Organized by KSFO radio personality Melanie Morgan, chair of Move America Forward, pro-war, anti-Islamic and anti-immigration demonstrators converged on the Berkeley Recruiting Center today (Wednesday), caravanning into town with their SUVs and Harleys decked out in American flags to face off with Code Pink, the anti-war group that has held vigils in front of the 64 Shattuck Square Recruitment Office for three weeks. 

The mostly female demonstrators from Code Pink and their allies—Sing for Peace, the World Can’t Wait, Berkeley High students, the Ecumenical Peace Institute—mustered around 125 demonstrators, but their message spoken into hand-held bull horns was sometimes drowned out by the pro-war side’s superior sound system; the 250 or so mostly male counter-demonstrators clearly outnumbered Code Pink’s participants. 

The pro-war counter-demonstrators came from as far as Santa Rosa and as close as the UC Berkeley campus; they represented groups including the American Legion, the Gathering of Eagles, Eagles Up and the UC Berkeley College Republicans. 

When the pro-war side sang God Bless America, the anti-war people sang, “God Save America.” The pro-warriors called the protesters “commies” and the pro-peace folks called the counter-demonstrators “killers.” 

As the crowd grew and the rhetoric of the two sides escalated, Berkeley Police separated the pro and counter war demonstrators, with the pro-war side, which held permits, allowed to remain on the west side of the street in front of the recruiting office and the anti-war side, which held no permits, guided across the street. 

One young man, who did not want to be identified, was yelling “Code Pink traitors,” along with a group of counterdemonstrators. Asked what he meant, he told the Planet that it’s “because Code Pink is against what our country’s trying to do—to get freedom for people.” 

Nearby Dan Baptista also supported the war. “We left in the first Gulf War without finishing the job,” he said. “If we don’t finish it, we’ll have to go back again in 10 years.” 

Judy Christopher of Code Pink had brought her baby to the demonstration. “As a mother, I don’t want my son to grow up to kill people,” she said. 

As the demonstration wound down, Code Pink organizer Zanne Joi said she thought it had been a success. “We’ve shut down the recruiting office,” she said. 

On Thursday, the noontime demonstration at the recruiting center will be hosted by the Middle East Children’s Alliance. 

A 31-year-old Berkeley mother has been charged with murdering her 9-year-old son. 

Misti Mina Hassan was already in custody on a mandatory psychiatric suicide watch at Highland Hospital, where she was formally arrested Friday. 

According to Berkeley Police spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, Hassan told a friend she had “killed her son with Klonopin.” 

Manufactured by Roche Pharmaceuticals, Klonopin is the trademarked name for the compound known generically as clonazepam, which is usually prescribed for treatment of panic disorder and seizures. The drug functions as a central nervous system depressant, according to dispensing information provided to physicians by Roche. 

Celia Underwood, who lives in an apartment in the same building and who has been maintaining a curbside vigil at the shrine on the sidewalk out front, said Hassan told neighbors she was also taking Effexor, an anti-depressant. 

Underwood said the murder and suicide attempt followed a boyfriend’s decision to break off a five-year relationship with Hassan. “He came Tuesday and wasn’t here very long,” she said. 

The man’s spouse told apartment house residents of the relationship when she came by the building over the weekend to bring flowers for the shrine, Underwood said. 

Police arrived at Hassan’s apartment at the rear of 3011 Shattuck at 9:18 a.m. Wednesday to find her bleeding from the neck, arms and wrists. 

The body of her son, Amir, was found clad in pajamas on a bed in the front room—his body unmarked. 

An autopsy by the Alameda County Coroner’s officer determined the boy had died 18 to 36 hours before police arrived. 

In a prepared statement Friday, Sgt. Kusmiss said that the cause of death has yet to be formally determined pending the completion of toxicology tests. 

“There is probable cause to believe that young Amir died at the hands of his mother,” said Sgt. Kusmiss in the statement. “Detectives have based the arrest on Ms. Hassan’s statements to witnesses, Berkeley Fire Department rescue personnel, as well as statements provided by Ms. Hassan to BPD Homicide detectives during interviews in recent days.” 

Other self-incriminating evidence surfaced after investigators examined the suspect’s writings which they had recovered during a search of the home. 

“Content of the writing is also consistent with the crime scene as detectives found it,” Sgt. Kusmiss said. 

One Berkeley Police investigator arrived at the scene late Friday morning to search Hassan’s car, which was parked across the street. 

The investigator ordered a camera-carrying reporter to leave, threatening to close the sidewalk with crime scene tape if he didn’t comply. Other pedestrians were walking by without similar admonitions. 

Growing shrine 

The sidewalk shrine outside the apartment building continued to grow Monday, with friends, neighbors and others offering a poignant profusion of flowers, cards, books, toys and photos in honor of the slain youth. 

“Hello, hows heaven is god real or fake,” begins a letter from a classmate. “you should really see are school library its full of note, Photos, Pictures.”  

Students have decorated the library to honor their fallen schoolmate. 

Among the offerings on the Shattuck Avenue sidewalk were a wide-ranging assortment of stuffed animals and countless candles—including glass containers commemorating Catholic saints and one in a Hebrew-lettered metal container. 

Cards, letters and drawings adorn the fence, along with a small flock of yellow rubber duckies. Among the more somber offerings was a copy of Night, the memoir by Elie Wiesel, describing his teenage experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. 

Underwood has maintained a continuing vigil from a chair at the end of the sidewalk, talking with passers-by like Steffon White, a Fifth Street resident who works in the area. 

“Something like this is always tragic,” said White. “If you have young children, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could do this.” 

“She wanted to go back to graduate school,” said Underwood. “But then her boyfriend came over Tuesday night to break it off.” 

Late Monday morning, friends were helping her erect a large blue plastic tarp above the shrine to protect it from the rains which have sprinkled the Bay Area in recent days.  

Neighbors hope the skies are clear Sunday, when they will hold a pot luck barbecue in the back yard behind the apartment building from noon until dusk. 

Malong Pendar, who owns the Taste of Africa restaurant next door, is helping with the preparations.

Michi Uchida’s piercing black eyes and gnarled fingers testify to a community torn apart by World War II and the resurrection that followed in its aftermath. 

Michi, like hundreds of other East Bay Nisei, or second-generation Japanese Americans, is a living example of determination, of survival amidst suffering, humiliation and pain. 

When historian Donna Graves introduced California’s first effort at documenting its Japantowns to Berkeley’s Landmarks Preser-vation Commission recently, snippets from Michi’s life and the lives of many others like her were part of the presentation. 

“There were dozens and dozens of Japantowns,” Graves said. “But only the ones which had a critical mass of community institutions made it to the final list. The ultimate aim of our project is really tying a story to these places, to make a connection of the history to the place that was ruptured by World War II.” 

A bill signed by former governor Gray Davis in 2001 paved the way for a more active effort to preserve California’s Japantowns. 

A push from the California Japanese American Community Leadership Council and the state Civil Liberties Public Education Program, respectively, led to extensive research, surveys and a website (www.californiajapantown.org) that tied the pieces of the puzzle together. 

“Most people don’t even know that Berkeley had a thriving Japantown, don’t realize there were so many stories from their own town,” Graves told the Planet Friday. “A lot of buildings people pass by everyday were occupied by Japanese immigrant families at one point. But most don’t announce their ‘Japaneseness’ and have gone on to shelter new people and uses.” 

Preserving California’s Japantowns—the organization spearheaded by Graves and Jill Shiraki—continues to dig deeper to unearth every story behind these anonymous structures. 

“Little did we know that the Japanese grew flowers on what is now the Salvation Army at 1822 University Ave. and Auto California at 1806 San Pablo Ave.,” Graves said. 

According to Graves, California had the largest population of Nikkei (people of Japanese descent) in the U.S. just before WWII. 

“Yet their historical presence is often invisible in cities and towns where Nikkei farmed, fished, built businesses and established institutions,” she said. “Communities, as well as individual lives, suffered the effects of the war. Very few Nihonmachi [Japanese communities] were able to regain their pre-war vitality and many suffered yet again from urban renewal programs in the 1960s that destroyed what was left of Japantown.” 

Unlike some cities which have had most physical traces of their pre-WWII Japantowns erased, Berkeley has more than 60 structures listed in the pre-war directories still standing. 

Decades ago clusters of Christian churches, Buddhist temples and Japanese schools jostled for space along with mom-and-pop stores, florists, shoe repair markets and cleaners in Berkeley. 

“This is where I was born,” pointed out Michi on Friday, peering into the stained storefront of the former University Laundry at 2530 Shattuck Ave. almost seven decades since she was last there. “The Santa Fe and Key Route trains chugged by on Shattuck while my brother and I played inside. The business was pretty good as my dad was able to send four of my sisters to Japan and bring them back here. That’s four round-trip plane tickets.” 

The Fujii family shared a kitchen, dining and living room upstairs along with the Kimbaras, Imamuras and Tokunagas. 

“My fiance and I were attending UC Berkeley,” Michi said. “We had no plans to get married immediately but then Pearl Harbor happened. President Roosevelt sent out the Executive Order 9066 and we decided we would get married so that we could stay together.” 

Since cameras were confiscated from Japanese families, the only documentation Michi had of her wedding day was a portrait taken by photographer Dorothea Lange, who was on assignment to document the evacuation of California’s Japanese Americans.  

“But we didn’t get a copy and we never saw Lange again,” Michi said. “One of my friends spotted the picture in Lange’s collection in Washington, D.C., almost 17 years later. I was able to get a copy by paying $3.”  

Taeko Oda, whose father-in-law owned Oda Eggs and Poultry at 1744 McGee Ave., was also a university student around the same time as Michi. 

“I had six units left to graduate,” she said. “When December 7 happened, I was in the library studying for the finals. The face of the enemy became Japanese. I was so frightened I picked up my books and left.” 

Like Michi, Taeko was also relocated to Topaz, Utah.  

“We had to sell all our belongings at a loss,” she said. “It was just so demeaning. The camps were smelly, dirty and there was no privacy. I survived the ordeal because I was young. Fifty years later I was awarded my degree.” 

Preservation efforts have started with the former Obata Studio and Art Store at 2727 Telegraph Ave.—once used as the workspace of UC Berkeley professor and renowned painter Chiura Obata—which is being nominated for local landmarking by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 

“I don’t think it’s possible to landmark all 60 locations,” Graves said. “But I think it’s important to point out the poignant and powerful stories behind each building.” 

After Pearl Harbor was attacked, shots were fired through the window of the art studio. 

“People threw garbage on our steps at night but never showed their face,” said Yuri Kodani, 80, Obata’s daughter. 

“When the war began, we had to sell everything and evacuate to the relocation camps in Tanforan. We lived in stables. But my father’s students and ex-students were very kind to us. Robert Gordon Sproul stored his paintings in the university and we got them back after the war.” 

Once a bustling storefront for the popular Blue Nile restaurant, the Obata studio will open as the Muse Art House and Cafe in January. 

“In a way it’s coming full circle,” Kodani said. “I am glad that the essence of the place will remain the same.” 

Image courtesy Michi Uchida 

George and Michi Uchida pose for photographer Dorothea Lange during their wedding on April 27, 1942. The Uchidas left for the Tanforan evacuation camps the next day.

After protests from West Berkeley residents and small business owners, the West Berkeley Community Benefits District (WBCBD) may be off the table.  

A city-run meeting tonight (Tuesday) will focus on the WBCBD, a tax assessment district, or possibly other iterations of the plan that has been under discussion by the West Berkeley Business Alliance for more than a year. 

The meeting, slated to run from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. or later, is at Rosa Parks Elementary School, at Allston Way and Eighth Street.  

While a postcard sent to some West Berkeley residents and businesses by Southwest Berkeley Council-member Darryl Moore’s office said “the West Berkeley Business Alliance (WBBA) has withdrawn its recent proposal to create a Community Benefits District,” WBBA consultant Marco LiMandri of San Diego-based New City America refused to confirm this.  

“Go to the meeting tomorrow night and you’ll find out,” LiMandri told the Planet in a brief phone interview Monday.  

Michael Goldin, chair of the WBBA steering committee, did not return Daily Planet calls. 

The tax assessment district, as conceived by the WBBA, would stretch roughly from University Avenue to the Oakland border and from San Pablo Avenue to the bay, encompassing all property owners within it. The property owners would pay an assessment according to their size, with some relief for Bayer and the largest property owners in the area.  

Similarly, the decision about whether to create the district would be weighted according to property size, with large landholders such as Bayer and San Rafael-based Wareham Development having the lion’s share of the decision-making power. Homeowners would have had a collective 2 percent of decision-making power. 

West Berkeley Concerned Neighbors (WBCN), which has held meetings with up to 100 attendees, formed in August to counter what they say is a plan where residents and small business voices would be overwhelmed by large commercial interests if a community benefits district were created. 

Sarah Klise of WBCN told the Planet on Monday that she had been trying for three weeks to get the community formally represented at the city-sponsored meeting. She said that around 11 a.m. Monday she reached Acting Economic Development Director Michael Caplan, who told her she would be given five minutes on the program. The West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies and the WBBA will also have speakers. 

In addition to speakers from the various city departments including police, Health and Human Services, public works and economic development, the program will consist of people representing the other Business Improvement Districts in the city.  

The general public will be alloted two different time periods to comment. 

Mayor Tom Bates’ Chief of Staff Cisco DeVries said in an e-mail to the Planet that the mayor is not planning to attend. 

Asked about the proposed district on Monday, Caplan told the Planet: “They basically shelved the idea.”  

Caplan distanced himself from the decision-making. “It’s not my proposal,” he said. “It’s [the WBBA] proposal.” 

The WBBA has contracted with LiMandri for $60,000, which includes a $10,000 grant from the city. Community members have complained that the WBBA planning meetings, which have gone on for more than a year, have excluded them. City staff and Moore and his staff have been invited to meetings. 

During a break from jury duty on Monday, Moore told the Daily Planet that he prefers that residents are not part of a future West Berkeley district. Moore described tonight’s meeting as a way to collectively look at options. “We’re learning as we go along,” he said, predicting that the West Berkeley district will eventually look like one of the other existing business improvement districts in the city, based either on property ownership or on business ownership. 

Caplan said the WBBA is not going to give up on its concerns, pointing to homelessness, graffiti and crime. These are the issues that will be discussed at the meeting, he said. 

But that’s not what the community is most concerned about, according to Klise. In early iterations of the Community Benefits District plan, the WBBA had indicated that some of the funds collected would be directed toward looking at revising West Berkeley zoning. The neighbors reacted with concerns for gentrification and five-story buildings sprouting next to their single-family homes. 

But Caplan said that discussion would not be held tonight. “They’re not dealing with land use [at the meeting],” he said, arguing that this would take “a whole other meeting … There’s no land-use conspiracy—at least from the staff point of view.” 

Klise said she thinks it is important for community people to show up in large numbers at the meeting tonight. 

“We do live in Berkeley,” she said. “It doesn’t look good for 10 of the largest developers to be all calling the shots versus 200-300 [community] people.”  

If Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums has lost significant political support in the city since the June 2006 election—as at least one local media outlet has reported—that sentiment was not immediately apparent at a standing-room-only Town Hall meeting at North Oakland’s Peralta Elementary School last Saturday morning. 

Given the opportunity to address the mayor for one minute on any topic of their choice, some 50 residents voiced concerns ranging from crime and violence to residential and commercial development, but only one woman chose to criticize the mayor’s office itself, saying that she had not been successful in attempts to meet with Dellums. 

Meanwhile, in a 45-minute address at the beginning of the meeting, Dellums spoke specifically on the crime issue that is the concern of many Oakland citizens, saying that “people ought to be able to have a sense of security and peace in their neighborhoods. That’s fundamental.” But Dellums said that “having more police by itself is not the answer. The police cannot do this job alone. There needs to be a cooperative effort between the community and the police.”  

And to a suggestion by a North Oakland resident that the police force should be increased to 1,000 or more—well above the current 803 authorized officers—the mayor said that Oakland residents “have got to be willing to put your money where your mouth is” and “assume responsibility” for the “budgetary and tax consequences” of such a police personnel increase. 

