiring professionals [to] advise on land use issues, input on West Berkeley Plan.” There was $60,000 in their original first year budget plan targeted for these lobbying tasks. Despite repeated requests to remove land-use lobbying from their proposal, they have refused to rule it out.  

The BID would be instituted by a “weighted vote” of either commercial property owners, businesses or a combination of the two, depending how the district is based. The CBD would additionally include residential properties. Votes would be valued by the size of property holdings and/or gross receipts. Instituting a property-based CBD process would result in the sixteen largest property owners alone having enough “weight” to decide the final vote. Three-and-a-half percent of property owners would be able to institute the tax, but all would have to pay, as stipulated by state laws governing such districts. Even if the other ninety-six-and-a-half percent voted against, it would not matter. A BID would have a different, but essentially similar and grossly disproportionate weighted voting composition. This violates every principle of democracy that this country has ever stood for. The City Council must approve the BID or CBD. 

In a business-based BID, landlords would be treated as businesses, and taxed according to their gross receipts. But they wouldn’t really have to pay their assessments, because these taxes would in most cases be passed on to their tenants. So businesses that rent would get a double hit: taxed according to their own gross receipts, and also forced to pay their landlord’s taxes.  

This gambit is just the latest in a series of assaults on industries, artisans, and artists from the WBBA, which since its inception has been campaigning to weaken the land use protections of the West Berkeley Plan. These protections are at the heart of the plan, and are key to maintaining and safeguarding the strong and diverse economic reality that is working well in West Berkeley, providing city revenue, local jobs, and a synergistic environment that benefits of the entire city and region.  

The proposal on the table up to now has been a Community Benefits District (CBD), which includes West Berkeley homeowners. Due to massive opposition from these residents and small businesses in the area, the WBBA and the city are talking about possibly excluding homeowners and reconfiguring the CBD as a business-only BID, but there is nothing to verify this buzz. The original proposal also covered all the industrial zones of West Berkeley, but due to strong opposition in the northern section it was cut back to include only the area south of University Avenue. Since this action the WBBA has put the inclusion of the northern section back on the table in a possible “second stage” effort. This proposal ultimately puts all of West Berkeley at risk.  

BIDs are usually formed around commercial areas, where retail merchants share contiguous storefronts, common goals, and proportional sizes. But West Berkeley is a widely diverse area, in which all the stakeholders do not share the same problems, concerns and priorities, and where the largest property owners are at least 500 times the size of the smallest. What developers consider improvements are often destructive to the environment which artisanal and industrial businesses, and residents consider vital and need to thrive.  

Besides lobbying for land-use policies, the BID or CBD would also handle a bunch of mom-and-apple-pie areas, like neighborhood cleanliness and security. Of course neighborhoods can always be improved, but the anti-democratic CBD or BID is not the vehicle to accomplish such improvements. 

The office of Councilmember Darryl Moore, in conjunction with the city’s Office of Economic Development and the BID-CBD steering committee (i.e., the developers) have set up a community meeting to discuss the proposal. The meeting will take place on  

Oct. 16 at 7 p.m., at Rosa Parks Elementary School, 920 Allston Way.  

I urge you all to attend and to contact the mayor, City Council, and city manager, and tell them your thoughts on this offense to democracy.  

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

I couldn’t help being shaken by the “accidental death” of Carol Ann Gotbaum, in a holding cell at a Phoenix airport. From what I can gather, she acted in an erratic and irate manner, a similar manner to a mentally ill person in crisis. It brought back memories of friends and acquaintances who are mentally ill and who died either while being restrained or in some other way because of the illness.  

It is a universal story that goes along with mental illness that police or other authorities often treat an ill person roughly, and sometimes in a humiliating or even dangerous manner. I have heard a story of a young man in custody who died in the transport van due to overheating. I can remember three other mentally ill who died of a heart attack, either because of their psychotic episode or because of the health problems associated with their medication. I know of several others who committed suicide. Mentally ill people have died while tied down on a four-point restraint table; repeated checking is legally required in California to prevent this. It doesn’t always work. 

Whether Carol Gotbaum’s erratic behavior was caused by drug addiction or a mental health diagnosis doesn’t concern this article. Airport security must have lacked training to deal with persons who are in crisis, who are not a threat to security. It should not be a life-threatening situation for a mentally ill person who needs to fly somewhere.  

Many police forces in recent years have received training to deal with mentally ill persons in a non-lethal manner. The officers who have received this training are not always sensitive and sweet; however the mentally ill person with whom they have dealt doesn’t get maimed or killed by officers as often. However this has come about because thousands of mentally ill persons lost their lives due to mistreatment or neglect. It is still not uncommon for mentally ill to be shot to death by police when the mentally ill person appears threatening. Mentally ill are usually not as threatening as they appear. 

A few years ago in the news there was a story of a man with bipolar illness who ran off a plane and whom security shot to death. Terrorists are the exception not the rule when someone acts erratic. There needs to be a system in place that accounts for terrorist behavior versus a mental health crisis.  

However, I speculate that airport security could have been quite aware this woman wasn’t a terrorist. They treated the woman in a way that was most convenient to them, which was to handcuff her and forget about her. Mentally ill have received this type of treatment a lot over the past five decades. Now it is being talked about because it has happened in a more visible place.  

Jack Bragen is a Martinez resident. 

On Monday, a cardboard sign in the window of the Halal Market on San Pablo at University announced that it was closing. 

Inside, the formerly crammed shelves were nearly empty. Naim, the proprietor, usually a fixture behind the counter, was nowhere to be seen. A young nephew of Naim’s staffing the register responded to my astonished inquiry by informing me that Naim had had a heart attack. He was OK, taking it easy, still smoking.  

Halal means permissible according to Muslim law. So the shop sold no alcohol, no pork, and only meat slaughtered per that law. Above the merely permissible, upstairs there was a room for prayer—all were welcome, shoes removed. In the aisles next to the cartons of black tea were shelves of Islamic books for sale. And, depending on current events, Naim placed on his countertops handmade collection cans for humanitarian relief in various Muslim places. 

The Halal market first drew me in with its superb and very reasonably priced feta cheese, olives, and halvah. Later I discovered the amazing organic chicken, fresh on Thursdays, bulk spices and magnificent olive oil. Over time, I came to know Naim, who often offered tea and loved to make observations on Palestine, his homeland.  

Patrons did not merely shop at the Halal Market. Naim engaged us, even if we imagined that we were in a hurry. It would not do to simply sell something to someone he knew. He would talk with us, ask questions, state opinions. The result: there was usually a small knot of people from Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, and neighboring places around Naim, congesting the checkout counter and the entryway, hanging out, arguing, relating.  

Naim personally knew every item among the rainbow of foodstuffs in his packed shop. He would present a sample of the exquisite fresh roasted peanuts that he had just bought fifty pounds of, or recommend the Lebanese olive oil as the best. He would offer a fig from the spectacular seasonal shipment of Turkish figs with a terse but accurate “very good.” I came to learn that his pronouncements were reliably correct. 

The tall, mustachioed butcher who presided over the lamb and chicken display, and operated the vintage meat-cutting saw in the back of the shop generally addressed me as “brother,” as in, “Will there be anything else for you, brother?” I found this irresistible, and would respond by asking for “the organic chicken legs, brother.”  

The organization of the fragrant spices along one wall, and the airy display of amber honey towards the front all expressed Naim’s sensibilities. The entire store, from the “Palestine Unbreakable” cartoon under the glass countertop to the hookahs on the top shelves was an expression of Naim’s own personality. This became starkly evident in the dispirited shell of a market that existed, temporarily, without him, like the body of a person who has died.  

Plainly, Naim’s family played an essential part in the thriving of the Halal Market. They often worked in the store: his thoughtful wife in traditional dress was a powerful, quick-witted, and warm presence. Their teen children would work the register while Naim was out, especially during school vacations. Last I heard, both daughters were in college.  

Speaking of family, Naim knew both my mother and my brother, and usually asked after them, or after something one of us had purchased. For example, he wanted to know how the lamb we had bought for my mother’s birthday feast had turned out. Since we had prepared it according to his instructions, it had pleased all of the nonvegetarian guests.  

From a much smaller shop tucked away on Ninth Street, Naim had built the Halal into this hub of commerce and socializing. Before his illness, he had talked about expanding to an even larger venue. During the time of the Halal Market, a Longs had moved in across the street. There could hardly be a greater contrast between the two establishments. There was no reason to go into the Longs unless one needed something they were selling. It closed, and remains empty, its passing unmourned. The Halal pre-existed Longs, and rightfully outlived it. 

Naim loved that I am a Jewish peace activist, and was particularly delighted when I told him about an action that my organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, had taken at a local Caterpillar dealership. (Caterpillar makes the huge bulldozers that the Israeli army uses to demolish Palestinian houses.) He had me tell the story of how we had surprised the Caterpillar management several times to friends visiting his shop. He graciously accepted a stack of postcards Jewish Voice for Peace had produced, protesting US policy towards Israel/Palestine for people to sign and send to Nancy Pelosi, and accorded them a place of honor upon his crowded countertop. 

Naim’s history includes layers of nuance and irony that characterize the situation of Israel and the Palestinians. Once when I told him that I had visited Hebron, an ancient Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank, he asked if I had also seen Kiryat Arba, the large, modern Israeli settlement near it. Naim volunteered that in the seventies, he had been one of the construction workers building Kiryat Arba. Naim’s job had been to build the settlement on his people’s land. 

There must be any number of small businesses in Berkeley, across the country, and around the world that share with the Halal market that they express the personality and imagination of their proprietors within the economic system they inhabit. To get to know these small operations is to become connected with the human beings who with their dreams, courage, and labor, build, sustain, and lead them. 

The immense skill, long hours and devoted work that Naim and his family invested in the Halal Market resulted in a precious and unique community institution. The market contributed a special human quality, unmistakably stamped with the personality of Naim, to that stretch of San Pablo. It will be remembered, and missed. 

Glen Hauer has lived and worked in Berkeley for 30 years.  

Bush administration neo-conservatives, allied with a group of U.S. senators, appear to have successfully torpedoed the upcoming Bush administration-sponsored Middle East peace conference. Initially billed as a gathering that would propel Israel and the Palestinians toward a “final-status” agreement, the November conference’s goals have now been reduced to little more than establishing a “set of principles” as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it.  

“No one has any idea what the conference will look like,” one Arab diplomat told the New York-based Jewish weekly Forward, “We are still waiting for the United States to come forward and tell us what is happening.”  

Well, some U.S. officials have been quite clear about what is going to happen: nothing. 

Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams, now the leading neo-conservative in the Bush administration, told Jewish leaders back in May that the White House had no intention of pushing a peace agreement on Israel, and that U.S. efforts would be restricted to improving free movement of Palestinians and strengthening Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Presidential Guard. 

According to Forward, Abrams told Jewish leaders that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s efforts in the region are “Just process—steps needed in order to keep the Europeans and moderate Arab countries ‘on the team’ and to make sure they feel the United States is promoting peace in the Middle East.”  

Abrams now denies he made the statement, but the Forward is standing by its story. 

U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) told columnist Robert Novak, that Abrams has prevented the United States from having a “coherent Middle East policy,” and that “a number of Israelis who would like to engage with Syria … have said that Elliot Abrams keeps pushing them back.” 

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Syria would boycott the conference if it did not deal with issues like the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights. 

Abrams has a lot of help on the congressional side in his efforts to sabotage the conference. U.S. Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are pressing Rice to require countries that want to attend to cut support for “terrorist organizations,” meaning Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian organization Hamas. The countries would also have to recognize Israel.  

A statement from the Arab American Institute said, “If the goal is for Arab states not to participate in the upcoming conference, this [the loyalty oath] is the way to go.” 

From all indications, Rice doesn’t need much prodding to turn the conference into little more than a talking forum. Just before Rice left on her latest jaunt to the region, Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs David Welch low-balled any expectations about the upcoming event: “It might be possible even in two months to aggregate these in a way that really gives a sense that we turned a new page.”  

Things are in such disarray there is even talk about delaying the conference until mid-December. 

If it happens, it is not clear Saudi Arabia will attend, and even the Palestinians are talking about taking a pass, particularly after Olmert’s comment that he wasn’t interested in a signed agreement, just “principles.” One aide to Abbas told Reuters, “He [Abbas] can live without a conference.” 

If Olmert and Bush don’t seem much interested in making peace in the Middle East, a number of Israelis and Jewish-Americans are putting their shoulders to the wheel. 

Some 40 leading Israeli musicians, composers, conductors and musicologists have issued a letter that reads, in part: “We protest the prolonged occupation that is destroying our country’s image. Our continued control over the territories and their Palestinian inhabitants is morally wrong. The only positive option is an attempt to conduct responsible negotiations with Hezbollah, the Palestine Liberation Organ-ization, Hamas, Lebanon and Syria. Peace is made with enemies.” 

The initiative is spearheaded by musicologist Dutchi Lichtenstein and composer Hagar Kadima. Lichtenstein told the Israeli daily, Haaretz, “The separation between involvement in music on the one hand and ideology on the other is unacceptable to me. Music is not divorced from the social context in which it operates; it does not come from outer space. Someone here creates and performs it, and teaches and disseminates it, according to a certain order of priorities. This entire experience is political; and if we don’t understand the political context and work for change, we will probably continue to be involved in study, and will delve into semiotic analysis and into performing the fine points of the work … but in the end they will end on the shelf covered with dust.” 

A group of leading Israeli writers, including Amos Oz, David Grossman and A.B. Yehoshua, have also called upon the Olmert government to open talks with Hamas. Yehoshua, author of 10 novels, including “A Woman in Jerusalem,” and “Five Seasons,” said the call was made to end “the very disturbing, very terrible situation for the inhabitants [of Gaza] and for the Israelis who live along the border” and have been subjected to rocket attacks. 

“We have many times negotiated with enemies who are totally hostile to Israel or don’t recognize Israel—Jordan, Syria and Egypt,” said Yehoshua. “In 19781 Menachem Begin agreed to a ceasefire with the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] even though it was completely denying the legitimacy of Israel.” 

The novelist, playwright and essayist went on to point out that while PA President Abbas and the PLO are considered a friends of Israel, he remembers that 20 years ago “if you called for talks with the PLO, people said they wanted to kill you.”  

While the Olmert government has yet to respond to the writers, Yehoshua told the Independent that he felt the petition would help to “prepare the legitimacy” of such talks. 

Meanwhile, tentative merger talks are going on between the three major Jewish American peace and human rights groups—Americans for Peace Now, The Israeli Policy Forum, and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom—aimed at creating a pro-peace Jewish lobby to counter the influence of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). 

One of the organizers told the Forward that the alliance wanted to send a message to Congress that “there are other voices in the community.” Another said that many American Jews “were dying” to present an alternative to AIPAC on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, although organizers are taking pains not to pick a public fight with the powerful Israeli lobbying organization. 

The goal is to raise $10 million, a figure that would double the combined annual budgets of all three organizations. 

The Israel-based human rights organization B’Tselem is opening a U.S. branch. Executive Director Jessica Montell says the goal “is two-fold: to insert human rights into the Washington debate on Israel-Palestine, which so often ignores the daily experience of the people actually living here [Israel]; and to inform and mobilize the Jewish community regarding human rights.” 

She also said B’Tselem would “provide assistance to local groups who would like their voices to be better heard in the U.S.” 

B’Tselem, which is particularly active in the Occupied Territories, is currently leading a fight to allow Palestinians to walk down one of Hebron’s main streets. The organization successfully forced the Israeli Self-Defense Forces to admit the ban was “unlawful,” but the street is still off limits. B’Tselem members accompany Palestinians when they try to use the thoroughfare. 

The organization can be contacted through its web site, and a check would be appreciated: PO Box 53132, Jerusalem 91531. 

When the Berkeley Planning Department proposed last January to re-zone the West Berkeley properties occupied by Urban Ore and the city’s transfer station—two of northern Alameda County’s recycling hubs—for auto dealerships, it might have seemed that the bureau had exhausted its capacity to dream up bizarre land use schemes. That impression was dispelled last Wednesday evening, as senior planner Matt Taecker presented the Downtown Area Planning Advisory Committee (DAPAC—sounds like daypack) with a vision of a high-rise downtown as surreal as the notion of replacing Berkeley’s major recycling facilities with auto dealers. 

Set forth in a document entitled “Draft of Preferred Land Use Alternative (Staff)”—PLUA for short—the scenario featured five 16-story, 180-foot-high buildings, with an exception therein for two 225-foot-high hotels—no stories specified, but 20 seem likely; an unlimited number of 10-story buildings at 120 feet; and a minimum building height of 50 feet, which is to say, four to five stories. For comparison, the Power Bar Building, currently the tallest structure in downtown, is 180 feet high. 

Grotesque as they were, the numbers weren’t the most outlandish aspect of the staff proposal. That distinction belonged to Taecker’s characterization of 10-story structures as “mid-rise” buildings. Current zoning limits buildings in the downtown core to seven stories—the official height of the Gaia Building. Now we’re being told that buildings three stories taller than the current limit are “mid-rise.” Along the same fanciful lines, Taecker introduced the staff PLUA as a “compromise.” A compromise with what, pray tell? He never said. 

I believe that the senior planner and his colleagues bring genuine, albeit misplaced, dedication to their work. But to understand how such an extreme proposal could have made it onto the DAPAC agenda, you have to realize that the main impetus for Manhattanizing downtown (and, for that matter, Emeryville-izing West Berkeley) is coming from the Berkeley mayor’s office. Well-founded rumor has it that before the last DAPAC meeting, Tom Bates invited selected DAPACers into his office and lobbied them to support the high-rise prospectus. And that’s only the latest and far from the greatest instance of the mayor’s involvement.  

