The UC Berkeley Muslim Students Association (MSA) responded to Islamo-Fascist Week on campus with Peace Not Prejudice Week, ending today. 

Funded by UC Berkeley alumnus and Republican activist David Horowitz and hosted by Berkeley College Republicans (BCR), Islamo-Fascist Week met with protests from more than 30 student groups on campus who joined together to form The Coalition for Peace Not Prejudice. 

“Islamo-Fascist Week represents ignorance and indirect oppression of American Muslims,” said sophomore Saman Khalid, a member of MSA, which was also part of the coalition. “It’s against Islam ... It’s offensive not just to Muslim students but to everybody. They are trying to inform moderate Muslims about radical Muslims. It’s ludicrous. I don’t think you need to inform Jews about Nazis or Blacks about Jim Crow.” 

Berkeley College Republicans, who had set up a table across from the group Peace Not Prejudice at Sproul Plaza this week, said their events were in defense of moderate Muslims against radicals. 

“It’s about making people aware of Islamic terrorism,” said Ross Lingenfelder, BCR president. “We are not talking about Catholic terrorism in Ireland or Hindu terrorism in Sri Lanka ... It’s awareness about a really dangerous form of Islam that’s out to destroy the United States.” 

Khalid told the Planet that BCR’s actions were threatening the safety of women wearing a hijab on campus. 

“There was a man here on campus not affiliated with BCR who was carrying a huge sign that said ‘Islam Abuses Women’ and that it ‘promoted polygamy and wifebeating’ ... If you are someone who has no idea about what Islam is then that message could give the wrong impression.” 

BCR brought in Nonie Darwish, founder of Arabs for Israel, for a talk which was covered by television crews from the Washington D.C. bureau of Al Jazeera Monday. 

“We are not talking about the average Muslim but about a radical strain,” said Lingenfelder, a UC Berkeley math major. 

“The only complaint we are getting is that others might try to interpret our message in a wrong way. My goal is to polarize the radical in Islam and the peace-loving American Islam ... [and] to expose how radical Muslims treat their women.” 

“They are saying support moderate Muslims and not radical Muslims but are not providing a definition for either,” said senior and MSA political action committee co-chair Hamzah Hararah. 

“For them Salman Rushdie might be a moderate, but for others he might not.” 

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau stopped by the Pride Not Prejudice table Wednesday. 

“You are doing the right thing,” he told the students smiling. 

He later told the Planet that the university was obligated to let students express their views since Berkeley was the birthplace of free speech. 

“My pride lies with Peace Not Prejudice because they are conducting themselves in a dignified manner when they are being subjected to insult.”

Despite concerns of some residents that the city could end up subsidizing a downtown hotel-condo project, the council on Tuesday voted 8-1 to accept the developer’s funds to hire a consultant to figure out funding. 

Councilmember Dona Spring voted against the proposal. 

The council also approved a 13 percent salary hike for firefighters and named the Planning Commission as the lead commission on Bus Rapid Transit. The city manager restored funding to the Quarter Meal program. 

Downtown hotel 

A downtown hotel at Shattuck Avenue and Center Street is in the planning stages, spearheaded by UC Berkeley, which owns the land where the 210-room facility would be built.  

The project, to be named the Berkeley Charles Hotel, is being developed by Boston-based Carpenter and Company and is planned to include a conference room, ballroom, retail space and 50 residential condominiums. 

A report authored by Acting Economic Development Division Director Michael Caplan urged the council to accept funding from the developer to pay a consultant to look at “possible mechanisms to provide tax abatement or other subsidies to render the project feasible.” Caplan’s report notes a $30 million funding gap. 

At the council meeting, however, Caplan underscored the limitations on the consultant’s work: “This does not commit the city to a project subsidy,” he said. 

The report says the funding gap can be partially resolved if the city waives some hotel occupancy tax revenues, funds that some councilmembers said should be used for other city projects. 

The council vote means accepting $50,000 from the developer to contract with Keyser Marston and Associates to address the funding gap and “find creative ways to close this gap” that includes “partnering with the city to rebate some portion of the Transient Occupancy Tax [hotel tax] generated by the hotel in its early years of operation.” 

Councilmember Linda Maio said she thought the project would generate funds for the city and agreed with most of the council that an expert should be hired to analyze the feasibility of the project. 

“We want to hire our own person to go through the numbers,” said Councilmember Linda Maio. “I’m concerned the numbers are so high.” 

A few members of the public and Councilmember Spring were less enthusiastic about the contract for the study, which they said would lead to city subsidies. 

“It’s nuts,” former Planning Commission Chair Zelda Bronstein told the council. While Bronstein said she supports the idea of building a hotel downtown, she cautioned, “The idea of the subsidy needs to be killed.” 

Spring was the lone council vote opposing acceptance of funds for the fiscal analysis. The proposed project may do more harm than good, she said. 

“We’re asked to violate the height ordinance,” Spring said. The hotel could be as high as 20 stories. “They want us to give away the sidewalk and the street and build luxury condos,” she said. 

The council turned down an addition to the resolution by Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who had wanted to include in the resolution an addition, asking the developer to include “community benefits” in the project, including offering “card check” (a way to unionize workers through cards they submit), green building and affordable housing. 

Firefighters’ contract 

Following an 8-0-1 council vote to approve a four-year contract, firefighters will get a 13 percent raise over four years, retroactive to June 2006. A 2008 ballot measure may be needed to help pay for the salary hike in 2009-2010. 

Spring abstained, calling for the council to delay consideration of the raise to allow “for more discussion on the impact on future budgets.”  

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak disagreed. “The city has been in negotiations for a year and a half,” he said, pointing out that the firefighters’ contract expired in June 2006. In other years the raises have been 5 to 6 percent, he said, adding that the approximate 3 percent salary hike per year mirrors the city’s revenue growth. 

The proposed contract places firefighters near the median salaries of firefighters in nearby districts, wrote City Manger Phil Kamlarz in a report to the council. 

Kamlarz also noted in the report that the anticipated revenue increases would be sufficient only through 2008. “However, the [fiscal year] 2009 adopted budget does not include funding for full staffing, which is currently being considered as part of a potential ballot measure for November 2008,” Kamlarz wrote. 

Spring argued that the public had not had time to read the report, delivered to the council and public just before the meeting. “We should be willing to let the public scrutinize this before we vote. Who do you think pays the bills around here?” she asked. 

Bus rapid transit (BRT) 

The City Council unanimously approved a resolution directing the Planning Commission in cooperation with the Transportation Commission to lead Berkeley’s process for public discussion and input on Bus Rapid Transit, an AC Transit proposal that would, if fully implemented, dedicate lanes for buses on Telegraph Avenue and other streets in Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro. 

A staff report on the question indicates that the commission should be ready to present its “preferred alternative” for BRT implementation to the City Council by March 25. In addition to dedicated lanes, BRT can include technology to turn traffic lights green, ticket machines at bus stops, more frequent bus service and other features. 

The debate among public speakers at the meeting was over whether the Planning Commission or Transportation Commission should take the lead on the question. The argument for the Planning Commission was that it would look at broader ramifications of BRT—economic development and more—while the Transportation Commission would have looked more narrowly at questions such as side-street congestion that could result from BRT. 

The Transportation Commission has been favorable toward BRT. 

The resolution includes a proposal to AC Transit to conduct a feasibility study among the communities along the BRT route on the eco-pass concept, where bus passes are subsidized by the community or by businesses. 

Quarter Meal 

A vote of the council wasn’t necessary on Councilmember Worthington’s resolution to restore funding to Berkeley Food and Housing’s “quarter meal” program. The program was asking for $23,000 that had been cut from the city’s budget in June. City Manager Phil Kamlarz, however, said there was $2,000 per month until February in the city coffers to fund the program.  

At midyear, when the city takes a fresh look at its balance sheet, it might be able to give the program another half year of funding, he said. 

The Quarter Meal Program serves hot meals, five evenings per week at Trinity United Methodist Church on Bancroft Way.  

Editor’s note: Zelda Bronstein is currently volunteering as a proofreader for the Planet.

After what Supervisor Keith Carson said was “reluctantly” carrying out their legally-mandated duty to place a $12 million Children’s Hospital special tax initiative on the February ballot, Alameda County supervisors voted to place a second compromise measure on the ballot as well. 

But supervisors also said that both ballot measures may be in trouble and may not get the political support of all of them in next year’s campaigning. 

The compromise measure, which County Administrator Susan Muranishi said would mitigate some but not all of the county’s concerns about the original Children’s Hospital’s initiative, was written by Children’s attorneys following what some participants have privately described as an intense Oct. 9 meeting between hospital and county officials, and what Muranishi said were “extensive” followup meetings and conference calls. 

Both measures passed at last Tuesday’s supervisors’ meeting on 4-0 votes, with Supervisor Alice Lai-Bitker absent. 

The two competing measures will now appear side-by-side on next year’s presidential ballot in Alameda County. To pass, each measure must receive a two-thirds vote. If both pass, the measure getting the most votes will go into force. 

Children’s Hospital Vice President Mary Dean told supervisors at last Tuesday’s meeting that Children’s was “in total support of the revised version of the measure.” 

Children’s Hospital officials were unavailable to comment for this story. 

Both measures would authorize a special property parcel tax ranging between $24 and $250 per year for the construction of a new Children’s Hospital. Seismic problems had forced Children’s, a private hospital, to either retrofit its old North Oakland hospital or build a new one either in Oakland, in another Alameda County city or outside the county. Earlier this month, Children’s announced plans to build a 250 patient room, $700 million facility, complete with a 12-story tower, between 52nd and 53rd streets near the hospital’s current location. 

But according to Muranishi, the revised measure would alleviate several of the county’s original concerns, including eliminating the county as the holder of the bond’s debt service, reimbursing the county’s costs in administering the tax and providing some assurance that tax proceeds do not supplant hospital funds that can then be freed up for purposes not spelled out in the tax measure. 

The conflict between county supervisors and Children’s Hospital officials, which had been simmering for several months, went public last July after all five supervisors expressed sometimes-bitter concerns that Children’s had placed their original measure on the ballot without prior consultation with county staff or officials. 

One of the county’s major concerns was that the Children’s measure, if passed, would add to the county’s debt load, making it difficult if not impossible for the county to initiate its own bond measure for needed seismic retrofits at county-operated Highland Hospital. 

“What caught me off guard is that this has been going on for a long while and we were not made aware of it,” Board of Supervisors President Scott Haggerty said at the time. “I don’t know how you can involve the county in incurring this level of debt without bringing us to the table. This is not about the fine work that Children’s Hospital is doing. Everybody on this board appreciates that and acknowledges that and supports that. Let’s not make this about the children. We get it. We spend millions on the needs of children in this county. It’s about process. It’s about not coming to us in advance. I don’t know how you operate like this.” 

A chastened Children’s Hospital President and CEO Frank Tiedemann said in response that he “apologize[d] if we have not communicated well. We do a good job running a hospital, but not so well in the political process. We know you have serious questions, and we will try to give them serious responses.” 

Children’s officials said last July that it was an oversight that county staff and officials had not been brought into the original planning for the tax initiative, but the hospital’s bond counsel later revealed to county officials that their exclusion from the planning process had been intentional. 

According to Supervisor Carson in announcing last Tuesday’s compromise, county officials “rolled up our sleeves to work on correcting the original measure in order to demonstrate our support for health care in this county, regardless of whether we are the deliverers of that health care.” 

Carson represents the district in which Children’s Hospital is located and has been taking the lead in negotiations between the county and hospital officials over the measure. 

While supervisors expressed reluctance at Tuesday’s meeting about voting to place the original measure on the ballot, Alameda County Counsel Richard Winnie told them that because the measure had received the necessary signatures, the supervisors were mandated to do so. 

But Carson said that the original measure “was proven to be flawed by the fact that Children’s Hospital’s own attorneys have come back and totally changed it,” and said that the original measure would have failed “without a doubt” because of announced opposition by the Alameda County Taxpayers Association and “all labor unions in the county.” 

Carson said he still had “deep concerns” about the compromise measure.  