In his speech, Dellums also outlined several programs and policy initiatives he said he would be formally announcing over the next few weeks (see sidebar). 

Saturday’s meeting, held in lieu of District 1 Councilmember Jane Brunner’s regular bi-monthly community advisory meeting, was the third of the charter-mandated town hall gatherings that Oakland mayors have been required to hold since the strong- mayor form of government was put in place.  

The first meeting was held earlier this year at Frick Middle School in Councilmember Desley Brooks’ 6th District. The second was held at DeFremery Park in Councilmember Nancy Nadel’s 3rd District. A fourth community meeting, held at the Bridges Academy last June after Dellums walked down the Fruitvale International Boulevard business district to speak with merchants and citizens, apparently did not count as a charter-mandated town hall. 

Typical of the citizen comments was Don Lowrey, president of the Temescal Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council, who said that “police in Oakland are getting frustrated because there are not enough of them on the street to answer the calls. We don’t want a police state in Oakland, but we want enough police who can deal with citizens competently.” 

Lowrey also suggested that crime prevention efforts in Oakland intervene with students in high school to keep them from being caught up in the crime and violence cycle. Lee Edwards, Temescal NCPC Vice President, agreed that the police department was understaffed, saying too many were being dropped out of the police academy.  

“There needs to be early intervention when it looks like police candidates might be dropping out, and somebody should work with them and help them pass the course,” Edwards said. “It’s easier to teach them than to flunk them out.”  

But Michael Mechanic, a North Oakland resident, Peralta parent and East Bay Express editor, said that simply increasing the number of street patrol officers was not the best solution to Oakland’s crime problem. Citing the fact that Oakland has “one arson investigator working part-time,” Mechanic said that the Oakland Police Department “needs to increase its investigative functions.”  

While several residents expressed concerns about development issues along Telegraph Avenue, where the city is attempting to put in higher-rise commercial buildings to support the vision of Telegraph as a transportation corridor, others said they were disturbed by the proposed new Children’s Hospital complex planned for the hospital’s current location on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in North Oakland. 

“I live 40 feet away from the hospital, and we didn’t find out about the new proposal until the last minute,” Ted Franklin said. Saying that the planned hospital expansion would force him out of his home, Franklin said that, “I won’t be able to move.” 

And Beverly Guyton said that “up until recently, I was concerned about the crime problem in North Oakland, but after I learned of Children’s Hospital’s plan to put up a 12-story hospital in our neighborhood, now that’s consuming me.”  

Guyton suggested that the hospital, instead, build a portion of its planned expansion as an annex near Highland Hospital “so that the people in East Oakland who have children don’t have to drive all the way out to North Oakland to get service.” 

And while no resident made specific complaints about Dellums himself, several praised him and his work. 

“I voted for you all my life, back when to when you were in Congress,” Bob Brockl said. “I’ve never regretted it.” 

In his remarks, Dellums talked about the frustration of trying to bring Oakland’s uniformed police officer strength up to its authorized 803. 

“We need more police officers,” the mayor said. “We are currently at 730, which leaves us at about 70 under strength.” Dellums said that last year, 119 new officers graduated from the Oakland Police Academy.  

“But in that same year,” he added, “60 officers retired, 40 moved on to other agencies, and 10 were terminated. That left us with a net gain of nine new police officers. That’s not enough.” 

Dellums also said that while the city is conducting a heavy recruiting drive for new officers, half of every 1,000 recruits drop out from the beginning, with another 400 dropping out after the department conducts its pre-academy psychological, psychiatric, and physical tests. Of the 100 recruits that actually enter the academy, “50 percent wash out, leaving 50 police officers out of the original 1,000 recruits.”  

The mayor called that a significant problem that the city was facing in bringing its police force up to full strength.  

“We need to be creative to figure this out,” he said, suggesting that the city may partner with local community colleges to develop pre-academy courses for potential police recruits to prepare them for entering the police academy. “It’s a difficult problem. We’re trying, but it’s not easy.” 

Initiatives Announced by Dellums 

1. A public-private collaboration with PG&E to install and replace lights at Oakland “hot spots” where night-time crime is the most prevalent.  

The first targets will be in Beat 6X (a North Oakland-West Oakland triangle bounded by Adeline and 40th streets and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard) and Beat 34X (an East Oakland square bounded by International Boulevard, 82nd and 90th avenues, and Sunnyside Street), with other areas phased in as the initiative moves forward. Initiative to begin “within a few days.” 

2. Rethinking development of the old Oakland Army Base to be “strategy driven” and “vision driven” rather than “project driven” as it has been in the past.  

Mayor to report to the City Council in the near future with a new vision for the Oakland Army Base to produce a minimum of 10,000 jobs with a mix-used strategy that recognizes the “vital maritime uses” of the area close to the Port of Oakland, as well as a regional shopping center, office space, and “creative industry.” Dellums proposes to bring this vision to developers and ask them to shape their development projects based on its parameters. No timetable given on when the vision package would be completed and presented to council. 

3. Establish a partnership between the City of Oakland, the Oakland Unified School District, Alameda County, and philanthropic organizations to “establish a health clinic in every middle school and high school” in Oakland within five years. 

The clinics, similar to what is already available at Berkeley High School, would include health care programs, mental health counseling, and family services. An announcement of the first phase of the project, to include both naming the targeted schools and identifying the initial philanthropic money, will be made in a few weeks. 

4. Establish a World Trade Center in Oakland that will encourage national and international trade and investment in the city, and “ultimately generate employment for city residents.”  

An announcement of the first phase of the project will be made in several weeks. 

5. The San Francisco Foundation and the East Bay Foundation have committed between $350,000 and $500,000 in seed money to create an office of public-private partnership within the mayor’s office to assist the mayor in “going after philanthropic resources for the city.” 

Dellums’ wife, Cynthia Dellums, will chair an advisory committee of citizen, government, and business interests to assist in this project. Announcement on the creation of the advisory committee to be made shortly. 

6. Conversations are currently being held with the governor’s office to “carve out a specific geographic area in Oakland to come in with state resources to do a block-by-block revitalization.”  

The governor’s office has already made a similar commitment to create such an intervention in a 70-block area along Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles. An announcement on the Oakland program will be made within the next few days. 

Celebrated for her art and her activism, Pele deLappe spent a lifetime fighting for racial justice, women’s equality and workers’ rights. 

On Oct. 1, at 91, DeLappe died peacefully in her Petaluma home of complications from a stroke, surrounded by friends and family.  

She was a fourth-generation San Franciscan who lived in Berkeley for many years. Her lithographs, frescos, etchings and paintings of everyday people and jazz musicians have been shown in galleries from San Francisco to New York, and can be found in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, at the San Francisco headquarters of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and on the walls of modest living rooms and kitchens of friends and fellow activists.  

DeLappe sketched wherever she was, said her friend Mary Fromer, who worked with deLappe at People’s World, a newspaper affiliated with the Communist Party. 

“She would draw characters in a meeting or in a courtroom,” Fromer said. 

The people she drew were “ordinary people—ordinary shop girls,” said Nina Sheldon, deLappe’s daughter. Among the lithographic reproductions scattered liberally throughout her autobiography, A passionate journey through Art & the Red press, is a depiction of a 1945 picket line at the Uptown Theater (city unknown), where African-American and white picketers are carrying signs condemning Jim Crow and racist hiring policies. 

Age did not slow deLappe’s mind or her art. “She was still sketching until she had her big stroke” a few weeks before she died, Fromer said. She had shows at the Susan Teller Gallery in New York as recently as 1997 and 1999 and at the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco in 1999. In 2006 she created the lithograph, Lost in America, in response to Hurricane Katrina. 

As a young teenager, deLappe studied art at the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute) and went to New York to study at the Art Students’ League, when she was about 16.  

At 18, she returned to San Francisco, and participated in the 1934 San Francisco Waterfront Strike, not only as a picketer, but also by contributing her drawings and cartoons to the striking workers’ newspapers. She was arrested twice. It was around that time that she joined the Communist Party. 

She would leave the party twice. The second time was in 1990. In her autobiography she complained about the party’s lack of democracy at that point, and about “intolerance of differences of opinion by the party people back east—and some local ones.” 

Conn “Ringo” Hallinan, a People’s World editor in the mid 1970s, remembers deLappe’s quick wit, sense of humor and flashes of temper. This was her second stint with the paper. The first had been from 1943 to1949, when the paper laid her off for economic reasons.  

After leaving the PW the first time, deLappe became an editor of a new, short-lived newspaper, the West Oakland Beacon. In her autobiography she said she was the only white on the staff of the newspaper that was to be the “the Black voice of West Oakland and counter irritant to Sen. William Knowland’s reactionary Oakland Tribune.”  

From around 1953 to 1972, deLappe worked as a designer for Moore’s Business Forms in Emeryville. During that time she struggled to obtain pay equal to her male counterparts. 

Back at People’s World in the 1970s, deLappe was features editor and jazz critic and contributed her drawings and cartoons. Her drawings were simple but able to express both emotion and politics, Hallinan said, recalling a drawing of John Mitchell, the attorney general who engineered the Watergate break-in, “looking incredibly evil.” 

At People’s World, deLappe’s was “not a sectarian approach to culture,” Hallinan said. Her critics, however, thought she should be creating what they considered stereotypical “true” workers’ culture, “but she was never an ideologue, never a narrow sectarian,” he said. 

DeLappe’s drawings were also insightful. Hallinan remembers when he had hurt his back and deLappe joined him one afternoon as his three young boys crowded into bed with him to watch Star Trek on TV. 

Several days later deLappe gave Hallinan a drawing. “It was me sitting in bed with the TV on, with Mr. Spock on TV, with each of the kids exactly what they were. Somehow she picked up on the personality of the kids,” he said. 

Besides being smart, she was fun. “She told raunchy jokes with style and could drink me under the table,” Hallinan said. “We’d go to these meetings and get terribly bored, go to a local bar and then go back to the meeting.” 

DeLappe’s sense of humor was with her until her death. In the last five years of her mother’s life, daughter Nina Sheldon and her mother became very close and shared many moments of hilarity, Sheldon said. 

“We just laughed. Nobody was funnier than my mother,” she said. Mostly the two found today’s political situation awful enough to be funny. “Things can be so horrible that you have to laugh—like some of the insane things that Bush and Cheney did,” Sheldon said.  

DeLappe’s keen interest in politics and her activism never left her. Recently, in her wheelchair “she was out there in a picket line, holding up a sign against the war in Iraq,” Sheldon said. 

She would stay current with what was going on. “She’d get up in the morning and have to listen to Amy Goodman [host of the progressive news magazine Democracy Now! heard on Pacifica and community radio stations],” Sheldon said. 

She’d read the San Francisco Chronicle and “howl with rage” and write letters to the editor. 

The last article she wrote was a review in July for the Berkeley Daily Planet of The Letters of Jessica Mitford, edited by Peter Sussman. Mitford was deLappe’s longtime friend and Berkeley neighbor. She ends the piece: “How I miss—and long for— Decca’s take on these parlous times.”  

DeLappe found great love late in life, Sheldon said. In 1992, she moved from Berkeley to Petaluma to be close to painter and graphic artist Byron Randall, whom she had known for a half-century. 

Randall “was the most serious love of her life. She was 70!” Sheldon said. Randall died in 1999. 

In Petaluma, “she developed a whole new circle of friends,” Fromer said. She participated in art classes and workshops.  

“She was fortunate to die at home, with Jon, Mary [Jon and Mary Fromer] and me singing the Internationale in three-part harmony,” Sheldon said. 

Hers “is the kind of life that you want to live,” Hallinan said. “She went through personal tragedies—several marriages and a son who struggles with mental illness. She never let the difficulties in her life derail her. And she never stopped having fun.” 

A public memorial is being planned. The date and location are not yet set. 

Photograph: Pele deLappe in a 1997 photograph.

Two key sections of the proposed new downtown plan come up for votes Wednesday, chapters that could help define the future look of Berkeley’s urban core. 

Four days later, the public will have a chance to weigh in on those proposals and the rest of the work of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee during the committee’s last public workshop. 

While one of the chapters up for consideration Wednesday looks at the handling of streetscapes and open space, the other looks at historic structures and the design of new buildings. 

By combining new design and the future of the older buildings that now dominate the downtown streetscape, the second chapter has proved to be the most controversial. 

Approved unanimously by a subcommittee drawn in equal numbers from DAPAC and the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), the 14-page proposal is certain to spark controversy. 

A proposed revision signed by Matt Taecker, the city planning staffer hired with UC Berkeley funds to help prepare the plan, was rejected by the subcommittee. 

One central conflict concerns the city skyline, with staff—backed by Mayor Tom Bates—consistently pushing for a higher, denser downtown than many DAPAC members seem to want. 

The DAPAC/LPC subcommittee’s chapter stresses the importance of building height controls, while the staff has repeatedly pushed for a plan which originally envisioned 14 high-rises each 16 stories tall, though the number has dwindled in subsequent iterations of the proposed chapter on land use. 

Another source of contention has been the subcommittee’s desire to single out downtown sub-areas with concentrations of historic buildings for special protection. 

Their draft for the chapter also proposes creating a historic district for the central Shattuck Avenue business district which would impose protections and design restrictions on new construction in the district. 

The Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) has urged rejection of that idea. 

DBA also worries about the potential impacts of a proposed Center Street pedestrian plaza between Shattuck and Oxford Street.  

Mark McLeod, DBA president and one of the founders of Downtown Restaurant, has expressed doubts about the wisdom of closing the street, and urged that in no case should closure occur before the proposed UC-backed hotel/meeting center/condo tower at the Shattuck end of the block and the university’s planned Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive building at its western end are open. 

But the streetscape chapter draft makes the Center Street Plaza a high priority, including street closure to traffic except for emergency services and delivery vehicles that serve merchants along the plaza. 

It calls on the city to develop and adopt a Public Improvements Plan creating an overall policy for implementing additions and alterations design to make the city center more pedestrian friendly. 

The streetscape chapter also endorses another ambitious proposal by staff: transforming the Shattuck Avenue median between Durant Street and Dwight Way into grassy “park blocks” by “converting excessive travel ways and parking areas to a linear park.” 

It proposes requiring developers of new projects to contribute to downtown greenery and open space, though just how remains at issue, and urges adoption of another staff proposal to improve stormwater runoff quality by capturing it in vegetated “swales,” rain gardens, permeable paving and other innovations. 

Other policies call for: 

• Restricting traffic on Hearst Avenue between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Oxford Street to two lanes as a way to extend the Ohlone Greenway to the UC Berkeley campus; 

• Exploring opportunities to extend the Shattuck Avenue boulevard character north of University by exploring ways to increase street trees by eliminating traffic lanes or planting them in parking lanes. 

• Redesign of University Avenue between Shattuck Avenue and the campus by expanding sidewalks, landscaping, pedestrian features and—if feasible—removing traffic lanes to reduce street-crossing distances for pedestrians. 

The chapters are available online at the DAPAC website at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/planning/landuse/dap/reports.htm. 

Saturday’s workshop is being held at the Berkeley High School library, located on the second floor of the school near the intersection of Allston Way and Milvia Street, with the entrance on Allston. 

Technical problems have derailed plans for an on-line discussion group, Taecker said. The committee will accept email comments in advance of the event, which can be sent to Yiu Kam, assistant planner for the downtown area, at ykam@ci.berkeley.ca.us.

The Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) voted 8-6 Thursday to allow Berkeley developers Ruegg and Ellsworth to relocate the landmarked Blood House at 2526 Durant Ave. to Regent Street and build a a 34,158-square-foot, five-story building with 44 apartments, 18 parking spaces and retail space in its place. 

Designed by architect Robert Gray Frise, this 1891 Queen Anne-style building was originally constructed as a single-family home whose use was later altered. 

Flanked by the Albra and the Brasfield buildings—two other landmarks—the Blood House is now used as an office building. 

“The Blood House is a minority in the neighborhood because it’s not in good shape,” project manager Brendan Heafey told the board. “Our intention is to build condominiums and rent them out to permanent residents such as university staff and faculty who plan to stay in the neighborhood for a long time ... We are trying to improve the health of the area.” 