DAPAC owes its very existence to Bates; the body is a by-product of the Bates-brokered, 2005 secret agreement that settled the city’s first lawsuit over UC expansion. The lawsuit was about getting the university to pay its fair share of city services; there was nothing in it about downtown. So it was a shock to discover that the agreement not only sold out Berkeley taxpayers but also included extensive provisions for a new downtown plan. Worse yet, though the planning commission is legally entrusted with the initial preparation of land use plans, responsibility for drafting the new downtown plan was jointly assigned to the planning staffs of the university and the city.  

In the fall of 2005, facing demands for a community process, the mayor and council created a temporary commission, DAPAC, to draft the plan. Again, Bates showed his peremptory hand: Berkeley commissions are supposed to elect their chairs; instead, with nary a peep from the council, DAPAC’s chair was chosen by the mayor.  

Despite these machinations, the commission has not simply rolled over for the mayor and his proxies. At the Oct. 3 meeting, the staff proposal was supported by only three DAPACers. One was Jenny Wenk, who works at the downtown YMCA. The other two were Dorothy Walker and Victoria Eisen, both professional planners. Walker is a former president of the American Planning Association and a retired vice chancellor for property development at UC Berkeley. Eisen oversaw the Association of Bay Area Government’s Smart Growth Strategy before leaving the agency to start her own consulting firm.  

Soon after Taecker ended his presentation, Eisen made a motion, seconded by Wenk, to recommend the staff proposal to the council. Walker delivered a passionate defense of the proposal, asserting that approval was necessary for the sake of “the people who aren’t here,” meaning those who can’t afford housing in this town; she’s apparently under the illusion that affordability and real estate speculation go hand in hand. Thankfully, the majority of DAPAC’s 21 members expressed misgivings, many of them grave, about the high-rise scenario. Realizing that her motion was doomed, Eisen withdrew it.  

Unfortunately, DAPAC member Helen Burke then suggested forming a committee that would try to reach a compromise. Even more unfortunately, the commission gave Burke’s suggestion an informal okay. I say “unfortunately,” because in the interest of sound policymaking, compromise should not be an end in itself when, as in the present case, disagreement is deep and principled. 

Instead, DAPAC should take its bearings from the first major goal of Berkeley’s 2002 General Plan: “Preserve Berkeley’s unique character and quality of life.” Granted, downtown Berkeley needs more than preservation; it requires substantial improvement. But any change should honor—indeed, enhance—those aspects of its character that are worth preserving.  

Chief among such valuable attributes is the area’s moderate scale, a point emphasized by DAPACer Steve Weissman. Stating that he “worships at the altar of Jane Jacobs” and that he is, accordingly, a partisan of density—“I’ve written a book about it”—Weissman nevertheless balked at the high-rise PLUA. “I strongly believe that a cluster of 16-story buildings is not going to happen in Berkeley,” he said, “because of what people are saying and because of what it would do to the feeling of the place.” Amen. 

Planning staff contend that downtown revitalization requires more housing units in the area—2,500, to be exact, a number that, they further assert, can only be met by realizing their 10-to-20-story phantasmagoria. Yet staff also concede that downtown’s current zoning, with its seven-story limit in the district core, would permit 1,800 new dwellings. Is it worth changing “the feeling of the place” into something utterly foreign just to cram 700 more apartments into downtown? Where’s the hard proof that 2,500 new housing units and no less are required to tip downtown into a new era of vibrant street life, retail bustle and broad affordability? It certainly wasn’t evident on Oct. 3.  

Lack of substance aside, the timing of the staff proposal is also questionable. As DAPAC member Gene Poschman observed, land use development standards will be at the heart of the new downtown plan. DAPAC convened in late November 2005; it has now had over forty meeting; it is scheduled to disband at the end of November. On Oct. 3, several commissioners asked why, given the complexity of the issue, they hadn’t gotten the staff’s Preferred Land Use Alternative at least a year and a half ago.  

Let me hazard a cynical explanation: If the staff proposal had been issued early in the game, the commission would have had time to delve into the intricacies of zoning law and the complex relations between urban form and urbanity—an investigation that likely would have revealed the high-rise scenario to be a very tall pile of hype. Better to dump an outrageous proposal onto the agenda at the midnight hour, with the expectation that a rushed “compromise” will result in something a little less outrageous. Indeed, there’s now talk of a 10-story upper limit.  

DAPAC’s next meeting is on Wed., Oct. 17. Berkeley citizens who would like to weigh in on the future of downtown should try to attend the community workshop on Sat., Oct. 20. As of press deadline the time and location of the meeting were not posted on the city’s website. Time and place to be published in next week’s Daily Planet. 

It was a couple of throwaway sentences deep into the second page of an Oakland Tribune murder arrest story, so innocuous that if you read it, you probably hardly noticed. And that’s what makes it so insidious, why it should make us worried, and why the police practice involved ought to be brought to a halt. 

The sentences in question appeared in the Oct. 4 “Reputed Gang Member Nabbed In Killings” story in which the Tribune reported that a suspect, 26-year-old Ivan O. Ordaz, had been arrested in the Sept. 1 East Oakland shooting deaths of 19-year-old Thomas Melero-Smith and 22-year-old Allan Mejia Martinez. 

Following the statement that Ordaz had confessed to both murders, the Tribune article added that “[Oakland homicide Sgt. Tony] Jones said Ordaz ‘was very cooperative, but emotionless’ while making his admissions. ‘He did not show any remorse,’ Jones said.” 

These police statements ought to trouble us, if we are paying attention to their implications. 

Saying that someone gave a confession is a statement of fact, information that is proper for the police department to release and for the Tribune to report. We presume that either the confession was video- or audio-taped or signed so that, if Mr. Ordaz at some later point says he did not confess, the police department can produce that proof. 

But a statement that a person is “emotionless” or “showed no remorse” is a subjective matter. We will take Mr. Jones at his word, since we have no reason not to, and believe that the homicide sergeant listened very carefully to Mr. Ordaz and watched his movements and expressions during the police interview, honestly concluding that in his opinion, Mr. Ordaz acted as if he didn’t care about the deaths that resulted from his actions. However, because that was Mr. Jones’ honest observation does not make it established fact that no emotion was shown. It is entirely possible that another observer could have listened to the same interview, watched those same movements, and come to the entirely opposite conclusion, perhaps that Mr. Ordaz appeared stoic, but that was only because he was trying hard to hold back emotions of remorse that were clearly bubbling up inside. I am not suggesting that this is what happened. I was not there during the interview, so all I can do is take the word of the OPD homicide sergeant on it. And that is the problem. 

The issue of perpetrator remorse, while it is not supposed to be considered by a jury in the guilty-innocent phase of a trial, is one of the determining factors for jury deliberations in the penalty phase of a death penalty trial. If Mr. Ordaz were to recant his confession and plead not guilty, and there were enough surrounding circumstances for the Alameda County District Attorney to seek the death penalty, the issue of Mr. Ordaz’ remorse, or lack of remorse, during his police interview would almost certainly come before the jury. And at that point, it would be proper for Mr. Jones to give his observations, since those observations would be subject to cross-examination by Mr. Ordaz’ attorney, giving the jury the opportunity to hear both sides. 

In the Tribune article, however, there is only one side of the police interview of Mr. Ordaz: the police side. 

The problem with the Ordaz lack-of-remorse remark by an Oakland police official is not so much that it was subjective, but that it was unnecessary, outside the lane of what police officials ought to be doing in investigating crimes, compiling evidence, and arresting suspects. And, unfortunately, some members of the Oakland Police Department appear to be making something of a habit of that, these days. 

Consider the recent self-admitted OPD embarrassment in the Chauncey Bailey-Your Black Muslim Bakery case. 

On Sept. 20, in the story headlined “Bailey Gun Tied To Other Crime,” the Tribune reported that OPD officials had “confirmed” that the shotgun used to murder Chauncey Bailey on Aug. 2 “also was used in a failed June 2005 assassination attempt on [John Bey,] a former high-ranking member of the bakery organization” and that “the same shotgun was used last December to blast out the windows of a car belonging to the ex-boyfriend of the girlfriend of Yusuf Bey IV, the now jailed leader of the bakery empire.”  

“Linking the shotgun to the attack on John Bey,” the Tribune continued, “is the first public confirmation of the long-held suspicion there was a fierce internal battle for control of the lucrative organization between the bakery's old guard and younger family members. Investigators suspected at the time bakery members had been involved in the attempt on John Bey's life, and when they also suspected the owner of the car in last December's attack also was targeted by bakery members, they compared the recovered shotgun shells and found a match.” 

Except, in fact, none of that was true. 

Two days later, “embarrassed” (their word) OPD officials admitted in a Tribune story titled “Police Wrong About Gun In Bailey Killing” that no police criminologist had ever matched shotgun shells from the Bailey murder and the two Your Black Muslim Bakery officials shootings. “[Homicide Sgt. Lou] Cruz, the investigator who had said the shotgun was used in the three attacks, said Friday he was ‘led to believe there was a match,’” according to the Tribune story. But “after the [OPD] criminalist saw media accounts about the supposed matches Thursday, he contacted investigators and told them he never had compared the shells in Bey's case with the car shooting. 

On Friday, he tested the shells from all three crimes with both shotguns recovered during the raid and determined none matched the Bey attack.” 

The Tribune article of Sept. 22 focused on the self-confessed “embarrassment” of the police having to recant their original assertion of a link, but I have a different question: Why did Oakland police officials feel the need to release the information about the shotgun shell link in the first place? 

The Bailey murder shotgun itself, you may remember if you have followed the Bailey case closely, was discovered by Oakland police during the raid of three Your Black Muslim Bakery properties the day after Mr. Bailey was shot and killed in downtown Oakland. OPD officials have said that Bakery handyman Devaughndre Broussard threw the weapon from the window of one of the properties as police were entering, that forensic testing linked the shotgun to the shells found at the  

Bailey murder scene, and that Mr. Broussard himself later confessed to the murder. (The Tribune now refers to that as “tearfully” confessed. Our police department seems obsessed with telling us details of confessors’ demeanor in these cases.) 

In any event, if the Bailey murder shotgun was the same weapon used in the earlier attacks on Your Black Muslim Bakery associates, which took place before police believe Mr. Broussard began his association with the Bakery, that would, indeed, provide a link between other Bakery members and the Bailey murder, a link Oakland police presumably have been trying to make. 

But why was there a need to make that link of shotgun shells in the media—even if that link between the three shootings had actually proved to be correct—instead of using that information to gather enough evidence to bring further arrests in the Chauncey Bailey murder case, or arrests in the earlier two shootings at Your Black Muslim Bakery officials? That, after all, is what the police are supposed to be doing, gathering enough evidence after crimes have been committed to support an arrest. 

If you believe my purpose here is to defend the murderers of Thomas Melero-Smith, Allan Mejia Martinez, and Chauncey Bailey, whether they are the persons who have already confessed, or somebody else, well, friend, you have missed the point. It’s quite the opposite. I want the perpetrators found, and anything the police do which impedes their work in finding those perpetrators—including selective leaks to the press where such leaks demonstrate no necessary public purpose—should be set aside. 

One might argue that in the case of the Bailey murder shotgun, police were only being helpful in trying to keep the press and the public informed. The problem is, Oakland police are helpful in such cases when it suits them, unhelpful when it doesn’t. I have been trying for several months to get OPD records of the 30-day car confiscations they have been conducting throughout East Oakland for the past several years. OPD officials have gone before both the Oakland City Council and the California State Legislature to give details on how many such car confiscations have taken place. On the other hand, they tell me that they can’t isolate and release those records so that those assertions can be verified. 

Meanwhile, a week after Chauncey Bailey, I praised the Oakland Police Department for its circumspection in handling out information in the case in its initial stages. “Oakland police officials,” I wrote, “have been measured and cautious in what they have released to the press concerning the Your Black Muslim Bakery arrests. … [Assistant Oakland Police Chief Howard and Lt. Ersie Joyner have] refused to speculate beyond that, despite repeated questions by reporters, saying only that the persons arrested were being questioned, and the department was continuing its investigation. And that’s exactly how it should have been. The department satisfied the public’s need to know that evidence in the Bailey murder had been uncovered—confirming the widespread speculation that there was some connection with the murder to Your Black Muslim Bakery—but refusing to participate in any public rush to judgment. … If there is enough evidence developed by police to bring to the District Attorney and a judge, to take out a warrant for further arrests in the Bailey murder, then police should do so, and it is proper for them not to speculate in detail about that. Speculation don’t make it so.” 

Unfortunately, at least some Oakland police officials have decided to return to the land of speculation, to their embarrassment, and to our dismay. 

2206 Jefferson Ave. in central Berkeley is a charming enigma of an old Berkeley house. Precisely when it was built and how it arrived where it is are matters of some mystery. 

However, it’s also manifestly a house here and now, and currently for sale with an asking price of $695,000. Chris Cohn from Pacific Union is the listing agent, and there’s an Open House scheduled for this Sunday, Oct. 14, from 2-4:30 p.m. Go to www.berkeley-properties.com and look under “Featured Properties” for listing details. 

The house is divided into two units, with an expansive, intriguing, garden.  

Architecturally, it’s a Victorian. I showed retired UC Professor of Architecture Kenneth Cardwell—also Archivist of the Berkeley Historical Society—an early photo of the house. He describes it as a “Renaissance Revival Victorian” and notes that was “a style that was popular in the 1870s.”  

Other architectural experts generally agree it looks like a 1870s or 1880s design. In 1976, historian Mark Wilson led a Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association walking tour of the neighborhood which identified it as “Italianate” and “early 1880s.” 

An exact date is not yet known and some postulate construction as late as 1905; we’ll see, however, that the house appears to have existed by 1903 at the latest, and possibly much earlier. 

In early photos of Berkeley, one-story, raised basement, Victorian homes like this punctuate the landscape. Most are gone today. Regardless of when it was built, this is a rare local survivor. 

The 1911 Sanborn (fire insurance) maps show the current location as an empty lot. The neighborhood McGee-Spaulding-Hardy Historic Interest Group thinks this house was moved around that time from the vicinity of Bancroft and Milvia, perhaps when Berkeley High School was expanding south. 

To check, historian Daniella Thompson looked up the 1903 Sanborn map for Bancroft west of Milvia. Eureka! A house that looks very much like this one, at least in plan form, appears at 1935 Bancroft, part of a now-vanished residential enclave where the newer Berkeley High School gymnasium now stands.  

House moving wasn’t uncommon in early Berkeley. It was a shifting residential landscape. Vacant land was plentiful and often inexpensive, and most buildings were wooden and rested on simple foundations of brick. Jacking up a house, or even an apartment building, putting it on rollers, and having horses drag it down the block or across town occurred again and again.  

Despite the apparent move, 2206 Jefferson has retained much of its original exterior, including horizontal board siding, large window bays, raised detailing below the roof eaves, and the roof form itself.  

The most prominent features of the exterior are three large “slant bay” windows. Some window sashes are divided vertically into two smaller panes, hinting again at an early construction date when large sheets of window glass were not available.  

Below the window bays there are curiously curved bases that taper down and back to the house wall, like corbels. Formed of numerous carefully fitted pieces of wood, they resemble enormous wooden wine glasses sliced in half. 

Inside, the house has been considerably altered.  

Start at the double front door, up the steps from the street. Note the large metal door ringer set low in one of the door panels. Inside the vestibule, turn left into the main front room.  

This big space enjoys light and extra room through two bay windows and was, presumably, the original front parlor, typically used in Victorian homes for the best quality furniture, knick-knacks, and guests. 

Beyond the vestibule there’s a bathroom and a bedroom. West of the parlor a large kitchen opens up through a door and horizontal window to a big sunny deck along the south wall of the house. 

The kitchen is probably inserted in the space of the second, family, parlor. 

If you stand outside on the deck facing the house, look to the left of the kitchen doorway and the right of the kitchen window. You’ll see joints running up and down the wall where different sections meet. Between them the original parlor windows probably stood; they’re just visible in the earliest photo of the house, before it was subdivided. 

Enter the second unit from the deck, through a door inserted in the back window bay. The living room could be the old dining room of the house, and retains several early—quite possibly original—doors and a Victorian style fireplace surround and mantle. Behind the fireplace there’s a bathroom, and straight ahead, opposite the entry door, a bedroom.  

Beyond the bedroom is a large kitchen. At the back of the unit the house divides into several small spaces. There’s a tiny pantry-like room, an even tinier hall (look up for the slanted porch awning, now enclosed within the house) and two back rooms, one the second bedroom, the other the “plus” room.  

From outside, look at the rear of the house to appreciate the merging of varied roof forms and wall sections hinting at the various additions. Inside, look for quirky features such as doors to nowhere, remnants of previous reconfigurations. 

Ceilings are high, and most floors are hardwood or carpet. An early real estate listing (1969) mentions pine floors, presumably now covered up. The front unit is listed as approximately 799 square feet, the back as about 980. A shared laundry and storage are in a partial basement, under the back unit and accessed from the yard. The units are prettily painted and staged. 

To the north and west, the house sits quite close to the property lines and adjacent structures, some just touching distance away from corner windows of the rear bedroom. Southward, the house is lightened by its large garden. 

The early Sanborn maps show this as its own lot, with a small garage, but it’s all garden and patio today and integrated with the house, but extending much deeper into the center of the block than the house. 

It’s notably planted, with palms and tropicals emphasized. A plant expert who walked through the garden with me pointed out several rare or unusually large and attractive specimen plants. Advice to buyers: at least identify the botanical treasures of the garden before extensively altering it.  

Present day neighbors on the block remember an early 1980s resident of the house calling himself “Bear,” who worked on this garden and frequently offered plants to neighbors. 

The garden is functionally and visually divided into front, middle, and rear patios, with clustered plantings and pathways in between. It’s intelligently laid out. Each unit of the house opens onto part of the shared deck, but has its own stair to the garden and to one of the patios. 

Many generations lived here, and some very limited research hints at their history. 

A “Sofinnia” or “Syphina” Inger lived here at 2206 Jefferson and paid property taxes in 1911. Sleuthing on genealogical websites turned up information that the Ingers may have been a Mormon family from Utah. 