And Haggerty said that both initiatives were “poorly written,” adding that “we tried to fix the problem initially before Children’s Hospital began collecting signatures on the original ballot measure,” but said that county officials were rebuffed by hospital officials. “I talked with one Children’s Hospital Board member about how poorly-written the first measure was, and this person looked me straight in the face and said, ‘you wouldn’t vote against children, would you?’” But Haggerty said that having two competing Children’s Hospital measures on the ballot will be confusing to voters, “and both of them will probably fail.” Haggerty said that “while I’m voting for it today, I’m not saying I will go out and ask voters to support it.”

Faced with some 60 neighbors opposing telecommunications antennas proposed for a building at Ward Street and Shattuck Avenue—and armed with signs calling for the recall of the mayor and stating “Don’t Sell Us Out”—the Berkeley City Council split Tuesday over whether to uphold the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) decision to deny permits for the antennas at 2721 Shattuck Ave. 

Nextel Communications and Verizon Communications have appealed the June zoning board decision, the second time ZAB has voted to deny Nextel and Verizon permits for the antennas atop the five-story UC Storage building. They have also filed lawsuits, saying the city’s denial violates the 1996 Telecommunications Act. 

The split vote on upholding the zoning board—with councilmembers Max Anderson, Dona Spring and Mayor Tom Bates in support of the ZAB decision, Councilmember Gordon Wozniak in opposition and Councilmembers Linda Maio, Darryl Moore, Laurie Capitelli, Betty Olds and Kriss Worthington abstaining—with no position having mustered the five required votes, buys the council 30 days to uphold or deny the telecommunications companies’ appeal.  

If no five-vote position for or against the appeal emerges at the council’s Nov. 6 meeting—and, if before the 30-day period is up, there is no special council meeting at which the ZAB denial is reversed—the zoning board decision will stand. 

The council addressed the lawsuit in closed sessions before and after the Oct. 23 meeting, but took no vote on whether to go forward with the suit, according to city spokesperson Mary Kay Clunies-Ross. The closed-door session was continued to Thursday at 5 p.m.  

“This is the first time the council has asked good questions,” the community group’s spokesperson Michael Barglow told the council, speaking for a second time at the end of the hearing. “The only reason we’re being taken seriously is because of the Verizon lawsuit,” he added. 

At the opening of the public hearing, Cory Alvin, speaking for Nextel, told the council that the company had reduced the number of antennas from 12 to six and noted that “a third-party review had determined that [the antennas] were necessary for coverage needs.” 

Alvin also underscored that the antennas were planned for a “commercial corridor,” as the city could deny them in a residential area. 

Community members, however, are quick to point out that UC Storage, owned by Piedmont resident Patrick Kennedy, abuts a residential neighborhood. Community speakers called on the city to locate the antennas away from the neighborhood, such as on the fire station on the west side of Shattuck Avenue at Derby Street. 

But Paul Albritton, attorney for Verizon, told the council: “There are no nearby sites for co-location.” He went on to ask the council to “look beyond the emotional appeals” of the community. 

Barglow, who lives near the proposed antenna site, spoke on behalf of the neighborhood. “Stand up and lead,” he told the council. 

Addressing the lawsuit, Barglow called on the city to spend the funds necessary to fight the telecommunications companies. He noted that while some city staff believe the lawsuit would cost about $250,000, the community thinks the cost would be less. 

Barglow added the campaign to recall Bates to the mix. The mayor, who was strongly supported by his neighbors in the last election, lives close to the proposed project. His house was picketed Monday night by about 25 of his neighbors.  

“Some of us are doing the hard work of recalling the mayor,” Barglow said. 

While city insiders asking for anonymity have said Bates supports settlement of the Nextel/Verizon lawsuit, the mayor voted in favor of denying the appeal. 

Another neighbor of the proposed antennas, Christopher Restivo, addressing the council, pointed out that the antennas proposed atop UC Storage were not likely to serve the South Berkeley neighborhood. “If folks in the hills are using cell phones, what antennas are they using?” he asked. 

While allegations of adverse health effects from radiation emitted by the antennas cannot be included in criteria for approval or disapproval of the antennas, according the Telecommunications Act, it was on the minds of both council and community. 

“Could you put aluminum foil to shield their houses?” asked Wozniak, the only councilmember to vote against the ZAB denial of the antennas.  

“Metal blinds would block [the radiation],” Anthony Tricoci, the city’s consultant on telecommunications responded. 

Anderson, a registered nurse, who represents the area and made the motion to uphold the zoning board decision, targeted the federal Telecommunications Act’s prohibitions against addressing the health questions. 

“This issue strikes at the heart of our role in the federal government,” he said. “We’re told we have no right to speak out about our health—we’re told to shut up and go away. Nextel and Verizon are not in this city to promote public health.” 

We cannot “leave the important aspects of our lives to those who do it for profit,” Anderson said.

The question of downtown Berkeley’s future skyline remained unresolved Thursday at the end of the second of three scheduled meetings of a citizen planning committee, the land-use subcommitee of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC). 

With chair Rob Wrenn pushing for a unanimous vote, members of the panel are drafting language about the height and population of the future of the city center for presentation to DAPAC on Nov. 7. 

The controversial notion of 16-story point towers—roundly blasted at last week’s DAPAC public workshop—remained very much on the table at the end of Monday’s session. 

While majority sentiment at DAPAC meetings seemed to favor lower buildings, the heights discussed Thursday were edging up from the eight-floor counter-proposal Wrenn had offered only weeks earlier. 

Two subcommittee members—retired UC Berkeley development executive Dorothy Walker and professional transportation planner Victoria Eisen—backed the towers, with more support coming from Kerry O’Banion, the UC Berkeley planner who serves as the university’s ex officio member. O’Banion said he favored higher buildings, which would allow the university to keep all its planned development on property the tax-exempt institution already owns. 

It was the university’s expansion plans through the year 2020 that triggered the city lawsuit that resulted in an out-of-court settlement mandating a new downtown plan and the DAPAC process. 

Architect James Novosel and Wrenn opted for a 12-story maximum, with environmentalist Juliet Lamont favoring eight floors and affordable housing advocate Jesse Arreguin proposing a maximum of 10. 

Commercial buildings should be allowed to rise as high as apartments and condos, said committee members, with the exception of Arreguin, who said full height should be allowed only if the developer agreed to provide greater benefits for the community. 

Walker and Eisen said they favored taller buildings because they offered the only source of potential revenues for the public improvements in streets and open space called for in other chapters of the plan already adopted by DAPAC. 

Developer Ali Kashani and former city Land Use Planning Manager Mark Rhoades arrived together, with Kashani offering the subcommittee a set of spreadsheets arguing that only taller buildings would bring members of his trade to build in the city. 

Developers, he said, “look at a 15 to 20 percent” return on their investments—figures which, by his flow charts, could only be accomplished by structures of 14 stories and above. 

Planning Commission Chair James Samuels told the subcommittee that nothing should be taken off the table, adding that he thought there was substantial support on DAPAC for the proposed chapter by planning staffer Matt Taecker and its call for the point towers. 

Lamont challenged Ka-shani on his figures, saying that when she had worked in a bank, she learned to look with suspicion on figures prepared by advocates. 

And, besides, she asked, why should developers be entitled by a plan to profits greater than the average citizen is accustomed to receiving on investments in treasury bills or stocks? 

At one point when Kashani challenged her, Lamont shot back, “You don’t want to go toe to toe with me.” 

Walker and Eisen said the Kashani figures reinforced their convictions that tall buildings were needed to generate the fees needed for improvements. 

Planning Commissioner Gene Posch-man said that by simply continuing the existing 1990 downtown plan, the area could accommodate the 3,000 additional new housing units included in the version originally offered by Taecker. 

The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), a regional jurisdiction which administers an array of state funds to local jurisdiction, has decreed that the city must be willing to significantly increase the number of dwellings it is willing to build—though actual construction is left up to the realities of the market and government-funded construction programs. 

City officials, including Planning Director Dan Marks, have said downtown’s the only place the city might willingly accommodate a significant number of new dwelling units. 

The land-use subcommittee was a last-minute DAPAC creation, forced on a reluctant staff and Chair Will Travis. 

The move came after members rejected repeated iterations of proposed land-use elements that would liberally sprinkle the city center with the 16-story “point tower” apartment and condo buildings to accommodate the ABAG numbers. 

Subcommittee members have a lot to accomplish at Monday’s session, though they’ve left themselves an out with an option for a fourth meeting the following Thursday. 

Besides building heights, members must decide on where—and how many—taller buildings should be allowed and what shape they should adopt relative to lot size and the streetscape. 

Monday meeting 

Monday will be a long day for DAPAC subcommittee members. In addition to their own meeting that starts at 8 a.m., they also face a meeting for the full committee starting at 7 p.m. 

The Monday night meeting, held in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave., will feature a report on the public workshop, plus scheduled action on the Economic Development and Housing and Community Health/Services chapters. 

Those who arrive at 6:30 can see a presentation by landscape architect Walter Hood of the latest version of his plans for the proposed Center Street Plaza, which could be built if traffic were to be closed between Shattuck Avenue and Oxford Street.

The People’s Park Community Advisory Board is now accepting public comments on the draft report assessing the park’s needs and planning future changes. 

The board is scheduled to meet at the Trinity Methodist Church, 2362 Bancroft Way, on Nov. 5 from 7 to 9 p.m. to hear public comments on the report and state of the park. The board will make recommendations to the university on Dec. 3 about the study and future steps. 

San Francisco-based consultants MK-Think were paid $100,000 by UC Berkeley to conduct an assessment study to improve the park, which took place over the last nine months. 

The findings, according to MKThink, aim to address project goals of making the park safer and generating greater use by a broader range of community members. 

“They have done a good job but we still have a long way to go,” said Irene Hegarty, director of community relations for UC Berkeley. “The consultants have given us their best judgment, but if people think there are other things that should be taken into consideration we will listen to them.” 

The report focused on three ways to look at the site: an urban park, a student and community center and an arts park. 

At a community workshop held in July, park users, Telegraph Avenue merchants and residents and university officials shared ideas with MKThink about the issues of safety, homelessness and future programs and designs for the 2.8 acre site south of the UC Berkeley campus. 

Although student workshops were scheduled, Hegarty said lack of participation led to them being canceled. 

The 34-page report states that People’s Park is “often characterized as a battleground between park activists and the University of California,” which owns the property. Additionally, it states that many wanted the park to remain an open space and asked that the university recognize the struggles that took place to create it. Although homeless problems are discussed in the report, nothing conclusive is said about their future in the park. 

Board member George Beier said that he was hoping that the homeless issue would be discussed in detail at future meetings. 

“I really don’t believe you should push people out of a place until there is a place for them to go,” he said. “On the whole I think MKThink was sensitive to the needs of park users in the report ... I think the idea of tumbling into the park, of welcoming people, of using it as a place of reconciliation is great.” 

Beier added that he hadn’t seen a lot of space dedicated in the report about the history of the park. “I have said in the past that it would be great to have something small like a cafe to mark the history of the place and have a cup of coffee,” he said. “That’ll attract young people.” 

UC Berkeley student and board member Ionas Porges-Kiriakou said that he would like to see the word “green” before open space in the executive summary. 

“It’s too early to say if the $100,000 was well spent or not,” he said about the consultants’ fee. “If positive changes do happen to the park, then, yes, it was well spent.” 

Porges-Kiriakou also complained that students were under-represented in the report. 

“Successful outreach was not done,” he said. “I had to tell most of my friends about the meetings, and these are students who are aware of what’s going on in the community ... The report was MKThink’s analysis of public input rather than public input itself.” 

Board member Gianni Ranuzzi urged community members to read the report. 

“It’s a step to promote continued dialogue,” she said. “MKThink’s recommendations for improving restrooms, lighting and drainage seems doable.” 

Board members said that they were interested to see what plans the university had to move the report forward. 

The draft report can be viewed at www.communityrelations.berkeley.edu or at the People’s Park Office, next to the basketball court. Community members can comment on the draft report by e-mail at pplspark@berkeley.edu or send comments by mail to: People’s Park Community Advisory Board, 336 Sproul Hall #4208, Berkeley, CA 94720-4208.

Berkeley’s Planning Commissioners spent their meeting Wednesday talking about what they’d like to do. 

Commissioner Susan Wengraf asked commissioners and planning staff to consider the implications of letter from a contractor detailing his difficulties with the city’s zoning code. 

The issues around the Prince Street building permit application were complex, as Acting Land-Use Planning Manager Debra Sanderson explained in a memo to the commission. Part of the problem involved driveways that were wide enough for early 20th century cars but too narrow for their 21st century counterparts. 