Roland Peterson, president of the Telegraph Avenue Merchant’s Association, said that high-density housing would be economically viable for Telegraph. 

“We have a number of projects in the neighborhood,” said Dana Ellsworth.  

“By moving the house to a better location, it adds a much-needed link in the block which is required to make the street vibrant. Currently the house does not contribute to pedestrian activity.” 

The city Landmarks Preservation Commission declared the building a structure of merit in September 1999. Ruegg and Ellsworth’s appeal of the designation was denied by the City Council a month later. 

At an earlier meeting, the zoning board had denied the proposed demolition of the historically designated structure and had asked to see other alternatives which would help preserve it. 

A compromise suggested by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA), which would retain the Blood House on the site and build a 40-unit project, was heard by the ZAB in February 2004 but then abandoned by the developers. 

Ruegg & Ellsworth presented the idea of relocating the Blood House to an empty lot at 2508 Regent St. 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.” 

“We feel that the proposed alternative offered a solution to the community,” BAHA member Leslie Emmington told the board Thursday. “As an organization, we don’t feel there has been enough discussion ... the staff conclusions don’t demonstrate that the preservation alternative is infeasible.” 

Board member Jesse Arreguin asked the zoning staff why the BAHA alternative had not been given serious consideration. 

“I am for rental housing on the Southside but I have serious concerns about the process and the impact relocating it will have on the historic fabric of the neighborhood,” he said. “The reason why it was a structure of merit was to give some kind of historic character to the neighborhood,” he said.  

Board member Bob Allen said the BAHA alternative had been given serious consideration. 

“The proposal would cut down street frontage to less than half of what it was now,” he said. “It was a very unsatisfactory situation.”  

Heafey told the board that the 40-unit preservation alternative would not have met California building codes. 

Board member Terry Doran said that wrapping the Blood House with a large modern building would be offensive. 

“By moving it to a new site, the historical character of the building will be kept intact,” he said. 

Floor joists with steel beams will be used to lift the house from its first floor and lower it onto a trailer. The relocation is scheduled to take place on a Sunday and local traffic will 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 are also being explored. 

Gordon told the board that the Blood House would not be moved until he got a permit to move the Woolley House.

Staff registered nurses at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center and Herrick Hospital were back at work Monday morning—three days after their two-day walkout ended. 

Members of the California Nurses Association (CNA) walked out of their jobs at 13 hospitals of the Sutter Health chain and two Sacramento-area hospitals of the smaller Fremont-Rideout Health Group. 

While the nurses had announced a two-day action, the Berkeley hospitals and their sister facility in Oakland, along with some other Sutter facilities guaranteed five days of work for non-union replacements, many flown in from out of state. 

Other hospitals in the chain allowed striking nurses to return immediately after the two-day walkout. 

More than 5,000 CNA nurses struck starting at 7 a.m. Wednesday, announcing well in advance that they were staging a two-day action. 

Locked out when they attempted to return to work Friday, Berkeley RNs were finally able to report back to work Monday morning. A hospital representative told Bay City News that they had only been able to recruit replacements for the longer term. 

At least two agencies specializing in finding short-term replacements for striking nurses had advertised for strike-breakers. 

CNA spokesperson Charles Idelson said Monday afternoon that he hasn’t heard of any problems with nurses returning to work, “but we’re monitoring the situation closely.” 

Idelson said the union had strong support from local political figures, including two who are nurses at Alta Bates Summit: Berkeley City Councilmember Max Anderson, who cares for patients at the Oakland hospital, and Albany Mayor Robert Lieber, who works in Berkeley. 

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and Assemblymember Loni Hancock appeared at a CNA Berkeley rally Wednesday, and Berkeley Councilmember Kriss Worthington, a candidate for Hancock’s seat if she doesn’t run again, appeared at a Thursday rally in Oakland. 

While members of many unions attended the rallies, only members of the Office and Professional Employees International Union voted to honor the picket line. 

The lockout—which Idelson called a retaliatory action by Alta Bates Summit management—mirrors an identical action taken after CNA’s last walkout on Sutter hospitals. 

After the one-day action Dec. 1, 2004, the chain locked its doors to union members for the next four days. 

While Sutter operates more than 20 hospitals, including one in Hawaii, each hospital or hospital group negotiates its own contracts with unions. CNA contracts with all the Sutter hospitals have expired in recent months, with the Alta Bates Summit pacts ending last month, Idelson said. 

No new talks are planned between union and management, while negotiations to date have focused on workplace and patient care concerns—with no mention yet of salary or benefits. 

Idelson said union leaders will be meeting sometime in the next few days to plan their next moves. 

Carolyn Kemp, the designated spokes-person for the Berkeley hospital, did not return calls by deadline Monday, and did not return calls before or during the strike and subsequent lockout.

Assault 

On Sunday at 10:54 p.m., a man arrived at the emergency room at Alta Bates Hospital to report that he had been robbed and assaulted the day prior. No arrests have been made. 

Burglary 

At 10:45 p.m. on Sunday, a Berkeley resident who lives on the 1700 block of McGee Street, called in to report that their home had been burglarized. The house door had been unlocked. A double-barrelled shotgun, a laptop, and several digital cameras were stolen. No suspects have been identified. 

Terrorist threat 

At 4:58 p.m. on Saturday, a man threatened a woman. Police arrested the man and put him in custody. 

Battery 

At 1:23 p.m. on Saturday, there was a fight between women on the 1900 block of Russell Street. One of the women, 58, was arrested on charges of battery. 

Battery via kick 

At 11 a.m. on Saturday, a man called in to report that another man to whom he owed money had kicked him on the 1600 block of 10th Street. Police have a suspect, but no arrests have been made. 

Drunk driver 

On Saturday at 4 a.m., police arrested a 28-year-old Emeryville man for driving drunk at the corner of Alcatraz and Baker streets, near the Oakland border. 

In a move that Oakland Unified School Board President David Kakishiba said was “not unexpected,” California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed Assemblymember Sandré Swanson’s AB 45 Oakland school local control bill on Saturday. 

Schwarzenegger wrote, “The pace at which [the bill] seeks to restore the authority of the school board may surpass the pace at which the state administrator can imbed sustainable reforms. Current law contemplates the return of the district to local control once the [California Superintendent of Public Instruction] has a level of confidence that the improvements in the district are sustainable. In the interest of the educational well-being of the students, it is well worth investing the time to allow the [state superintendent] to finish the work that has already begun.” 

The veto means that the fate of the future of the Oakland Unified School District remains under current state law, which allows the California school superintendent unlimited discretion as to when local control can be returned. 

Under Swanson’s bill, which he introduced on the first day he took office last year, a recommendation for return to local control by the state-financed Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team school monitoring organization would call for immediate return in that operational area, regardless of the state superintendent’s position. 

In a Saturday press release entitled “Swanson Upbeat for Next Step for Oakland Schools,” the first-term Oakland assemblymember said that despite the failure of AB45 to become law, he felt the bill had caused some positive accomplishments. 

“I believe that the Governor’s action puts more pressure on the Superintendent, as he now must continue the transfer of authorities without the structural guarantees that I was attempting to put in place with AB 45,” Swanson said in his prepared statement. “Under current law, … the superintendent always had the ability to move the process forward but had been unwilling to do so. Given this new environment, I am optimistic that there won’t be another stalemate, and that is a clear victory for Oakland children.” 

But speaking by telephone, School Board President Kakishiba sounded considerably more bitter about the veto. 

“While some people have been talking about the problems with the local school board, nobody in state government—from the governor’s office to the state superintendent to the Republican members of the legislature—wants to be culpable for what has happened to the Oakland schools under state control,” Kakishiba said. “During five years of state receivership, we have never had a balanced budget, and the executive turnover has been far worse than any other urban district in California during that time.” 

While praising state officials for “dealing with the most severe part of the fiscal emergency at the beginning of the state takeover,” Kakishiba said that since that time “state officials have proven themselves unable to solve the day-to-day problems of the district, such as stopping the declining enrollment. The state doesn’t want to look in the mirror and see its own actions. I see a lot of raw, naked opportunism at work here. It’s not about getting educational results in Oakland. It’s about the state retaining power. It’s both sad and frustrating.” 

Kakishiba said that the Oakland School Board—which received a limited return of local control last summer from State Superintendent Jack O’Connell after the Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) had recommended such a return two years running—will “keep on the state administrator’s case to balance the ’07-’08 budget and to develop a new multi-year Fiscal Recovery Plan for the district.” 

The board president said that the board will “continue to develop plans for initiating a superintendent search in anticipation” of beginning such a search next spring. 

Saying that the AB45 veto “won’t derail” board plans to begin the process for a board-hired superintendent, Kakishiba said that when the new FCMAT report on the Oakland schools comes out next month, he is anticipating an FCMAT recommendation of return to local control in either two or three of the remaining four district operational areas.  

“The past practice in return to local control after state takeovers is that when at least three areas have been returned to local control, the local district is allowed to hire a superintendent to administer those areas,” Kakishiba said. “That’s what occurred in Compton and Vallejo.”  

Kakishiba said that even though O’Connell could choose not to follow FCMAT’s recommendation under current law, “I believe the superintendent feels that there has not been any problem with the return of local governance and community relations to school board control, and so there is good reason to believe he will go along with the FCMAT recommendation.” 

Kakishiba said that one possible reason for O’Connell to reject a FCMAT recommendation of return of more local control in the Oakland schools is “if the state superintendent believes that the private investment in the Expect Success! initiative will be endangered by the return of local governance.” 

O’Connell's office issues a statement on the AB45 veto Thursday afternoon: 

“I commend Governor Schwarzenegger for vetoing AB 45 by Assemblymember Sandré Swanson (D-Oakland), which would have instituted an unworkable process for determining the timeline for return of local control to the Oakland Unified School District. I appreciate Assemblymember Swanson's passion for improving public education in Oakland, and I share his commitment to our students. I am pleased that Oakland Unified is making progress in both student achievement and fiscal stability, and that the district has resumed local control in the area of governance and community relations. However, this bill would have created a new bureaucracy for the process of determining the return of authority to the local school board. This process would not serve the best interests of the students of Oakland Unified.”

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.

We get letters from all over the world in response to what appears on our pages, particularly on our opinion pages. We get letters in which the writers unburden themselves of their opinions about Berkeley in general, or about what they believe Berkeley to be. And we get many letters in which the writers reveal their opinions about the fate of the nation or the world, which they send hoping a Berkeley paper will print when their hometown papers haven’t.  

We also get what I call “robo-letters”, generated by some mysterious fill-in-the-blanks web page—sometimes the text of these letters is identical, sometimes only the titles are. Sometimes they’re obviously intended for a congressperson or the president, not “the editor”. They are easy to spot because they frequently assign inappropriate gender titles (Mr. Susie Jones) to the signatures. Even though we often sympathize with the sentiments expressed, we seldom print these. 

Last week we got a few letters from distant places, and even one from Berkeley, applauding the well-written commentary we printed from the Marine recruiter whose near-campus office was targeted by Code Pink and other anti-war demonstrators. Even though our usual policy is to devote our limited space mainly to local letters, and even though we tend to print only a couple of representative samples from what looks like an organized letter-writing campaign, we’ll be printing most of these, and we’re glad to get them. 

Because the writing style varies a great deal, it’s reasonable to believe that these missives are heartfelt expressions of personal belief, not computer-generated mass mailings, even though there might be some central organization suggesting that they be written. The over-arching theme is that the writers support the role played by the armed forces of the United States in maintaining the security of the nation from foreign invasion, a legitimate sentiment it’s hard to criticize.  

We appreciate the traditional freedoms, including freedom of the press, which we enjoy in the United States (even though we remember A.J. Liebling’s crack that the press is only free for those who own them). We’re glad Code Pink picketed the recruiting offices, but we’re also glad the letter writers are able to weigh in with their dissenting points of view.  

It’s true that many of us, including me, have seen dishonest military recruiting in action, but we’ll take the word of Captain Lund, who manages the Marines’ Berkeley recruitment effort, that he doesn’t run his operation that way. But even if one recognizes the bravery and commitment of sincere individuals like Captain Lund, it’s legitimate to ask him and his supporters if they’re also aware of the dangers to what we value about this nation which are coming from inside the country.  

There’s been news in the last week or so about the Defense Department’s use and abuse of a device called a National Security Letter (NSL), part of the Bush administration’s USA Patriot Act. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “a comprehensive analysis of 455 NSLs issued after 9/11 shows that the Defense Department seems to have collaborated with the FBI to circumvent the law, may have overstepped its legal authority to obtain financial and credit records, provided misleading information to Congress, and silenced NSL recipients from speaking out about the records’ requests.” In other words, the Pentagon’s been doing some illegal spying on Americans, and that’s not what this country is supposed to be all about. Now we hope to get letters from Captain Lund and/or his supporters acknowledging that real Americans don’t join the military in order to be able look at their fellow citizens’ bank records. 

Much more important is the central purpose of the armed forces: to protect this country from real military threats from abroad. Captain Lund, I strongly suspect, is intelligent enough to realize that invading Iraq had very little connection with the problem it purported to solve, the attack by al Qaeda on the World Trade Center. I’d bet that like most Americans he knows by now that Osama bin Laden is alive and well and living in Afghanistan, and that we’ll never be able to catch him as long as our troops are tied down by the pointless exercise in Iraq.  

One reason we maintain our respect for the armed forces of the United States is that at crucial historic points American service personnel have sometimes been willing to speak truth to power when they think things are off course. The fifty black sailors who refused to resume dangerous munitions loading at Port Chicago during World War II have finally been recognized as heroes more than a half-century later. Young John Kerry was an inspiring figure when he spoke up in 1971 for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.  

And now we have the example of Lt. Ehren Watada before us. Even though he’s a loyal officer and no pacifist, he’s refused to serve in Iraq because he believes that it’s a criminal war and that participating in any way would be the same as aiding and abetting a crime. He’s offered to go to Afghanistan, where the U.S. military effort is floundering, but he’s been turned down. His second court martial trial (the first ended in a mistrial) was supposed to begin last week, though it’s now been postponed by a federal judge in the civil court system until at least October 26. 

Readers who have had their attention directed to this paper because of Captain Lund’s encounter with Code Pink should also familiarize themselves with Lt. Watada’s case. There’s a website, thank-yoult.org, which is maintained by his supporters for this purpose.  

We had the occasion recently to talk with some visitors from Spain who drove to Yosemite last weekend. As inhabitants of a nation where at least four diverse ethnic groups are frequently at odds with one another, sometimes violently, they were touched by seeing our national flag flying at many rural homes on the route. They said they admired the way the American nation sticks together despite our differences of political opinions.  

That’s an important point, one which we are sometimes inclined to forget. There’s more than one way to be a patriot, more than one way to fly the flag, and we should appreciate all of them. Captain Lund has spoken up for the conventional way, and Lt. Watada is providing a different perspective, but both deserve our respect and even our gratitude, even when we disagree with 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.

CUT THE PURSE STRINGS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

End the war—cut the purse strings—before we have another Vietnam on our hands. 

The deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis does not register on America’s consciousness. 

Do you think your day is going bad? Think about what Iraqis have to put up with every day. 

In 2006 Americans went to the polls to send a message: We want our country back and an end to war. 

Why do millions of Americans still support a war based on lies and a war that has gone horribly wrong? 

Will Americans remain in denial about Bush’s war being about oil? 

Do you believe your eyes about the war in Iraq, or do you believe White House Spin? 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

• 

ENERGY BILL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This summer, the Senate and the House of Representatives passed their own versions of a clean Energy Bill. These victories were an important step in the larger battle for strong energy policy in America. Now Congress must continue to move forward and hammer out a strong and clean final version of this Energy Bill. 

The final Energy Bill must include the Senate’s hard-fought compromise provision that would require a 35 miles-per-gallon fuel economy standard for American automobiles by 2020. The auto lobby wants this provision replaced by a “do nothing” alternative, yet according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Senate’s position on fuel standards would save consumers $24 billion at the pump each year once the cleaner cars hit the road. Using cost-effective technologies to create these cleaner cars will also create over 170,000 new American jobs, including tens of thousands in the auto industry alone. 