In 1913 a “J.W. Savacool” was living at 2206 Jefferson. Quite possibly a developer or realtor, he also had a business address for a “City and County Lands” enterprise at 2185 Shattuck.  

The next person who can be directly connected with the house so far is a Mrs. Corinne Neal who lived there in the 1930s and into the 1940s. A neighbor down the block remembers her giving piano lessons—25 cents each—in the second parlor.  

Around 1946 Mrs. Neal apparently sold the house to a couple named Nilson. That same year they sold to a Dorothy Jakala. In 1947 a “Fern S. Magistrini” appears to have had partial ownership and in 1949 Jakala and Magistrini sold to “Vincenyo and Terisena Cortese,” according to the fragmentary real estate records at Berkeley Architectural Heritage.  

Quick transitions in a tumultuous decade! 

The next available real estate record shows the house going on the market for $22,500 in 1969. By then it was already subdivided into units; quite possibly the division occurred much earlier, since older Berkeley homes were often partitioned into rentals in the 1930s and 1940s. 

In 1972 the house was listed for sale at $28,500. In 1973 it appears to have sold, and in 1977 there’s another possible sale to someone with the last name of Sataki. Later came the current owners who, the realtor says, have been there for about 24 years. 

Surrounding the house is the pleasant and fascinating McGee/Spaulding neighborhood. Someone once carved “Love” in wet concrete in front of 2206 Jefferson. That’s a word you hear frequently when you ask neighbors what they think of living in this area. 

Tucked between Downtown on the east, University Avenue on the north, Sacramento Street on the west and Dwight Way on the south, it was once bisected by Strawberry Creek (now underground) and farmed by Irishman James McGee.  

In the 1870s McGee donated land to the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who built a convent on the block just north of this house. A school and the original St. Joseph the Worker church, Berkeley’s first Roman Catholic Parish, were soon added.  

The surrounding blocks remained substantially in agricultural uses through the 19th century, although streets and Victorian homes began to appear. To the west of McGee’s farm the smaller Spaulding Tract was subdivided and sold for home lots.  

Nearby turn of the century and early 20th century streetcar and interurban railway lines—one ran along California Street—and an influx of new residents after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire resulted in rapid development. Fields and cows gave way to home lots, bungalows, cottages.  

By the late 1920s this was a well-established Berkeley neighborhood. In the 1950s and 1960s rapid construction of apartment buildings threatened many of the older homes and quiet residential blocks, but unbridled demolition and development was slowed in the 1970s by civic and political activism. 

Today, the neighborhood is an eclectic mix of one and two story homes surrounded by gardens, some apartment buildings, and venerable Berkeley institutions including Washington School, St. Joseph the Worker Parish, and Berkeley’s first Jewish congregation, Beth Israel.  

Present-day residents range from old Berkeley families here for generations to urban homesteaders of the 1960s and 70s, to UC faculty families at the former Presentation High School campus. The streets are generally wide and quiet, although there’s some fast traffic along Allston.  

Stand at the corner of Jefferson and Allston and look north and east. You’ll see in the distance the towers and edifices of Religious Berkeley (St. Joseph’s), Civic Berkeley (Old City Hall), Educational Berkeley (the domed Cyclotron at UC) and Commercial Berkeley (the former Great Western / Powerbar Building). 

One long-time resident facetiously calls the 2200 block of Jefferson the “broccoli forest” for its rows of stately, dome headed, dense and handsome, melaleuca linariiforia (Flaxleaf Paperbark) street trees. In June they turn, in her imagery, to giant cauliflower, covered with thousands of tiny white blossoms. 

If you visit 2206 Jefferson, take some time to walk or drive around the neighborhood and admire the modest, interesting, houses, many of them quite eclectically remodeled and gardened. One neighbor I talked to when she was out raking her leaves paused to say “it’s a great neighborhood. You’re near everything. You could live here without a car.” 

A few other neighborhood houses are currently on the market. The house just north of 2206 Jefferson will soon be for sale, too. 

The neighborhood has an active history research group. You can find a neighborhood history on City Councilmember Dona Spring’s website at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/council4/ 

Suggested captions, and credits: 

Photo A. An undated, but early 20th century, view of the house shows the prominent window bays and patterned shingles on the roof. This is before division into separate units, and the old parlor windows are visible between the two bays on the left.  

Photo Credit: Courtesy, Ormsby Donogh Collection, Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 

Photo C. The living room of the back unit is probably the original dining room, and contains a period fireplace. (Credit, Steven Finacom) 

Some promising plant sales and garden events will happen over the next couple of weeks. One thing to remember about plant sales: Most of them accept payment by cash or check only, as it’s not feasible for them to set up a credit-card facility for such infrequent events. So remember your checkbook along with your walking shoes and some cartons or recycling boxes to tote your plants.  

Someday one of these outfits will offer caddy service and will therefore profit immensely. Maybe some local football team will work on commission. In uniform! Advertising! Tight pants!  

Merritt College Landscape Horticulture Department’s monthly sale is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 13 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Kiamara has lots of plants there including native Californians and veggie starts, plus some exotics I’ve never heard of. That’s the sort of thing some of us find irresistible. Get on up there and take a stroll around the department grounds while you’re at it.  

The Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society has its native (natch) plant sale Saturday, Oct. 13 too, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. “Scores of species of hard-to-find native plants, seeds, and bulbs suitable for California gardens. Native plant books, posters, and note cards.” Expert advice too, as always, including alternatives to lawns. I guess someone in the South Bay still has a lawn. Scandalous. 

Closer to—in fact, in—Berkeley, The Watershed Nursery will have its Fall Open House also on Saturday, Oct. 13, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Along with “thousands of beautifully lush native plants” and experts to help you choose from them, this one features advice from the Bay-Friendly Garden folks and a workshop with Alrie Middlebrook, co-author of Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens ($45; $25/California Native Garden Foundation members): 13 Ways to Stop Global Warming and Have a Beautiful Garden. Call (510) 548-4714 quick-like-a-bunny to register if there’s space left; maximum is 25 people.  

Friday, Oct. 19, 7:30 to 8:30 p.m., Alrie Middlebrook (busy lady!) and co-author Glenn Keator will sign the above book and talk about “Designing California native gardens with a focus on Bay Area plant communities” at Builder’s Booksource. That one’s free. 

And apparently in celebration of various deserving birthdays, the East Bay Chapter of CNPS will throw its second annual Native Plant Fair at Tilden Park’s Native Here Nursery on Saturday, Oct. 20, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 21, noon to 3 p.m.  

The fair will feature local plants grown at Native Here plus other California natives including hundreds of Douglas iris ready for planting; bulbs grown from locally collected seeds (this patient practice increases the stock of some rare plants); and Californian seeds from the Regional Parks Botanic Garden’s Seedy Friends; books, art by Dianne Lake, Gregg Weber, and Yu-Lan Tong, and Heidi Rand; and crafts including pots by Ginger Markley and Tina Cheung.  

David Bigham, David Margolies, Lyn Talkovsky, and other experts will speak, and a silent auction of special plants, books, and other items culminates on Sunday, Oct. 21 at 2:30 p.m. Volunteers needed! Leave a message at (510) 549-0211, nativehere@ebcnps.org or Elainejx@mindspring.com or just show up any Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.  

For those of you who’ve been reading this column for some time, you know that I have what might be called a conflicted relationship with the building codes. Basically they bug me. I’m glad they’re there but they still bug me.  

And the ones that bug me the most are the ones that talk about things like ceiling heights, the size of rooms and so forth. I mean, do we need someone to tell us when a room has become too small? And whose room is too small? Last time I checked, people came in a variety of sizes and if I can buy pants in range of sizes, why can’t I have rooms in a range of sizes? In short, my question is; “Who gets hurt? And is this all necessary?” 

I will concede that there are some size issues that do make sense and those are mostly ones that relate to the entry of fire personnel. We’ll get to that a little later on, but let’s stick with less justified edicts for the moment. 

First, I’d like to say that I was right all along and have now been at least somewhat exonerated (roar of the crowd). Well, maybe not, but it felt good to say it anyway. The point is, that the rules on the sizes of rooms have been greatly slackened in the latest version of the residential code.  

The code I’m talking about is the International Residential Code and this latest version (2006) will probably go into force in local communities in say … maybe … 2012. No joke. That’s about how fast the codes get adopted. Nevertheless, I plan on arguing cases from this latest canon at the next available opportunity. After all, it IS the current code, even if the cities are incredibly slow to adopt new ones. 

So here’s what the new code says about bedrooms. I’ll try to stick primarily to this since any analysis of how the code affects the whole dwelling would be freakishly boring. Besides, you’re probably not a contractor and I want to set our bar at a manageable level. 

Bedrooms are now required to be no smaller than 70 square feet in size with neither dimension being less than seven feet. So a room is typically going to be at least seven feet by 10 feet. That’s not very big but I’m happy because it’s nobody’s business but yours.  

The new code also says that at least one room in the dwelling has to be a minimum of 120 square feet and while the seven-foot rule also applies, it’s hard to imagine too many builders making this room seven feet by 17 feet, two inches. We can imagine that this will typically give us 10 foot by 12 foot rooms. Again, I don’t think we need this in the code but… there it is. 

Ceiling heights are the really interesting part of the new code and where I personally feel validated. While many people are under the impression that 8’ ceilings are required, the actual requirement for many years has been seven feet, six inches. Well, the code has finally done the right thing and dropped the requirement to seven feet. Now, I’m not suggesting that seven feet is a good ceiling height. Personally, I like 11 foot ceilings, but I don’t like the idea that one has to build a room of any particular height. What if you’re four foot, 11 inches and want a room that feels Goldilocks-right to you. You might feel really uncomfortable in a room with eight foot ceilings and there’s no good reason you should be forced to meet some taller person’s standard. So hooray.  

Also, for rooms that have sloped ceilings (this applies to those developed attic spaces we often see) you can now cut into this seven-foot ceiling height and allow half the room to slope down to five feet. Any sloped portion below five feet will not count as bedroom area so you’ll have to have at least 35 square feet at seven feet and 35 more between five feet and seven feet. This is getting quite cozy by my measure and again, I applaud the International Code Council for getting out of my face. If I want short, I should be able to have short. 

If you have a beamed ceiling of seven foot height, the beams can extend downward, another six inches as long as the beams are at least four foot apart. This means that people who are six feet, six inches are going to bump their heads. Well, they don’t have to buy those houses or rent those rooms. So, there. 

Basements have also been given new a liberation. They can be as short as six foot, eight inches (not bedrooms, just basements with all the usual accouterments; ping-pong, storage and such.) 

These rooms may also have ceiling obstructions such as ducts and beams that reduce the height to six foot, four inches here and there. Again, this is great news for people trying to rehabilitate basements with a permit. 

Bathrooms can also be six feet, eight inches and this can be quite helpful in remodels where the ceiling or floor has been modified for ventilation, plumbing or heating. 

Now, a few words about windows. Windows are essential for ventilation, light and escape and the new codes have some changes here as well. Some of this isn’t really new but it may be new to you so here it is: 

Habitable rooms have to have windows for lighting in an amount equal to 8 percent of the floor area. That means that they have to be at least 5.6 feet per room or one window of about 30 inches by 27 inches. Also, half of this amount has to open for ventilation, which is pretty normal for windows. 

Most open either halfway (double-hung or slider) or fully (casement, awning). This is all pretty easy if you ask me but it does get a little more complex when we add in the issue of escape. The window I’ve described for light is not large enough to meet the escape requirements. They’re just a wee bit larger except for ground floor windows.  

All bedrooms have to have at least one window that’s at least 20 inches wide and 24 inches tall but also has to OPEN to at least 5.7 square feet in total size. This means that a casement window just slightly larger than the minimum will work but a double hung will have to be about twice the size that lighting demands.  

This last part is something I actually consider extremely important because it’s about escaping from fire and isn’t this what the code is really about? Safety? 

This one window also has to be no more than 44 inches above the floor so that firemen (and firewomen) have a floor that they can reach when they climb through the window. They won’t drop to the floor because it might not be there and that, as we say, is a bad thing. 

For safety’s sake lets cover just a couple of other issues that relate to bedrooms. First, a bedroom cannot connect directly with the garage. The door from the garage into the house must not be through a bedroom. 

Also, the sole access to a furnace or water heater cannot be through a bedroom (although there are some exceptions that mostly involve attics). A water heater or furnace can never be in a bedroom or its closet. As you might guess, these things all have to do with fire but also have to do with carbon monoxide and oxygen depletion. 

If you’ve been living with a substandard attic or basement apartment lo these many psychedelic years, this should all come as pretty good news. If you’re a builder it’s better still. It’s also nice (and odd) for me when I can say, “look at the nice thing the government did for us.” Down in Hell they must be saying “Hey look, a snowflake!” 

For a couple of decades at least, Joe and I have lurked around a few of the little stands of the weed Nicotiana glauca, tree tobacco, that are scattered along Del Puerto Canyon Road just east of I5. Short lurks are part of our usual spring day-trip itinerary along that route from Del Puerto Canyon to Mines Road because we might see Costa’s hummingbirds feeding on the tall shrubs’ tubular yellow flowers, and who knows what other hummers might show up while they’re migrating?  

So it was almost a reflex that made me pull over when I found a streetside stand of tree tobacco in west Berkeley. I’m lucky there wasn’t a lot of traffic there with me. Birders’ reflexes aren’t always adaptive; I remember a fender-bender occasioned by a kestrel who was doing an apparently convincing stage impression of a peregrine at close range over a freeway traffic jam. Having learned from that example, I do try to behave myself.  

Free advice, though: Never tailgate a birder. 

Nicotiana species—there are 45 to 100 of them, depending on who’s classifying—are native to the Americas. Those sweetly night-scented garden flowers are close kin to smoking-type tobacco, currently a favorite political red herring in public places. (Why, no; I don’t smoke it and never have. See? Behaving myself again! That might itself be a bad habit.) 

Come to think of it, I’ve never been on Del Puerto Canyon Road after dark; I’ll have to hie me down to Fourth Street tonight and have a sniff. 

This one is, fide the botanist Howard McMinn, the only woody species that shows up in the United States. Most of the various tobaccos cultivated by the First Peoples are herbaceous. Tree tobacco is native to Argentina, and came here with the Spanish missionaries. 

Tobacco is closely enough related to tomatoes to share some diseases like the dread tobacco mosaic virus, which is why nurseries ask people not to smoke while shopping, even outdoors. If you’re growing tomatoes, you might have been advised to wash your hands after smoking before messing about with your plants.  

It’s no surprise to those who’ve dealt with certain diseases in humans, Ebola fever for example, that one’s closest biological relatives harbor one’s worst epidemiological dangers. We share more diseases with our dogs and cats than with our turtles and snakes, who might harbor salmonella and such but ordinarily don’t suffer from them, and fewer still with our commensal arachnids or the average earthworm.  

The species are in the solanum family, along with potatoes and eggplants and chili peppers (sweet peppers too) and nightshades and Jimsonweed. We have a handsome native California plant, almost a shrub, called blue witch or Solanum umbelliferum, last time I looked.  

Why “witch”? Undoubtedly because of the plant’s association with other solanums and relatives like Atropa belladonna with highly active poisonous and intoxicating compounds. Both A. belladonna and Solanum nigrum get called “deadly nightshade.” Lots of members of the family are toxic or, even when edible, have toxic parts; don’t nibble on tomato or potato greens.  

People do all sports of foolish things with solanums. Smoking tobacco in the mass-produced, everyday, uncritical fashion that’s spread around the world is certainly one of them. People have smoked Jimsonweed for its hallucinogenic qualities, a dangerous idea because one has no way of knowing how concentrated the intoxicating toxins are in a given plant and what dose one’s taking.  

Belladonna is so called because women used it, way back when, as eyedrops to dilate their pupils, one of those “I’m interested” sexual signals that get rotated through the assembly line of fashion.  

Belladonna does have medical uses: you might get a (very low, carefully controlled) dose of atropine extracted from it before surgery to dry out mucous membranes and make the surgeon’s work a bit simpler. Rarely, it’s also used by opthamologists to dilate pupils during an eye exam.  

If you manage to get poisoned by certain insecticides you’ll get dosed with atropine in the ER. My great-auntly advice is to avoid messing with either of them if you can help it.  

Other insecticides are being produced from nicotine compounds. That flea-control stuff that gets applied to the back of the dog’s or cat’s neck is a nicotine derivative, which has the merit of being less toxic to most non-arthropods like you and me and the furry pets than the stuff that older treatments used. I believe the same corporations are making insecticides for plants out of nicotine analogues, too. Seems to me we’re coming full circle and you might want to go smoke a cigar in your garden after all.  

Photograph: Ron Sullivan. 

Glaucous leaves and yellow flowers of tree tobacco. 

Ron Sullivan’s “Green Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section.  

FRIDAY, OCT. 12 

THEATER 

California Shakespeare Theater “King Lear” at the Bruns Ampitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., Orinda, through Oct. 14. Tickets are $15-$60. 548-9666.  

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. 

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 

Shotgun Players “Bulrusher” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. through Oct. 28. Tickets are $17-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

“Whatever She Wants” a romantic comedy stage play by Je-Caryous Johnson, Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 3 and 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $34.50-$49.50. 465-6400. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Thread Count” An exhibition of works by eight fiber artists. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. Exhibition runs to Nov. 4. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

FILM 

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

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jonathan Kozol reads from “Letters to a Young Teacher” in a benefit for The Edible Schoolyard, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $8-$10 at Cody’s. 559-9500.  

Susan Faludi describes “the Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9-11 America” in a benefit for KPFA at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $10-$13 at Cody’s. 559-9500.  

“War and Peace 3: The Future” readings from the anthology at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

“A Night of Poetry” with Andrew Bleeker, Maxwell Heller and Lindsey Boldt at 7 p.m. at Book Zoo, 6395 Telegraph Ave. 654-BOOK. 

Dennis Evanosky reads from his new book about Oakland’s Laurel District at 7:30 p.m. at Laurel Bookstore, 4100 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 531-2073. 