Add the city’s parking requirements and the effort to turn a basically unusable garage into a mother-in-law apartment, and the homeowners found themselves caught in a complex of seemingly conflicting codes. 

While Sanderson said the would-be builder’s version of events differed from city’s staff’s perception of the events, she acknowledged that there are many areas where the city’s zoning code could be improved. 

“For two hours every Wednesday staff would go over items for discussion, though we’ve got it down to about an hour now,” she said. 

While many of the problems stemmed from interpretations of new ordinances, Sanderson said, others came from conflicts with existing laws. 

Commissioners decided in the end to ask the staff to bring one code problem before the commissioners to ponder at each meeting. 

Commissioners also agreed to delay consideration of proposals to create a city-specific density bonus statute at the request of the Wengraf and Zoning Adjustments Board member Rick Judd. 

The delay was sought so the chairs could review the comments on their proposal by city staff, then meet with them before the final document is presented to the commission. 

The commission scheduled a Nov. 14 hearing to consider proposed revisions to the city’s liquor license policies. 

One controversial policy would bar anyone from receiving a license in the city if they had even one past license violation on their record, and another would allow confiscation of licenses of older businesses which had been opened before the existing city liquor laws and which had been closed for at least nine days for any reason. 

The commission also voted unanimously in favor of an application to permit the conversion of six residential units into condominiums at 1821-1831 Highland Place. 

The units were previously tenant-in-common dwellings. 

Cross country running is a sport where everybody gets to play. 

All 46 students on this year’s Berkeley High School team—a collection of track runners, basketball players, chess players (who play better if they stay in shape), a baseball player and people who don’t like to run alone—all run in every race. 

Some finish near the front and some near the back. But nobody gets cut for being too slow. It’s a characteristic of the sport to get steadily faster. 

“I started out very slow,” said Brian Bort, now a coach. “My dad said I had to do a sport, and cross country was the only sport I couldn’t get kicked off of.” 

He had a back injury, he said, that hurt when he ran. Running made it go away after awhile. 

In his first race he ran five kilometers (about three miles) in 26.46 minutes. “I ran up to the coach and said, ‘Hey, Coach, 26.46, that’s pretty good.’ He just walked away.” 

In a race in college, he said, he ran a similar distance in 15.2 minutes, like running three five-minute miles in a row, part of it uphill. 

“I had coaches that wouldn’t let anybody go,” he said. 

Berkeley has a hilly, three-mile course in Tilden Park at the upper end of Euclid Avenue. Some courses are nastier, containing exposed tree roots, sand and streams that must be splashed through. 

Austin Snyder, a runner for three years, said 60 to 80 runners from several teams can start the race. “People elbow each other and people fall down,” he said. The idea is to keep your own team together as near to the front as possible. 

This is for mutual support and because of the team scoring system—five points for first down to one point for fifth. This works until the encounter with a horrible hill—half-a-mile long, rising at 45 degrees—where contenders and the also-rans divide. 

Brandon Reeves, a varsity basketball player with strong legs, said he can power himself up the hill but at a price. Over the top the “legs sort of go,” he said. 

Nate Haile, who came in first at a recent meet, also sprints up the hill, enough so that his thigh muscles hurt. But after a long descent he gets a second wind and is able to sprint again. 

Haile is from high-altitude Ethiopia, producer of the world’s best long-distance runners. For millennia, Ethiopians have lived on hills on the top of mountains from one to two miles above sea level. 

Berkeley High has 60 teams and 1,000 participants, one for every three students, and a sports budget of $220,000 a year. 

Competitive sports build character, said Kristin Glenchur, the school’s athletic director. 

Specifically, “It’s an organized competitive environment that puts kids in flight-or-fight situations when they make decisions on the spot,” she said. “A classroom doesn’t have that level of urgency and that whole body-mind thing that happens.” 

Berkeley cross country runners at practice, Nate Haile on left. Photograph by Michael Howerton.

The Berkeley Board of Education approved a policy to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students and their families from discrimination and harassment in the Berkeley Unified School District for the first time Wednesday. 

The earlier Nondiscrimination/Harassment Policy included most subgroups but did not specifically reference gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students or their families, district officials told the Planet. 

The new expanded policy specifically addresses “gender differences, including transgender and gender non-conforming students and guards against bias and stereotyping of students based on gender.” 

Additionally, it “encourages curriculum, instruction and activities that are inclusive of all types of students and their families, and prohibits harassment in any form.” 

“We had an old, somewhat vague anti-harassment policy that did mention sexual orientation, that went back 15 years ago,” said School Board Vice President John Selawsky. “But there was no reference to anti-bullying programs or a curriculum development to include all types of students and families. The new policy itemizes some of these concerns. We are definitely not waiting for a crisis to develop this.” 

The earlier policy did not identify a district person or a complaint process to protect students against bullying, or even state that harassment would be subject to discipline. 

“I am not aware of any other school district that specifically encourages, as a preventive measure, activities and curriculum that teach kids to respect family diversity and gender identity,” said Judy Appel, executive director of Our Family Coalition, a Bay Area-based gay and lesbian family support group, and mother of two Oxford Elementary School students. 

“In California, there are laws that require schools to protect against discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation and identity, but that doesn’t mean everybody is doing that in practice,” she said. 

Appel, who worked on a district-wide task force to draft the policy, said that the amendment would not force a biological girl who thinks of herself as a boy to use the girls’ bathroom. 

“Berkeley Unified is very welcoming to gays and lesbians, but I started hearing about anti-gay comments in the schools some time back,” she said. “None of the teachers were talking about family diversity. In general there wasn’t any uniform set of skills to combat stereotypes and teach diversity. A group of us decided to meet every month last year and one of the things that came up from parents was a policy that showed support ... We felt that kids weren’t seeing gay and lesbian families reflected in the classroom or learning to respect kids who would themselves realize they were lesbian or gay. The teachers had some fears and said that they would like to have some support from the district.” 

Nine-year-old Kobi, Appel’s son, told the Planet that he had never been teased at Oxford for having lesbian parents but had heard kids use the word “gay” as a slur. 

“My having two moms doesn’t affect me in any way,” he said. “It doesn’t make my family different from my friends’ families.” 

“They learn to respond quickly to different questions,” said Appel. “When people tell them ‘you must have a dad,’ they say ‘I don’t have a dad, I have a donor.’” 

Jen Rader, who, with her partner Barb Wenger, has two children (Ben, 6, and Elijah, 8) in Thousand Oaks Elementary School, said that the policy would create a safe and welcoming environment for all families. 

“Teachers will have the skills to answer questions not just about gay and lesbian families but multiracial, foster and adopted families,” she said. “If we make schools safe at the elementary level, then it will bear fruit in middle and high school.” 

Most gay and lesbian parents said harassment and bullying took place in the schools’ playground. 

“It’s possible that the new policy will stop that but it will require a lot of diligent policing,” said Ed Valenzuela, who adopted Malcolm X first-grader Kiki seven years ago with his partner Gary Walker. 

“Berkeley is very diverse, but two-dad families are definitely a minority here. There are a lot more lesbian mothers with children,” he said. “When things like Mother’s Day are celebrated at the school it would help if teachers are a little sensitive and turn it into a family event instead ... A couple of times Kiki has mentioned instances when a kid or two have come up to her and said ‘you have two dads, gross.” 

“That’s so gay” is another slur used in schools which gay and lesbian parents find offensive. 

District superintendent Michele Lawrence told the Planet that the district had no way of knowing the exact number of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students or families in the Berkeley public schools. 

“We don’t specifically ask questions about sexual orientation,” she said. “Our concern is to make certain that kids are sensitive to mixed students or families ... We want all children to feel safe on a school campus.”

The oft-divided anti-war movement will be marching in San Francisco under a single banner Saturday: End the War Now. “No more surges, no more study groups: BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!”  

A pre-rally will begin at 11 a.m. at San Francisco’s Civic Center, after which protesters will march to Dolores Park. Before reaching the park, monitors will direct those who wish to participate in a symbolic “die in”—lying on the ground for a few minutes to symbolize those who died in Iraq—before continuing to the park. 

The sponsoring coalition includes the two large umbrella groups: ANSWER Coalition and United for Peace and Justice. There are some 150 other endorsers including the city of Berkeley, Alameda County Central Labor Council, Asian Pacific Islanders Resist! Watada Support Committee, Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee, Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the list goes on. 

Among the groups meeting to march are:  

• Bay Natives for Peace, who are gathering on the left side of the Civic Center stage and will lead the march. In an e-mail to the Planet the group said it’s asking all indigenous people to join them and wear “Homeland Security; fighting terrorism since 1492” shirts. 

• The Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club will take the 10:14 a.m. BART train from MacArthur BART to Civic Center, then march with the labor contingent.  

• Labor is meeting at the Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Ave. at 10:30 a.m. and will hold its own pre-march rally there. Rep. Barbara Lee will be the featured speaker. After the march, the labor contingent will reassemble in Dolores Park. Councilmember Kriss Worthington will march in the labor contingent, representing the city of Berkeley. 

• Progressive Democrats of the East Bay is meeting at the plaza in front of the San Francisco Library, 100 Larkin St. They’ll be distributing postcards to send to Dave Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, to hold him to his promise not to let funding for the war out of his committee. Northern California Progressive Democrats of America will have a table at Dolores Park. Telephone: 510-524-3791. 

• Code Pink is meeting at 10 a.m. at Civic Center, Larkin and Grove streets. Sing for Peace will march with them. 

Cindy Sheehan will be among the speakers at Dolores Park. Dennis Banks of the American Indian movement and Tim Paulson of the San Francisco Labor Council will also speak. Para La Gente, a rap group from Watsonville, will perform. 

Marches will take place in cities across the country, including New York, Chicago, Boston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Orlando and Salt Lake City. 

There are more peace events Sunday: 

Women of Color  

Resource Center Brunch 

At 11 a.m., the Sisters of Fire Awards brunch will feature Angela Davis. Tickets are $45-75. The event is at the Scottish Rite Center, 1547 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. Call 510-444-2700 ext 304. 

Honorees will include Assemblymember Karen Bass, Los Angeles, the first African American and the first woman to serve as majority floor leader for the State Assembly, vocalist Linda Tillery, poet Isle Park, the Serv-ice Women Action Network, which helps women solve problems during and after military service, and California Latinas for Reproductive Justice. There will be a special tribute to 17-year Women of Color Resource Center Director Linda Burnham. 

Ecumenical Peace Institute Dinner 

At 6 p.m., also on Sunday, the Ecumenical Peace Institute annual dinner will feature Joseph Gerson, author of Empire and the Bomb, How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World.  

The event is at Redwood Gardens, 2951 Derby St. The donation is $15-$35 with no one turned away. Call 510-655-1162. 

Die-in 

And on Nov. 1, the first Thursday of the month, beginning at noon, activists “desperate about the continuing war in Iraq,” according to Ying Lee, a Berkeley Public Library trustee and former Berkeley councilmember, will observe the first year anniversary of the Thursday Die for Peace at the San Francisco Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Ave.  

After a vigil and the reading of names of some of the Americans and Iraqis who have been killed in the war, some people will choose to commit civil disobedience. Lee is among dozens of people who have been arrested at the Federal Building a number of times over the past year. Other local residents who have been arrested over the year include Ruth Maguire, Sally Hindman, Stephanie Miyashiro and Grace Morizawa of Berkeley and Grace Shimizu of El Cerrito. 

While some of the arrestees may opt to pay the $125 fine after arrest, Lee said she and a few others plan to go to trial, likely some time in December. Lee told the Planet that it is critical for her to have a public trial “to express our horror about the war.”

UC could make the first cash payment on a new downtown Berkeley art museum in January. 

The UC Board of Regents Committee on Grounds and Buildings is scheduled to approve a $3.5 million payment for partial plans of the new Berkeley Art Museum/ Pacific Film Archive during its Jan. 16 session at the Mission Bay Campus of UC San Francisco. 

The $110 million to $130 million in funding needed for the 138,500-square-foot being designed by Japanese architect Toyo Ito is set to come from private donors. 

Barclay Simpson, the 86-year-old Orinda resident and manufacturer who has given extensively to the project, heads the mu-seum’s board of trustees. If built, the new gym and office building that the university proposes to erect below the western wall of Memorial Stadium will also bear his name. 