The final bill must also include the House’s 15% renewable electricity standard, which would require electric companies to obtain more power from clean, renewable sources like wind and sun. The Senate has passed similar provisions several times in the past, so industry interests should not be allowed to undermine what is clearly a majority position in both Congressional chambers. 

These provisions will help launch the clean energy economy in America. By reducing our reliance on dirty fossil fuels, they will also put us on the path to energy independence—and a healthier future. 

Congress needs to stand up to industry and other clean energy opponents who want the Energy Bill weakened. 

Terri Aspen 

Guerneville 

• 

WATER TREATMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Californians must realize the unfortunate reality of our state’s water treatment facilities. Of the thousands of water treatment facilities violating the Clean Water Act in the U.S. today, California ranks as the nations 9th worst where 69 percent of our water facilities, including eleven in Contra Costa County, violate their permits, dumping contaminated waste water with excessive amounts of fecal coliform and traces of E. coli into our surrounding bay and wetlands which threatens public health and local wildlife. Now, there is a proposed budget cut of 395 million dollars to the clean water state revolving fund. Call or write your senator, urging them to reject these proposed budget cuts and hold polluting water treatment facilities accountable. 

Andrew Klaus 

San Francisco 

• 

CELLULAR PHONE TOWER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last night the Zoning Adjustments Board approved a T-Mobile cellular phone tower in north Berkeley. Neighbors near 2095 Rose Street should appeal the decision. It is unnecessary, as there is already adequate coverage. There are currently too many unsightly antennas. I feel sick at the sight of them. They are an insult to the Precautionary Principle, especially in this residential neighborhood. 

This brings up the problem of the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 precluding a city from denying a wireless carrier access based on health concerns. Such is life in a corpocracy. Shouldn’t a city in a democracy be permitted to consider health issues in deciding what is installed in our town? Now that it is abundantly clear, even in the mainstream press, that many government agencies such as the FDA and FCC are beholden to corporate interests at the expense of the public good, it is time for municipalities to stand up for local sovereignty. If a quarter of municipalities facing this quandary would do so, even if only minimally defending their position, the telecom industry and corporate media would take notice, which would help grow the democracy movement. It should be our right to consider the Precautionary Principle in opposing a forest of radiation- emitting antennas on our rooftops, as I believe Mendocino has done. 

year the ZAB rejected Verizon and Nextel applications 5 to 4. If last night’s meeting were not at the same time as Berkeley High School’s annual back-to-school night, additional public comment may have swayed at least Councilmembers Worthington and Spring’s appointees. This was BHS parents’ only opportunity to meet their children’s teachers. 

Bravi to those residents who got word in time and spoke out. Council member Max Anderson’s appointee to the ZAB, Jesse Anthony, deserves high praise for standing alone and voting his conscience against the measure. 

There might be a Design Review Committee meeting on Thursday Oct. 18 to study the design of 12 Verizon antennas on the French Hotel. It meets at 7:00, North Berkeley Senior Center. 

PhoeBe Sorgen 

North Berkeley resident of 18 years 

• 

ERRORS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Glen Hauer (Naim and Halal Market) says he is an activist for Jewish Voice for Peace, but one truly interested in peace should be scrupulously concerned about facts and accuracy.  

Several errors need to be called to Mr. Hauer’s attention.  

1. The city of Hebron, mentioned several times in the Bible, is the site of the world’s oldest Jewish community. It is not and never has been, as Hauer erroneously states, “an ancient Palestinian city.” Jews lived continuously in Hebron since the days of King David. Only in 1929, after an Arab pogrom murdered 67 Jews, did Hebron temporarily become free of Jews. Now the community has been reestablished. (When Baruch Goldstein murdered Arabs in Hebron, his act was shunned and condemned by Jews everywhere.)  

2. Naim, Hauer reports, was a construction worker for the ‘modern Israeli settlement’ of Kiryat Arba, “built on his people’s land.” Kiryat Arba, a name that predates Hebron, is another ancient Jewish city, mentioned in the Book of Joshua. It is a city, not a “settlement” and the land on which it sits is “disputed” land whose status will be finalized when and if a peace agreement is reached. It is inaccurate to prejudge disputed land as Palestinian.  

3. Hauer mentions that the Israeli army has used Caterpillar bulldozers to demolish Palestinian houses. That is true. But does he ask why? Hauer neglects to mention that many homes were destroyed because they contained tunnels through which Palestinians smuggled weapons and equipment so recruited suicide bombers could murder Israeli citizens.  

By presenting false or misleading statements, Mr. Hauer does a disservice to Palestinians, Israelis, and others who want to understand the complicated Middle East.  

June Sutz Brott 

Oakland 

• 

GUS LEE FOR CITY COUNCIL? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I can’t remember when I’ve so agreed with a columnist as I did with Gus Lee’s “Recalling Better Time in the Elmwood” (Oct. 12-15). I, too, have lived long enough in this neighborhood to remember each of Lee’s references: shoe repair, Burnaford’s Produce, health food store, Bolfing’s Sporting Goods, etc. He is absolutely correct in his opinions (recall them both) of Mayor Bates and Councilmember Wozniak—neither have been a friend of Elmwood, particularly Wozniak who lives here! “A big, fancy, overpriced restaurant” indeed. Just what we need. I, for one, won’t be eating there. And what help have either of them been to our beleaguered hardware store? Tad needs a helping hand, not John Gordon!!!  

How about Gus Lee for City Council?  

Barbara Scheifler  

• 

AL GORE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Rejoicing at the news that Al Gore has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I was struck by the quiet dignity and humility with which he accepted this richly deserved award. Here, indeed, is a good, good man. A wave of melancholy then swept over me, and I thought, “If only—”.  

If only Gore had been in the White House all these years, as he should have been, nearly 4,000 young Americans would be alive today, veterans’ hospitals across the country would not be filled to overflow with amputees, brain-damaged and psychologically ruined men, countless thousands of Iraqi civilians would still be alive, and Afghanistan and Iraq would not be in ruins. And I would not be ashamed of my country. 

Ah, yes, if only— 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

VISIONARY UPGRADE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The proposed “visionary” upgrade from three funky, neighborhood outdoor swimming pools to one new, spiffy, indoor pool located at the West Campus site is awful news for some of us. Instead of conveniently walking 15 minutes to swim, without a car we’re supposed to use AC Transit (four buses, two each way), take an extra hour and incur $500/year in bus fees. It will be cheaper, less a hassle and less time-consuming to just swim at one of the UC expensive pools. 

“Visionary” also we’re told is the proposal for the one new pool to be indoor? Surely they’re kidding. Not only is there already a downtown Berkeley indoor YMCA pool for those who want indoor. Some of us consider the aesthetic beauty of the sky with its changing cloud formations and rising or sinking sun and brilliant sunset colors part of the total swimming experience we look forward to. But, hey, an indoor pool will attract more participants, reply the visionaries. Where’s the study showing that? UC outdoor pools and Oakland’s neighborhood outdoor pools are well attended year-round (currently they’re too crowded). It’s wishful thinking to imagine an indoor pool will attract more participation. 

Rumor has it that the “real” reason for the suggested new pool has nothing to do with vision or increased usage. The “real” reason is, what a surprise, money. Evidently it is cheaper to build one new pool than to upgrade and maintain three funky neighborhood pools. If that’s the case, why are we writing letters to the editor, answering questionaires and going to pool meetings? Why the waste of everyone’s time? It feels like the visionaries are manufacturing consent where the decisions have already been made. 

The Berkeley neighborhood pools are a blessing. The new aquatics management made great progress in keeping them running professionally and smoothly. I like the funky, low-tech, colorful aspect of the pools. I like being able to walk a few minutes to reach one. I like swimming under a beautiful ever-changing sky. I will not be swimming at the visionary new pool. 

Maureen Kane  

• 

MEMO TO ZELDA 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

A few years ago, The New Yorker (October 18, 2004) published “Green Manhattan,” a story about a couple that got married right out of college, in 1978. They were young and naive and unashamedly idealistic, and they decided to make their first home in a utopian environmentalist community in New York State. For seven years, they lived, quite contentedly, in circumstances that would strike most Americans as austere in the extreme: their living space measured just seven hundred square feet, and they didn’t have a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, a lawn, or a car. They did their grocery shopping on foot, and when they needed to travel longer distances they used public transportation. Because space at home was scarce, they seldom acquired new possessions of significant size. Their electric bills worked out to about a dollar a day. 

The utopian community was Manhattan. Thanks to urban density, it is by most significant measures the greenest community in the United States, and one of the greenest in the world. 

I find it thrilling that we could have our own Manhattan right here in Berkeley. To create an environmentally sustainable future, we will need to make dramatic changes to the way we live, and I’m delighted that the visionaries at ABAG and our City of Berkeley planners are showing us the way in their proposals for Berkeley’s downtown. Sleepy suburbs— and I include Berkeley among them— will give way to vital urban cores, with the vitality of commerce, artistic life, and opportunity we see in New York and other great cities. 

Urban density can and does work. Please embrace it, and the healthier future it will give us, rather than obstruct it. 

Mitchell Gass 

• 

WARM POOL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We feel it imperative, at this time, to get a message out to the community to clarify the mission of the One Warm Pool Advocacy Group.  

There seems to be some confusion regarding this mission and our priorities. We are unfairly being portrayed by some as being contrarians and/or competitors when it comes to the other pools in Berkeley. We hereby go on record and state that this is absolutely untrue and unfounded. We are merely remaining committed and focused in the struggle to retain a warm pool in Berkeley for the disabled members of the community, both young and old. A struggle which has been going on for far too long, especially when you consider that Berkeley has won awards for how well it treats its disabled community. 

As some of you know, demolition of the gym, which houses the warm pool, is on BUSD’s agenda. This site has been in jeopardy for a number of years and it is our goal to save or relocate this desperately needed community resource. Hopefully, some of you remember the late Fred Lupke and others who fought for years to save the warm pool. They were finally successful in getting a bond passed to rehab the current pool at the present site; however, BUSD declared it seismically unsound and we were back in jeopardy of losing the pool.  

We started all over again struggling to save the warm water pool. On top of everything else, the bond measure had been written in such a way that it was not transferable to any other site or location so we were truly back to square one.  

We have been through many, many, many trials and tribulations, i.e., meetings on top of meetings, broken promises on top of broken promises, mechanical failure, etc. Now that we are at a point where we have a completed plan to present to City Council which could possibly result in continuing to have a warm pool in Berkeley, our heartfelt struggle and efforts are being twisted and misconstrued. There are those who say we are being selfish and self-centered; however, it seems that only we remember that we do not have the luxury of waiting another several more years hoping and praying for something, which is now only a vision, to come to fruition. Time is not on our side. Time is our deadliest enemy. 

We sincerely hope that the community will understand, support and join in our efforts to assure that we retain a warm pool in Berkeley. Don’t you all agree that the neediest members of our community have been hanging over this precipice long enough? If others have a vision and/or some other plan for the able-bodied, we wish them well and they should do the same for us without making it a competitive issue. To do so just isn’t fair to the community at large, and more specifically to the disabled community. 

Joann Cook & The One Warm Pool Advocacy Group 

• 

RADIATION IN GOURMET  

GHETTO 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

This letter is to bring to the attention of neighbors of the gourmet ghetto that several wireless providers plan to install many wireless facilities in this area. On Oct. 11, 2007, the ZAB approved four antennas on the roof of 2095 Rose, across from the Jewish Community Center. This area is mainly residential; however, the ZAB ignored this fact. Verizon plans to sit 12 antennas on French Hotel. There are already three antennas on the roof of Barney’s Restaurant at 1600 Shattuck. All these antennas will pollute the gourmet ghetto by hazardous microwave radiation. Even the City of Berkeley Health Department has stated that the long-term effects of radiation from wireless facilities in not known. It does not end there. Verizon has been trying to get permission to install antennas on the UC storage on southside. Their application has been ping-ponged between the ZAB and the City Council. A crucially important public hearing to decide on this case will be held on Thursday, Oct. 23. The public should attend this hearing to object to Verizon. In particular, Verizon is suing the city in order to get rid of the ordinance that regulates wireless facilities. A corporation that is trying to invade our neighborhoods has no place in Berkeley. 

Sanjay Sanwal 

• 

MEMORIES OF BATES 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Tom Bates was a State Assemblyman from Berkeley when I ran for a City Council seat from district 1. Back then Bates would interview local candidates for his endorsement. During my session with him, he said he hadn’t endorsed anyone yet. The next day I was campaigning through the district and found a leaflet for another candidate—with a Tom Bates endorsement! 

I guess he was just picking the brains of the opposition. But it was a flat outright deception! 

When he was a candidate for mayor, Bates emptied the Daily Cal newspaper racks one day because the paper had endorsed his opposition. He claimed he knew nothing about it until witnesses came forward with the fact that they saw him do it. 

Neighborhoods have tried to stop incident after incident in the matter of land use degradation, (even through the courts). 

When Tom Bates took office as mayor, “Smart Growth” slipped in the back door—without so much as a Public Hearing. 

A change is urgently needed. It’s just possible that Bates will have to go, He needs to be recalled. 

Martha Nicoloff, Co-Author, 

Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance 

• 

WE GET WHAT WE PAY FOR 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Members of private security forces in Iraq have three features in common with persons wearing U.S. military uniforms, that is, with public forces: 1) all got the same basic military preparation, 2) all are there because they volunteered and 3) all are paid with our taxes.  

The Pentagon gets the lion’s share of the federal budget—$450 billion or 51 percent—plus supplements enabling Bush to squander $2 billion a month in Iraq.  

After being discharged, U.S. military personnel can earn five times their former pay if they sign on with private security firms. Of course, this creates a manpower drain and to improve their retention rate the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force now offer rather large re-enlistment bonuses, as much as five figures for enlisted men and up to $150,000 for officers.  

It is common experience that the harder the job the higher the cost and people who watched the Sopranos on TV can tell you that it costs a lot to have someone whacked. Iraq is a place where both private and public forces whack and get whacked on a large scale. 

All of this means that our public security force in Iraq competes for personnel with private security forces and since we the people pay for both it turns out that we are stupidly competing with ourselves.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

• 

EXCESSIVE UNIVERSITY 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

What’s wrong in California? 

With a legislature responsible for the best, most stringent automobile-emissions rules in the country, with at least one major city moving toward assured medical care for all its citizens, California’s noble and eminent university makes news for its reactionary policies. 

Such as: 

• The excessive retirement benefits and perquisites the recently outgoing president of the statewide UC system awarded to himself and those he chose to favor. 

• The gross corruption of values in planning a multimillion dollar “fitness center” next to and along with expanding the already huge and misplaced stadium while student tuition and fees have skyrocketed, departments and offices have laid off personnel, and the university has terminated cheap and constructive services such as the oil-, time- and person-saving jitneys to Davis and Santa Cruz. 

• The cowardly refusal of the Berkeley Art Museum to sponsor Botero’s devastating compendium of historically and aesthetically important paintings and drawings of Abu Graib ... 

In September the chancellor at UC Irvine, cancelled his appointment of Erwin Chemerinsky, a greatly respected constitutional scholar and tireless defender of civil liberties, to head Irvine’s new law school. His reason for dismissal? Chemerinsky was “too politically controversial.” The phrase is muddy English and the implications a disaster. Controversy, differing accounts, estimates, judgments are the core of politics and the core of law. 

Ariel Parkinson 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for printing the letter by Captain Richard Lund. I work in a building on University Avenue. I am a woman, I am a mother, I am the wife of a veteran, I am a liberal, I am a democrat, I am a staunch opponent to this war, and I am an enemy of President Bush. And I am ashamed. 

Wars aren’t created by the military, they are created by politicians and their self- serving constituents. 

The Code Pink protest is an insult to the sacrifices made by heroes like Captain Lund and the other men and women serving in our military, and does no service to our cause of ending this war. 

Please forward along to Captain Lund our support and our thanks. 