Peg Kingman reads from her debut novel, “Not Yet Drown’d” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Ralph Dranow and Clara Hsu read at 7 pm at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland Opera Theater “ Turn of the Screw” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Oakland Metro Operahouse, 630 3rd St., through Oct. 14. Tickets are $25. 763-1146.  

Kurt Ribak Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $15. www.hillsideclub.org  

The Junius Courtney Big Band, featuring Denise Perrier, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$14.. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Akosua, jazz-inspired folk fusion, at 8 p.m. at Maxwell's Lounge, 341 13th St. Oakland. Cost is $10. 839-6169. 

William Beatty, piano, at 6:30 p.m. at The Mount Everest Restaurant, 2011 Shattuck Ave. at University. 665-6035. 

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

Tito y su Son de Cuba at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cuban dance lesson at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Katzen Kapell at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. 

Ray Cepeda, Latin rock, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Tom Russell at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761.  

Tara Tinsley and Tim Jenkins at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Devin Hoff, Willie Winant, Lisa Mazzacappa, Ralph Carney and others at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Ceremony, Life-long Tragedy, Knuckle Puck at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Kevin Beadles Band at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

“Old to the New Throwback Concert” with The Attik, Ise Lyfe, Rico Pabon & Agualibre at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $15. 548-1159.  

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

John Scofield Trio featuring The ScoHorns at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun.. Cost is $16-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, OCT. 13 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Asheba at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

THEATER 

Bunraku, The National Puppet Theater of Japan at 8 p.m. Sun at 3 p.m., at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus Tickets are $76. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Central Works “Every Inch a King” opens at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. and runs through Nov. 18. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381.centralworks.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Artists of Invention: A Century of CCA” Exhibition and celebration of the centennial of California College of the Arts opens at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

“Abundance of Color and Light” Opening reception at 6:30 p.m., light show at 8:15 p.m., at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. 644-4930. 

“The Memorial Leaves Devastation in its Wake” A painting and mixed media installation. Opening reception at 4 p.m. at The Gallery of Urban Art, 1746 13th St at Wood. Donation $5. Bring something to BBQ. www.thegalleryofurbanart.com 

Tea Pot Show Works by members of the Potters’ Studio in celebration of their 35th Anniversary. Sat. and Sun. from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 637 Cedar St. 528-3286. 

“Peace Imaginings, How You Vision It” multimedia digital art by both established and emerging artists of the Berkeley City College MultiMedia Arts program. Opening reception at 2 p.m. at the Art of Living Center, 2905 Shattuck Ave. 478-5000. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Naomi Wolf introduces “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, A Citizen’s Call to Action” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

“Telling Tales” Storytelling Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at Berkwood Hedge School, 1809 Bancroft Way. Cost is $5, $15 per family. 883-6990. 

Gloria Frym, Ethan Paquin, and Chad Sweeney, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Artists’ talk at 2 p.m.at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Civil Rights Concert Series and Courage Awards from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. Tickets are $27-$37. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

Taylor Eigsti, jazz pianist at 8 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Tickets are $32. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Bryan Baker and Friends “If Music Be the Food of Love” at 8 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Road, Kensington. Suggested donation $15-$50. For reservations call 525-0302, ext. 309.  

Jon Cooney, light R & R, at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

The Freedom Song Network, in celebration of its 25th anniversary, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$50. 849-2568.  

Bayside Jazz with Dan Hicks at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ.  

Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $15. 525-5054.  

Kirk Keeler and Meghan Baker at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

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

Al Young in Concert at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373.  

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

Culann’s Hounds, The Bog Savages at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Jinx Jones Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Skitzo, Fog of War, Scarecrow, Witchaven at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

John Scofield Trio featuring The ScoHorns at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun.. Cost is $16-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, OCT. 14 

THEATER 

“By George, It’s War!” A musical satarization of the Bush administration by Dale Polissar at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $18-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Berkeley in the 1930s” An exhibition exploring the development of transportation, businesses, and industries. Opening reception at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St. 848-0181. 

Works by Mittie Cuetara Opening reception at 4 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

FILM 

“The Magic of Chinese Animation” Introduced by Beijing Film Academy Prof. Duan Jia at 2 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Jewish Folk Art: Recalling the Lost World of Polish Jews” Panel discussion at 2 p.m. at the Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $10-$12. 549-6950. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Patrizia Ferrara & Isota at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Americana Unplugged: String Break at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

William Beatty and The Unconditionals at 6:30 p.m. at The Mt. Everest Restaurant 2011 Shattuck Ave. 665-6035.  

Don Neely’s Royal Society Orchestra at 5 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $20. 525-5054.  

Inga Swearingen and Bill Peterson at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

MONDAY, OCT. 15 

EXHIBITIONS 

Richard Whittaker and Rue Harrison Photography and Drawings opens at The LightRoom, 2263 Fifth St., and runs through Nov. 9. 649-8111. 

FILM 

“Runnin’ Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers” Premier showing at 8 p.m. at Elmwood Rialto Cinema, 2966 College Ave. at Ashby. Cost is $8-$9. 433-9730. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

PlayGround Six emerging playwrights debut new works at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $15. 415-704-3177. 

“Listening to Classical Music” with Joseph Kerman at 12:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Rebecca Brown & Lucy Corin read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Adam Clay and Andrew Grace, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Harry Shearer reads from his novel “Not Enough Indians” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with Judy Wells at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mal Sharpe’s Big Money in Jazz Band and Eric and Suzy Thompson at 7 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Benefit for the Elmwood Neighborhood Association. Donation $20. www.theelmwood.org 

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

Songwriter’s Showcase at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $5. 548-1761. 

Julio Bravo y su Salsabor at 8 at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, OCT. 16 

FILM 

“Films by Bruce Conner” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, will discuss his book “Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

“The Talented Women of the Zhang Family” with author Susan Mann in conversation with Sophie Volpp at 5:30 at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

“Blowing on Embers, Stories for Hard Times” with author and family therapist Ellen Pulleyblank Coffey at 7:30 p.m. at Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. www.hillsideclub.org 

Alison Wilson-Fried reads from her novel “Outside Child: A Book of Murder and New Orleans” at 7:30 p.m. at Laurel Bookstore, 4100 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 531-2073. 

“Recognition and Persuasion: The Literary Critic as Cultural Critic” with Stefan Collini, Univ. of Cambridge, at 5 p.m. at Townsend Center for the Humanities, 220 Stephens Hall, UC Campus. 643-9670. 

Dan Machlin and Brent Cunningham, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Dwontown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Edwidge Danticat reads from his new novel “Brother, I’m Dying” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Hilary Hahn, violin, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$62. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

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

Emery High School Jazz Band at 12:30 p.m. at College of Alameda Student Center, 555 Ralph Appezzato Memorial Pkwy., Alameda. 748-2213. 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Classical at the Freight: Dmitri Ashkenazy and friends at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Ellen Honert, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Nicolas Bearde at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$15. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 17 

THEATER 

St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County’s Seldom Seen Acting Company, an acting company of seven homeless men, performs “Now You Know” at noon at the St. Vincent de Paul Downtown Community Center, 2280 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. Donations accepted. 636-4261.  

FILM 

International Latino Film Festival “Mi Mejor Enimigo/My Best Enemy” at 7 p.m. at Richmond Public Library, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. 620-6555. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Treasures: Three Generations of Printmakers Works by Emmanuel Montoya, Miriam Stahl and Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Artists’ talk at 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley art Center, 1275 Walnut St. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Rev. Forrest Church speaks about his new book “So Help Me God! The Founding Fathers and the First Great Battle Over Church and State” at 7 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Steve Georgiou introduces “Mystic Street: Meditations on a Spiritual Path” at 7 p.m. at Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute, Graduate Theological Union, 2311 Hearst. 649-2450. 

Estelle Freedman introduces “The Essential Feminist Reader” 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 www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oaktown Jazz Workshop at noon at Oakland City Center, 12th and Broadway. www.oaklandcitycenter.com 

Music for the Spirit with Ron McKean on harpsichord at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

The Very Hot Club of Berkeley at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Whiskey Brothers, old-time and bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

The Tiptons, London Street at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Music for Sight Seeing at 7 p.m. at Mama Buzz, 2318 Telegraph Ave. at 23rd, Oakland. Cost is $5 . 

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

Wayward Monks at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Mikie Lee and Amber at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Uncle Earl at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $21.50-$22.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Matthew Shipp at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, OCT. 18 

EXHIBITIONS 

“three generations ... five impressions” Artists’ recpetion at 5 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. 841-3976. www.giorgigallery.com 

“Nature’s Intentions” New works by Gary Brewer, Jennifoer Holmes and Chris Isner opens at Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 3rd St., Oakland, and runs to Nov. 19. 444-7411. www.estebansabar.com 

2007 James D. Phelan Art Award in Printmaking Reception at 6 p.m. at Kala Gallery, 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977. www.kala.org 

“Paper+Silk+Canvas+Mylar+Leather+Wool” Celebrating 25 years of innovative printmaking by artists of the Blue Bay Press. Artists’ talk at 7 p.m. at Craft and Cultural Arts Gallery, State of CA Office Bldg. Atrium, 1515 Clay St., Oakland. 622-8190. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Michael Krasney introduces “Off Mike: A Memoire of Talk Radio and Literary Life” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Ann Packer reads from her new novel “Songs Without Words” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Baguette Quartette, French cafe music, at noon at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

The Mountain Boys/Jimbo Trout & The Trout People, Jelly Roll Souls at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Brigitte DeMeyer at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

Lucia and Friends “A Meeting at the Crossroads” at 7:30 p.m. at Café de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $15-$25. 843-0662.  

Houston, Jones, and Jacques at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Seven Stories Falling, Z-trane Band, Privies at 10 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Jef Mercelis at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

David Sanchez at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Singer and actor Nicholas Bearde, longtime Rockridge resident, one of Bobby McFerrin’s original (and ongoing) Voicestra vocalists and a favorite at Bay Area clubs and parties, will record his third CD live, performing at Yoshi’s Jazzhouse in Jack London Square Tuesday evening. 

Bearde, who teaches a class entitled “The Soulful Side of Jazz” at Berkeley’s JazzSchool, has specialized for the past quarter century in just that: the continuity between jazz vocals and soul music, singing standards and original songs. But the origins of his warm, distinctive vocal and performing style go back to a lifetime of singing, listening and thinking about music and how it affects its listeners. 

Some of it goes back to Nashville, where he was born and raised, when his mother “and her buddies would hang out all night, five or six of them, drinking, dancing, listening to ‘Ebbtide,’ to Lou Rawls, Arthur Prysock, Nat Cole, Cab Calloway ... I’d hear it through doors—‘Honey, hush!’—and it was only later I understood what they meant, talking about how Cab Calloway’s hair would look on a pillow!” 

Bearde remembers being taken on a second-grade field trip to the symphony hall, hearing a full orchestra play “The William Tell Overture,” and “swooning; I was 7, and it carried me to a place I couldn’t believe—and I only knew it before as The Lone Ranger theme! Kids aren’t exposed to that so often now.”  

He remembers “instantly becoming a tenor in the school choir--I’d been in choir at church from the beginning of time—after a woman at a piano had me sing a song and told me a time to come back. Nobody asked me! And the music had me in tears. I couldn’t reveal that feeling in those days to my classmates.” 

Out of his love of classical music and from a Jamaican friend who introduced him to music by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bob Dylan, “a respect grew for everything else. We didn’t quite believe in foreigners in Nashville; never met any. We knew there were Chinese and Mexicans in the world, but nobody else. And there I am, a young soulster with a doo-wop trio, offered a contract which never worked out—suddenly, there’s jazz and folk music. And I heard Lou Rawls’ live album, ‘St. James Infirmary and Other Songs’, he was really the first male vocalist with whom I realized what’s possible, how a man’s supposed to sing. A Lou Rawls tribute’s part of my show at Yoshi’s. Ironically, I remember my mother listening to him sing ‘Willow, weep for me’ with her friends, but didn’t really get it until I heard his live album. I must’ve gotten those habits from her!” 

Bearde credits enlisting at 18 in the Air Force for “opening up my world. When you’re brought up in extreme poverty, you’re told not to expect much more.”  

While serving two years of his four-year hitch in Japan, he sang with a 10-piece soul group, “my first professional gig.” Dis-charged, he visited the Bay Area, then went to LA, “expecting more of the same. As soon as I had the opportunity, I ran back up here. I’ve been around the world, and I still love this place best out of everywhere I’ve ever been.” 

But Bearde didn’t start out singing when he settled in the Bay Area. “When I got here,” he said, “I was so intimidated by who was on the scene—Sly Stone, Tower of Power, Santana; it was the ’70s. I laid back a long time, checking people out, but not doing it, till the very early ’80s.”  

Working in commercial photography, his career came to an end “when I blew a big job. I’d been torn between photography and music, and realized I blew it because I hadn’t really wanted to do it. I needed to be in a band, in front of people, challenging myself—and thought, ‘whatever happens, happens.’” 

He sang in a Top 40 band for a few years, “then in ’83 I got a call that somebody had cancelled at Pasand, the club on Union Street in San Francisco. My name had been given, and I stepped in and from there, became a regular, really stepping into the jazz world, the beginning of all this that’s happening for me right now.” 

In 1986 Bearde “hooked up with Bobby McFerrin, who had his idea for a radical group of all voices. Molly Holme helped put it together, and called me.”  

The beginning of Voicestra was “about 15 singers improvising at Different Fur Studio in San Francisco for five or six hours.”  

After a few years of performing “mainly around the Bay, “Voicestra rehearsed for a full year in 1990, then toured.” In 1995, “the budget ran out. The singers wanted to continue, but Bobby couldn’t afford it.” So SoVoSo was born, “Voicestra minus about three or four singers” until 1998, when “Voicestra came back into being, and has toured a couple months of the year, usually in Europe, ever since.” 

Meanwhile, Bearde was working solo more and more, trying to establish his name. “Voicestra is a whole other world. It and my solo career are two separate items.” His solo style is mellow, filling a groove, yet forceful, rising to crescendos of excitement, backed by his personable onstage style. 

His CDs, Crossing the Line (1998) and All About Love (2004), both featuring a handful of original numbers besides standards ranging from Coltrane’s “Naima” to “Moonlight In Vermont” to Burt Bacharach, were both in the British Top Ten, and “have notoriety in the states, but it’s hard to get radio play without a budget—the lubricant! Artists always just want to do their art, but today it’s the last thing they want you to do. Publicity, marketing—that’s what they think you’re supposed to be doing. In my position, I’m always torn between making a living and wanting to make a statement, making something bigger and better than I am now.” 

He’s aiming for that with his “Live At Yoshi’s” album, a self-financed venture on his own label, Right Groove Records. “I’m tired of trying to fit into this category, that category. I’m proud of my first two albums; I did what I wanted to, sang the repertoire I had to, for me. But to some degree, they were still shaped to the market. This new one is where I want to be; where I am, who I am at this time.” 

Cinema 16 is a UK company bringing greater visibility to the short film through a series of DVD releases showcasing some of the best works in the form.  

The label started out in Europe in 2003 with British Short Films, followed by American Short Films and European Short Films, and this last collection has just been released in the United States. 

The two-disc set features early and rarely seen works by some of Europe’s most prominent directors, including Ridley Scott, Lars Von Trier and Christopher Nolan. Some are simple student films, others are award-winning works with high-production values and polished technique. But most of the set’s highlights are the work of lesser-known directors.  

The disc starts with Juan Solanas’ Man Without a Head (France, 2003, 18 minutes), a surprisingly moving special effects tour de force about a man who literally does not have a head and attempts to purchase one for a special date in which he will declare his love for his girlfriend. The film is rich with saturated colors that contrast with the dismal industrial landscape in which the man lives in his shabby apartment. One particularly striking scene shows the man dancing Astaire-like in his bedroom, mooning over a photograph of his beloved.  

Virgil Widrich’s Copyshop (Austria, 2001, 12 minutes) is another effects extravaganza, about a man who photocopies himself over and over until the film is seemingly populated with thousands of mirror images of himself. The film is shot in black and white and uses a choppy sort of collage-style visual scheme that replicates the look of photocopies of photocopies. The technique consisted of 18,000 photocopied digital frames, animated with the use of a 35-millimeter camera.  

Though the collection is rife with special effects, the most captivating films are more down to earth. Lynne Ramsay’s Gasman (UK, 1997, 14 minutes) is as dense with emotion and meaning as any great short story, as a young girl struggles with a gradually dawning awareness of the secret lives of adults during a night out with her father—a night that brings her into contact with another woman and other children, the connections between them all coming into focus as the evening comes to a close. 

Balilnt Kenyeres’ Before Dawn (Hungary, 2005, 13 minutes) consists of a single long take, the camera gliding smoothly around a field in the early morning hours as police descend upon an immigrant-smuggling operation. The seamless choreography of action and camera, evocative photography, and thoughtful but open-ended conclusion make for an especially powerful short subject.  

Also included is Roy Andersson’s World of Glory (Sweden, 1991, 16 minutes), a minimalist rumination on the banality of evil and its ramifications on the psyches of those who serve it. The film is widely considered one of the most significant short films ever made.  

Sergio Leone is often thought of as an ironic and humorous filmmaker, a mischievous genre deconstructionist. But though his films have plenty of humor and wit and mischief, they also contain great beauty and depth and insight. Though he may have worked most famously in a genre largely considered pulp—the Western—but Leone was one of the great cinematic artists.  

Pacific Film Archive is presenting seven of Leone’s best films, starting Saturday and running through Oct. 28.  

Leone is best known for his films with Clint Eastwood, the so-called “spaghetti westerns” in which the director deconstructed and built upon the traditions of a uniquely American genre. The “Dollars Trilogy” culminated in perhaps his most beloved film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1967). But his masterpiece is Once Upon a Time in the West, (1968) a nearly three-hour epic that re-imagines the great myths and imagery of western expansion.  