Though the Barclay Simpson Student Athlete High Performance Center is tied up in a lawsuits filed by the city, neighbors and environmentalists, the university is moving forward with a search for a key project official to oversee the contract administration process. 

In a parallel move, the university has issued a call for companies interested in providing necessary site preparation and testing services, including the installation of a new support beam at the base of the stadium wall. 

The support beam was one of the bones of legal contention during the hearings on the litigation now awaiting a decision by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Miller. 

That action challenges the legality of the environmental documents for the gym and the other buildings included in the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects. 

Other campus projects 

The university is also moving forward with the planned demolition of Earl Warren Hall to make way for the 200,000-square-foot Li Ka-Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences. 

A recently issued request for qualifications seeks a commissioning agent to supervise planning of the building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems as well as other aspects of the project. Construction is scheduled to begin early next year, with completion 27 months later. 

Meanwhile, the university has also issued a call for bids for the demolition of the seismically unsound Campbell Hall, a building that houses offices of the College of Arts and Letters and astronomy and physics labs, and for construction of an 88,000-square-foot replacement. 

The new building would also feature a roof-level deck for student astronomers to study the stars, and a bridge linking the building to adjacent Le Conte Hall.  

The UC Board of Regents has scheduled actions on several Berkeley projects over the course of its next two meetings. 

For its meeting on Jan. 16, in addition to considering the new museum complex the board is slated to raise the amount of external funding the UC President’s office can contribute for the building of the Stanley Qualitative Biosciences and Bioengineering Facility from $15 million to $65 million. 

The nearly completed 285,000-square-foot building replaces the earlier 67,000-square foot Stanley Hall, which was demolished four years ago, located between Mining Circle and Gayley Road. 

The new facility, which will contain a significant part of the campus’s research on genetically modified organisms, opened on Sept. 29. 

While an earlier funding measure adopted by the regents in March 2002 specified that the regents would pledge the board’s credit to secure funding, that provision is stricken from the measure up for adoption in January. One of the reasons cited for the change in financing is that a $50 million pledge from a charitable trust is still outstanding, requiring the shift from donated funds to long-term financing. 

Lab projects 

Also in January, the Grounds and Buildings Committee will be asked to approve the environmental review documents and the design for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (LBNL) Advanced Light Source (ALS) User Support Building, a $32.8 million project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. 

The 31,389-square-foot building will support research with the ALS, a particle accelerator that produces ultraviolet light and x-ray beams. 

Approval will pave the way for clearing the site by demolishing the existing Building 10 at the lab. 

During their March 13 meeting, the same committee is being asked to amend the budget for the planned lab at LBNL that will house the offices and labs of the controversial biofuel program funded by BP plc, the company once known as British Petroleum. 

In addition to the BP-funded Energy Biosciences Institute, the structure will house other energy research programs, and plans show that part of the structure will be used for the lab’s nanotechnology research. 

While the regents had approved a $159.4 million budget earlier this year, the new action is needed to authorize a specific pledge to use the University Education Fund as the source of repayment of some of the $74.4 million in external funding needed for the project. 

The remainder of the external financing repayment is to come from lease revenues generated by BP’s use of the facility. Of the remainder of project costs, $70 million is to come from state bond funds and $15 million from gifts.  

Bioengineer Jay Keasling, a leading figure in the EBI project at the lab, is also running research programs out of the new Stanley Hall bioscience building and the lab’s newly leased space in Emeryville, where a second biofuel lab—the Joint BioEnergy Institute—will open next spring with federal funding. 

Funding changes to another LBNL project don’t require action by the regents, though the board will be formally notified of the move in January, 

The 22,500-square foot building will provide short-term housing for graduate students and visiting researchers working on projects at the lab. The Office of the President has already given approval not more than $9,993,000 of external financing for the project, with the remainder of $10,937,000 in costs covered by already available lab funds and a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. 

Construction is scheduled to begin next month and end by March 2009.

Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth said a cigarette-sparked fire did about $20,000 in damage to an Alvarado Road home and its contents early Wednesday evening. 

Firefighters got a call at 6:14 p.m. from a boy next door to the home and rushed to 139 Alvarado, where they found flames inside a second-story home office. 

The blaze was under control within 20 minutes. 

Meanwhile, Berkeley firefighters have been busy battling bigger blazes in Southern California, said Orth. 

Two engines and eight firefighters were sent south as part of two Alameda County strike teams battling the raging wildland and forest fires that have devastated the Southland. 

Both companies were originally assigned to fight the Buckweed fire in Los Angeles County near Magic Mountain amusement park. 

One engine was later dispatched to the 9,000-acre Rice fire in San Diego County, and the second company was sent to combat the Grass Valley complex of fires near Lake Arrowhead in the mountains and near Big Bear Lake in the mountains above the Los Angeles basin. 

Flames had been whipped into firestorms by Santa Ana winds, which died down Wednesday. 

Orth said that he expects the two companies now in the south will be demobilized soon, though replacements may be needed depending on developments.

Faced with some 60 neighbors opposing telecommunications antennas proposed for a building at Ward Street and Shattuck Avenue—and armed with signs calling for the recall of the mayor and stating “don’t sell us out”—the Berkeley City Council split Tuesday over whether to uphold the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) decision to deny permits for the antennas at 2721 Shattuck Ave. 

Nextel Communications and Verizon Communications have appealed the June zoning board decision, the second time ZAB has voted to deny Nextel and Verizon permits for the antennas atop the five-story UC Storage building. They have also filed lawsuits, saying the city’s denial violates the 1996 Telecommunications Act. 

The split vote on upholding the zoning board—with councilmembers Max Anderson, Dona Spring and Mayor Tom Bates in support of the ZAB decision, Councilmember Gordon Wozniak in opposition and Councilmembers Linda Maio, Darryl Moore, Laurie Capitelli, Betty Olds and Kriss Worthington abstaining—with no position having mustered the five required votes, buys the council 30 days to either uphold or deny the telecommunications’ companies appeal.  

If no five-vote position for or against the appeal emerges at the council’s Nov. 6 meeting—and no special meeting gets scheduled before the 30-day period is up at which the denial is reversed—the zoning board decision will stand. 

The council addressed the lawsuit in closed session meetings before and after the council meeting, but took no vote on whether to go forward with the suit, according to city spokesperson Mary Kay Clunies-Ross. The closed-door session was continued to Thursday at 5 p.m. The venue has not been set. 

“This is the first time the council has asked good questions,” the community group’s spokesperson Michael Barglow told the council, speaking for a second time at the end of the hearing. “The only reason we’re being taken seriously is because of the Verizon lawsuit,” he added. 

At the opening of the public hearing, Cory Alvin, speaking for Nextel, told the council that the company had reduced the number of antennas from 12 to six and noted that “a third-party review had determined that [the antennas] were necessary for coverage needs.” 

Alvin also underscored that the antennas were planned for a “commercial corridor,” as the city could deny them in a residential area. 

Community members, however, are quick to point out that UC Storage, owned by Piedmont resident Patrick Kennedy, abuts a residential neighborhood. Community speakers called on the city to locate the antennas away from the neighborhood, such as on the fire station, located on the west side of Shattuck Avenue at Derby Street. 

But Paul Albritton, attorney for Verizon, told the council: “There are no nearby sites for co-location.” He went on to ask the council to “look beyond the emotional appeals” of the community. 

Barglow, who lives near the proposed antenna site, spoke on behalf of the neighborhood. “Stand up and lead,” he told the council. 

Addressing the lawsuit, Barglow called on the city to spend the funds necessary to fight the telecommunications companies. He noted that while some city staff believe the lawsuit would cost about $250,000, the community thinks the cost would be less. 

Barglow added the campaign to recall Bates to the mix. The mayor, who was strongly supported by his neighbors in the last elections, lives close to the proposed project. His house was picketed Monday night by about 25 of his neighbors.  

“Some of us are doing the hard work of recalling the mayor,” Barglow said. 

While city insiders asking for anonymity have said Bates supports settlement of the Nextel/Verizon lawsuit, the mayor voted in favor of denying the appeal. 

Another neighbor of the proposed antennas, Christopher Restivo, addressing the council, pointed out that the antennas proposed atop UC Storage were not likely to serve the South Berkeley neighborhood. “If folks in the hills are using cell phones, what antennas are they using?” he asked. 

While allegations of adverse health effects from radiation emitted by the antennas cannot be included in criteria for approval or disapproval of the antennas, according the Telecommunications Act, it was on the minds of both council and community. 

“Could you put aluminum foil to shield their houses?” asked Wozniak, the only councilmember to vote against the ZAB denial of the antennas.  

“Metal blinds would block [the radiation],” the city’s consultant on telecommunications responded. 

Anderson, a registered nurse, who represents the area and made the motion to uphold the zoning board decision, targeted the federal Telecommunications Act’s prohibitions against addressing the health questions. 

“This issue strikes at the heart of our role in the federal government,” he said. “We’re told we have no right to speak out about our health—we’re told to shut up and go away. Nextel and Verizon are not in this city to promote public health.” 

The closed-door session was continued to Thursday at 5 p.m. in the 

Redwood Conference Room on the sixth floor of the city administrative 

building, 2180 Milvia St. The public will be able to address the 

council before the closed session. 

Scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) joined with officials from two cities and a leading developer Monday to unveil the site of a $135 million biofuel lab. 

Though announced months after BP declared Berkeley the winner of a $500 million corporate biofuel research program, the federal lab will be the first to commence tweaking genes in the drive to turn plants into fuel for planes, trains and automobiles. 

UC officials and officers of the British oil company have yet to sign a final agreement spelling out the details of the more lucrative pact. 

LBNL chemical engineer Jay Keasling, CEO of the new Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) and a central figure in the BP program, served as emcee of Monday’s event at EmeryStation East, the new Emeryville building that will house the lab, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to turn plants into transportation fuels. 

Called Jay-bay by cognoscenti, the Emeryville lab will fuse the research efforts of two UC campuses, Berkeley and Davis, with the Carnegie Institution for Science and three UC Berkeley-administered federal energy labs—LBNL, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia.  

“This is a great moment for us,” said Keasling, who said the UC Board of Regents, the DOE and Wareham Development signed the contract for the 65,000-square-foot lab last week.  

The lab, which will open sometime in the spring, occupies the fourth floor of Wareham’s just-finished building at 5885 Hollis St. 

Keasling will also be a familiar figure on the building’s first floor, where his own privately held and patent-seeking biotech company—Amyris Technologies—has just leased a lab of its own. 

That company’s CEO is a former BP vice president hired while UC Berkeley was negotiating the half-billion-dollar Energy Biosciences Institute that the British oil company awarded to the university in February. The firm employs at least three other BP personnel. 

While most biofuel currently in use is corn-derived ethanol, Keasling said JBEI will focus on other plants, including rice straw, switchgrass and Arabidopsis, a plant in the mustard family. 

Keasling said work at the lab will focus on breaking down plant cellulose, drawing on research on microbes found in the gut of the common termite, where they break down wood into digestible sugars that fuel the termite’s ravenous rampages. 

DOE Under Secretary for Science Raymond L. Orbach, a former chancellor of UC Riverside, sent written congratulations, expressing his hope that the center “will become a crucible for transformational discoveries.” 

The George W. Bush administration made biofuel development a major effort of the DOE, declaring alternative energy a matter of national security. 

“I can’t think of a more profound privilege than to be associated with Jay-bay,” said Wareham founder Rich Robbins, whose company has dubbed the building a “center for noble and Nobel research.” 

“This is a very auspicious occasion,” said Emeryville Mayor Nora Davis. 

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates was also on hand, praising the new lab’s work as “a definitive partnership that’s going to be working together to make a difference.” 

Also on hand was the mayor’s City Council colleague, Gordon Wozniak. 

Keasling said the lab wouldn’t be working on corn, the primary source of ethanol—known in the old days as white lightning or corn liquor. 

A controversial crop derivative, ethanol isn’t as efficient as gasoline and can’t be transmitted through pipelines. 

Instead, he said, JBEI will be seeking ways to break down plant cellulose into fuels more similar to petroleum-derived gasoline. 

No lab efforts will focus on genetically modified crops, though the gene-engineering technology developed for working on microbes and on other technologies for breaking down plant cell walls could have later applications for altering plants, he said. 

While most of the research will occur at the Emeryville lab, crop testing is slated for fields at UC Davis, where the ground is more suitable for growing rice. 