Bridget Haverty 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Bravo for printing Captain Richard Lund's letter. There is still some equal rights alive in Berkeley. 

Yvonne Holcomb 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to thank this paper for printing the open letter from Captain Lund to Code Pink. While we here in the Midwest know that those in Berkeley oppose anything to do with the military, it is still guys like Captain Lund who defend their rights as Americans. 

I personally feel that Code Pink is run by extremists and communist sympathizers and should be locked up. Especially when I hear about what they do in the halls of congress. One of our greatest presidents ever, Abraham Lincoln, suspended habeus corpus and imprisoned “Copperhead Demo-crats,” who emboldened the enemy during a time of war. Just like Code Pink. 

Keith Best 

Waukesha, WI 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Please stand together and show the members of Code Pink what a disgrace they are to your community. Little do they understand that Captain Lund has put his life on the line defending the very freedoms Code Pink used to dishonor him. Code Pink should be blushing for only one reason—out of embarrassment and shame for their actions. 

Sonia 

San Diego 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I don't see how anyone could ever show disrespect to an officer; especially a Marine. 

It's like the person who hates police, but when someone is breaking into your house; they’re the first people you would call. 

You would think he would be treated with cheers and excitement being new in the area. Where is the neighborhood hospitality? 

Unfortunately, we have in America people who hate being American. If they find such bitterness with officers that are here to protect us from an invasion from a foreign enemy, then they should just leave the country asap. We don't want people with that kind of attitude living here in this country. Good luck with the country that would take them in. They would do the same immature behavior there as well.  

Berkeley should kick out those kinds of spoiled brats out of their city. God Bless our Marines.  

Catherine Le Bell 

Los Angeles 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for printing Captain Richard Lund's letter on 10/02 to Code Pink. It was the carefully measured response of a professional military officer to pseudo intellectuals who think they know so much but are in fact grossly uninformed.  

It is fair and right of you to at least let those you probably disagree with have their say in the matter. If it were not for that Marine and many like him, there could be no protest at all. 

Rick Murray 

Redmond, OR 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am curious if Code Pink ever responded to this well-written article. If so, please send a link. Though I live in northern Minnesota (identified as democrats), the support for our troops and military structure is extremely strong.  

Cliff Gawne-Mark 

Duluth, MN 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am continually sickened by the activities of organizations like CodePinko and MoveOn.org. 

I don’t care if you hate Bush and loathe the Iraq situation, Capt. Lund has devoted his adult life to you and the United States and is willing to give his life for the misguided, sniveling liberals who defaced his facility. Were it not for our military, we would not have the freedom to criticize our government. 

I am a veteran of the army. During my enlistment, I met, trained and worked with USMC Officers and Gunney Sgts. The Gunneys were a little scarey, but the officers were all top notch. My favorite uncle, a graduate of the Naval Academy, was buried on the bottom at Guadalcanal and had a DE named after him. 

I don’t care if you hate our country, burn our flag or vote democratic; please show our men and women on the front lines of your defense a little respect. 

To Captain Lund, I salute you, Sir. Semper Fi. 

Richard Landers 

formerly RA 15 660 011 

Wooster, OH 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Wow, the Marines rock, and Code Pink kinda sucks big time.  

Susanne Aspley 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a typical American (that’s a citizen of U.S.A. for those of you who don’t like us using the name of the American continents to describe our country), I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks for the important work you and all our brave military personnel do for our freedom. 

It often goes unsaid and is taken for granted, but Code Pink, and other “peace loving” organizations, only have the freedom to speak out against our country because that privilege is secured by our military forces. 

Take a look at history and try to find one instance where peace was ever secured without military force—it has never happened. There will always be evil human beings who must be fought to secure peace for the masses and unfortunately innocent people will die in the process. People die, every one of us will, and to bravely risk your life to help secure peace and freedom of speech, without the courtesy of thanks from those who benefit most from it, is one of the most righteous ways a human being can live his or her life. 

BWB  

San Diego, CA 

• 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My hat is off to the young Marine captain. His response was well taken and straightforward. Unlike the advocates of free speech that come in the night like a common criminal because they can't defend their indefensible point of view. 

My hat is off to the Berkeley Daily Planet for printing his response.  

Bill Santos 

San Jose, CA

Many people think the Bush regime is politically weakened and will no longer be able to achieve its political agenda, particularly in regard to the Iraq war. Millions also have the illusion that after the 2008 elections that the U.S. military will finally withdraw from that beleaguered country. But the Bush regime is currently expanding the size of the U.S. military, and the leading Democratic presidential contenders are not likely to remove the U.S. military presence in Iraq if they are elected. 

On September 27, 2007, Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated he is likely to approve an army proposal to expand the size of the army. At a Department of Defense press conference, Gates said, “I’m probably going to recommend they go ahead and give it a try. I’m inclined to approve it.”  

In a related development regarding the size of U.S. forces in Iraq, Army Secretary Pete Geren recently met with a group of reporters and said it was possible that even if the army withdraws five combat brigades from Iraq between December 2007 and July 2008, the number of “non-combat” troops there could remain the same or even increase. Geren stated that a reduction in the number of combat troops in Iraq could mean that more support troops are needed to train the Iraqi forces or perform other functions. “That’s a possibility. I’m not saying it’s a likelihood,” Geren told the reporters. Gates confirmed this when he met with the Senate Appropriations Committee on September 26, 2007, and admitted that the Pentagon has not decided on the level of support troops in Iraq for 2008. 

On September 27, 2007, Geren an-nounced that in addition to expanding the active-duty army to a total of 547,000, he is also planning to increase the size of the National Guard and Reserve. The army expects to reach its targeted growth within four years.  

In addition to the army expansion, the Marines intend to add an additional 27,000 personnel to their ranks, bringing their total to 202,000. 

Well, if a Democrat wins the presidential race in 2008, all this madness will end, right? Dream on!  

The Democrats held a debate on September 26, 2007. At the beginning, debate moderator Tim Russert asked Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as former Senator John Edwards, whether they would promise to have all U.S. troops out of Iraq by January 2013. All three refused, even though that would be at the end of their first term if they were elected.  

Obama responded, “We would get combat troops out of Iraq. The only troops that would remain would be those that have to protect U.S. bases and U.S. civilians, as well as to engage in counter-terrorism activities in Iraq.” He failed to mention that this would allow tens of thousands of troops, if not more, to remain in Iraq for the indefinite future. Obama has previously stated he wants to expand the overall size of the U.S. military by 92,000, so he must want to use these additional forces somewhere. 

Clinton echoed Obama when she stated, “I will drastically reduce our presence there to the mission of protecting our embassy, protecting our civilians, and making sure that we’re carrying out counterterrorism activities there.” Clinton claimed that the only combat missions she would permit would be those aimed at “eradicating al Qaeda in Iraq.” As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Clinton has advocated a permanent troop increase for the military. She also introduced legislation to increase military burial travel allowances, which will undoubtedly be needed if she is elected. 

John Edwards also refused to pledge withdrawal while attacking Clinton in the debate. He said her stand allows “a continuation of the war. I do not think we should continue combat missions in Iraq.” But he did not explain how he would stop the war if he refuses to withdraw troops from Iraq. I guess we are just supposed to believe him when he says, “I believe this war needs to come to an end.” Edwards, like Obama and Clinton, has also stated he wants to increase the military’s size. 

While all three of these leading Democratic contenders claimed they would stop the active use of “combat troops” in Iraq, with some caveats, they have also made it clear the Iraq war will continue under their administrations. But look at the Army Secretary’s comments above. He says even if “combat troops” are no longer used, there still will be the need for troops in Iraq, including the possibility of increased numbers. 

We must stop the madness of the Bush regime. But we cannot rely on the Democrats to do so. They have shown us repeatedly that they support the Bush wars by authorizing hundreds of billions of dollars to finance them. Only a mass movement can halt these endless wars that were initiated by the Bush regime and its enablers, the Democrats in congress. We can’t wait until 2008, we must declare it now! 

Kenneth J. Theisen is an organizer with The World Can’t Wait! Drive out the Bush Regime!

Before Marcel Marceau’s body is buried and evaporates from public view, I thought to make note here in a short commentary that Marceau was a pantomime (pantomimist) and Charlie Chaplin was a mime – despite what AP, UPI and theater folk say about Marceau.  

I wrote an essay in 1962 published in a theater magazine about the difference between mime and pantomime. Nevertheless, for some it doesn’t matter; they are as confused or in denial as ever. Linguistic accuracy is not a strong factor in American culture; consider the dyslexic mentality of what we now call “activists.” I just talked to a young person who said, “I’m very political.” I asked what do you mean by that? She said, “An anarchist, I guess.” Oh, you mean you read Kropotkin, Tolstoy and others? No answer. Many young Americans now say they are anarchists, which I interpret as meaning, “No one tells me what the f… to do.” We used to call these folks liberals, hippies, or dropouts. In the ’60s the New Left were Marxists, not in any communist party. Trotskyites were socialists, different from social democrats; Communists were in political parties, later called Stalinist parties; while Maoists made up Marxist-Leninist parties and the latter certainly made sure they were not mistaken for CPUSA members.  

The mimes and pantomimes can be mixed up as everyone understands when they see the SF Mime Troupe do musical comedy, which is neither mime nor pantomime since the change of management, writers and directors now produces musical comedy with liberal messages such as “call your elected officials.”  

Distinctions are important even though people who drink soft drinks with “high fructose corn syrup” consider it a full sugar, —it is not, and your local nutritionist will say (like Sally Fallon), “Research indicates that it is the fructose, not the glucose, moiety of sugar that is the most harmful…” Some researchers even observe that it ruins teeth, disrupts the body’s functions and causes disease. Postmodernists consider labeling a suspect category. However anti- GMO folks don’t. Those who ingest “high fructose corn syrup” (probably GMO) in their soft drinks and don’t care about labels, nutrition and disease because they are anarchists, best be watched carefully lest they burden the medical care system.  

Mime produces different results from pantomime. Pantomime works with “nothing there” live on stage not in film— 

it doesn’t make sense in film. Mime works in film. Chaplin used real props, manipulating them in different ways. Marceau used no props, manipulating his body and his face (with white makeup) in different ways. Just because silent movie performers didn’t speak didn’t make them mimes or pantomimes, and just because it says Mime Troupe doesn’t mean they do mime or pantomime, as the writer-director-lead actor said we do “Political musical comedy.” 

The wonders of Marceau. If people can remember, who saw him live on stage, was that he was French with accordion music between the skits along with his sign carrier Pierre Verry who offered wonderful static poses, a sign with signifiers or a mimetic abstract pose illustrating the essence of the next bit. Marceau worked in white face with pedal-pusher pants, a stripped shirt, and certainly one of the elements of his sentimental success was that he was as French as Edith Piaf or Maurice Chevalier.  

The distinction between mime and pantomime is not a sticky intellectual academic effort. They produce different results. Modern dance by Martha Graham was not ballet. Mime produced Jean Louis Barrault and Charlie Chaplin, pantomime produced Marceau and Shields—the latter used to mock people on SF streets. Some lump them as “white faced clowns” but Fellini’s Clowns didn’t do pantomime, they used props and were mimetic.  

Labels, an aspect of biology ever since Linnaeus, identified different species of plants with Latin names is a bother, but, any reasonable gardener knows the benefit of specific ID’s lest they put the wrong species in the wrong soil. By using common names one can easily eat the wrong mushroom, plant the wrong tree in the wrong soil or eat the wrong clam.  

Our political arena doesn’t help, either in Latin or in English, since confusion is rampant. Trying to make a distinction between the Democrats and the Republicans one has to remember they all voted for the military budget (except one or two locals). Militarizing US foreign policy is likely to continue for both parties, as democracy being delivered by weapons, is part of “support our troops” and American patriotism, but not so for the Palestinians, Iranians or the Venezuelans.  

Marceau’s performance inspired many to become Pantomimes, I too was inspired by him, but went back to his teacher and became a Mime.  

Violence, selfishness and insults have skyrocketed on national television since the first year of the war on terror, my second grade students at Rosa Parks Elementary in Berkeley, California found.  

For the last decade, I’ve had students analyze television preceding National TV-off week organized by the TV-Turnoff Network. The mostly seven-year-old students are asked to collect all the data themselves since their teacher has never owned a television. An average total of 35 children’s television shows, both in Spanish and English, are studied for a period of seven days. The first day of the study, as homework, students record how many times they see hitting, hurting or killing on half-hour segments of the shows they regularly watch, viewed from beginning to end. The second day, they focus on acts of selfishness; the third day, on instances of putdowns and the fourth day, on the number of times a typical class rule is broken. Finally, in class, each of four groups of students compiles the data produced by the homework, focusing on one of the four variables in the study. But this year, when I pulled out old samples of graphs compiled by a class in April of 2002 as models, the contrasts between the graphs produced five years ago and this April shocked my students.  

“In a half-hour of ‘Jackie Chan’ in 2002 you would see hitting 10 times at most,” wrote gifted seven-year old Flynn Michael Legg. “In 2007, shows of ‘Jackie Chan’ had 34 hitting scenes.” For the 2001/2002 season—year one of President George Bush’s ‘war on terror’—nearly one-fourth of the television shows my students watched had one or no acts of violence at all in one half-hour. Now of the shows they randomly watch, only “That’s So Raven” continues to have no violence, and all other shows have at least three instances of hitting or violence in one half-hour. Today, nearly half of shows randomly viewed by my students contain hitting or more violent acts 7 to 34 times each half-hour.  

The maximum number of gratuitous putdowns or insults has nearly doubled since 2002, going from 10 in “That’s So Raven” to 18 in “Dumb and Dumber,” over one putdown every two minutes. In “Sponge Bob Square Pants,” Flynn pointed out, one would hear at most two put-downs in 2002. Today it’s 16. No shows had more than 10 putdowns in 2002. Now three shows did (“Sponge Bob”:16; “Dumb and Dumber”: 18; “Letty La Fea”: 13) Very few shows have no insults at all any more.  

All the shows my students watched this year showed people or characters being selfish at least once in each half-hour. In 2002, only three shows had more than three acts of selfishness in a half-hour. Now, 10 did. Half of the shows showed five to nine instances of selfishness each half-hour. 

Students also found that in April of 2002, only one show depicted the violation of ordinary class rules (no hitting, put downs, swearing etc.) twelve or more times. In April of 2007, the number of such programs rose to six. In 2001, the maximum times class rules were broken on a given half-hour show were 17 on one show. In 2007 the number of such shows has quadrupled with the maximum number of rules broken on a given show doubling or reaching over 34.  

These differences compelled us to substantiate our findings with Internet re-search. Indeed, children in the “yellow group” found that according to a 2007 study by the Parent’s Television Council (PTC) called “Dying to Entertain,” since 1998, violence on ABC network has quadrupled (a 309 percent increase). In 1998 the station had about one act of violence per hour. By 2007, it was almost four or 3.8 on average. CBS, according to the PTC study, had the highest percentage of deaths during 2005-2006, with over 66 percent of violent scenes depicting death after 8:00 p.m. (www.parentstv.org/).  

Students in the “blue group” reading the same PTC study noted that now violence has shifted to being more central to the story with more graphic autopsy scenes or torture scenes. The study remarks that the 2005-2006 season beginning in the fall was one of the most violent ever recorded by the PTC. 

Precocious 7-year old Maeve Gallagher reported in her essay that “The green group found kids will have seen “200,000 violent acts on television by age 18 ... and 16,000 murders,” according to Real Vision, a project of the TV-Turnoff Network. “Videos and TV are ‘teaching kids to like killing,’ according to a 1999 Senate Judiciary Committee Report entitled ‘Children, Violence and the Media,’” Maeve cited. The Senate report also found that ten percent of crimes committed are caused by violence seen on television.  

The findings by students in the red group convinced the rest of the class to limit their viewing of television, turning it off completely during the TV-Turnoff Network’s TV-off week—something they were reluctant to do when our unit of television study began. What they discovered, largely thanks to the TV-Turnoff Network’s website (www.tvturn-off.org/) is that there are more televisions (2.73) in the average home than people (2.55.) (USA Today). The average home had a television on eight hours a day, more than 10 years ago, asserts Nielsen (2006). Children who watch six or more hours a day perform worse on reading tests than do those who watch one hour a day or don’t play video games, reports the Center for Screentime Awareness (www.screentime.org). By the time they finish high school, children will have spent more hours watching TV than in school.  