Leone did not merely deconstruct and caricature the Western, he revitalized it, bringing a greater depth and mystery to its vistas and villains. He delved into the roots of the form’s archetypes, digging up the primal thoughts, emotions and characters that inhabited the landscape. And then he magnified it all; he distilled the genre to its essence and then spread it on thick in deep sepia tones.  

But it is the faces of his characters, even more than the dramatic Monument Valley backdrop, that provide Once Upon a Time in the West’s most enduring images. Leone deepened the impact of the close-up, juxtaposing and equating the rugged terrain of the landscape with the equally rugged terrain of the human face, each giving greater significance to the other. The eyes of his sweat-soaked, sun-scarred outlaws reflect the landscape and imbue it with meaning, and the landscape shapes the characters who survey it.  

Though the widescreen format is ideal for shooting vast panoramic landscapes, it poses problems for photographing people. Close-ups must crop the face above the eye, and still leave wide swaths of wasted open space on either side. Leone made use of these limitations brilliantly, however, bringing his camera in even tighter and expertly balancing close-up faces on one side of the frame with open vistas on the other.  

Leone’s masterful use of the widescreen format is particularly evident in the scene where Jill arrives at the McBain ranch to find the bodies of her husband and his children laid out on tables in the dooryard. The body of her husband, his head in the lower left corner of the frame, slants upwards across the frame to where Jill’s grief-stricken face is positioned in the upper right. Across the frame to the left of her is a group of attentive neighbors dressed in black, and behind them the rugged hills as backdrop. In one expertly composed image, Leone tells the whole story.  

Leone knew how to move his camera as well. One of the most stirring moments in any Western comes when Jill first arrives in Flagstone, hoping to find her new husband waiting for her at the train station. She waits and watches in vain as the throng of passengers moves past until she finally heads into the station office. And here begins a brilliant marriage of form and content: Leone’s camera follows her to the door and then watches through the window as she asks for directions from the station agent. The agent guides her through a door on the opposite side of the building as Leone lifts his camera above the window, up the wall and over the roof, and as the music swells we get our first look at the town, all construction and bustling activity. It is the birth of the West, and we encounter it along with Jill, who is soon to become its guiding feminine life force. Indeed, it is as if the town only comes to life once she lays eyes on it. It is a shot full of the promise, the legend, the myth and the glory of the West, achieved with simple but masterful technique. 

Claudia Cardinale, as Jill, is in fact the cornerstone of the film. Though the photogenic Italian’s voice was dubbed by an actress with a better grasp of English, Cardinale was not cast simply as eye candy, but for her expressive face and her ability to project a mix of weariness and determination. In the scene at the station and again toward the end of the film, when Harmonica walks into the house only to announce his departure, Cardinale demonstrates her talent in close-ups that see her effortlessly transition from happy anticipation to crestfallen disillusionment to iron-willed perseverance. Her face is beautiful yet damaged, once by the life she has escaped and again when the life she hopes to escape to is ripped from her grasp. And again Leone demonstrates his knowledge and faith in the terrain of the human face, patiently holding the camera’s gaze on Jill as the emotional change overtakes her features.  

As the New Orleans hooker turned pioneer homesteader, Jill may at first seem like a mere variation on a stock Western character. But Leone is after something else here. Throughout the film, Jill is consistently associated with water—the water that runs beneath the dream of a town that will be known as Sweetwater; the water that will fuel the heaving, churning steam train that represents progress; the water she heats for the weary Cheyenne’s coffee; the hot bath with which she renews herself after suffering the world’s degradations; and the water she brings to the thirsty railroad workers in the film’s closing shot. She is the life force of this brave new world, the madonna that gives birth to this new land. And though the moments when her clothing is torn or barely held together by flimsy string may seem at first like simple exploitation, there is greater significance in these images. For in the end it will be her strength and determination that shine through the dust and violence, just as it is her beauty and courage that are unleashed once her dandified city clothes are torn apart, the phony veneer of sophistication and respectability giving way to the earthy mother of the West. 

Greg Brockbank, who plays Dick Cheney in By George, It’s War!, composer Dale Polissar’s new satirical musical comedy about the Bush administration, says he tries to put a “tough, Republican look” on his face while swinging his golf club in the Bohemian Grove during the number “The Republican Men’s Chorus” as the group sings, “We’re just hard-working, regular guys trying to make an honest buck; and if we have to poke our fingers in a few people’s eyes, and cut a few throats, what the fuck?” 

The “Republicans” repeat the last three words in a melodious barbershop-style arpeggio. 

It’s all part of the fun in the spoof, which lampoons the Bush administration and protests the Iraq war with music ranging from lively numbers reminiscent of Gilbert and Sullivan to forboding pieces evocative of Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht. A one-act version of the show of the same name played in Marin in 2004. 

Now Polissar, who wrote both music and lyrics, has added a second act covering Bush’s re-election and the war. The production opens Sunday, Oct. 14 at La Peña in Berkeley, where it plays four shows before moving to Mill Valley’s 142 Throckmorton Theatre. 

With a cast of eight, a three-person band and choreography by Doree Clark, who also co-directed, the musical review takes potshots at everything from the administration’s stance on gay marriage—“When persons of similar gender, start acting all loving and tender, it’s a fearful sight to see; it portends the destruction of society! … Parents plastered nightly on martinis, better by far than if parents both have weenies”—to what Polissar believes was the stealing of the election: “Democracy is well and good, but people aren’t too bright, so on election night, the poor dear people need my skill to make it come out right,” sings a computer-geek “wizard,” flanked by two showgirls displaying graphs of election results that change whenever he waves his computer-mouse wand.  

Ernest Bottarini plays the wizard to hilarious effect, as well as a character named “Mohammed bin Gone-A-Lot,” modeled after former Bush-administration adviser Ahmed Chalabi (who’s “been gone” from Iraq for years). In “No Problem,” Mohammed—or “Mo,” as Bush nicknames him—informs the president and a couple of generals that conquering Iraq will be “a piece of cake”: “If you invade Iraq, no problem! They soon all eat Big Mac, no problem!” he intones, all smiles, to an oom-pah-pah accompaniment as the generals stand by, nodding solemnly.  

Bush is played as a bumbling fool by Charlie Morgan. “It’s a way to respond to the corruption of this administration,” he says about the production and his role. In one of the show’s funniest scenes, Bush and Cheney eavesdrop on a pair of unsuspecting lovers whose phones they have tapped. Cheney wears a cast on his leg from a hunting accident and is tethered to an oxygen tank.  

“Y’know, some people say I don’t listen to the people,” Bush says, donning headphones. “Why, listening to the people is one of my favorite things to do!” 

The lovers are in the middle of sexy bedroom talk when Osama bin Laden comes on the line: it turns out the hunted Al Queda terrorist has, all this time, been working as a sous-chef in the White House kitchen and he has been eavesdropping on Bush: “I must say, that call you made to Dick last Wednesday about the FBI director…,” he begins. He also advises Bush to spice up the White House food with a little curry. 

Polissar, 69, is a San Francisco native and Bolinas resident whose music has been performed around the Bay Area, including at the Exploratorium and on KPFA. He plays jazz clarinet at Marin restaurants, used to write poetry, and was once a reporter for the Lodi News Sentinel, where he wrote an exposé of the bracero system that got read into the congressional record. He holds a B.A. in English and an M.A. in music composition from Stanford.  

A bit of a Luddite, Polissar owns no computer: He typed the script of the show on a typewriter and wrote out the piano score the old-fashioned way—by hand. He says songs, complete with words, often pop into his head as he walks along the beach. His inspiration for the second act came from Bush’s re-election. “I didn’t think he won,” Polissar says. When the pundits said people voted on the basis of moral values, the bouncy tune “Moral Values” (“we got more moral values than you”) came to him, and the rest of the act flowed from there. He has spent the past couple of years arranging the tunes and staging the show. 

Brockbank (Cheney and other characters), a San Rafael lawyer with a theater background who is chairman of the Marin Democratic Central Committee, former chairman of the Marin chapter of the ACLU and currently running for a seat on the San Rafael city council, says he’d love to see the show sweep the country.  

“It’s important to let the world know, hey, this guy [Bush] is the greatest buffoon, and one of the greatest threats to world peace, in history,” he says. “Sometimes I struggle to decide whether it’s [the show is] an entertainment event that’s also about politics, or a political event that’s also entertaining. I think the composer is coming from both places. He’s a serious professional musician and he is seriously into politics. The way he works, every word, every phrase is very carefully and cleverly done.”  

Cast member Sandi Rubay, like the rest of the ensemble, plays various roles in the production. (Tim Mayer, Melody Ferris, Molly Maguire and Rana Kanges-Kent, also currently working in the musical “Shopping” in San Francisco, complete the cast.) “He’s passionate,” Rubay says of Polissar. “He’s just this old hippy from Bolinas who has something to say. I think he’s brilliant.”  

Polissar likes to point out that his show is more than a light satire. “It also has some deep affirmation of the beauty of the world we stand to lose,” he says. Indeed, the show ends with a moving, lyrical ensemble number, “This World”: “This world, with its flashing waters, this world, with its flaming sun … All that we need is here. We’re given paradise.” 

It’s a tearjerker. And there are dark scenes—soldiers in their bunker bemoaning the killing of an Iraqi family and war protest numbers.  

But the show’s real power may lie in the cathartic release it provides its audience through its mirthful, unrestrained swipes at George W. and company. 

2206 Jefferson Ave. in central Berkeley is a charming enigma of an old Berkeley house. Precisely when it was built and how it arrived where it is are matters of some mystery. 

However, it’s also manifestly a house here and now, and currently for sale with an asking price of $695,000. Chris Cohn from Pacific Union is the listing agent, and there’s an Open House scheduled for this Sunday, Oct. 14, from 2-4:30 p.m. Go to www.berkeley-properties.com and look under “Featured Properties” for listing details. 

The house is divided into two units, with an expansive, intriguing, garden.  

Architecturally, it’s a Victorian. I showed retired UC Professor of Architecture Kenneth Cardwell—also Archivist of the Berkeley Historical Society—an early photo of the house. He describes it as a “Renaissance Revival Victorian” and notes that was “a style that was popular in the 1870s.”  

Other architectural experts generally agree it looks like a 1870s or 1880s design. In 1976, historian Mark Wilson led a Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association walking tour of the neighborhood which identified it as “Italianate” and “early 1880s.” 

An exact date is not yet known and some postulate construction as late as 1905; we’ll see, however, that the house appears to have existed by 1903 at the latest, and possibly much earlier. 

In early photos of Berkeley, one-story, raised basement, Victorian homes like this punctuate the landscape. Most are gone today. Regardless of when it was built, this is a rare local survivor. 

The 1911 Sanborn (fire insurance) maps show the current location as an empty lot. The neighborhood McGee-Spaulding-Hardy Historic Interest Group thinks this house was moved around that time from the vicinity of Bancroft and Milvia, perhaps when Berkeley High School was expanding south. 

To check, historian Daniella Thompson looked up the 1903 Sanborn map for Bancroft west of Milvia. Eureka! A house that looks very much like this one, at least in plan form, appears at 1935 Bancroft, part of a now-vanished residential enclave where the newer Berkeley High School gymnasium now stands.  

House moving wasn’t uncommon in early Berkeley. It was a shifting residential landscape. Vacant land was plentiful and often inexpensive, and most buildings were wooden and rested on simple foundations of brick. Jacking up a house, or even an apartment building, putting it on rollers, and having horses drag it down the block or across town occurred again and again.  

Despite the apparent move, 2206 Jefferson has retained much of its original exterior, including horizontal board siding, large window bays, raised detailing below the roof eaves, and the roof form itself.  

The most prominent features of the exterior are three large “slant bay” windows. Some window sashes are divided vertically into two smaller panes, hinting again at an early construction date when large sheets of window glass were not available.  

Below the window bays there are curiously curved bases that taper down and back to the house wall, like corbels. Formed of numerous carefully fitted pieces of wood, they resemble enormous wooden wine glasses sliced in half. 

Inside, the house has been considerably altered.  

Start at the double front door, up the steps from the street. Note the large metal door ringer set low in one of the door panels. Inside the vestibule, turn left into the main front room.  

This big space enjoys light and extra room through two bay windows and was, presumably, the original front parlor, typically used in Victorian homes for the best quality furniture, knick-knacks, and guests. 

Beyond the vestibule there’s a bathroom and a bedroom. West of the parlor a large kitchen opens up through a door and horizontal window to a big sunny deck along the south wall of the house. 

The kitchen is probably inserted in the space of the second, family, parlor. 

If you stand outside on the deck facing the house, look to the left of the kitchen doorway and the right of the kitchen window. You’ll see joints running up and down the wall where different sections meet. Between them the original parlor windows probably stood; they’re just visible in the earliest photo of the house, before it was subdivided. 

Enter the second unit from the deck, through a door inserted in the back window bay. The living room could be the old dining room of the house, and retains several early—quite possibly original—doors and a Victorian style fireplace surround and mantle. Behind the fireplace there’s a bathroom, and straight ahead, opposite the entry door, a bedroom.  

Beyond the bedroom is a large kitchen. At the back of the unit the house divides into several small spaces. There’s a tiny pantry-like room, an even tinier hall (look up for the slanted porch awning, now enclosed within the house) and two back rooms, one the second bedroom, the other the “plus” room.  

From outside, look at the rear of the house to appreciate the merging of varied roof forms and wall sections hinting at the various additions. Inside, look for quirky features such as doors to nowhere, remnants of previous reconfigurations. 

Ceilings are high, and most floors are hardwood or carpet. An early real estate listing (1969) mentions pine floors, presumably now covered up. The front unit is listed as approximately 799 square feet, the back as about 980. A shared laundry and storage are in a partial basement, under the back unit and accessed from the yard. The units are prettily painted and staged. 

To the north and west, the house sits quite close to the property lines and adjacent structures, some just touching distance away from corner windows of the rear bedroom. Southward, the house is lightened by its large garden. 

The early Sanborn maps show this as its own lot, with a small garage, but it’s all garden and patio today and integrated with the house, but extending much deeper into the center of the block than the house. 

It’s notably planted, with palms and tropicals emphasized. A plant expert who walked through the garden with me pointed out several rare or unusually large and attractive specimen plants. Advice to buyers: at least identify the botanical treasures of the garden before extensively altering it.  

Present day neighbors on the block remember an early 1980s resident of the house calling himself “Bear,” who worked on this garden and frequently offered plants to neighbors. 

The garden is functionally and visually divided into front, middle, and rear patios, with clustered plantings and pathways in between. It’s intelligently laid out. Each unit of the house opens onto part of the shared deck, but has its own stair to the garden and to one of the patios. 

Many generations lived here, and some very limited research hints at their history. 

A “Sofinnia” or “Syphina” Inger lived here at 2206 Jefferson and paid property taxes in 1911. Sleuthing on genealogical websites turned up information that the Ingers may have been a Mormon family from Utah. 

In 1913 a “J.W. Savacool” was living at 2206 Jefferson. Quite possibly a developer or realtor, he also had a business address for a “City and County Lands” enterprise at 2185 Shattuck.  

The next person who can be directly connected with the house so far is a Mrs. Corinne Neal who lived there in the 1930s and into the 1940s. A neighbor down the block remembers her giving piano lessons—25 cents each—in the second parlor.  

Around 1946 Mrs. Neal apparently sold the house to a couple named Nilson. That same year they sold to a Dorothy Jakala. In 1947 a “Fern S. Magistrini” appears to have had partial ownership and in 1949 Jakala and Magistrini sold to “Vincenyo and Terisena Cortese,” according to the fragmentary real estate records at Berkeley Architectural Heritage.  

Quick transitions in a tumultuous decade! 

The next available real estate record shows the house going on the market for $22,500 in 1969. By then it was already subdivided into units; quite possibly the division occurred much earlier, since older Berkeley homes were often partitioned into rentals in the 1930s and 1940s. 

In 1972 the house was listed for sale at $28,500. In 1973 it appears to have sold, and in 1977 there’s another possible sale to someone with the last name of Sataki. Later came the current owners who, the realtor says, have been there for about 24 years. 

Surrounding the house is the pleasant and fascinating McGee/Spaulding neighborhood. Someone once carved “Love” in wet concrete in front of 2206 Jefferson. That’s a word you hear frequently when you ask neighbors what they think of living in this area. 

Tucked between Downtown on the east, University Avenue on the north, Sacramento Street on the west and Dwight Way on the south, it was once bisected by Strawberry Creek (now underground) and farmed by Irishman James McGee.  

In the 1870s McGee donated land to the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who built a convent on the block just north of this house. A school and the original St. Joseph the Worker church, Berkeley’s first Roman Catholic Parish, were soon added.  

The surrounding blocks remained substantially in agricultural uses through the 19th century, although streets and Victorian homes began to appear. To the west of McGee’s farm the smaller Spaulding Tract was subdivided and sold for home lots.  

Nearby turn of the century and early 20th century streetcar and interurban railway lines—one ran along California Street—and an influx of new residents after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire resulted in rapid development. Fields and cows gave way to home lots, bungalows, cottages.  

By the late 1920s this was a well-established Berkeley neighborhood. In the 1950s and 1960s rapid construction of apartment buildings threatened many of the older homes and quiet residential blocks, but unbridled demolition and development was slowed in the 1970s by civic and political activism. 

Today, the neighborhood is an eclectic mix of one and two story homes surrounded by gardens, some apartment buildings, and venerable Berkeley institutions including Washington School, St. Joseph the Worker Parish, and Berkeley’s first Jewish congregation, Beth Israel.  

Present-day residents range from old Berkeley families here for generations to urban homesteaders of the 1960s and 70s, to UC faculty families at the former Presentation High School campus. The streets are generally wide and quiet, although there’s some fast traffic along Allston.  

Stand at the corner of Jefferson and Allston and look north and east. You’ll see in the distance the towers and edifices of Religious Berkeley (St. Joseph’s), Civic Berkeley (Old City Hall), Educational Berkeley (the domed Cyclotron at UC) and Commercial Berkeley (the former Great Western / Powerbar Building). 