The primary microbe slated for gene-tweaking is E. coli, which is found in the guts of most animals. 

Researchers will also be working on organisms found in the multi-chambered digestive systems of cattle, which are assembly lines for breaking down cellulose into food. 

Keasling acknowledged that there are potential conflicts of interests for researchers who have their own private biotech startup companies, and JBEI’s other lead figure, Chris Somerville, has a biofuel-seeking company of his own, Mendel Technology. 

“There are a lot of conflicts,” Keasling said, “and we have to manage those appropriately.” He said the new lab will use the same conflict-handling mechanisms now in place at the university. 

Keasling said the new lab wouldn’t need any significant measures to contain the altered microbes because production “won’t take place in this facility within that five-year period.”

Although building a second story atop the present animal shelter at 2013 Second St. is on tonight’s (Tuesday) City Council agenda, Councilmember Betty Olds, who served on a now-defunct committee searching for a new shelter, says she’ll ask the council to wait until early next year to make a decision. 

Olds believes a new site for the shelter has been found. She says she’s not ready to reveal the location. 

Also on the agenda for tonight’s meeting, which begins at 7 p.m., is approval of a four-year firefighter contract, hiring consultants for a feasibility study for a downtown hotel, the question of telecommunication antennas at UC Storage and more. 

At 6:30 p.m. the council will hold a work session on the pandemic flu with Dr. Linda Rudolf, head of the city’s public health division. 

Animal shelter 

Five years ago Berkeley voters approved a $7.2 million general obligation bond to build an animal shelter. A committee consisting of Councilmembers Betty Olds and Dona Spring, two members of the humane commission and city staff was charged with locating a site. 

“Every time we found some place, something was wrong with it,” Olds told the Planet on Monday.  

An animal shelter needs to be located where neighbors are not going to get upset by barking dogs. According to a city staff report, it should be near a place like Aquatic Park, where the animals can be walked. 

The problem with rebuilding on the site—adding offices and small animal rooms on a second story—is that the foundation at the site has to be raised three feet because of flooding. In addition,the animals will have to be temporarily relocated at a cost of about $1.5 million, Olds said. 

As for the new site, the councilmember added, “It’s not a done deal.” 

Firefighters’ contract 

The City Council will be asked to approve a four-year contract for firefighters retroactive to July 2006. If the contract is approved, at the end of the four years the firefighters will have received a 13 percent increase.  

Writing to the City Council, Barbara Gilbert asked the body to look at the effect the increase will have on other city workers. “As you are well aware, the domino effect will occur with the other unions who will be demanding comparable increases,” she wrote. 

Furthermore, Gilbert said in an interview with the Daily Planet on Monday, that she had requested comparative costs, but has yet to receive them. 

In a separate interview Monday, City Manager Phil Kamlarz said he was preparing those figures, which will indicate that the city pays a little higher than the median salary. (The comparative figures were not ready by late Monday afternoon.) 

Kamlarz said 13 percent over four years is the approximate growth in city revenues expected over four years.  

Public hearings: Nextel, Verizon 

The question of putting Verizon and Nextel telecommunication antennas atop UC Storage at 2721 Shattuck Ave. will be back before the council again. The zoning board has denied Nextel and Verizon requests for the antennas two separate times, with the applicants appealing the decision both times.  

Both Nextel and Verizon have filed lawsuits against the city on the question. 

The downtown hotel 

Tonight the proposed downtown hotel will be before council, which will be asked to accept funds from Carpenter and Company, the hotel developer, to pay for a “financial feasibility analysis and review of possible mechanisms to provide tax abatement or other subsidies to render the project feasible.” 

Councilmember Dona Spring told the Planet she is a proponent of a downtown hotel, but not in favor of giving the hotel millions of dollars in subsidies. There is a $30 million gap between estimated project costs and projected revenues necessary to make the project financially feasible, according to a staff report written by Michael Caplan, acting director of the city’s economic development division. 

Spring said she believes the developer wants to give the city the funds so the city can contract for the study “to show the council’s open to the idea” of public financing for the hotel. 

Caplan’s report calls on the city to accept the funds for the study. “Solid financial assessment and knowledge of industry standards will assist the city in negotiating a fair deal that protects the city’s financial interests,” the report said. Staff is asking for a sole source contract with Keyser Marston, “which specializes in doing feasibility assessments of hotel projects.” 

Other actions: 

The council will also be asked to address: 

• Increasing the allocation for the winter shelter program by $10,000 for the program at the Oakland Army Base, whose costs have increased. 

• Creating the position of transportation manager, who will head the transportation division in the Public Works Department. The salary will be in a range from $111,000 per year (plus about 50 percent benefits) to about $135,000 (plus benefits). 

• Putting a $25,000 award, which the city received from the National Organization on Disability, toward the purchase of a wheelchair accessible vehicle for City CarShare. Additional costs would be borne by City CarShare. 

• Developing a city “preferred alternative” on Bus Rapid Transit, which would dedicate traffic lanes to buses on Telegraph Avenue; 

• Becoming a city of sanctuary for conscientious objectors; 

• Reinstating $23,000 to Berkeley Food and Housing Project.  

When a neighbor of Misti and Amir Hassan glanced out of his window last week, he saw Amir dressed in a cape and holding a rail spike in one hand. Amir peered over the balcony of his apartment and then tossed the spike, which was attached to a long rope, into the yard below.  

The neighbor went outside and asked Amir what he was doing.  

“I’m an elf, and I’m doing magic,” Amir replied.  

This story was one of the many examples of Amir’s creativity, wisdom, kindness and sense of humor shared by teachers, friends and family members at a memorial service Friday. Police found Amir, 9, dead in his apartment last Wednesday. Amir’s mother, Misti, has been charged with his murder and will enter her plea Nov. 16. 

More than 70 people gathered at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland for Amir’s service, which was hosted by Amir’s father, Chad Reed, and his family. Although a media frenzy accompanied Misti’s hearing on Thursday, only one photographer and one cameraman attended the ceremony. No one mentioned Misti or spoke about the circumstances of Amir’s death.  

Somber attendees, dressed mostly in gray and black, filed into the stone chapel just before 1 p.m. Several children attended the service, including one boy who wore a white T-shirt emblazoned with Amir’s photograph and the line, “In memory of Amir Hassan.”  

Each person received a program filled with pictures of Amir smiling, playing with toys, holding a soccer ball and playing a guitar. A poem Amir had written about himself with the lines “Who would like to see Ozzy Osbourne in Concert, the next Woodstock, the Police live and world peace” was printed on the back.  

Jazz music played by a live band accompanied the quiet chatter and occasional baby’s cry until Reverend Anthony Jenkins, dressed in a long, white robe, rose to deliver the opening prayer. Jenkins reminded the attendees that they were there not to be sad, but to “celebrate Amir’s life and begin to move forward.”  

Amir’s uncle, Carlos Reed, then displayed a slideshow, which began with pictures of Amir as a baby in a hospital bed and proceeded chronologically through his short life, while The Police’s “Every Step You Take” and Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” played. In each picture, Amir wore a giant grin and a mop of curly brown hair that fanned out like a halo at least three inches above his head. Most pictures showed Amir by himself, although Chad Reed, Carlos Reed, his aunt Ayanna Reed and his younger sisters Maya and Bella Reed occasionally appeared with him. Only one photo showed Misti holding Amir as a baby and kissing the side of his head.  

The remainder of the service was filled mostly with personal reflections from any of the attendees who wanted to share a memory of Amir. Ten people rose to speak, including his neighbors, teachers, parents of his friends, his uncle, and Susan Hodge, the principal of Amir’s school, Emerson Elementary School.  

“Amir was only called to my office once,” Hodge said. “It was for making the ‘rock on’ hand signal in his class photograph.”  

Hodge held out her hand with her thumb and pinky finger extended to demonstrate while the other attendees laughed.  

“I remember there was a girl in Amir’s class who was being a bit of a bully,” Hodge continued. “We were talking about what we could do with his class and Amir said, ‘She just hasn’t been loved enough. If we love her more, that will help her.’”  

Others spoke about Amir’s intelligence and wisdom, commenting that talking to him often felt like talking to an adult.  

“A few weeks ago I saw him, and we were talking and got on the subject of toys,” said a man who introduced himself only as a friend of Amir’s uncle. “He told me, ‘You know, I don’t really like to shop at Toys ‘R’ Us or those other big stores. I like to shop in smaller stores that are more a part of the community.’”  

Jackson, the pastor, closed the service with a speech about how everyone needs to follow the example of Amir and love each other more.  

“The only thing that Amir gave was love,” Jackson said in a booming voice. “Let’s not leave here today without learning from him that we all need to give our love more. That’s what Amir did, and that’s the message we can take from his life.” 

The PG&E service center at 2111 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, empty for almost two years, was handed over to the Berkeley YMCA on Friday to be developed into a teen center over the next two years. 

The 8,000-square-foot building dedication to YMCA is PG&E’s largest corporate contribution to date. The building is valued at $2.1 million, according to a PG&E press release. 

The city will not lose property taxes from the transfer to the non-profit YMCA since PG&E is exempt from paying property taxes. 

The YMCA, which currently has less than 400 square feet of permanent space in downtown Berkeley for teen programs, is already making plans to double the number of participants in programs such as Y-Scholars, The Outsiders Club and YMCA Youth and Government, which address issues such as college preparation, employment and leadership development in communities. 

“We are delighted,” said Fran Gallati, executive director of the Berkeley-Albany YMCA. “PG&E and the Y are alike in a lot of ways. The Y’s business is investing in the energy for young people and PG&E is constantly looking for ways to improve energy efficiency in the community.” 

Although the center is scheduled to open in 2009, Gallati said that teenagers were already involved in different ways. “We are hiring teen leaders from Berkeley High and across the city to the newly formed Teen Task Force which will focus on the needs of young people.” 

The task force members will work with real estate developers, architects and teen program providers for the next 12 to 18 months to help design programs for the new center. 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz said that the center would keep teenagers away from trouble. 

“Anything that helps them make more productive use of their time is welcome,” he said. “A facility dedicated to the needs of young people is a great idea.” 

Wil Hardee, director of public affairs for PG&E East Bay, said that PG&E was interested in providing training and employment opportunities for teenagers through the YMCA. 

“The benefits of educating the community about energy conservation and helping kids find jobs outweigh giving up the building,” he said. “We want to reach out to the community in new ways.” 

Mayor Tom Bates said including homeless youth would be a good idea. 

“I am trying to get them to be welcome here,” he said. “It will be a safe and interesting place to hang out and provide them with employment opportunities.” 

For some Berkeley High freshmen, the teen center meant safety.  

“It will give us something to do with our time apart from watching TV and playing on the computer,” said Berkeley High freshman Cynthia Nayola. “I am hoping for dancing classes, art classes and programs that will help us with school in general.” 

Councilmember Linda Maio said the building would be Berkeley’s first teen center dedicated entirely to the needs of young people. 

“We’ve done the research,” she said. “Three to six in the afternoon is when teenagers go around doing stuff they shouldn’t be doing. They get easily bored, and this will act as a haven for them. We’ve used school sites in the past but they have always had to share them with other groups.” 

School board member John Selawsky said, “It’s close to Berkeley High, the YMCA, the public library, City College and so many other resources. The kids can make use of the center right after school.” 

Photograph: Riya Bhattacharjee 

Berkeley High School freshman and Berkeley United in Action member Yesenia Espernoza and her friends, Monica Avales and Angelica Gonzalez, discuss future partnerships with the new YMCA Teen Center. All three teenagers participate in clean-up walks in Southwest Berkeley every week as part of Berkeley United in Action.

In April 2006 former Berkeley Police Sgt. Cary Kent pleaded guilty to felony drug possession and grand theft charges stemming from his stealing illicit substances from the locked police evidence vault he was charged to guard.  

Early this year another officer left the Berkeley Police Department (BPD) after several months of paid administrative leave, charged with stealing the possessions and cash of people he had booked. The district attorney declined to charge him. 

After spending more than a year studying both incidents and looking at related police policies and practices, on Oct. 12 a Police Review Commission subcommittee released a report entitled “Police Review Commission Policy Report: Evidence Theft Within the Berkeley Police Department.” The report concludes: “The systemic failure of a department to identify and remedy major lapses in security, personnel management and administration must be addressed immediately.”  