“I suspect the increase in television violents [sic] has something to do with the war on terror,” Andres Ventura hypothesized in his essay summing up his conclusions to the study. “By scaring kids and parents and pushing violents [sic], people are more likely to vote for war. The TV makes you dumb because if you see a lot it makes you forget things. It makes parents dumb too. It makes them forget how things were when they were kids.” 

“If you watch too much T.V. when you are an adult, you lose the kid that is inside you.” --Maeve Gallagher agreed. 

“Watching television replaces your imagination with television thinking and there’s not much space left after that,” Daniel Hernandez-Deras, commented a few years ago. 

One of the most shocking facts my students found was that according to The TV-Turnoff Network’s Real Vision project , parents spend only 38.5 minutes a day with their children in meaningful conversation. And more than half of 4-6 years olds (54%) would rather watch T.V. than spend time with their parents. 

This finding inspired Alejandro González unique conclusion: “I think Jorge [sic] Bush wants to make people more scared. We know Jorge [sic] Bush likes war. And… TV makes you like more war. What’s scary is kids spend more time seeing TV than being with their dad. Since our study, I turn off the TV more and go play with my dad. Maybe the president used to watch more TV than being with his dad.”  

Your article “Reading Recovery Program Shows Results in Berkeley Schools” (October 5–8) violates several basic journalistic principles. 

It includes no mention of opposing points of view. A reader would not guess that there is profound controversy about this program both within the Berkeley Unified School District and in the broader ranks of U.S. education. One would not guess that last year the district apparently came close to abolishing this expensive and ineffective program. 

The headline is not backed up by the content of the article. Only three paragraphs address the results of Reading Recovery in Berkeley. One paragraph claims that “the program . . . has helped 75 percent of [children in it to] catch up to the classroom average.” No source is cited for this controversial and unlikely claim. One paragraph cites Greg John, the principal of John Muir Elementary School. Mr. John has never taught basic literacy (his teaching experience was at the middle-school level) and has completed no serious training in this area. The principal of one school in the district, he lacks any expertise to evaluate Reading Recovery. The final paragraph quotes Tom Prince, the Reading Recovery teacher-leader. As well-intentioned as he may be, Mr. Prince has a conflict of interest evaluating the program that he leads. This paragraph also states: “Research has shown that Reading Recovery reduces the achievement gap.” In fact, the research on Reading Recovery in the U.S. is mixed at best. Those researchers who are not already affiliated with the program have raised probing doubts about its effectiveness. Reading Recovery as pioneered by Marie Clay in relatively homogeneous communities in New Zealand and Australia may be a successful program, but Berkeley’s program is quite different and violates many of her basic principles. 

The article is filled with incorrect information and misleading claims. 

It refers to “an eight-year hiatus of the program from the district.” The program has been active throughout the last eight years.  

“‘All the children in the reading recovery program have been identified by their kindergarten teachers as being far below basic.’” “Offered to children at [sic] the bottom 20 percent of their kindergarten class.” From the article one might not realize that in fact the program works not with kindergartners but with first-graders. The Reading Recovery teachers cherry-pick which students to take and reject many of the lowest performers because they don’t want to muck up the program’s statistics by working with children who may not succeed. When they have run out of other candidates, they often take students who are doing fine in their first-grade classrooms. They pick children from poor and less educated families, whose parents they believe are unlikely to resist being placed in the program. Mr. John instituted disciplinary action against a classroom teacher for informing the parents of one student that the student was doing well in reading and did not need Reading Recovery. 

“We only train really experienced classroom teachers who have already had successful literacy training.” This claim is false. One Reading Recovery teacher had her classroom career in a private school, working only with children from highly educated literate families, where only minimal instruction in reading was necessary. In 2006 Reading Recovery was used as a transitional job for easing out an incompetent administrator who hadn’t been in the classroom for decades. Berkeley Reading Recovery teachers tend to be quite unaware of other aspects of literacy education and of recent research in literacy techniques. 

“John said that the program had helped kids perform well in reading in the district’s Developmental Reading Assessment.” The DRA is not the district’s assessment, but was written by Joetta Beaver and published by Celebration Press, and is used throughout the nation. Unfortunately, most district teachers, including Reading Recovery teachers, have had limited training in administering the DRA, and the results they report have little uniformity. In addition, Reading Recovery teachers have a conflict of interest. They as individuals, and the program as a whole, must produce good DRA scores to justify their continuation. Classroom teachers often report that children undergoing Reading Recovery experience setbacks, not progress. 

Unfortunately, the Planet regularly prints boosteristic articles about elementary education that make no mention of the controversies and defects of the programs they describe. Berkeley’s elementary schools have serious problems, and the Planet could do good service to the community by investigating them thoroughly and shedding light on possible improvements.  

Your puff piece on Reading Recovery, however, covers up the important issues. 

Donald Forman is Berkeley resident.

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. 

Most Americans don’t trust their government. A recent Gallup poll found “Americans generally express less trust in the federal government than at any point in the past decade, and trust in many federal government institutions is now lower than it was during the Watergate era.” Only 43 percent of poll respondents trust President Bush and 50 percent do not trust Congress. 

After Iraq, healthcare, and the economy, Americans rank lack of trust in their government as the number four problem facing the United States. Specific reasons include: “Congress not doing anything” (9 percent), “Government has wrong priorities” (8 percent), “[President] Bush is doing a poor job” (8 percent), “Corruption/scandals in government/lack of ethics” (5 percent), and “Political leaders not working together/bickering/too partisan” (3 percent). Over the past twelve months, the trust issue has gradually gained importance and now outranks immigration, education, and global climate change, among others. 

Two-thirds of Americans say they are “dissatisfied with the way America is being governed”—the highest dissatisfaction rating in 34 years. However, there’s a striking difference in level of satisfaction based on party affiliation: only 18 percent of Democrats and independents are satisfied, compared to 63 percent of Republicans. 

What impact will this sharply divided perspective have on the outcome of the 2008 election? Will the fact that President Bush and the GOP are viewed negatively by two-thirds of Americans translate into a Democratic landslide? Or will lack of trust in the Bush Administration be mediated by the fact that many Americans aren’t satisfied with the Democratically controlled Congress, either?  

Democratic strategists believe the trust issue will work in their favor. The latest poll results indicate that 53 percent of respondents have a favorable opinion of Democrats compared to only 38 percent who view Republicans positively. Based upon this “favorability gap,” many Democratic leaders predict a blue landslide in 2008 when Democrats will capture the White House and win big majorities in the House and Senate. 

However, judging from the sentiments expressed by left-coast Democratic activists, Democratic leaders may be underestimating the extent of deep-blue discontent. Many long-time Democrats are deeply disturbed by what they feel is a betrayal of trust by some Democratic leaders: in 2006 these loyalists worked hard to ensure Democratic victories in the House and Senate believing Dems would use their new legislative power to stop the war. And they haven’t.  

These feelings of betrayal are not limited to the war in Iraq. In a July Gallup Poll 36 percent of respondents thought Congress should institute impeachment proceedings against the President. Most poll participants judged Bush on his conduct of the Iraq war, but a significant percentage described him as someone who lies, doesn’t listen, and has no regard for the Constitution. These strong feelings about the President haven’t gone away. But over the last ten months, many deep-blue activists stuffed their desire for impeachment after Democratic leaders told them, in effect, that Congress could only do one thing at a time: focus on impeachment or stop the war. They gritted their teeth and said: Okay. As long as you stop this awful war, we’ll give up our call for impeachment.  

But Democrats haven’t stopped the war. Now, many loyalists feel their leaders played them for fools. As a result, they don’t trust Congress. 

The trust issue could have several different impacts on the 2008 election. It’s likely to affect voter turnout: in the 2004 election, only 61 percent of eligible voters actually cast a ballot. There could be an even lower turnout in 2008, as more Americans see their vote as meaningless and complain: I don’t trust politicians; there’s no difference between the two parties. 

There’s likely to be an impact on fundraising. Even though Republicans doggedly support President Bush, GOP fundraising lags behind that of Democrats. At the moment, Democrats have raised 50 percent more than have Republicans. If this trend continues, Dems should pick up at least four more seats in both the House and Senate. 

However, the trust issue could also have a negative impact on Democratic fundraising. Many disaffected deep-blue activists threaten to change the pattern of their donations: rather than give to umbrella organizations such as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) or the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), there’s talk they will only fund candidates who voted to stop the war. That means for example, they would send money to Congresswoman Barbara Lee or her PAC that supports antiwar candidates. It means they would not send money to the re-election campaign of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, one of the most conservative of Democratic Senators. On the other hand, the deep-blue activists would support Congressman Tom Allen in his bid to win the Senate seat in Maine because he is reliably anti-war. 

It’s clear Americans are dissatisfied with their national government and don’t trust the leaders of either party. It remains to be seen how this will affect the 2008 election, but it’s an issue that’s unlikely to go away. 

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

If you want to look back at changes in Berkeley’s bird life over the last century, the work of Charles Augustus Keeler provides a convenient benchmark. I have a battered library-discard copy of his Bird Notes Afield, the second edition, published in 1907. Keeler notes in a preface that the bird collection of the California Academy of Sciences, where he did his research, had been a casualty of the San Francisco quake and fire the year before. 

Keeler is an obscure figure today, known primarily to architecture buffs. He gave Bernard Maybeck his first commission, and the resulting Keeler Cottage still stands on Highland Place in North Berkeley. Around the turn of the last century, though, Charles Keeler was prominent in Bay Area literary and artistic circles. 

Born in Milwaukee, he moved here with his family in 1887, attended UC (but didn’t graduate), and landed a job with the Academy. But he saw himself as more poet than scientist, publishing several volumes of poems and plays. A Simple Home (1904) made him a leading voice of the Arts and Crafts movement. 

A friend of John Muir and early member of the Sierra Club, Keeler also founded and presided over the Hillside Club, ran the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce, and organized the Baha’i-influenced First Berkeley Cosmic Society. He had met Muir on the 1899 Harriman Expedition to Alaska, whose complement also included the naturalist John Burroughs, the artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes, and the photographer Edward S. Curtis. 

However, this is about Keeler as a nature writer. His work requires a bit of translation, because so many of the common names of Bay Area birds have changed since the 1900s. Bird Notes Afield is full of varied robins (now varied thrushes), pileolated warblers (Wilson’s), russet-backed thrushes (Swainson’s), and the like.  

Like many of his contemporaries, he wasn’t afraid to anthropomorphize his subjects. Of the varied thrush, he wrote: 

“Some deep, brooding sorrow seems to have fallen upon it to quench its song and leave it meditative and lonely.” The junco, in contrast, is “exceptionally bright and cheerful,” the house wren is “jolly,” and the western scrub-jay is “happy-go-lucky.” But Keeler doesn’t seem to have gone as far as his contemporaries who were lambasted as “nature fakers” by Theodore Roosevelt. 

What interests me most, though, is which birds he considered common, and which he didn’t mention at all. Keeler’s Berkeley had no crows, no ravens, no chestnut-backed chickadees, no Nuttall’s woodpeckers. He treats western bluebirds as frequent winter visitors, and lark-finches (lark sparrows) as routine spring nesters. 

Then there’s this: “The lovely little summer warbler … with its fine gold plumage faintly streaked on the breast with reddish brown, and its vivacious crescendo song, is a familiar summer resident here”—“here” meaning Berkeley. That would be the yellow warbler. And it seems to have remained a familiar urban or suburban bird at least into the 1920s: Joseph Grinnell and Margaret Wythe, in their 1927 Directory to the Bird-life of the San Francisco Bay Region, call it a “common summer resident throughout the region” that “often makes its home in orchards and shade trees in city parks and gardens.” 

That has definitely changed. I’m accustomed to seeing yellow warblers in my yard during migration, but over a couple of decades in Berkeley I’ve never detected a singing male during the breeding season, or any other indicator of nesting. This species prefers riparian habitat, and there’s not a lot of that left in the Bay Area. 

It has also suffered from nest parasitism by the brown-headed cowbird, a Great Plains bird that first showed up here around the 1920s. Like cuckoos, cowbirds dump their eggs in the nests of hosts, who rear the alien hatchling as if it were their own. In populations that co-evolved with cowbirds, yellow warblers either desert the parasitized nest or roof over the cowbird egg (along with any of their own) and start a new clutch. Naïve California warblers have no such instinctive defenses.  

But it seems the warblers are still around, in small numbers. The Contra Costa Breeding Bird Atlas, online at www.flyingemu.com/ccosta, shows nesting confirmed in two survey blocks just north and east of Berkeley, and possible in two others in the East Bay Hills. Elsewhere around the Bay, yellow warblers are uncommon nesters in Marin County and appear to be holding their own in Sonoma and Napa. 

Although there have been other losses since Keeler’s time, there have also been gains. Grinnell and Wythe were pessimistic: “On the whole, it looks as though the total number of species in the Bay region at the present time were undergoing decided reduction, due in major part to the elimination of habitats of wide diversity or of productive kinds.” What actually happened between 1927 and 2007 would have surprised them. More next time.  

Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Ron Sullivan’s “Green Neighbors” column on East Bay trees. 

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!” 

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 her 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.  

Classical at the Freight: Dmitri Ashkenazy and friends at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

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. 

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.  

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.  

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.  

Uncle Earl at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $21.50-$22.50. 548-1761.  

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. 

Alex Ross, New Yorker music critic on “The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century” at 7 p.m. in Wheeler Auditorium, UC Campus. Free. 642-3691. 

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.  

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

Mo’fone at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Lucia and Friends “A Meeting at the Crossroads” at 7:30 p.m. at Café de la Paz.. Tickets are $15-$25. 843-0662.  

Houston, Jones, and Jacques at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Seven Stories Falling, Z-trane Band at 10 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. 

Jef Mercelis at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$12. 849-2568.  

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

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 

FRIDAY, OCT. 19 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., through Nov. 20. 525-1620. 

Altarena Playhouse “Morning’s at Seven” A family comedy by Paul Osborn Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Nov. 11. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553.  

Central Works “Every Inch a King” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through Nov. 18. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1381. centralworks.org 

“A Shirtwaist Tale” on American labor history, women’s suffrage, and Jewish history, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Suggested donation $20. http://ashirtwaisttale.com  

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.  

Women’s Will “Antigone” Fri.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. between Telegraph and Shattuck, Oakland, through Nov. 11. Tickets are $15-$25 sliding scale. 420-0813. www.womenswill.org 

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. 

“Deadly Deviant” Mixed media exhibit celebrating Halloween and Day of the Dead. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Eclectix Gallery, 7523 Fairmount Ave., El Cerrito. www.eclectixgallery.com 

FILM 

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

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Carl Bernstein discusses “A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500.  

Tim Maleeny reads from “Beating the Babushka” at 5:30 p.m. at Dark Carnival, 3086 Claremont Ave. 654-7323.  

“Chinese Opera and the Life of Mei Lanfang” A symposium from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Institute of East Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton St. Free.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

John Ulloa, CD release party, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568.  

Guangzhou Ballet of China at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$68. 642-9988.  

Medicine Ball Band at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

The Stir Ensemble of Chicago at 8 p.m. at Free-Jazz Fridays at the Jazz House, 1510 8th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$15. 415-846-9432. 

Reggae Angels, Mo’Rockin Project at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054.  

Sheldon Brown Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. 

The Rockits, Berkeley rock, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Reilly & Maloney at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761.  

Elizabeth August at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Fuzzy Cousins, Invincible Czars, Mojow & the Vibration Army at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082.  

Batch & Ras Attitude, Zioneers, Malika Madremana & The Greensphere Band at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $12-$15. 548-1159.  

Times 4 at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

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 

SATURDAY, OCT. 20 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Derique, the high tech clown, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4-$5. 849-2568.  

“The Wizard of Ahhhhs” Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave. 452-2259. 