One long-time resident facetiously calls the 2200 block of Jefferson the “broccoli forest” for its rows of stately, dome headed, dense and handsome, melaleuca linariiforia (Flaxleaf Paperbark) street trees. In June they turn, in her imagery, to giant cauliflower, covered with thousands of tiny white blossoms. 

If you visit 2206 Jefferson, take some time to walk or drive around the neighborhood and admire the modest, interesting, houses, many of them quite eclectically remodeled and gardened. One neighbor I talked to when she was out raking her leaves paused to say “it’s a great neighborhood. You’re near everything. You could live here without a car.” 

A few other neighborhood houses are currently on the market. The house just north of 2206 Jefferson will soon be for sale, too. 

The neighborhood has an active history research group. You can find a neighborhood history on City Councilmember Dona Spring’s website at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/council4/ 

Suggested captions, and credits: 

Photo A. An undated, but early 20th century, view of the house shows the prominent window bays and patterned shingles on the roof. This is before division into separate units, and the old parlor windows are visible between the two bays on the left.  

Photo Credit: Courtesy, Ormsby Donogh Collection, Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 

Photo C. The living room of the back unit is probably the original dining room, and contains a period fireplace. (Credit, Steven Finacom) 

Some promising plant sales and garden events will happen over the next couple of weeks. One thing to remember about plant sales: Most of them accept payment by cash or check only, as it’s not feasible for them to set up a credit-card facility for such infrequent events. So remember your checkbook along with your walking shoes and some cartons or recycling boxes to tote your plants.  

Someday one of these outfits will offer caddy service and will therefore profit immensely. Maybe some local football team will work on commission. In uniform! Advertising! Tight pants!  

Merritt College Landscape Horticulture Department’s monthly sale is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 13 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Kiamara has lots of plants there including native Californians and veggie starts, plus some exotics I’ve never heard of. That’s the sort of thing some of us find irresistible. Get on up there and take a stroll around the department grounds while you’re at it.  

The Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society has its native (natch) plant sale Saturday, Oct. 13 too, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. “Scores of species of hard-to-find native plants, seeds, and bulbs suitable for California gardens. Native plant books, posters, and note cards.” Expert advice too, as always, including alternatives to lawns. I guess someone in the South Bay still has a lawn. Scandalous. 

Closer to—in fact, in—Berkeley, The Watershed Nursery will have its Fall Open House also on Saturday, Oct. 13, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Along with “thousands of beautifully lush native plants” and experts to help you choose from them, this one features advice from the Bay-Friendly Garden folks and a workshop with Alrie Middlebrook, co-author of Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens ($45; $25/California Native Garden Foundation members): 13 Ways to Stop Global Warming and Have a Beautiful Garden. Call (510) 548-4714 quick-like-a-bunny to register if there’s space left; maximum is 25 people.  

Friday, Oct. 19, 7:30 to 8:30 p.m., Alrie Middlebrook (busy lady!) and co-author Glenn Keator will sign the above book and talk about “Designing California native gardens with a focus on Bay Area plant communities” at Builder’s Booksource. That one’s free. 

And apparently in celebration of various deserving birthdays, the East Bay Chapter of CNPS will throw its second annual Native Plant Fair at Tilden Park’s Native Here Nursery on Saturday, Oct. 20, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 21, noon to 3 p.m.  

The fair will feature local plants grown at Native Here plus other California natives including hundreds of Douglas iris ready for planting; bulbs grown from locally collected seeds (this patient practice increases the stock of some rare plants); and Californian seeds from the Regional Parks Botanic Garden’s Seedy Friends; books, art by Dianne Lake, Gregg Weber, and Yu-Lan Tong, and Heidi Rand; and crafts including pots by Ginger Markley and Tina Cheung.  

David Bigham, David Margolies, Lyn Talkovsky, and other experts will speak, and a silent auction of special plants, books, and other items culminates on Sunday, Oct. 21 at 2:30 p.m. Volunteers needed! Leave a message at (510) 549-0211, nativehere@ebcnps.org or Elainejx@mindspring.com or just show up any Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.  

For those of you who’ve been reading this column for some time, you know that I have what might be called a conflicted relationship with the building codes. Basically they bug me. I’m glad they’re there but they still bug me.  

And the ones that bug me the most are the ones that talk about things like ceiling heights, the size of rooms and so forth. I mean, do we need someone to tell us when a room has become too small? And whose room is too small? Last time I checked, people came in a variety of sizes and if I can buy pants in range of sizes, why can’t I have rooms in a range of sizes? In short, my question is; “Who gets hurt? And is this all necessary?” 

I will concede that there are some size issues that do make sense and those are mostly ones that relate to the entry of fire personnel. We’ll get to that a little later on, but let’s stick with less justified edicts for the moment. 

First, I’d like to say that I was right all along and have now been at least somewhat exonerated (roar of the crowd). Well, maybe not, but it felt good to say it anyway. The point is, that the rules on the sizes of rooms have been greatly slackened in the latest version of the residential code.  

The code I’m talking about is the International Residential Code and this latest version (2006) will probably go into force in local communities in say … maybe … 2012. No joke. That’s about how fast the codes get adopted. Nevertheless, I plan on arguing cases from this latest canon at the next available opportunity. After all, it IS the current code, even if the cities are incredibly slow to adopt new ones. 

So here’s what the new code says about bedrooms. I’ll try to stick primarily to this since any analysis of how the code affects the whole dwelling would be freakishly boring. Besides, you’re probably not a contractor and I want to set our bar at a manageable level. 

Bedrooms are now required to be no smaller than 70 square feet in size with neither dimension being less than seven feet. So a room is typically going to be at least seven feet by 10 feet. That’s not very big but I’m happy because it’s nobody’s business but yours.  

The new code also says that at least one room in the dwelling has to be a minimum of 120 square feet and while the seven-foot rule also applies, it’s hard to imagine too many builders making this room seven feet by 17 feet, two inches. We can imagine that this will typically give us 10 foot by 12 foot rooms. Again, I don’t think we need this in the code but… there it is. 

Ceiling heights are the really interesting part of the new code and where I personally feel validated. While many people are under the impression that 8’ ceilings are required, the actual requirement for many years has been seven feet, six inches. Well, the code has finally done the right thing and dropped the requirement to seven feet. Now, I’m not suggesting that seven feet is a good ceiling height. Personally, I like 11 foot ceilings, but I don’t like the idea that one has to build a room of any particular height. What if you’re four foot, 11 inches and want a room that feels Goldilocks-right to you. You might feel really uncomfortable in a room with eight foot ceilings and there’s no good reason you should be forced to meet some taller person’s standard. So hooray.  

Also, for rooms that have sloped ceilings (this applies to those developed attic spaces we often see) you can now cut into this seven-foot ceiling height and allow half the room to slope down to five feet. Any sloped portion below five feet will not count as bedroom area so you’ll have to have at least 35 square feet at seven feet and 35 more between five feet and seven feet. This is getting quite cozy by my measure and again, I applaud the International Code Council for getting out of my face. If I want short, I should be able to have short. 

If you have a beamed ceiling of seven foot height, the beams can extend downward, another six inches as long as the beams are at least four foot apart. This means that people who are six feet, six inches are going to bump their heads. Well, they don’t have to buy those houses or rent those rooms. So, there. 

Basements have also been given new a liberation. They can be as short as six foot, eight inches (not bedrooms, just basements with all the usual accouterments; ping-pong, storage and such.) 

These rooms may also have ceiling obstructions such as ducts and beams that reduce the height to six foot, four inches here and there. Again, this is great news for people trying to rehabilitate basements with a permit. 

Bathrooms can also be six feet, eight inches and this can be quite helpful in remodels where the ceiling or floor has been modified for ventilation, plumbing or heating. 

Now, a few words about windows. Windows are essential for ventilation, light and escape and the new codes have some changes here as well. Some of this isn’t really new but it may be new to you so here it is: 

Habitable rooms have to have windows for lighting in an amount equal to 8 percent of the floor area. That means that they have to be at least 5.6 feet per room or one window of about 30 inches by 27 inches. Also, half of this amount has to open for ventilation, which is pretty normal for windows. 

Most open either halfway (double-hung or slider) or fully (casement, awning). This is all pretty easy if you ask me but it does get a little more complex when we add in the issue of escape. The window I’ve described for light is not large enough to meet the escape requirements. They’re just a wee bit larger except for ground floor windows.  

All bedrooms have to have at least one window that’s at least 20 inches wide and 24 inches tall but also has to OPEN to at least 5.7 square feet in total size. This means that a casement window just slightly larger than the minimum will work but a double hung will have to be about twice the size that lighting demands.  

This last part is something I actually consider extremely important because it’s about escaping from fire and isn’t this what the code is really about? Safety? 

This one window also has to be no more than 44 inches above the floor so that firemen (and firewomen) have a floor that they can reach when they climb through the window. They won’t drop to the floor because it might not be there and that, as we say, is a bad thing. 

For safety’s sake lets cover just a couple of other issues that relate to bedrooms. First, a bedroom cannot connect directly with the garage. The door from the garage into the house must not be through a bedroom. 

Also, the sole access to a furnace or water heater cannot be through a bedroom (although there are some exceptions that mostly involve attics). A water heater or furnace can never be in a bedroom or its closet. As you might guess, these things all have to do with fire but also have to do with carbon monoxide and oxygen depletion. 

If you’ve been living with a substandard attic or basement apartment lo these many psychedelic years, this should all come as pretty good news. If you’re a builder it’s better still. It’s also nice (and odd) for me when I can say, “look at the nice thing the government did for us.” Down in Hell they must be saying “Hey look, a snowflake!” 

FRIDAY, OCT. 12 

Progressive Democrats of the East Bay Picket of the Marine Recruitment Center from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 64 Shattuck, two doors down from Copy Central. 524-3791. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Regine Spector, on “United States-Russian Relations: A New Cold War?” 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.  

“Planet Earth: Pole to Pole, Mountains and Deep Ocean” A Conscientious Projector Film at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar. 841-4824.  

Red Cross Blood Drive from 11:45 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. atUCB Unit 3 Dorms, 2400 Durant Ave. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Womensong Circle Participatory singing for women with Betsy Rose, at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Small Assembly Room, 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation $15-$20. 525-7082. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253.  

SATURDAY, OCT. 13 

African People’s Solidarity Day with speakers from South Africa, Sierra Leone and the U.S. on conditions faced by African people around the world. Sat. from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Sun. from 1 to 5:30 p.m. at Beebe Memorial Cathedral, 3900 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Sliding scale donation $10-$25. 625-1106. www.uhurusolidarity.org 

“Blood Money: Campaign Dollars and Health Care Policy in California” A panel discussion at 10 a.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. at 27th. Sponsored by the California Clean Money Campaign. www.caclean.org 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland uptown to the Lake to discover Art Deco landmarks. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Paramount Theater at 2025 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Paws on the Square and a Katrina Pet Reunion from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Jack London Square, Oakland. Owner-Dog Look-Alike Contest, trick and costume contests for dogs and cats, and information on adoption and training. Sponsored by Hopalong Animal Rescue. For more informaion see www.jacklondonsquare.com 

“Berkeley in the 1930s” An exhibition exploring the development of transportation, businesses, and industries. Come see how Berkeley fared during The Depression at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St. 848-0181. 

The Great War Society meets to discuss “American Volunteers in the Canadian Army-1914-17” by S. Compagno at 10:30 a.m. at 640 Arlington Ave. 527-7118. 

Keep Our Water Clean: Pharmaceutical Take-Back Campaign Bring in your over-the-counter medications and supplements as well as non-controlled prescriptions. Bring medication in original containers with personal information marked out. Bring mercury thermometers in two zipper bags to prevent breaks and spills. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Whole Foods Market, 3000 Telegraph Ave. For more infomation see www.teleosis.org  

School House Creek Commons Fall Clean Up and Sowing of Wild Flower Seeds at 9 a.m. at Virginia and Curtis streets, at the eastern end of the Berkeley Adult School. If the weather has cooled enough, we also hope to be planting a slope of a hill with plugs of native grasses. There’s a play area for kids, and coffee and snacks will be served. 559-8368. 

Codornices Creek Watershed Tour with different speakers along various points of the creek. Meet at 9 a.m. near the mouth of Codornices Creek at Albany Waterfront Park, where Buchanan St. dead ends north of Golden Gate Fields, west of I-580. There will be a complimentary lunch afterwards. Please bring your own water bottle to save plastic. RSVP required 540-6669.  

Celebrate Cerrito Creek by Making Art Join Friends of Five Creeks and environmental artist Zach Pine making art with natural materials on restored Cerrito Creek from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the south edge of the El Cerrito Plaza parking lot between Cornell and Kains, adjacent to Saturday El Cerrito Plaza Farmers Market. Free, all are welcome. 848-9358. www.fivecreeks.org  

Help Restore San Pablo Creek in El Sobrante from 9 a.m. ato 12:30 p.m. Sponsored by REI and SPAWNERS. Tools provided. To register call 665-3538. www.spawners.org 

“Thirteen Ways to Stop Global Warming and Have a Beautiful Garden” A workshop with Alrie Middlebrook from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at The Watershed Nursery, 155 Tamalpais Rd. Cost is $25-$45. 548-4714.  

Autumn Arachnids Learn about the mysteries of the spider and then hunt for orb weavers, jumping spiders, wolf spiders and more at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Urban FIRE Walk-A-Thon A benefit for fund a Microloan Progam in Oakland. Meet at the Boathouse at Oakland’s Lake Merritt at 9 a.m. Donation $50. 655-1304. www.urbanvoice.org 

Indian Statue Day and Festival from noon to 5 p.m. in downtown Point Richmond. Music, arts and crafts, dress up your dog contest and a tour of the point’s Historic District. South of the Border luncheon from noon to 2 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St. 234-4219. 

Celebrating Indigenous People’s Day at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park with a presentation of Native American arts and music at 2 p.m. at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. Free. 532-9142. 

“Telling Tales” Storytelling Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at Berkwood Hedge School, 1809 Bancroft Way. Cost is $5, $15 per family. 883-6990. 

NAACP Berkeley Branch meets at 1 p.m. at 2108 Russell St. All are welcome. 

“Wal-Mart: The Face of 21st Century Capitalism” with Prof. Nelson Lichtenstein, UCSB, at 7 p.m. at Alamda Free Library, 1550 Oak St. Alameda. Conference on “Labor, Wal-Mart and China” begins at 1 p.m. Sponsored by California Healthy Communities Network and Alameda Public Affairs Forum. 814-9592.  

Vegetarian Cooking Class “Sensational Soul Food” Learn how to prepare Smokin’ Barbecued Tofu, Hoppin’ John (Black-eyed Peas and Rice) with Sauteed Greens, Spicy Okra Rice Soup, Creamy Vegan Macaroni & Cheese, Sweet Bread Pudding from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro, Oakland. Cost is $45, plus $5 materials fee. To register call 531-COOK. 

Pancake Breakfast and Tiffany Tour of the Louis Comfort Tiffany glass mosaic mural triptych, “Te Deum Laudamus,” from 8 a.m. to noon at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Cost is $7. 465-4793.  

“Sogetsu Ikebana Flower Show” Demonstration at 1 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022.  

“Strong at the Heart: How it Feels to Heal from Sexual Abuse” with author Carolyn Lehamn at 1 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

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.  

SUNDAY, OCT. 14 

Spice of Life Festival in North Berkeley’s gourmet Ghetto, notrh Shattuck Ave., from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with product demonstrations, a culinary stage and live music. www.spiceoflifefestival.com 

Reptile Rap Meet our resident snake and turtle friends with an interactive talk for the whole family, from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Friends of the Alameda Wildlife Refuge Workday Help us prepare habitat for California Least Terns, which breed at the refuge. Meet at 9 a.m. at the main refuge gate at the northwest corner of former Alameda Naval Air Station, Alameda. Sponsored by Golden Gate Audubon Society. 843-2222. 

STAND Fundraiser and Garden Reception from 4 to 6 p.m. in the garden of a grand 115 year old Queen Anne Victorian in the heart of Temescal, 449 49th St., corner of 49th and Clarke. Speakers are Jeff D. Hoffman, the land-use/environmental attorney representing STAND, and Jeff Norman, Temescal historian. Cost is $25, $40 per couple. 655-3841. 

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 

7th Annual Crabby Chef Challenge benefiting Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Spenger's, 1919 Fourth St. Cooking competition begins at 2 p.m. 845-7771. 

The Friends of the Kensington Library Booksale from noon to 4 p.m. in the parking lot behind the library at 59 Arlington Blvd. A silent auction with ‘finds’ for book collectors from noon to 2 p.m. 524-3043.  

“The Revived Peace Process: Opportunities and Pitfalls” with Yossi Alpher, co-editor of bitterlemons, a web-based Israeli-Palestinian political dialogue magazine and columnist for Peace Now, at 7 p.m. at Congregation Netivot Shalom, 1316 University Ave. Donation $10. 525-3582.  

“The Joy of Vegan Baking: Compassionate Cooks’ Traditional Treats & Sinful Sweets” Book party with author Colleen Patrick-Goudreau of Compassionate Cooks at 4:30 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro, Oakland. 531-2665. 

“Sogetsu Ikebana Flower Show” Demonstration at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022.  

Architecture Tour of the Oakland Museum of California Meet at 1 p.m. at the Admissions Desk, second level, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

“China Blue” Film screening and discussion of the conditions of China’s workers at 10 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 595-7417. www.tifcss.org 

“Unitarian Universalism, Why It Matters” with Bill Hamilton-Holway at 10 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

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 

Tibetan Buddhism with Hugh Joswick on “Dream and Illusion” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, OCT. 15  

“New Public Policy Perspectives and the Power of Engaged Citizens” with Robert B. Reich, David L. Kirp, and Carol Chetkovich at 6 p.m. at FSM Cafe at Moffitt Library, UC Campus. fsm-info@ 

library.berkeley.edu 

Pumpkin Painting for Children at 3:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200.  