The report can be found at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/prc. 

The full Police Review Commission will discuss the report Wednesday, 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. Police Chief Douglas Hambleton will be present to respond to commissioner questions.  

The commission will then finalize the report and send it to the City Council, which will be asked to approve the report and the subcommittee recommendations for changes in police policies. 

The subcommittee, made up of PRC Commissioners William White, Sharon Kidd and Sherry Smith, and community members Andrea Prichett and Jim Chanin, spent more than a year reviewing the 800-page police report on the Kent case, analyzing it and conducting interviews with the police chief and auditor. 

While the subcommittee had good access to the chief of police, the report notes that its investigation was constrained by the refusal of the police officers’ union to allow its officers to be questioned by the committee. “The subcommittee believes that not being able to interview officers concerning the incident was a major setback to the investigation,” the report says. 

Further, the report notes difficulties the subcommittee had in obtaining various documents and information it requested. For example, it had asked for but did not receive a report on the total inventory, including quantities, of missing drug evidence. It also was unable to obtain copies of information from the database into which officers enter the quantities of drug evidence, and results of any audits on the database concerning loss of evidence in BPD’s possession. 

The report underscores that the investigation is not aimed at particular officers, past or present, but targets the failure of policies and practices that would have alerted the police chain of command quickly to crimes committed within the department. 

The internal police investigation shows, according to the subcommittee report, that years went by without Kent’s bosses confronting him, while fellow police officers noted that Kent looked bad, acted abnormally and failed to complete job assignments.  

Among the questions driving the committee were:  

• When poor job performance and health issues were noticed by fellow officers and reported to superiors, why didn’t the information go up the chain of command to the chief?  

• While investigators noted there was tampering with 286 envelopes of drug evidence, why were these envelopes not weighed to see how much of the illegal substances was missing? (Many more envelopes had been tampered with than had been used to bring charges against Kent.) 

The report makes more than two dozen recommendations for change in procedures and policy in the police department, many of them concerning opening records of seized property and contraband to public scrutiny.  

Subcommittee member Prichett, also a member of Copwatch, underscored, however, in an interview with the Daily Planet: “No policy is going to substitute for the will of police officers to be professional.” 

Among the recommendations the report makes is that BPD should hire an outside auditor to examine the database where quantities of seized drugs are recorded. “Monthly asset reports should be made public,” the report says. 

The report further recommends the establishment of a workgroup that would include staff from the city manager, auditor, finance and police departments that would reconcile the quantity of seized assets with deposits into accounts, tracking individual cases including the status of court proceedings “to promote consistency and to enable members of the public whose assets have been wrongly seized to recover their assets with due process and efficiency.” 

Relating specifically to the Kent case, the report recommends that the department identify the exact quantity of drugs missing from the evidence room. It also recommends replacing officers who have current access to the evidence room who also had access to the evidence when Kent did. 

In addition, the report calls on police to revise the “early warning system,” which identifies problem officers early on and bars officers, when possible, from supervising family members or personal friends. 

Procedures should be developed mandating the reporting by officers of fellow officers they suspect of misconduct or drug abuse, the report says, recommending as well that drug-testing policies for officers be developed and implemented. 

Berkeley police adopted new operating procedures for the evidence room after an investigation by the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, related to the Cary Kent case.  

The report recommends that the police chief report regularly to the City Council on its implementation. 

Does the Marine Recruiting Center in downtown Berkeley have a proper use permit? 

That question was raised by Councilmember Dona Spring two weeks ago at a City Council meeting. City Manager Phil Kamlarz responded Monday in a brief memo, stating that the former use was a photo shop, considered an “office use,” just like the present use. Therefore, only an over-the-counter permit was required. 

On June 6, said the memo, the Planning Department approved an over-the-counter permit for an “officer selection office.” 

In a phone interview Monday, Spring argued that the city should have the right to regulate recruiting downtown, just as it can regulate where to allow massage parlors and medical marijuana outlets. 

“Downtown isn’t an appropriate area for this type of service,” she said, noting that it doesn’t support the mix of retail businesses there.  

Kamlarz, however, said that the council “may not regulate land uses based on the identity of the applicant or the applicant’s viewpoint with respect to matters of public interest.” 

He goes on to write: “In addition, any prohibition of recruiting offices could be subject to challenge under the supremacy clause of the United States Constitution.”  

Kamlarz noted that, similarly, high school campuses must allow access to military recruiters. 

A 17,000-square-foot vacant commercial property in downtown Berkeley that most recently housed Barnes & Noble will soon have a new tenant, according to city Economic Development Division Acting Director Michael Caplan.  

Staples, which says on its corporate website that it “invented the office superstore concept in 1986,” will move into the building at 2352 Shattuck Ave. early in 2008, according to Staples spokesperson Mike Black. 

While the new store will make a small dent in downtown Berkeley’s total 114,000 square feet of vacant downtown retail space—amounting to a 12.8 percent vacancy rate in the downtown area—not everyone is celebrating. 

Gary Shows has owned Alko, the homegrown 99-year-old Berkeley office supply company, since 1984. While he does not welcome the competitor, with its more-than 1,900 outlets and $18.2 billion in sales in 2006, he says he’s prepared to go toe-to-toe with the international giant. 

Shows, whose store is at 2225 Shattuck Ave., said he’s done some investigation and found that Staples does not come in to a new venue and undercut other businesses, driving them out as he alleged WalMart does. 

Shows says that Alko’s prices are comparable to Staples’, and that his store stocks high-end stationery supplies, which Staples does not. 

Moreover, “We have a loyal customer base,” he said. “The only thing that Staples has is a parking lot and wider aisles.”  

What’s hurt his business in recent years, Shows said, was a UC Berkeley decision two years ago to buy office supplies from Office Max. “They signed a strict contract with them,” he said. “What has annoyed me most is the City of Berkeley—they give us almost no support,” he said. 

In July 2006, the City Council approved a three-year $1.65 million contract for office supplies with Office Depot. Alko did not offer sufficient online ordering, the city finance director told the Daily Planet at the time.  

“We’re really a Berkeley store,” Shows said. “We take care of our employees.” 

Caplan said he understands the concerns of competing small stationers, but given the large space, “it is almost inevitable that a large mini anchor” would move in, noting that commercial realtor John Gordon recruited Staples. 

Caplan added that Staples is much more than a paper-supply store. They also carry consumer electronics for which “most people now tend to go to Emeryville,” he said. “A lot of money flows out of Berkeley.” 

Speaking for Staples, Black said it chose the Berkeley location not just because of the university, but because of the city’s many small businesses.  

“In addition to carrying 7,000 products,” he said, “there are copy and print centers that offer business cards and signs” and services small businesses can use, such as in-store technicians who install computer software purchased at Staples, such as security software. 

A dedicated group of six Berkeley citizen planners gathered Monday afternoon to decide how high, how dense and how soon. 

The Land Use Subcommittee of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) held its first meeting in a fast-paced rush to decide the hottest topic left for the first draft of Berkeley’s new downtown plan. 

Just how tall should Berkeley’s skyline rise, and how many new residents should their plan be designed to handle would prove tougher than the other question: How soon they had to have their answers. 

Huddled around a table in the second floor of the city’s Planning Department on Milvia Street, the group began by picking a chair. Seconds later, at the suggestion of Victoria Eisen, Rob Wrenn took the helm. DAPAC Chair Will Travis had named Eisen as his pick for chair last week, but a majority of subcommittee members insisted on electing from within. 

Then things slowed down as the subcommittee set out to tackle the task set out for them over the course of three—or maybe four—meetings before DAPAC takes up the subcommittee draft at its Nov. 17 meeting. 

Lower skyline 

The one near-certainty to emerge by the end of the session was that the shape of the downtown most members want is a lot lower than the version consistently pressed forward by city staff. 

The issues of height and density even pitted environmentalists against environmentalists. 

While Billi Romain, the city’s green building coordinator, and Timothy Burroughs, developer of Berkeley’s climate action plan, came to the meeting to urge high densities, KyotoUSA founder Tom Kelly and Juliet Lamont, Sierra Club activist and subcommittee member, said they were concerned that too much concentrated growth downtown could endanger Berkeley’s sense of community. 

Matt Taecker, the planner hired with UC Berkeley funds to shepherd the plan through the approval process, has consistently pushed for 16-story high-rise point towers, though he has lowered the number of those towers from the originally proposed 14 down to five, plus a BART Plaza area height limit of 12-stories for residential or office buildings. Taecker would also like to allow three other 120-footers, one each on the northern and southern sides of the plaza neighborhood. 

But most comments from subcommittee members involved lower heights, with Jesse Arreguin initially favoring a maximum of eight stories. 

Wrenn himself had worked with other DAPAC members, including Lamont and non-subcommitee members Helen Burke and Wendy Alfsen, in drafting a proposed three-story base expandable to eight floors in return for meeting a number of bonus height requirement, including affordable housing units or fees to build low-income units elsewhere and use of environmentally friendly building technologies and materials. 

Architect and subcommittee member Jim Novosel proposed a plaza-area limit of 12 stories, with an eight-floor maximum surrounding it, scaling down to a maximum of five floors along residential neighborhoods. 

Eisen said she shared the concerns about the impacts of taller buildings on the city center, especially because the plan so far has given relatively little consideration to design. 

But she said her concerns about height could be best illustrated by downtown’s two tallest architectural creation, one pleasant and the other not, the Wells Fargo Building and the Power Bar Building. 

Both are similar in height to the point towers urged by staff and Walker. 

“Height for height’s sake really isn’t the beginning point,” Eisen said. 

Walker stressed repeatedly that she believed that the only ways DAPAC would be able to fund the open spaces, plazas, new stores, affordable housing and other amenities embraced by other plan chapters already adopted by the full committee would be through more density than her colleagues deemed acceptable. 

Developer Ali Kashani sat through the meeting, taking notes, and city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks also sat through part of the session, while Calvin Fong, an aide to Mayor Tom Bates, sat through it all. 

Three planning commissioners sat in: Chair James Samuels, Gene Poschman and Helen Burke. All three are DAPAC members. Wendy Alfsen from DAPAC was also on hand, as was retired planner and preservationist John English. 

English and Poschman questioned the numbers of new residents and population densities on the alternatives sketched out on a series of maps prepared by Taecker—with figures ranging from a low of 1,300 units for the proposal by Wrenn and company to a maximum of 3000 units in Walker’s version. 

Poschman and English said they were concerned about the impact of the density bonus on the plan, a state law that allows builder to increase their size of their project by including units for lower-income tenants and buyers. 

The committee resolved that issue by a decision that all heights approved would be maximum figures including all available bonuses. 

By the end of the meetings, members had agreed to return for the subcommittee’s next session Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to noon, with an eye toward wrapping up their work at a session starting at 8 a.m. the following Monday, Oct. 29, with a backup final session set for 10 a.m. on Halloween. 

Thursday’s meeting will open with members offering their own proposed development districts and the proposed heights for each.

A small group of protesters rallied at Frank Ogawa Plaza in front of Oakland City Hall late Monday afternoon as part of a National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation. 

Protests were also scheduled on Thursday for New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. 

Speaking for the family of Gary King, Jr., who was shot and killed by an Oakland Police officer last month in North Oakland, Keith Shanklin, executive board member of ILWU, local 34, said that “the family of Oakland is bleeding the blood of injustice, stolen lives, and police brutality,” and promised that protesters demonstrating against King’s death would rally every Thursday afternoon at City Hall until further notice.  

Shanklin said that he wanted Sergeant Patrick Gonzalez, the Oakland police officer who shot King, to “surrender his badge and gun and report to the community so we can arrest him for his crimes.” 

Shanklin was flanked by several members of King’s family, but said they were not able to speak at the rally themselves about the case under the advice of attorneys. 

Some 75 demonstrators, some of them walking bicycles and one riding on a scooter for disabled users, marched the seven blocks from City Hall to the 7th Street headquarters of the Oakland Police Department and back again before beginning Thursday’s rally. 

Other speakers at the rally presented the cases of several residents killed in recent months by San Francisco Police Officers. 

After nearly two years of work, Berkeley planning commissioners Wednesday will finally begin discussions of proposed local rules to govern the application of a controversial state law. 

The state-mandated density bonus—which allows developers to build bigger buildings in exchange for providing apartments or condos for lower-income residents—has served as a political football in the city. 