EXHIBITIONS 

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. 

“Masks of Africa” from the collection of Hogan Edet and Judah Dwyer. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Float Gallery, 1091 Calcot Place, Unit #116, Oakland. www.thefloatcenter.com 

FILM 

“Seven Chances” with Judith Rosenberg on piano at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Rajiv Chandrasekharan describes “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Mark Wilson on “Julia Morgan: Architect of Beauty” at 7 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. RSVP to 228-3207. 

Alice Medrich describes “Pure Dessert: True Falvors, Inspiring Ingredients, and Simple Recipes” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Rhythm & Muse featuring poet Garrett Murphy at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 644-6893.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Guangzhou Ballet of China at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$68. 642-9988.  

Oakland Ballet “Oakland Ballet Company Returns” at 2 and 8 p.m. at Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $15-$50. 465-6400. 

The Palmer-Cogan Duo with flutist Kris Palmer and pianist Dmitriy Cogan at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864.  

Broceliande’s Autumnal Celebration House Concert at 8 p.m. in Piedmont. To RSVP and for location call 569-0437. 

Soul Summer Night at the Museum with Oakland School for the Arts, Renee Neufville, Stabe Wilson and others, at 8 p.m. at Oakland Museum, 1000 Oak St., Oakland. Cost is $25. 629-4139. 

Skylar at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

The KTO Project at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568.  

Ellen Robinson & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

The Unreal Band, Pat Quinn Tribute at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054.  

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

Larry Stefl Jazz Group at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5. 843-2473. 

Eddie Marshall & Holy Mischief at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15-$18. 845-5373. 

Zoyres, Samvega at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $TBA. 841-2082.  

Bag O’ Goodies at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

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 

SUNDAY, OCT. 21 

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 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. 

Richard Whittaker and Rue Harrison Photographs and Drawings. Reception at 4 p.m. at The LightRoom, 2263 Fifth St. 649-8111. 

“Celebrating the Fabric of Our Lives” A presentation and exhibition of quilts from 2 to 4 p.m. at Salem Lutheran Home, 2361 East 29th St., Oakland. 534-3637. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Orhan Pamuk reads from “Other Colors: Essays and A Story” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donations accepted. 559-9500. 

Asian American Poetry Now at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. 

An Afternoon with Danny Lyon, documentary photographer and filmmaker at 3:30 p.m., UC Campus. Cost is $12. For reservations see www.fotovision.org 

Leslie Piels and Ann Leyhe describe “Succulents for Containers” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Ayamanatara reads from “365 Days to Enlightenment” at noon at All About Eve, 862 San Pablo Ave, Albany. 559-9901. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Community Music Day at Crowden Music Center, with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free. ccmc@crowden.org 

Live Oak Concert with Marvin Sanders, flute and Lena Lubotsky, piano, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

California Bach Society performs Handel “For the Duke of Chandos” at 4 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft at Ellsworth. Tickets are $10-$25. 415-262-0272. www.calbach.org 

Davitt Moroney, 16th Century English Keyboard music at 4 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $20. 854-6830. 

Guangzhou Ballet of China at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$68. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

The Mo’Rockin Project at Jazz at the Chimes at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10 for concert and reception. For reservations call 228-3218. 

The Very Hot Club at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Crotty/Phipps/Corman Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Trick Kernan Combo at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Americana Unplugged: Claudia Russel 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. at University. 665-6035.  

CDQ+2 at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com

“What do you do with an old king?” queries Central Works Theater Ensemble with their current revival of co-founder Gary Graves’ comedy Every Inch a King, which takes the primal scene, the family tragedy from King Lear, updates it, takes a peek at the three sisters conferring with the old man in the other room and makes it dark, offbeat and too funny. 

The show’s in the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., where the company’s been in residence, making plays, for a good deal of the past dozen years. Central Works always makes superb theatrical use of the intimate salon space in the venerable old Julia Morgan-designed structure, and this time the author directs, while co-founder Jan Zvaifler, who helmed the first run, is onstage as one of the sisters. 

Rica Anderson and Sandra Schlechter, two of the original cast of three, play her siblings. Do they “sell the home? Or do as the old man says? ... What if your old man has been a real son-of-a-bitch all his life? What if it’s all a scam?” A sensitive, all-too-common issue—stiffened by Shakespearean tragic thunder, served up as a contemporary comedy ... the old age and “downfall” of Reggie Leroy, rubber stamp monarch and millionaire—and the dilemma of his daughters, the troika they try to become to handle him, constitute one of the more celebrated Berkeley originals of the stage in recent years, now happily revived—a fitting close to their 2007 season, following the premieres of two new plays.  

Thurs.-Sun., through Nov. 18, $9-25 sliding scale, with Thursdays pay-what-you-will. 558-1381 or centralworks.org. 

Child prodigy or fake? Naive genius or instrument of an adult Svengali? A controversy that erupts over the growing success of a child painter, a kind of modernist primitive, becomes a welter of questions about art, perception and authorship for a local community outside New York City and for the national media, and became a problem of integrity and presentation for Berkeley-raised documentary filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev, whose remarkable movie My Kid Could Paint That opened locally this past weekend.  

Bar-Lev, who attended Malcolm X and Willard schools and Berkeley High, and who credits his upbringing here for his “learning how to look at things with different points of view,” began a documentary a few years back with the permission, even friendship, of the Olmstead family, whose 4-year-old daughter Marla was rapidly gaining notoriety for her paintings, which seemed to viewers to combine the innocence and freedom of childhood with the fantastic forms and colors of Modernist nonobjective abstraction. 

But praise—and skyrocketing prices, up to $25,000 each (over $300,000 total)—for Marla’s paintings got derailed after five months of increasingly international exposure by a 60 Minutes segment (shown in part in Bar-Lev’s film, as the Olmstead family watches with increasing disbelief), in which Charlie Rose elicited comments from a child psychologist, suggesting Marla’s work was probably painted, or at least guided, by her father, himself a Sunday painter and night manager for a Frito-Lay plant. 

The reaction was just as swift as the foregoing recognition, the criticism as brutal as the praise had been fervent. “The juvenile Jackson Pollock may actually be a full-fledged Willem De Frauding,” sniped the New York Post, and vitreolic hate e-mail poured in to the parents and local gallery owner and photorealist painter who launched Marla’s Icarus-like career. 

At this tipping point, the Olmsteads turned to Bar-Lev, whose visage is glimpsed earlier in the documentary, as greeted by the attractive suburban couple and as he plays with Marla and her baby brother Zane (and impish Marla’s more interested in playing than in talking about art or what she does when painting)—with hopes the documentarist will be able to vindicate Marla’s sole authorship with his film.  

And Bar-Lev, with questions of his own and increasingly mixed loyalties, found himself striving to preserve what he regards as the true documentary nature of his film, a sense of purpose which begins to alienate his subjects, intent on their own dilemma, this lands him in the midst of a crossfire between viewers and critics with different concerns, some condemning Bar-Lev for not taking sides, or not showing the reality of bigger issues they feel explain the ongoing conundrum of authorship and the propriety of media attention to, and investigation of, a previously obscure family, especially its children.  

A recent screening of My Kid Could Paint That in San Francisco showed the fascinating tensions which surfaced in the film. Bar-Lev fielded questions with wit and sensitivity, expressing appreciation for the questioners’ concerns, but firmly stating that his film was not about answers as to who painted certain paintings or who’s to blame for this distasteful controversy.  

He said it is a reflection on how these events and the issues they raised are viewed by our society and its phalanx of media, a plethora of perspectives, some criss-crossing or clashing, some never intersecting at all.  

“Scott Fitzgerald once said that the measure of intelligence is the capability to keep two opposing ideas in mind at the same time,” said Bar-Lev, “And when I quoted that for Good Morning America, I was asked, ‘Isn’t that the measure of insanity?’ Ultimately, the film is trying to see the gray area between evil-doers and heroes. There’s a distinction between a documentary filmmaker and an investigative reporter—and a cop. The investigative reporter and a policeman have the obligation, in different ways, to find out what the facts are. My film is, in part, about ethical choices. In order to resolve some of the issues it brings up, I would’ve had to cross a line—as when I film the Olmsteads on their couch while expressing some of my own doubts and they emphasize (as they continue to do) that Marla received no assistance of any kind in painting, and had never said she was a genius.  

I’d love to get an answer to all that, too, but should I have given the Olmsteads a polygraph? or taken the kid off to the side to ask whether her dad really helped her? I was more interested in preserving humanity. People asked questions right from the start, and when they were assured Marla was solely responsible, they said, ‘My god, she’s a genius!’ So the blame can’t fall just on the parents or the gallery owner. It’s not either that she’s a genius or her parents are criminals.” 

My Kid Could Paint That falls somewhere in between other unusual “essay” films, like Orson Welles’ F for Fake (which also went through major changes in the midst of its making and in postproduction, due to events which revealed much ambiguity in its subjects and threw its original purposes into doubt)--and, say, Albert Brooks’ faux-documentary, Real Life, which wryly casts doubt on the role of the documentarist, in llight of the famous episode of a PBS “reality” doc not only invading a family’s home (with permission), but contributing to its eventual break-up.  

But Bar-Lev keeps his perspective open, all the way to the vanishing points, and eschews easy comment and inference, while capturing telling remarks and expressing self-criticism. The events and various personalitiesare fascinating, and audience members find themselves taking both with varying judgments and speculations as to their veracity and ethical value.  

In the midst of it all, the children continue to play and grow up. Bar-Lev casts his net wide, yet always comes back to the question: How do we choose to tell our stories—and how do we choose to react to the stories of others? 

Contributed photo  

Marla Olmstead, 4, works on a painting that may or may not be entirely her creation in Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary My Kid Could Paint That, now in theaters.

This preview of the 2007 SF Jazz Festival, the 25th running of our inspired local jazz derby, must needs begin in medias res since the first two events of the season, author Ben Ratliff and guitarist John McLaughlin, have already come and gone. Not to worry. You still have a chance to catch 37 more performances before the festival closes on Jan. 25 with a concert by Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares at Grace Cathedral.  

Bulgarian sacred choral singing may seem like a stretch for a jazz festival, but it fits in with the range of music that this festival embraces: Cape Verdean vocals from Sara Tavares; Cuban music from Isaac Delgado and Gonzalo Rubalcaba as well as the Conga kings, Candido, Patato Valdes and Giovanni Hidalgo; Latin jazz from Pete Escovedo and John Santos; Brazilian newcomer CéU as well as Brazilian Tropicália legend Caetano Veloso; avant-garde classical from the Kronos Quartet; sitar master Ravi Shankar accompanied by his daughter Anoushka; Saharan guitarists Tinariwen and Vieux Farka Touré and Senegalese vocalist Youssou N’Dour; Portuguese fado star Cristina Branco; and Israeli singer-songwriter Chava Alberstein.  

There is still plenty of music for traditionalists, though, with concerts from Dr. John and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band; saxophonists Ornette Coleman, Pharaoh Sanders, Paquito D’Rivera and Joe Lovano; harmonica master Toots Thielmans; vocalists Dee Dee Bridgewater, Kurt Elling and Nancy King; pianists Ahmad Jamal, Tord Gustavson, Fred Hersch, Jason Moran, Jon Jang, Jackie Terrasson and Herbie Hancock; drummer T. S. Monk; and guitarists John Abercrombie and Dorado Schmitt. 

Without a doubt, the most important event of the festival is the appearance by avant-garde jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman who this year received both a Pulitzer, for his album Sound Grammar, as well as a Grammy for lifetime achievement.  

Ornette, 77, made his first recordings for the Contemporary label in Los Angeles in 1958 and 1959. Dispensing with the piano after his first album, he soon caught the attention of the jazz world playing with a quartet that included either Ed Blackwell or Billy Higgins on drums, Charlie Haden on bass and Don Cherry on pocket trumpet. Ornette himself played a white plastic alto saxophone. It was his sound, however, that divided jazz into two warring camps, although it was the critics and fans more than the musicians who went to war.  

By dispensing with conventional harmony, refusing to run the chord changes that were so central to bebop and hard bop, he pushed Thelonious Monk’s idea of thematic variation to its limits. He composed unusual compositions like Lonely Woman, The Blessing and Ramblin’, whose tonalities fell between the notes of traditional Western scales.  

In fact, what Ornette did was quite traditional within the framework of jazz history. Like Louis Armstrong, he projected the raw emotions expressed in the flatted thirds, fifths and sevenths of the so-called blues scale on to a music played on European instruments. He was retrieving the microtones that got lost or buried during the middle passage. He dispensed with symmetrically mathematical song forms just as earlier jazz improvisers had always invented asymmetrical melodies while soloing. His sound was uniquely human, immediate and thrilling, a return to the vocalic origins of the music.  

Ever since those groundbreaking early recordings almost 50 years ago, Ornette has continued to pursue his own eccentric musical path, creating an emotionally supercharged music informed by his personal lyricism. His current rhythm section, Tony Falanga and Greg Cohen on acoustic bass and his son Denardo on drums, is the same one that played the festival in 2005 as well as on his Pulitzer Prize-winning album. That live performance, as well as the one on the album, presents some of Ornette’s most accessible and sublime music. In a most American way, he continues to sound his barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. 

Another must-see group is Dorado Schmitt’s Django Reinhardt Festival Band. Schmitt, a Gypsy guitarist and violinist from the Lorraine region of France, first played the Bay Area with saxophonist James Carter in 2004. His band, with Carter on board, had already wowed everyone at the Django Festival at New York City’s Birdland in 2002. For this festival appearance, the group is joined by Cuban-born clarinet virtuoso Paquito D’Rivera.  

Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, for those who do not know, was certainly the first great non-American jazz musician. Along with violinist Stephane Grappelli, he formed the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, and together (and apart, as well) they made some of the greatest jazz recordings of the swing era.  

Django’s music was lyrical, swinging, free, inventive and technically astounding. It is always surprising to find out that the fingers of Reinhardt’s left hand had been mutilated in a conflagration of wax flowers in his caravan. He subsequently had the use of only two fingers of that hand. In spite of, or because of, this limitation, he could play runs of notes on the guitar that still seem impossible, even for those with ten fingers. 

Schmitt is among a handful of players who have come close to catching the spirit as well as technical virtuosity of Reinhardt’s music. The addition of D’Rivera, a founding member of Irakere and one of the greatest Latin jazz players of all time, only increases the potential greatness of this concert. 

Ornette Coleman will perform at the Masonic Center in San Francisco on Oct. 28 at 7 p.m. Dorado Schmitt’s Django Reinhardt Festival Band with Paquito D’Rivera will perform at Herbst Theatre on Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. There will also be a family matinee concert without Paquito at 3 p.m., same date. For more information on all the events of the SF Jazz Festival call (866) 920-5299 or go to their website at sfjazz.org.

Now is the perfect time of year to head up north to Crescent City. It makes a great refueling stop while exploring expansive Redwood National Park, and is just a hop, skip, and jump from the Oregon border and the dramatic Oregon coast. 

Because Crescent City is so far north—about a six- to seven-hour drive—it is often overlooked as a Bay Area getaway destination. That’s a shame, because it has some sites that are worth the extra time it takes to get here.  

Not the least of them is the Crescent Beach Motel, an ordinary but nicely maintained lodging in which all the rooms have a large window facing the ocean.  

The sandy beach is just beyond a protective low row of boulders. As my husband and I stared out at the grey ocean, it came alive with diving pelicans and bobbing surfers. We wound up keeping our windows open to the soothing sounds of the rolling waves and bleating fog horn.  

Amenities are modest, but I appreciated my complimentary afternoon cup of hot chocolate and my breakfast of coffee and instant oatmeal.  

On our drive in, we passed through the immense redwoods along the Avenue of the Giants just below Eureka. You might want to allow time for a stop at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, which is just off Highway 101 about six miles north of Orick. Steven Spielberg filmed part of The Lost World: Jurassic Park II here. This 14,000-acre park is a refuge for one of the few remaining herds of native Roosevelt elk, which are the largest mammals in California and the largest subspecies of North American elk. Viewing is prime from mid-September to mid-October at the Elk Prairie section on Newton Drury Scenic Parkway.  