Playwriting Class with Joshiah Polhemus, Mondays from 1 to 3 p.m. at Arts First Oakland Center, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Cost is $40 for 4 weeks. 444-4755. www.stagebridge.org 

Books and Ideas Group discusses “The Poe Shadow” at 1:15 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 981-5190. 

Teen Chess Club meets at 3:30 p.m. at the Claremont Branch of the Berkeley Public Library, Benvenue at Ashby. 981-6280. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, OCT. 16 

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 Lake Temescal. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

The Berkeley Garden Club “Designing with Natives in the Home Garden” presented by Glenn Keator and Alrie Middlebrook at 1:30 p.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 845-4482. 

Town Hall Meeting on West Berkeley Assessment District with Council Member Darryl Moore and the City of Berkeley Office of Economic Development at 7 p.m. at Rosa Parks Elementary, 920 Allston Way, at 8th St. 981-7120. 

St. Paul’s Episcopal School’s Annual Book Fair from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. at 116 Montecito Ave., Oakland. 285-9600.  

Middle School Book Group from 4 to 5 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 4th Floor, Children’s Story Room, 2090 Kittredge Street, Berkeley. 981-6223.  

“Reincarnation and Buddhism” with Rev. Harry Bridge, at 7 p.m. at the Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave. at Fulton. Donation $20. 809-1460. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 6 to 8 p.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Community Sing-a-Long every Tues, at 2 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. 524-9122.  

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library. 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 17 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around the restored 1870s business district. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of G.B. Ratto’s at 827 Washington St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

“The Struggle Against Agribusiness in the Americas” with an update on Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Donations accepted. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Civilian War Victim Series “A Civilian War Victim’s Story” with Dr. Brian Gluss at 1 p.m. at Emeryville Senior Center, 4321 Salem, Emeryville. 596-3730. 

“Coconut Revolution” A documentary on the struggle of indigenous people in Bouganivlle, Papua New Guinea, against the Panguna copper mine, at 8 p.m. at Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shatttuck Ave. www.thelonghaul.org 

5.6 Mile Wednesday Join naturalist Meg Platt for a moderate hike traversing a steep creek crossing and varied hills in search of native plants beating the heat. Meet at 10:30 a.m. at Bear Creek Staging Area, Newt Hollow Picnic Site, Briones. For information call 525-2233. 

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Colloquium with Thomas H. Hahn on “Landscapes of Ritual: China and the Perfromative Body.” Email for time and location laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium 

“21st Century Family” A Greater Good magazine panel on how marriage has changed at 3:30 p.m. in the Lipman Room, 8th flr, Barrows Hall, UC Campus. www.greatergoodmag.org 

Computers for Seniors An open and ongoing class covering email, Internet, letter-writing and more. Class meets Wed. a.m. for eight weeks, from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center 2939 Ellis St. 981-5170.  

Online Live Homework Help Workshop for students in 4th to 8th grade, from 2:45 to 3:45 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 4th floor, Children’s Story Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223.  

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

“So Help Me God” The Founding Fathers and the First Great Battle Over Church and State with Rev. Forrest Church at 7 p.m. at The UNitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Suggested donation $10. 525-0302. 

An Introduction to Marxism, a free class for beginners and students at every level from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 595-7417.  

“Mystic Street: Meditations on a Spiritual Path” with Steve Georgiou at 7 p.m. at Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute, Graduate Theological Union, 2311 Hearst. 649-2450. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

THURSDAY, OCT. 18 

“Creating Inclusive Environments for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Families in East Bay Elementary Schools” A forum for parents, school administrators, and teachers at 5:30 p.m. at Chabot Elementary, 6686 Chabot Rd, Oakland. Free child-care is available on site. Please RSVP to Julia at 415-981-1960. 

“Climate Change and Biodiversity Conservation in Northern California” with Dr. Mark Schwartz, UC Davis at 12:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022.  

Golden Gate Audubon Society “Endangered Species Big Year at the Golden Gate National Parks” with Brent Plater at 7 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 843-2222. 

“The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil” A documentary at 7 p.m., followed by discussion at Green City Gallery, 1950 Shattuck Ave Suggested donation $5-$10. oilindependence@yahoo.com  

Sacramento and Berkeley Legislative Update with Assemblywoman Loni Hancock and Mayor Tom Bates sponsored by the Berkeley Democratic Club at 7:30 p.m at the Northbrae Community Church, in the Chapel, 941 The Alameda, just south of Solano Ave. Refreshments will be served. 849-2554. 

“Facing Death. . . with open eyes” A new documentary by Bay Area filmmaker Dr. Michelle Peticolas at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. 800-838-3006. 

“Avoid Cancer” Booksigning with authors Linda Eldridge and David Borgeson at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharm Berkeley 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon. Oct. 15, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

Commission on Aging meets Wed., Oct. 17, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5344.  

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission meets Wed. Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7487. 

Human Welfare and Community Action Commission meets Wed., Oct. 17, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5427.  

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., Oct. 18 , at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7415.  

Fair Campaign Practices Commission meets Thurs., Oct. 18, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6950.  

TUESDAY, OCT. 9 

THEATER 

SporK Festival, a bi-racial, bi-cultural celebration of short plays featuring Leila Buck at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$25. 849-2568.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Lucille Lang Day, Ed Miller and Antohony Russell White at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College auditorium, 2050 Center St. 525-5476. 

Peter Turchi talks about “maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sauce Piquante 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.  

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

Scraptet, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Jazzschool 10th Anniversary Concert at 7:30 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $125. 238-9200.  

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 10 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Ancient Roots/Urban Journeys: Expressions for Dias de los Muertos” opens at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ann Patchett reads from her novel “Run” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Deep Sports with authors Michael Lewis and Dave Zirin at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Benedit for KPFA. Tickets are $10-$13 at Cody’s. 559-9500. 

Anne Willan presents “Country Cooking of France” at noon at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

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 

Young Musician’s Program perfroms at noon at Oakland City Center, 12th and Broadway. www.oaklandcitycenter.com 

Bach Festival with Angela Hewitt, piano, Wednesday, October 10 at 8:00 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $42. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net; 

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

Balkan Folkdance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lessons at 7 p.m. Cost is $7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Buxter Hoot’n at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Fred O’Dell and the Broken Arrows at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

John Scofield Trio featuring The ScoHorns at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun.. Cost is $16-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, OCT. 11 

EXHIBITIONS 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Guided tour at 12:15 and 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. 

“A Class Act CCA-C” A group art show by students from California College of the Arts. Reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St. 465-8928. 

THEATER 

“Whatever She Wants” a romantic comedy stage play by Je-Caryous Johnson, Thurs. and Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 3 and 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $34.50-$49.50. 465-6400. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Hidden History of the East Bay: Photographs Tell Towns’ Stories” at 1 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

Omali Yeshitela, Black Power Movement veteran and Uhuru Movement leader reads from his latest work, “One Africa! One Nation!” at 7 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 98 Broadway, Jack London Square, Oakland. 272-0120. 

“Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in 18th Century Italy” with author Martha Feldman in conversation with Mary Ann Smart at 5:30 at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

“History, Culture and the Art of Puppetry in Japan” with Peter Grilli at 7 p.m. in Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Gabrielle Calvocoressi and Ken Weisner, poets and contibutors to “The Music Lover’s Poetry Anthology” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Edward J. Larson describes “Magnificanet Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland Opera Theater “ Turn of the Screw” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Oakland Metro Operahouse, 630 3rd St., through Oct. 14. Tickets are $25. 763-1146.  

Bluehouse at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

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

Five Dollar Suit, bluegrass, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Mark Growden, Professor Gall, Knees & Elbows at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

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

FRIDAY, OCT. 12 

THEATER 

California Shakespeare Theater “King Lear” at the Bruns Ampitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., Orinda, through Oct. 14. Tickets are $15-$60. 548-9666.  

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. 

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 

Shotgun Players “Bulrusher” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. through Oct. 28. Tickets are $17-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

“Whatever She Wants” a romantic comedy stage play by Je-Caryous Johnson, Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 3 and 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $34.50-$49.50. 465-6400. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Thread Count” An exhibition of works by eight fiber artists. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. Exhibition runs to Nov. 4. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com 

FILM 

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

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jonathan Kozol reads from “Letters to a Young Teacher” in a benefit for The Edible Schoolyard, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $8-$10 at Cody’s. 559-9500.  

Susan Faludi describes “the Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9-11 America” in a benefit for KPFA at 7:30 p.m. at King Middle School, 1781 Rose St. Tickets are $10-$13 at Cody’s. 559-9500.  

“War and Peace 3: The Future” readings from the anthology at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

“A Night of Poetry” with Andrew Bleeker, Maxwell Heller and Lindsey Boldt at 7 p.m. at Book Zoo, 6395 Telegraph Ave. 654-BOOK. 

Peg Kingman reads from her debut novel, “Not Yet Drown’d” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Ralph Dranow and Clara Hsu read at 7 pm at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland Opera Theater “ Turn of the Screw” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Oakland Metro Operahouse, 630 3rd St., through Oct. 14. Tickets are $25. 763-1146.  

Kurt Ribak Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $15. www.hillsideclub.org  

The Junius Courtney Big Band, featuring Denise Perrier, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$14.. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Akosua, jazz-inspired folk fusion, at 8 p.m. at Maxwell's Lounge, 341 13th St. Oakland. Cost is $10. 839-6169. 

William Beatty, piano, at 6:30 p.m. at The Mount Everest Restaurant, 2011 Shattuck Ave. at University. 665-6035. 

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

Tito y su Son de Cuba at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cuban dance lesson at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Katzen Kapell at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. 

Ray Cepeda, Latin rock, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Tom Russell at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761.  

Tara Tinsley and Tim Jenkins at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Devin Hoff, Willie Winant, Lisa Mazzacappa, Ralph Carney and others at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Ceremony, Life-long Tragedy, Knuckle Puck at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Kevin Beadles Band at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

“Old to the New Throwback Concert” with The Attik, Ise Lyfe, Rico Pabon & Agualibre at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $15. 548-1159.  

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

John Scofield Trio featuring The ScoHorns at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun.. Cost is $16-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, OCT. 13 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Asheba at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

THEATER 

Bunraku, The National Puppet Theater of Japan at 8 p.m. Sun at 3 p.m., at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus Tickets are $76. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Central Works “Every Inch a King” opens at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. and runs through Nov. 18. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381.centralworks.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Artists of Invention: A Century of CCA” Exhibition and celebration of the centennial of California College of the Arts opens at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

“The Memorial Leaves Devastation in its Wake” A painting and mixed media installation. Opening reception at 4 p.m. at The Gallery of Urban Art, 1746 13th St at Wood. Donation $5. Bring something to BBQ. www.thegalleryofurbanart.com 

Tea Pot Show Works by members of the Potters’ Studio in celebration of their 35th Anniversary. Sat. and Sun. from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 637 Cedar St. 528-3286. 

“Abundance of Color and Light” Opening reception at 6:30 p.m., light show at 8:15 p.m., at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. 644-4930. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Naomi Wolf introduces “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, A Citizen’s Call to Action” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

“Telling Tales” Storytelling Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at Berkwood Hedge School, 1809 Bancroft Way. Cost is $5, $15 per family. 883-6990. 

Gloria Frym, Ethan Paquin, and Chad Sweeney, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Artists’ talk at 2 p.m.at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Civil Rights Concert Series and Courage Awards from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. Tickets are $27-$37. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

Taylor Eigsti, jazz pianist at 8 p.m. at Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Tickets are $32. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Bryan Baker and Friends “If Music Be the Food of Love” at 8 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Road, Kensington. Suggested donation $15-$50. For reservations call 525-0302, ext. 309.  

The Freedom Song Network, in celebration of its 25th anniversary, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$50. 849-2568.  

Bayside Jazz with Dan Hicks at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ.  

Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $15. 525-5054.  

Kirk Keeler and Meghan Baker at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

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

Al Young in Concert at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373.  

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

Culann’s Hounds, The Bog Savages at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

Jinx Jones Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Skitzo, Fog of War, Scarecrow, Witchaven at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

John Scofield Trio featuring The ScoHorns at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun.. Cost is $16-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, OCT. 14 

THEATER 

“By George, It’s War!” A musical satarization of the Bush administration by Dale Polissar at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $18-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Berkeley in the 1930s” An exhibition exploring the development of transportation, businesses, and industries. Opening reception at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St. 848-0181. 

Works by Mittie Cuetara Opening reception at 4 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

FILM 

“The Magic of Chinese Animation” Introduced by Beijing Film Academy Prof. Duan Jia at 2 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Jewish Folk Art: Recalling the Lost World of Polish Jews” Panel discussion at 2 p.m. at the Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $10-$12. 549-6950. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Patrizia Ferrara & Isota at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Americana Unplugged: String Break at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

William Beatty and The Unconditionals at 6:30 p.m. at The Mt. Everest Restaurant 2011 Shattuck Ave. 665-6035.  

Don Neely’s Royal Society Orchestra at 5 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $20. 525-5054.  

Inga Swearingen and Bill Peterson at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

MONDAY, OCT. 15 

EXHIBITIONS 

Richard Whittaker and Rue Harrison Photography and Drawings opens at The LightRoom, 2263 Fifth St., and runs through Nov. 9. 649-8111. 

FILM 

“Runnin’Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers” Premier showing at 8 p.m. at Elmwood Rialto Cinema, 2966 College Ave. at Ashby. Cost is $8-$9. 433-9730. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

PlayGround Six emerging playwrights debut new works at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $15. 415-704-3177. 

“Listening to Classical Music” with Joseph Kerman at 12:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Rebecca Brown & Lucy Corin read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Adam Clay and Andrew Grace, poets, at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Harry Shearer reads from his novel “Not Enough Indians” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with Judy Wells at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

Songwriter’s Showcase at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $5. 548-1761. 

Julio Bravo y su Salsabor at 8 at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.

When the Bunraku (National Puppet Theater of Japan) begins a performance—as they will this Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. in Zellerbach Hall, for the first time since 1983—a particular kind of magic takes over.  

Some of it comes from the ritual of the appearance of the shamisen player and the Tayu, the narrator, onstage, sometimes popping into view on a turntable, with the Tayu bowing to the text of the play in his upheld hands. Some of it comes from the penetrating sound and rhythms of voice and instrument, as the emotions of the words play across the Tayu’s face. And when the three-foot-tall puppets start to “act,” despite the three puppeteers for each in full view, some spectators begin to squint, the illusion is at once so lifelike, yet fantastic, as if another world has opened up, in a perfect, completely charming imitation of the Genroku period of 17th-18th century Japan. 

The Bunraku (more formally “Ningyo Joruri,” indicating “doll storytelling, with music and chanting”), despite its reliance on actors of wood and paint, is one of the great theaters of the world. It has had a profound influence on the development of the texts and performing style of the Kabuki, and exciting the imaginations of theater practitioners and theorists everywhere, a literal realization of Romantic playwright Heinrich von Kleist’s great essay and parable, “On the Marionette Theater,” in which a stage dancer watching a puppet show asserts that “a puppet built to the right specifications could perform in such a way not to be equaled by any of the geniuses of our time ... never guilty of the least affectation.” 

The company, which includes four “Living National Treasures” of Japan (a government-designated status), will present ‘Date Musume Koi no Higanoko’ (“Oshichi of the Fire Watch Tower,” 1773) and ‘Tsubosaka Kannon Reigenki’ (“Miracle at the Tsubosaka Kannon Temple,” 1887), with an introduction to Bunraku. 

Other events around the Bunraku’s visit include a free symposium, 7 p.m. Wednesday at Wheeler Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus, and a lecture-demonstration in Samsung Hall at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, Fri. at 2 p.m. (free with museum admission).  

The Wheeler symposium includes a panel with Mary Elizabeth Berry (History Department chair), Janice Kanemitsu (East Asian Languages and Culture professor) and Peter Grilli, president of the Boston Japan Society (who also gives the free Sightlines pre-performance talks, half an hour before curtain). Both events will feature the screening of performance footage and a demonstration by puppeteers. 

Puppets were introduced to Japan in the 9th century, but it wasn’t until the late 16th century that the formula that would lead to the Bunraku was created, when Hikita, a puppeteer, joined forces with a shamisen player, Menukiya Chozaburo, to back the actions of the puppets with the musical storytelling of joruri. In 1685, the Takemoto-za was founded in Osaka, bringing together the talents of joruri narrator Takemoto Gidayu, puppeteer Tachimatsu Hachirobei, and “the Shakespeare of Japan,” playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon, and the Bunraku was born. 

Chikamatsu had come from Kabuki and was influenced by the humanistic acting style of Sakata Tojuro of Kyoto. In contrast to Kabuki, an actors’ theater, Bunraku would become a playwrights’ venue, and Chikamatsu wrote about 100 plays for the puppets, many adapted back to Kabuki and among its greatest classics.  

As the puppets improved technically and could be used with greater virtuosity—by the middle 18th century, eyes, eyebrows, ears and individual fingers could move and the stomach swell—Bunraku competed with Kabuki in popularity, and for awhile pulled ahead, due to government restrictions on live actors (similar to the conditions that made puppet opera triumph in France at about the same time). 

To catch up, Kabuki actors imitated puppet movement and joruri voice, taking the lead again, as described by Faubion Bowers, longtime Kabuki simultaneous translator and commentator, in Japanese Theater: “However much the public liked to see puppets act as humans, they were more delighted to see actors perform as puppets.” 

Bowers, who studied Kabuki in Tokyo before World War II, and afterwards, as MacArthur’s theater censor, saved Kabuki from closure when zealous reformers endeavored to have it banned completely, discusses both Kabuki and Bunraku as the expression of the Genroku era, late 17th to early 18th century (especially in the Kansai region, Kyoto and Osaka): “The moment of awakening of the common man in Japan ... there was emancipation to a certain extent, but it was emancipation of the emotions from narrow moral restraints. There was desire for equality, but for equality in the pleasure districts only ... The political rule of the military classes continued ... irrationality, conventionality and formality were harmonized... .” 