Because departing City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque has advised that the law allows even bigger projects than a simple reading of the statute might seem to prescribe, neighborhood activists have urged the city to adopt its own regulations to implement the statute. 

Many other cities throughout the state have taken similar actions. 

A joint subcommittee drawing on members of the commission and the Zoning Adjustments Board met for almost two years to hammer out language and tables that would make sense out of the statute. 

Though the panel was directed to end its work early this year, its efforts have languished on the shelf.  

“It’s been too long,” said Commissioner Gene Poschman. 

Commissioners are also scheduled to set the date for the first public hearing on a proposed new ordinance that would allow the city to permanently end the licenses of non-conforming liquor stores which have been closed for more than 90 days. 

The measure would also allow neighbors to file private actions against public nuisances, as well as giving the Zoning Adjustments Board greater flexibility when deciding on liquor license applications. 

The one item up for definitive action is an application to turn six apartments at 1821 Highland Ave. into condos. 

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

In the wake of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto of a bill by Assemblymember Sandré Swanson that would have clarified the procedure for returning local control to the state-operated Oakland Unified School District, Swanson is moving forward with plans for oversight committee hearings for what the assemblymember says is “to study the effectiveness of California’s statutes governing state takeovers of school districts.” 

Swanson will be holding the hearings in his capacity as chair of the California Select Committee on State School Financial Takeovers, a newly formed position and committee established by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez earlier this year. 

Swanson said that the committee “will be looking at all of the state takeovers and in particular will be observing Oakland to make sure the progress continues.” 

In a press release issued shortly after the governor’s veto of Swanson’s AB45 Oakland school local control bill was announced, Swanson’s office said that hearings would begin early next year in Oakland and other cities around the state.  

A spokesperson for the assemblymember’s office said this week that the committee is not yet ready to release detailed plans, including a hearing schedule. 

Members on Swanson’s Select Committee include Julia Brownley (D-Woodland Hills), chair of the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance; Gene Mullin (D-San Mateo), chair of the Assembly Education Committee; Jean Fuller (R-Bakersfield); Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa); Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley); Juan Arambula (D-Fresno); Mervyn Dymally (D-Compton); and Bonnie Garcia (D-Coachella). Swanson, Evans, Hancock, Arambula, and Dymally all represent areas where local school districts have been taken over by the state. 

Besides Oakland in 2003, the State of California has taken over control of six other local school districts since 1990: Richmond/West Contra Costa (1990), Coachella Valley Unified (1992), Compton Unified (1993), Emery Unified (2001), West Fresno Elementary (2003), and Vallejo City Unified (2004). Of those school districts, only Oakland Unified and West Fresno Elementary remain under state control.

Testimony concluded Monday in the trial of a six-time convicted felon from Berkeley who’s accused of attempting to murder Berkeley police officer Darren Kacalek on May 17, 2005.  

Jurors will return to court Wednesday morning for closing arguments in the trial of 38-year-old Howard Street, who’s also charged with first-degree residential burglary, carjacking and assault with a firearm in connection with a separate incident involving the robbery and shooting of a man in an Oakland motel room on May 5, 2005.  

Street admitted in testimony last week that he fired the shots that injured Kacalek, now 31, during a chase near Delaware and Sixth streets but claimed that he didn’t know he was shooting at a police officer at the time.  

Prosecutor Michael Nieto told jurors in his opening statement said that the incident began about 2:35 a.m. when two Berkeley police officers tried to stop Street when they saw him speeding in a stolen Ford Mustang at the intersection of Sixth Street and University Avenue near Interstate Highway 80.  

Nieto said Street didn’t pull over even though the officers, who were traveling in two separate cars, turned on their lights and sirens.  

The officers chased Street, but he managed to get away in the car, according to Nieto.  

In his testimony, Street laughed about ditching the police officer, saying they “were way back” after he sped up.  

“I was going as fast as that street could take,” Street said, referring to Sixth Street. Continuing to laugh, he said, “I was going fast enough to put them [the officers] three blocks back.”  

Street said he swore at and tried to attack an Alameda County Sheriff’s deputy in front of jurors during his trial because he thought the deputy had lied on the witness stand and was laughing at him.  

Street was shackled after the incident.  

Street’s lawyer, Andrew Steckler, told jurors in his opening statement that he believes the evidence in Street’s trial will show that Street believed he acted in self-defense when he fired at Kacalek.  

Steckler said he thinks the most serious charge Street should be convicted of is attempted voluntary manslaughter.

The Berkeley school board will vote Wednesday whether to accept the completion of the Derby Field project Wednesday.  

The Berkeley High field hockey team practiced on the grass Monday afternoon, the first use of the new field. The field will be used by Berkeley High and Longfellow Middle School athletic teams. B-Tech (Berkeley Technology Academy) will also use it for physical education. 

The field will have one unlocked pedestrian gate, and community members can use the site for running or throwing a frisbee, said district spokesperson Mark Coplan. 

“Any kind of organized activity will require a permit from the school district,” he said. “Also, dogs are not allowed on the field. It will have the same rules that are applicable to all the other school fields.” 

Online grades and attendance 

The school board will discuss a plan to allow families of students at Berkeley High, B-Tech, King, Willard and Longfellow middle schools to view grades and attendance online. 

The district’s technology department is currently working with the high school and middle schools to make the information available online. 

The proposed plan states that the new technology will display the attendance and reporting period grade data for each student that is stored in the district’s Student Information System, thus making the data current and compatible with other reporting systems.  

It will also provide teachers a place to update or post news, calendars, assignments, tests and classroom assignments. 

The website, which school district spokesperson Mark Coplan said could start this school year, will cost Berkeley High School $3,636. 

West Campus 

The board will discuss plans to move the district’s administrative office from the old City Hall building (recently re-named as the Maudelle Shirek building) at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way to the West Campus by 2009. 

The staff will be moved to two pre-constructed modular buildings on the west side of the current parking lot at the West Campus. 

The proposed plan specifies six portables on the east side of the parking lot, use of the east side of the gymnasium for storage and two parking lots for staff. 

However, the maintenance department and the nutritional services warehouse will remain at the current site until appropriate locations can be found for them. There is also no proposed space for a board meeting room. 

Once a permanent structure has been built to house the administrative staff, the modular buildings will be used for child care. 

Berkeley High’s School Governance Council released a draft earlier this month of their proposal for an advisory program they plan to implement in fall 2008 for Berkeley International High School and Academic Choice students. 

The other small schools will have their own advisory program.  

The purpose of the advisory program is to help students create a vision of their future by getting them to develop a five-year plan.The desired outcomes of the program are outlined in the School Advisory Program Proposal, which Principal Jim Slemp plans to introduce to the Berkeley Board of Education as soon as Nov. 14. They are as follows: 1) To help students create a vision for their future by developing a five year plan by their junior year that will take them through graduation and into postsecondary education; 2) Students will understand how to access support services, set personal and academic goals and develop a plan to monitor and achieve their goals; 3) Students will demonstrate skills to manage conflict in a positive and productive manner; 4) Students will experience an adult advocate who knows and cares about them and can strategize ways to improve their success; 5) Students will be their own advocate and take responsibility for their own education; 6) Students will work together to develop a community of peers to support their personal and academic goals.  

Sherene Randle, advisory curriculum coordinator, as well as co-leader of Academic Choice and an English teacher, says that Berkeley High is in the process of refining the goals and outcomes of the advisory program. 

“There has been a lot of discussion regarding whether the classes should have students of all grades, or be broken up by grade, or have ninth- and tenth-graders in one class and eleventh- and twelfth-graders in other classes,” she said. “There are a lot of possible combinations.” 

Randle unveiled the proposed plan of a sample advisory period. On Tuesday, the first five minutes would be devoted to attendance, the next five minutes would be for announcements, for the 30 minutes after there would be a community building activity, and then the for last five minutes there would be an exit ticket (where teachers evaluate their students). On Wednesdays, there would be attendance and announcements for five minutes each, then there would be reflective writing, discussions, or tutorials for 25 to 30 minutes, and then the last five to ten minutes would be for another community building activity. 

“Of course, the teachers have some leeway in what they teach and could switch the schedules for Tuesdays and Wednesdays if they wish,” commented Randle. 

There has been discussion regarding how to incorporate an advisory time that fits into the master schedule. Initial ideas brought up included block scheduling, shorter periods, et cetera. However, the SGC decided that twice a week, there will be block scheduling with three periods a day and a 45-minute advisory period. Students will be given a pass or fail grade for the advisory.  

Students generally feel that the advisory program is beneficial, but are skeptical about block scheduling.  

“I guess that the advisory could be good, but it depends how it is done,” said junior Scott Johnston. “In general, I think that block scheduling is a terrible idea. Many departments would be adversely affected by the change in scheduling.” 

In this plan, Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays would follow the normal bell schedule, but on Wednesdays and Thursdays, there would be a modified block bell schedule. On Tuesdays, there would be periods one, three, and five (each one-hundred minutes long), with an advisory period between first and third periods (45 minutes) and a 40-minute lunch break between third and fifth periods. On Wednesdays, students would go to periods two, four, and six, with the advisory period and lunch break the same as Tuesday. 

Randle said, “The goal is to personalize the experience for students in this large urban school. Graduates tell me that the school is ‘large, overwhelming, and impersonal.’ We want to change that.” 

The weather forecast says that Saturday will be another one of those gorgeous October days we’re blessed with in Northern California. It looks like it will be a very nice day for a walk—a long walk, a walk perhaps in San Francisco. Yes, if you haven’t figured it out already, this is a restrained pitch for the peace march in San Francisco. It’s being sponsored by—oh, who is it being sponsored by? And why does it matter anyhow? There will undoubtedly be people there with whom you disagree on some part of the message, or who will behave in a way you might not want to endorse. Go anyhow, carry your own sign with your own message, act the way you want everyone to act.  

You’ll see lots of old friends there, and make new ones. You’ll get some exercise. You’ll hear some music. You’ll see some handsome buildings, and some outrageous costumes. You can get there on BART, a trip in itself. 

And, someone pops up, will it stop the war? Well, no, probably not. Will it perhaps clean up the mess in Washington? Which mess? There’s always a mess in Washington.  

The latest candidate for attorney general of the United States of America doesn’t recognize torture when he sees it, and is a bit hazy on the concept of three branches of government. Blackwater and similar private security agencies continue to run amok not only in Iraq but around the world—it seems that the people in charge, whoever they are, didn’t learn about the nefarious “Hessian mercenaries” when they studied the Revolutionary War in their elementary school history classes. Congress continues to pass laws making the rich richer and the poor poorer, even failing in the last month to ensure that kids can go the doctor when they get sick.  

It is instructive but sobering to read in Arthur Schlesinger’s recently published journals for 1966 and 1967 about his own efforts and those of other Washington insiders, including Robert F. Kennedy, to persuade the Democratic establishment of the day to get out of Vietnam. Even those with the best intentions in that crowd, even RFK himself, didn’t really sense the strength of the groundswell of popular anti-war opinion which was building against the war.  

In the current congress, the Democrats cling to a tenuous voting majority, but they seem to be afraid to do anything much with it. Leaders express a desire to bring the troops home from Iraq, but can’t quite bring themselves to vote to cut off funds. “Wait until the election” seems to be the rallying cry, as it was in 1966-67.  

Schlesinger said then that “it is not hard to assert a congressional role,” but, given the structure of the American system, it is very hard to see how the Congress can restrain the presidential drive toward the enlargement of the war. Voting against military appropriations is both humanly and politically self-defeating.” 

Things haven’t changed much. The 1960s counterparts of today’s Democrats were looking for a hero to galvanize the masses against that era’s war. Schlesinger said of Bobby Kennedy that he had “a skepticism about a mass movement. Such a movement, [Kennedy] said, would have to tie itself to an issue or to a man. The issue of widening the war, he said, was too complicated and ambiguous. LBJ could always justify each specific step of intensification on the ground that it was necessary to say the lives of American troops and that it would shorten the war.” 

A lot of psychic energy is now being focused on who will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008. The mass media love a horse race. Hillary Clinton, even though not a man, is being promoted in some quarters as the leader to whom a mass movement could be tied, despite her deplorable record (or lack of one) of leadership on key questions. Obama’s initial charisma seems to be wearing thin, for no good reason perhaps except that he’s lost the outsider’s glitz. A fresh face might pop up, or Al Gore might come from behind at the last minute, but don’t count on it. The Democrats could yet manage to lose this one.  