After sitting outside our motel room for a spell on provided beach chairs, releasing the tensions of the journey, we drove the few miles into town for dinner at Ambrosia. Though located unpromisingly in a strip mall, it’s popular with locals for good reason. My well-priced entrée—horseradish-crusted wild salmon with mashed potatoes and asparagus—included a delicious Caesar salad and left little room for one of the housemade desserts, though I managed a few tastes of my husband’s chocolate cake.  

After breakfast in the morning, we took an invigorating walk along the driftwood-strewn beach using improvised driftwood walking sticks that my husband playfully converted into a baseball bat.  

Then it was off to the town’s charming, now automated Battery Point Lighthouse for a tour. The tide has to be out in order to walk over to the island that holds this charming little gem of a Cape Cod-style lighthouse, which is separated from the shore when the tide is in.  

I’d planned ahead to be here when the tide was right. And getting there is half the fun, requiring as it does a walk over a gravel bed leading past tidepools and past the occasional iris or magenta ice plant.  

I found several stranded, still-alive sea stars and returned them to a tidepool.  

While we sat on a bluff waiting for our tour to start, we took in the stunning sea view alive with flocks of sea birds, including pelicans, and wished we’d brought a lunch so that we could soak up the view even longer at one of the picnic tables.  

On the tour, led by the friendly keeper Randy Ansley and shared with a group of very excited local third graders, we learned that the first lightkeeper came out with James Marshall, who famously discovered gold elsewhere; that it is called “the Christmas light” because it opened on Christmas in 1856; and that the current lightkeeper has cable and internet and got the job by luckily being on a tour on the last day of the previous keeper’s stay.  

We climbed a spiral staircase, viewed the original 4th order Fresnel lens (now displayed in the gift shop), saw and heard an intriguing demonstration of an antique Victrola, and viewed the living quarters of the current keepers that is decorated with lace curtains, rag rugs, and antiques galore (it is one of the longest continually lived in lighthouses on the West Coast). When he saw the light, one kid screamed, “Wow!”  

After, we stopped a short ways away at Brother Jonathan Park, an open expanse that holds several graves and provides a viewpoint of the largest shipwreck--in terms of life and money--ever to occur off the coast of California. We then made a quick stop at the Northcoast Marine Mammal Center located adjacent to Front Street Park to view some noisily recovering baby sea lions, and then headed for lunch.  

The cozy Beachcomber Restaurant, located next door to our motel, has a nice nautical decor of rough-cut planks and fishnets, as well as comfortable booths, but the ocean view is the big event. Also, the fresh fish—often locally caught and usually grilled over madrone-wood barbecue pits—is very good, and the fish & chips-coleslaw-curly fries basket is primo.  

Before leaving town, we made one more stop—at the Del Norte County Historical Society Museum. Housed in a warren of rooms in a building that once served as the town’s Hall of Records and jail, this museum devotes two rooms to local Tolowa and Yurok Native American artifacts. Other displays include musical instruments, photographs, and needlework, and an annex houses the magnificent 5,000-pound, 18-foot-high, 1st order Fresnel lens from the Point Saint George Reef Lighthouse, located 6 miles off shore.  

From here, we hit Highway 101 and headed north to the Oregon border, which is just 20 miles away.  

IF YOU GO 

Crescent City/Del Norte County Chamber of Commerce  

(800) 343-8300; www.exploredelnorte.com  

Central Oregon Coast Association  

(800) 767-2064; www.coastvisitor.com 

Crescent Beach Motel  

(707) 464-5436; www.crescentbeachmotel.com. Rates drop on Sept. 3. 

Redwood National Park  

(707) 464-6101; www.nps.gov/redw 

Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park (707) 464-6101 x5301; www.parks.ca.gov 

Avenue of the Giants  

www.avenueofthegiants.net 

Ambrosia (707) 464-2400  

Battery Point Lighthouse  

(707) 464-3089; www.delnortehistory.org.  

Tours April-Oct.  

Brother Jonathan Park  

9th St./Pebble Beach  

Northcoast Marine Mammal Center (707) 465-MAML; www.northcoastmmc.org 

Beachcomber Restaurant  

(707) 464-2205 

Del Norte County Historical Society Museum (707) 464-3922; www.delnortehistory.org 

Carole Terwilliger Meyers is the author of Weekend Adventures in San Francisco & Northern California (www.carousel-press.com) and Miles of Smiles: 101 Great Car Games & Activities.  

Photograph by Carole Terwilliger Meyers. 

The Battery Point Lighthouse opened on Chrsimas day in 1856.

If you want to look back at changes in Berkeley’s bird life over the last century, the work of Charles Augustus Keeler provides a convenient benchmark. I have a battered library-discard copy of his Bird Notes Afield, the second edition, published in 1907. Keeler notes in a preface that the bird collection of the California Academy of Sciences, where he did his research, had been a casualty of the San Francisco quake and fire the year before. 

Keeler is an obscure figure today, known primarily to architecture buffs. He gave Bernard Maybeck his first commission, and the resulting Keeler Cottage still stands on Highland Place in North Berkeley. Around the turn of the last century, though, Charles Keeler was prominent in Bay Area literary and artistic circles. 

Born in Milwaukee, he moved here with his family in 1887, attended UC (but didn’t graduate), and landed a job with the Academy. But he saw himself as more poet than scientist, publishing several volumes of poems and plays. A Simple Home (1904) made him a leading voice of the Arts and Crafts movement. 

A friend of John Muir and early member of the Sierra Club, Keeler also founded and presided over the Hillside Club, ran the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce, and organized the Baha’i-influenced First Berkeley Cosmic Society. He had met Muir on the 1899 Harriman Expedition to Alaska, whose complement also included the naturalist John Burroughs, the artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes, and the photographer Edward S. Curtis. 

However, this is about Keeler as a nature writer. His work requires a bit of translation, because so many of the common names of Bay Area birds have changed since the 1900s. Bird Notes Afield is full of varied robins (now varied thrushes), pileolated warblers (Wilson’s), russet-backed thrushes (Swainson’s), and the like.  

Like many of his contemporaries, he wasn’t afraid to anthropomorphize his subjects. Of the varied thrush, he wrote: 

“Some deep, brooding sorrow seems to have fallen upon it to quench its song and leave it meditative and lonely.” The junco, in contrast, is “exceptionally bright and cheerful,” the house wren is “jolly,” and the western scrub-jay is “happy-go-lucky.” But Keeler doesn’t seem to have gone as far as his contemporaries who were lambasted as “nature fakers” by Theodore Roosevelt. 

What interests me most, though, is which birds he considered common, and which he didn’t mention at all. Keeler’s Berkeley had no crows, no ravens, no chestnut-backed chickadees, no Nuttall’s woodpeckers. He treats western bluebirds as frequent winter visitors, and lark-finches (lark sparrows) as routine spring nesters. 

Then there’s this: “The lovely little summer warbler … with its fine gold plumage faintly streaked on the breast with reddish brown, and its vivacious crescendo song, is a familiar summer resident here”—“here” meaning Berkeley. That would be the yellow warbler. And it seems to have remained a familiar urban or suburban bird at least into the 1920s: Joseph Grinnell and Margaret Wythe, in their 1927 Directory to the Bird-life of the San Francisco Bay Region, call it a “common summer resident throughout the region” that “often makes its home in orchards and shade trees in city parks and gardens.” 

That has definitely changed. I’m accustomed to seeing yellow warblers in my yard during migration, but over a couple of decades in Berkeley I’ve never detected a singing male during the breeding season, or any other indicator of nesting. This species prefers riparian habitat, and there’s not a lot of that left in the Bay Area. 

It has also suffered from nest parasitism by the brown-headed cowbird, a Great Plains bird that first showed up here around the 1920s. Like cuckoos, cowbirds dump their eggs in the nests of hosts, who rear the alien hatchling as if it were their own. In populations that co-evolved with cowbirds, yellow warblers either desert the parasitized nest or roof over the cowbird egg (along with any of their own) and start a new clutch. Naïve California warblers have no such instinctive defenses.  

But it seems the warblers are still around, in small numbers. The Contra Costa Breeding Bird Atlas, online at www.flyingemu.com/ccosta, shows nesting confirmed in two survey blocks just north and east of Berkeley, and possible in two others in the East Bay Hills. Elsewhere around the Bay, yellow warblers are uncommon nesters in Marin County and appear to be holding their own in Sonoma and Napa. 

Although there have been other losses since Keeler’s time, there have also been gains. Grinnell and Wythe were pessimistic: “On the whole, it looks as though the total number of species in the Bay region at the present time were undergoing decided reduction, due in major part to the elimination of habitats of wide diversity or of productive kinds.” What actually happened between 1927 and 2007 would have surprised them. More next time.  

Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Ron Sullivan’s “Green Neighbors” column on East Bay trees. 

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. 

Rally Against Military Recruiters in Berkeley with Code Pink from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 64 Shattuck Square. 524-2776. 

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Colloquium with Thomas H. Hahn on “Landscapes of Ritual: China and the Performative 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. 

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. at the LeConte School Cafetorium, entrance on Russell St. Agenda topics will include BRT, local zoning issues and nominations for next year’s Board of Directors. KarlReeh@aol.com, 843-2602. 

“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. 

Simplicity Forum meets to discuss “Opting Out of the Consumer Trap” at 6:30 p.m. at the Claremont Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave. 

“Avoid Cancer” Book signing 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. 

FRIDAY, OCT. 19 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon Speaker to be announced. 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.  

“Designing California Native Gardens; The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens” with Alrie Middlebrook and Dr. Glenn Keator at 7:30 p.m. at Builder's Booksource, 1817 Fourth St. 845-6874. 

“AIDS in the Black Community” A forum, with film screening, at 6 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Free. 836-4649. 

“An Unreasonable Man” Conscientious Projector Series documentary on Ralph Nader at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. 841-4824. 

Iraq Moratorium Action from 2 to 4 p.m. at the corner of University and Acton. Sponsored by the Strawberry Creek Lodge Tenants Assoc. and the Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers. 548-9696. 

“10 Questions for the Dalai Lama” A documentary by Rick Ray, at 7:30 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. 528-8844. www.unityberkeley.org 

“Intro to Fearless Meditation: Practice of the Body” at 7 p.m. at Center for Urban Peace, 2584 Martin Luther King Jr Way. Suggested Donation $20 - $30, no one turned away. 549-3733. 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

SATURDAY, OCT. 20 

Fall Harvest Walk Join the Berkeley Path Wanderers on an easy, level walk to Berkeley community and school gardens. Meet at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley BART station, just outside the gates. 528-3246. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Open The Farm Meet and greet the animals at the Little Farm in Tilden Park as you help the farmer with morning chores, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. 525-2233. 

Berkeley Historical Society Tour of Downtown Berkeley from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. To register and for meeting place call 848-0181. 

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza at 388 Ninth St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Chapel of the Chimes Historical and Botanical Tour at 10 a.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. RSVP to 228-3207. 

East Bay Native Plant Fair Sat. from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Sun. from noon to 3 p.m. at Native Here Nursery, 101 Golf Course Drive. Free.  

The New School of Berkeley Halloween Bazaar, with children's games, giant rummage sale, book sale, crafts, haunted house, and more from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 1606 Bonita St. at Cedar. Proceeds support the New School’s scholarship fund. 548-9165.  

East Bay Regional Park District Ambassador Training from 9 a.m. to noon at the Trudeau Center, 11500 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Registration required. 544-2206. cjohnson@ebparks.org 

Tibetan Association Celebrates the awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal to His Holiness the Dalai Lama at 6 p.m. at Golden Gate Fields, 1100 Eastshore Highway. Tickets are $50. RSVP to 390-6771, 206-0247. 

California Writers Club “Literary Voices from our Community” with Gurnam Brard and Anjuelle Floyd, at 10 a.m. at Barnes & Noble, Jack London Square. 272-0120. www.berkeleywritersclub.org 

Free Car Seat Check from 10 a.m. to noon at the Allston Way Parking Garage, between Harold Way and Shattuck Ave. 647-1111. 

Fire Safety Day Meet a firefighter at 11 a.m. at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. 

“Tropical Rainforests: Challenges and New Hopes” A forum from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. Cost is $15-$30. For information call 415-321-8000.  

Chapel of the Chimes Historical and Botanical Tour at 10 a.m. at 4499 Piedmont Ave. RSVP to 228-3207. 

Old Oakland Outdoor Cinema “Babe” at sunset on Ninth St., between Broadway and Washington. Free, bring your own chair and blanket. 238-4734. 

Full Houses: Poker Tournament to benefit Impact Theatre at 7 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave. $50 buy in, with unlimited $25 rebuys until 9 p.m. 464-4468. 

“Destination Studies Class on Eastern Europe” from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. Cost is $10. 981-2931. 

“Restoring the Heart of Change” Daylong retreat with Kyodo Willilliams at Center for Urban Peace, 2584 MLK Jr Way. Cost is $25. 549-3733. 

“Spirit Never Dies” An evening of communing with those that have passed over at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Psychic Institute, 2018 Allston Way. Cost is $20. For reservations call 644-1600 . 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

SUNDAY, OCT. 21 

United Nations Day Celebration with a parade of the flags of the 193 member nations at 11:30 a.m. at Jack London Square, Oakland.  

Bike Tour of Oakland around Oakland’s Brooklyn neighborhood on a leisurely paced two-hour tour that covers about five miles. Meet at 10 a.m. at the 10th St. entrance to the Oakland Museum of California. Reservations required. 238-3514.  

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 526-7377. 

“Confronting Cambodia’s Wildlife Crisis” A presentation and discussion with Wildlife Alliance at 11:30 a.m. at Morgan Lounge, Room 114 Morgan Hall, UC Campus. RSVP to 202-223-6350. miller@wildlifealliance.org 

Greening Richmond Learn about global warming and what residents and business owners can do. Information tables on lighting, appliances, solar panels, tank-less water heaters, insulation and more. From 1 to 5 p.m. at DeJean Middle School, 3400 Mac Donald, Richmond. www.greenchamberofcommerce.net 

Green Sunday “Stem Cell and Cloning Research Controversies: Developing a Green Position” with Diane Beeson, and Tina Stevens at 5 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. at 65th in North Oakland. 

El Cerrito Historical Society with Richard Schwartz on his new book “Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley” at 1 p.m. at the El Cerrito Senior Center, 6510 Stockton Ave. behind the El Cerrito Library. 526-7507. www.elcerritowire.com/history 

Holiday Gourd Crafting Learn the history of gourds, and how to create a fall centerpiece for your table from 1 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. Cost is $20-$29. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Community Music Day at Crowden Music Center, with an instrument petting zoo, mini-concerts with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, and more, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free. ccmc@crowden.org 

Day of the Dead Community Celebration with music, dance, ceremonia, activities, and food, from noon to 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Reservations required. 238-2022. 

“Celebrating the Fabric of Our Lives” A presentation and exhibition of quilts from 2 to 4 p.m. at Salem Lutheran Home, 2361 East 29th St., Oakland. 534-3637. 

Friends & Family Day at the Magnes from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Judha L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. 549-6950. www.magnes.org 

“10 Questions for the Dalai Lama” A documentary by Rick Ray, at 7:30 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Cost is $10. 528-8844. www.unityberkeley.org 

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club, Berkeley Marina. Wear warm, waterproof clothing and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. www.cal-sailing.org 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Repair Class Learn how to repair a flat. Bring your bicycle and tools. At 10 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Marx and the United States” with Urszula Wislanka and Ron Kelch at 10 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. 595-7417. www.tifcss.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

“Activating Present-Moment Awareness” with Marion Pastor and David Curry at 10 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Elizabeth Cook on “Sacred Places of the Buddha: Birth of Enlightenment” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, OCT. 22 

“Violence on the Streets” A law enforcement awareness forum, with film screening, at 6 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Free. 836-4649. 

“Frontiers in Climate Forecasting” with Bill Collins of LBNL at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. 486-7292. 

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 

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. 

CITY MEETINGS 

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.  

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.