The poeticized dramas of Bunraku deal with sentimental and social conflicts, expressed in the common speech of the time. In the first play to be presented, a girl separated from her secret lover almost burns down the city trying to reach him. In the second, an older couple is rewarded for their exceptional sacrifice and devotion. Smaller than life, the life-like puppets create emotional overtones that become larger than life. As Kleist’s dancer says in his parable, “Grace appears with the greatest purity in whatever human shape having either no consciousness or infinite consciousness—puppet or god!” 

BUNRAKU (NATIONAL PUPPET THEATER OF JAPAN) 

8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley. $76. Rush tickets, for $10-20, are announced two hours before showtime and put on sale an hour before. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. 

Photograph: Bunraku Kyokai 

Bringing Japan's centuries-old form of puppet theater, Bunraku National Puppet Theater of Japan comes to Cal Performances Oct. 13 and 14.  

Featuring Richard Roundtree—“Shaft” on the silver screen—and TV star Viveca A. Fox in her theatrical debut, Whatever She Wants, a romantic comedy by Je’Caryous Johnson, is onstage this week, Thursday through Sunday, at the Paramount Theater in Oakland. 

Boris Kodjoe (from Madea’s Family Reunion and Soul Food), “L’il G” (from Silk) and Scruncho (from BET’s “Comicview”) round out the cast. 

In the play, Fox’s character, Vivian Wolf, opens a private club where single women can meet men who have been screened: “No baby daddies, no bad credit, no pot bellies—and no living with your mama.” 

Roundtree plays Fox’s father Theodore. “I love the storyline,” he said. “It’s a black family trying to make it in America. What a novel idea.”  

Roundtree, with his resonant voice, has “always sort of fallen into the authority figure,” he said. Best-known for his signature film role, he began onstage as a member of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York, playing Jack Johnson in their production of The Great White Hope. “That need to hear that hand-clapping,” is how Roundtree credited his origins in live theater.  

Whatever She Wants is just one example of the newer touring romantic comedies that have provided a venue for black film, television and recording stars. Coming out of the musicals and “gospel dramas” that were a hit with audiences in the ’80s, these broad, sitcom-like stories told with humor appeal to a broad spectrum of spectators, including devout church-goers, due to their moral and social messages.  

For a couple of decades at least, Joe and I have lurked around a few of the little stands of the weed Nicotiana glauca, tree tobacco, that are scattered along Del Puerto Canyon Road just east of I5. Short lurks are part of our usual spring day-trip itinerary along that route from Del Puerto Canyon to Mines Road because we might see Costa’s hummingbirds feeding on the tall shrubs’ tubular yellow flowers, and who knows what other hummers might show up while they’re migrating?  

So it was almost a reflex that made me pull over when I found a streetside stand of tree tobacco in west Berkeley. I’m lucky there wasn’t a lot of traffic there with me. Birders’ reflexes aren’t always adaptive; I remember a fender-bender occasioned by a kestrel who was doing an apparently convincing stage impression of a peregrine at close range over a freeway traffic jam. Having learned from that example, I do try to behave myself.  

Free advice, though: Never tailgate a birder. 

Nicotiana species—there are 45 to 100 of them, depending on who’s classifying—are native to the Americas. Those sweetly night-scented garden flowers are close kin to smoking-type tobacco, currently a favorite political red herring in public places. (Why, no; I don’t smoke it and never have. See? Behaving myself again! That might itself be a bad habit.) 

Come to think of it, I’ve never been on Del Puerto Canyon Road after dark; I’ll have to hie me down to Fourth Street tonight and have a sniff. 

This one is, fide the botanist Howard McMinn, the only woody species that shows up in the United States. Most of the various tobaccos cultivated by the First Peoples are herbaceous. Tree tobacco is native to Argentina, and came here with the Spanish missionaries. 

Tobacco is closely enough related to tomatoes to share some diseases like the dread tobacco mosaic virus, which is why nurseries ask people not to smoke while shopping, even outdoors. If you’re growing tomatoes, you might have been advised to wash your hands after smoking before messing about with your plants.  

It’s no surprise to those who’ve dealt with certain diseases in humans, Ebola fever for example, that one’s closest biological relatives harbor one’s worst epidemiological dangers. We share more diseases with our dogs and cats than with our turtles and snakes, who might harbor salmonella and such but ordinarily don’t suffer from them, and fewer still with our commensal arachnids or the average earthworm.  

The species are in the solanum family, along with potatoes and eggplants and chili peppers (sweet peppers too) and nightshades and Jimsonweed. We have a handsome native California plant, almost a shrub, called blue witch or Solanum umbelliferum, last time I looked.  

Why “witch”? Undoubtedly because of the plant’s association with other solanums and relatives like Atropa belladonna with highly active poisonous and intoxicating compounds. Both A. belladonna and Solanum nigrum get called “deadly nightshade.” Lots of members of the family are toxic or, even when edible, have toxic parts; don’t nibble on tomato or potato greens.  

People do all sports of foolish things with solanums. Smoking tobacco in the mass-produced, everyday, uncritical fashion that’s spread around the world is certainly one of them. People have smoked Jimsonweed for its hallucinogenic qualities, a dangerous idea because one has no way of knowing how concentrated the intoxicating toxins are in a given plant and what dose one’s taking.  

Belladonna is so called because women used it, way back when, as eyedrops to dilate their pupils, one of those “I’m interested” sexual signals that get rotated through the assembly line of fashion.  

Belladonna does have medical uses: you might get a (very low, carefully controlled) dose of atropine extracted from it before surgery to dry out mucous membranes and make the surgeon’s work a bit simpler. Rarely, it’s also used by opthamologists to dilate pupils during an eye exam.  

If you manage to get poisoned by certain insecticides you’ll get dosed with atropine in the ER. My great-auntly advice is to avoid messing with either of them if you can help it.  

Other insecticides are being produced from nicotine compounds. That flea-control stuff that gets applied to the back of the dog’s or cat’s neck is a nicotine derivative, which has the merit of being less toxic to most non-arthropods like you and me and the furry pets than the stuff that older treatments used. I believe the same corporations are making insecticides for plants out of nicotine analogues, too. Seems to me we’re coming full circle and you might want to go smoke a cigar in your garden after all.  

Photograph: Ron Sullivan. 

Glaucous leaves and yellow flowers of tree tobacco. 

Ron Sullivan’s “Green Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section.  

TUESDAY, OCT. 9 

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 Eastshore State Park and the Albany Bulb. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Birding Class on Owls Learn about their habits and habitats, then look for them on Sat. field trips. Classes are Oct. 9, 16, and 23 at 7 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, Oak at 10th St., Oakland. Field trips are Oct. 20 and 27. Offered in conjunction with the Audubon Society. Fee is $50. To register call 843-2222.  

“Tracking the Nation’s Groundwater Reserves” with William M. Alley of the U.S. Geological Survey at 5:30 p.m. in Room 112, Wurster Hall, UC Campus. 642-2666. 

“The Hidden Humor in Holy Scripture” with John L. Bell from the Iona community in Scotland at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. 848-3696. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 4 to 5 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.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. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library. 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

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, OCT. 10 

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.  

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Colloquium with Stephen R.J. Sheppard on “Global Warming in Everyday Places: Localizing, Spatializing, and Visualizing Climate Change” at 1 p.m. at Wurster Hall, Room 315A, UC Campus. All welcome. laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium 

Pools for Berkeley meets to discuss the possibilities of an aquatic center at West Campus at 7 p.m. at City of Berkeley Corporation Yard, Public Meeting Room, 1326 Allston Way. All welcome. Childcare for ages 5 and up. www.poolsforberkeley.org 

“Matewan” A film about labor and race in a West Virginia mining town at 8 p.m. at Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shatttuck Ave. www.thelonghaul.org 

An Introduction to Marxism, a free class for beginners and students at every level from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 595-7417.  

CodePink Picket in front of the Marine Recruiting Station, 64 Shattuck Ave. from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. 524-2776. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. 548-9840. 

THURSDAY, OCT. 11 

“Hidden History of the East Bay: Photographs Tell Towns’ Stories” at 1 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022. www.museumca.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. 

35th Anniversary Celebration of Harbor House with Dr. Tony Campolo from 6 to 9 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway at 27th St., Oakland. Tickets are $30-$40, available from Harbor House, 1811, 11th Avenue, Oakland. 534-0165. 

University of California Press Book Sale from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 2120 Berkeley Way, one block north of University, between Shattuck and Oxford. www.ucpress.edu 

Jack London Aquatic Center Community Challenge and fundraiser to inspire diverse communiteis to participate in water sports, at 5 p.m. at Jack London Aquatic Center. For information call 208-6067. 

Food + Farming Film “Our Daily Bread” and “We Feed the World” with San Francisco area breadbakers Steve Sullivan, founder Acme Breads, and Julie Cummins, CUESA, at 6:40 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. at Arch.  

Benefit for Sickle Cell Disease and Thalassemia Programs at Children’s Hospital & Research Center with an Evening Under the Stars at Chabot Space & Science Center. Tickets are $40-$90. 428-3452. www.childrenshospitaloakland.org 

“How to Have a Healthy Childbirth” at 5:30 p.m. at Pharmaca, 1744 Solano Ave. 527-8929. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755.  

FRIDAY, OCT. 12 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Regine Spector, on “United States-Russian Relations: A New Cold War?” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

“Planet Earth: Pole to Pole, Mountains and Deep Ocean” A Conscientious Projector Film at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. 841-4824. www.bfuu.org  

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. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 11:45 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. atUCB Unit 3 Dorms, 2400 Durant Ave. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

SATURDAY, OCT. 13 

African People’s Solidarity Day with speakers from South Africa, Sierra Leone and the U.S. on conditions faced by African people around the world. Sat. from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Sun. from 1 to 5:30 p.m. at Beebe Memorial Cathedral, 3900 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Sliding scale donation $10-$25. 625-1106. www.uhurusolidarity.org 

“Blood Money: Campaign Dollars and Health Care Policy in California” A panel discussion at 10 a.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. at 27th. Sponsored by the California Clean Money Campaign. www.caclean.org 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland uptown to the Lake to discover Art Deco landmarks. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Paramount Theater at 2025 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Paws on the Square and a Katrina Pet Reunion from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Jack London Square, Oakland. Owner-Dog Look-Alike Contest, trick and costume contests for dogs and cats, and information on adoption and training. Sponsored by Hopalong Animal Rescue. For more informaion see www.jacklondonsquare.com 

“Berkeley in the 1930s” An exhibition exploring the development of transportation, businesses, and industries. Come see how Berkeley fared during The Depression at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St. 848-0181. 

The Great War Society meets to discuss “American Volunteers in the Canadian Army-1914-17” by S. Compagno at 10:30 a.m. at 640 Arlington Ave. 527-7118. 

Keep Our Water Clean: Pharmaceutical Take-Back Campaign Bring in your over-the-counter medications and supplements as well as non-controlled prescriptions. Bring medication in original containers with personal information marked out. Bring mercury thermometers in two zipper bags to prevent breaks and spills and receive a free digital thermometer in exchange. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Whole Foods Market, 3000 Telegraph Ave. For more infomation see www.teleosis.org  

School House Creek Commons Fall Clean Up and Sowing of Wild Flower Seeds at 9 a.m. at Virginia and Curtis streets, at the eastern end of the Berkeley Adult School. If the weather has cooled enough, we also hope to be planting a slope of a hill with plugs of native grasses. There’s a play area for kids, and coffee and snacks will be served. 559-8368. 

Codornices Creek Watershed Tour with different speakers along various points of the creek. Meet at 9 a.m. near the mouth of Codornices Creek at Albany Waterfront Park, where Buchanan St. dead ends north of Golden Gate Fields, west of I-580. There will be a complimentary lunch afterwards. Please bring your own water bottle to save plastic. RSVP required 540-6669.  

Celebrate Cerrito Creek by Making Art Join Friends of Five Creeks and environmental artist Zach Pine making art with natural materials on restored Cerrito Creek from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the south edge of the El Cerrito Plaza parking lot between Cornell and Kains, adjacent to Saturday El Cerrito Plaza Farmers Market. Free, all are welcome. 848-9358. www.fivecreeks.org  

Help Restore San Pablo Creek in El Sobrante from 9 a.m. ato 12:30 p.m. Sponsored by REI and SPAWNERS. Tools provided. To register call 665-3538. www.spawners.org 

“Thirteen Ways to Stop Global Warming and Have a Beautiful Garden” A workshop with Alrie Middlebrook from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at The Watershed Nursery, 155 Tamalpais Rd. Cost is $25-$45. 548-4714. www.thewatershednursery.com  

Autumn Arachnids Learn about the mysteries of the spider and then hunt for orb weavers, jumping spiders, wolf spiders and more at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Urban FIRE Walk-A-Thon A benefit for fund a Microloan Progam in Oakland. Meet at the Boathouse at Oakland’s Lake Merritt at 9 a.m. Donation $50. 655-1304. www.urbanvoice.org 

Indian Statue Day and Festival from noon to 5 p.m. in downtown Point Richmond. Music, arts and crafts, dress up your dog contest and a tour of the point’s Historic District. South of the Border luncheon from noon to 2 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St. 234-4219. 

Celebrating Indigenous People’s Day at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park with a presentation of Native American arts and music at 2 p.m. at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. Free. 532-9142. 

“Telling Tales” Storytelling Festival from noon to 5 p.m. at Berkwood Hedge School, 1809 Bancroft Way. Cost is $5, $15 per family. 883-6990. 

NAACP Berkeley Branch meets at 1 p.m. at 2108 Russell St. All are welcome. 

“Wal-Mart: The Face of 21st Century Capitalism” with Prof. Nelson Lichtenstein, UCSB, at 7 p.m. at Alamda Free Library, 1550 Oak St. Alameda. Conference on “Labor, Wal-Mart and China” begins at 1 p.m. Sponsored by California Healthy Communities Network and Alameda Public Affairs Forum. 814-9592. www.alamedaforum.org 

Vegetarian Cooking Class “Sensational Soul Food” Learn how to prepare Smokin’ Barbecued Tofu, Hoppin’ John (Black-eyed Peas and Rice) with Sauteed Greens, Spicy Okra Rice Soup, Creamy Vegan Macaroni & Cheese, Sweet Bread Pudding from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro, Oakland. Cost is $45, plus $5 materials fee. To register call 531-COOK. 

Pancake Breakfast and Tiffany Tour of the Louis Comfort Tiffany glass mosaic mural triptych, “Te Deum Laudamus,” from 8 a.m. to noon at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Cost is $7. 465-4793. www.lakemerrittumc.org  

“Sogetsu Ikebana Flower Show” Demonstration at 1 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022.  

“Strong at the Heart: How it Feels to Heal from Sexual Abuse” with author Carolyn Lehamn at 1 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

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.  

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, OCT. 14 

Spice of Life Festival in North Berkeley’s gourmet Ghetto, notrh Shattuck Ave., from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with product demonstrations, a culinary stage and live music. www.spiceoflifefestival.com 

Reptile Rap Meet our resident snake and turtle friends with an interactive talk for the whole family, from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Friends of the Alameda Wildlife Refuge Workday Help us prepare habitat for California Least Terns, which breed at the refuge. Meet at 9 a.m. at the main refuge gate at the northwest corner of former Alameda Naval Air Station, Alameda. Sponsored by Golden Gate Audubon Society. 843-2222. 

STAND Fundraiser and Garden Reception from 4 to 6 p.m. in the garden of a grand 115 year old Queen Anne Victorian in the heart of Temescal. 449 49th St., corner of 49th and Clarke. Speakers are Jeff D. Hoffman, the land-use/environmental attorney representing STAND, and Jeff Norman, Temescal historian. Cost is $25, $40 per couple. 655-3841. 

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 

7th Annual Crabby Chef Challenge benefiting Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Spenger's, 1919 Fourth St. Cooking competition begins at 2 p.m. 845-7771. 

The Friends of the Kensington Library Booksale from noon to 4 p.m. in the parking lot behind the library at 59 Arlington Blvd. A silent auction with ‘finds’ for book collectors from noon to 2 p.m. 524-3043.  

“The Revived Peace Process: Opportunities and Pitfalls” with Yossi Alpher, co-editor of bitterlemons, a web-based Israeli-Palestinian political dialogue magazine and columnist for Peace Now, at 7 p.m. at Congregation Netivot Shalom, 1316 University Ave. Donation $10. 525-3582. www.bridgestoisrael-berkeley.org 

“The Joy of Vegan Baking: Compassionate Cooks’ Traditional Treats & Sinful Sweets” Book party with author Colleen Patrick-Goudreau of Compassionate Cooks at 4:30 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro, Oakland. 531-2665. 

“Sogetsu Ikebana Flower Show” Demonstration at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022.  

Architecture Tour of the Oakland Museum of California Meet at 1 p.m. at the Admissions Desk, second level, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

“China Blue” Film screening and discussion of the conditions of China’s workers at 10 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 595-7417. www.tifcss.org 

“Unitarian Universalism, Why It Matters” with Bill Hamilton-Holway at 10 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

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 

Tibetan Buddhism with Hugh Joswick on “Dream and Illusion” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

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 

MONDAY, OCT. 15  

“New Public Policy Perspectives and the Power of Engaged Citizens” with Robert B. Reich, David L. Kirp, and Carol Chetkovich at 6 p.m. at FSM Cafe at Moffitt Library, UC Campus. fsm-info@ 

library.berkeley.edu 

Pumpkin Painting for Children at 3:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Books and Ideas Group discusses “The Poe Shadow” at 1:15 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. 981-5190. 

Teen Chess Club meets at 3:30 p.m. at the Claremont Branch of the Berkeley Public Library, Benvenue at Ashby. 981-6280. 

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 

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 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., Oct. 9, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www. 

ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Oct. 10, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6346. TDD: 981-6345.  

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Oct. 10, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5426.  

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Oct. 10, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. 981-6740.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Oct. 11, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7410.