So, back to the main matter for the weekend...what good will it do to march in San Francisco on Saturday? Well, for one thing, for better or for worse, it is Nancy Pelosi’s home district, and she is still the speaker of the House, for all the good that does. She still shows a bit of backbone, but she needs all the propping up she can get from us.  

And then there’s the sacramental effect. The old Baltimore Catechism defined a sacrament as “the outward sign of an inward grace.” Every so often, it does us spiritual good to do what some traditions call “witnessing”—to show, well, not the flag perhaps, but to speak up for what we believe to be right, regardless of the effect.  

Mr. Eliot, the chronicler of life’s spiritual journeys, put it this way: 

“There is only the fight to recover what has been lost 

And found and lost again and again: and now under conditions 

That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. 

For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.” 

We must continue our struggle for a lasting peace based in a just society, even though we seem to find it and lose it again and again.  

And if that’s too metaphysical for you there’s always your mom’s unbeatable reason for doing the right thing: Because I say so, that’s why. 

A friend’s husband (he’s my friend too, but not in the same way) told me he went to the DAPAC workshop last week because the Planet editorial told him to go, and he always does what we tell him to do. His wife then suggested that I should tell him to do the dishes more often, but with awesome power like that I need to be careful how I use it, so I’ll stay clear of domestic matters. But as far as the march is concerned, don’t argue with me, just go. Logistical information about times, places, and groups you can hook up with can be found elsewhere in this issue.  

We encountered many of our Elmwood neighbors at a recent party, most of them grumbling in typically articulate Berkeley style about the big new restaurant cum who-knows-what which is under construction near the corner of Ashby and College. The talk turned to general questions of development and density, and specifically to what might be in store for downtown Berkeley if the University of California gets everything it wants from the official progeny of the advice which is scheduled to be delivered in November by the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee.  

The conversational tone was very negative about the kind of ultra-densification via tall towers currently being promoted by a combination of true believers and shills for UC. But one person, a long-time guru on the music scene for whom I have the deepest respect and admiration, muttered to me sotto voce that he didn’t really see what was the matter with tall buildings. “People have to live somewhere,” he said. He allowed as how he was happy he’d bought his home in the hills 40 years ago, because he himself wouldn’t be happy living in a downtown condo, but he thought some might be. 

His comments came to mind on Saturday morning, when we dropped in on DAPAC’s public workshop about its latest draft of goals and policies after buying our tomatoes and peppers at the Farmers’ Market, conveniently located right near Berkeley High where the meeting was held. This proved to be another in a recent run of civic meetings where the inmates seem to be taking over the asylum, or at least it must appear that way to the public employees who’ve largely thought they had things under control until now. The same phenomenon has been observed at several other recent “workshops,” the polite name for gatherings where citizens are allowed to vent a bit if they follow the rules. Attendees are refusing to sit through any more vapid powerpoint presentations, declining to break up into small groups, insisting on having their say even if their words are not being recorded on butcher paper tablets for later disposal.  

The DAPAC workshop was attended by what looked like 100 or so citizens and perhaps 15 of the 21 DAPAC members, plus lots of paid staffers from the city of Berkeley and the University of California racking up comp time. Early on, before we got there, participants seem to have decided that they were going to use all of the scheduled three hours for public comment, with not much time devoted to staff’s scheduled rehash of the draft, which was available on-line with copies distributed around the room.  

By 10:30 or so, public participation was in full swing. At the rate of three minutes per speaker, more or less, about 50 Berkeleyans were able to contribute to the public discourse about what should happen downtown in the future. They were, for the most part, intelligent and well-spoken, and even the few presentations which seemed a bit—er—scattered had interesting nuggets embedded in them. The Planet didn’t have a reporter there, but we really didn’t need one, because most of the best speakers have already expressed their ideas in these pages in the past.  

And—are you surprised?—almost no one spoke in favor of a taller, denser downtown Berkeley. The retired UC development official and current small-time developer who is Mayor Bates’ appointee to the Planning Commission, David Stoloff, did say a few positive words about it—no surprise there. A couple of true believers spoke up. One is on the board of Livable Berkeley, the pro-growth lobbying group, and the other is the main member of Friends of Bus Rapid Transit. A planning student or two expressed a deep desire to get the chance to test the theories they’d been absorbing in their classes on our fair city, which they’d come to know and love at least since freshman year. That was about it. 

Just to be sure the public is fully informed, however, we have invited all and sundry to send their comments to opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com. We’ll print as many as possible, and we’ll run the rest on the Web at berkeleydailyplanet.com. And our technical staff (i.e. the publisher) tells me that if we can get the tape of the meeting, it can also be posted there in audio form, in case anyone has three hours to listen to it. 

But the big unanswered question is what I think of as the J. Alfred Prufrock dilemma: Will it have been worth it after all? One of the best speakers, and a fresh face on the scene, was Bruce Kaplan, the proprietor of Looking Glass Photo [shameless plug for a Planet advertiser], who talked sadly about seeing Westwood, UCLA’s home neighborhood, converted into cement canyons. When the University of California is on the move, it seems that there is no force on earth that can stop it.  

In Santa Cruz, at least they’re trying. On Sunday we went to the opening of an art exhibit on the glorious campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz. A freelance graffiti artist had decorated the bathroom with his or her own artwork: “Stop the LRDP.” There’s a UC plan to destroy Santa Cruz too, with another Long Range Development Plan like the one threatening Berkeley.  

The difference is that the city of Santa Cruz sued challenging the environment impact report on UCSC’s plan, just as Berkeley did on UCB’s, but Santa Cruz stuck to its guns and won, in trial court at least, though UC might still appeal. The issues were the same: water, sewers, streets—who’s going to pay for all that when enrollment increases? Not to mention the impact of the for-profit biotech spin-offs that faculty and staff at both campuses lust after, which will pay little in the way of local taxes. 

The Berkeley City Council, the victim as usual of poor legal advice from its city attorney’s office, backed off, and topped off its surrender with a totally unnecessary agreement to go through the DAPAC process. The question, frequently repeated in these pages and at the workshop, is why our city has volunteered to surrender its excellent existing general plan before UC’s advancing army.  

A major problem is that for the large percentage of Berkeley citizens living in what are now million-dollar hillside homes, filling downtown Berkeley with towers will affect only a minor portion of their view. That’s true even of the best intentioned people like my musical friend. Some imagine teachers and policemen living in the market rate downtown condos they envision, but check the math. As many workshop speakers pointed out, these will have to be luxury dorms for wealthy students, not family homes for public employees. 

We’re tempted to run pictures of the pleasant homes of the most vocal members of the “smart growth” mafia, though that might seem tacky. The downtown condos they champion are for other people, by and large. Some refer touchingly to their grown children who have had to leave Berkeley to find single family homes they can afford, but I seriously doubt that said offspring will come back to live in downtown condo towers even if BRT materializes. Berkeley didn’t invent the real estate bubble, and we can’t solve it by cannibalizing our downtown.  

The answer to the Prufrock question might be the Macbeth answer: The protestations of those trying to preserve what’s best about Berkeley’s downtown might amount to not much more than “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Some predict that they might win the DAPAC battle but lose the war. 

Here’s a novel suggestion: Let DAPAC finish giving its advice, then file it and dare UC to do its worst. And though the city has blown its opportunity to follow Santa Cruz in asking for a better EIR, it still has the option of refusing water and sewer connections to excessive projects which will overwhelm city services. Does anyone on the City Council have the nerve—I can think of a more graphic Spanish synonym—to do that? 

CORRECTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In Richard Brenneman’s Oct. 23 article entitled “Density Bonuses, Liquor Licenses on Planning Agenda,” it suggested that the joint density bonus subcommittee was only comprised of members of the Planning Commission and the Zoning Adjustments Board. 

However, the City Council also appointed members of the Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) to the subcommittee and they participated as full voting members in the subcommittee’s discussions.  

I am sure that it was a honest mistake, however I would appreciate it if that point could be corrected to reflect the HAC’s participation in the process.  

Jesse Arreguin  

• 

UNNEIGHBORLY BEHAVIOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was at the West Berkeley Community meeting on Oct. 16 and was amazed at the rude behavior. People shouted insults from the audience. One fellow took hold of the microphone and wouldn’t give it up. He continued his rant until the time ran out and others who were waiting didn’t get a chance to speak. This is Berkeley democracy? 

I have had some problems with the way the West Berkeley Business Alliance has handled their proposal, but also with the spin that WEBAIC and some community members have given it. It is time to get over any mistakes that were made and also to get over hurt feelings about being disrespected, not informed, ignored etc. Let us get on with discussions about what needs to be done and who is willing to lend what kind of support. We are neighbors, not enemies. 

Bob Kubik 

• 

CITY ATTORNEY 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

The commentary masquerading as a news article reporting the retirement of City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque deserves a response. We have just witnessed the nation’s understandable loss of confidence in Attorney General Gonzales. His diminished standing resulted from the accurate perception that he lacked the necessary integrity commensurate with that position. While many of us believed the legal advice he provided was incorrect at best, what was particularly troubling was his lack of independence—the concern that he tailored his legal advice to meet the demands of theadministration, regardless of whether prevailing law and the Constitution supported that position. We now know that Attorney General Ashcroft maintained his integrity while rejecting the demand of Gonzales, Cheney and Addington to approve certain surveillance programs. 

The city attorney’s responsibility is multifaceted and exceptionally difficult. She must provide legal advice to city officials and the City Council on a wide range of issues, including personnel and employment law matters, zoning, police conduct, compliance with federal and state mandates, etc. She also must defend the city in wide-ranging litigation and initiate litigation as well. 

In asking her to carry out these responsibilities, we must not expect perfection. Nor must we expect that the city attorney’s reading of the legal landscape always will conform to ours or to those held by our elected officials or city administrators. If we demand such conformity, we are, in effect, demanding the same politically-based fealty which the Bush administration demanded and received from Attorney General Gonzales.  

If what we demand instead is integrity, advice based on a fair attempt to interpret and apply the law, and a vigorous effort to defend suits brought by and against the city, we must conclude that the city has been very well-served by Ms. Albuquerque’s tenure. Although I have locked horns with the city attorney’s office and challenged its interpretation and application of the law, I never had cause to question the city attorney’s fidelity to the people of Berkeley or her devotion to fairly interpreting and applying the law to further the city’s interests, without sacrificing her integrity or independence.  

It may be that few tears were shed about her departure; unfortunately this may reflect a desire to retain a city attorney in the Gonzales mode, i.e., an attorney who will obligingly follow the ideologically-based dictates of those in political power when the advice is sought. Let us hope, instead, that the new city attorney aspires to exhibit the independence and integrity of our retiring senior legal officer.  

Thom Seaton  

• 

GOOD RIDDANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

And good riddance to you, Manuela. You built a career by telling the city manager and City Council what they wanted to hear, which is not the same as providing good legal counsel. Take your golden parachute and just go. 

The city no doubt will go through the motions of a major search for your replacement, but in it’s wisdom probably will end up replacing you from within. This would be a serious mistake. Like the other law enforcement agency that has been in the news recently (Hi, Alberto), this one needs to be rebuilt from the top down. 

Evelyn Giardina 

Walnut Creek 

• 

BERKELEY’S RULING CLIQUES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Sorry, I cannot remain silent in the face of Becky O’Malley’s Stalinist-type revisionism (see her Oct. 23 editorial). I must point out that when I had my iron-clad case before the courts, I received absolutely no support or assistance from anyone of Becky O’Malley’s ilk, with one single and brave exception: Dona Spring. My case was based on an incontrovertible truth of the Brown Act, which specialists like Terry Francke now in retrospect freely admit. If I had received public support, it might well have made all the difference. As it was, I walked into a hostile court room as a sole pro per litigant up against two huge monoliths: the City of Berkeley and the University of California. Naturally, I got the short end of the stick, but along with me, the entire citizenry of Berkeley got the short end of the stick, and it is at least as much the fault of Becky O’Malley and all of her ilk as Chancellor Birgeneau or Mayor Bates. I guess I just wasn’t an influential enough member of the cliques that rule Berkeley to warrant the support of anyone. But now I must point out that those cliques are equally culpable to the villains they constantly try to create in the fiction of their editorials and commentaries. 

Now we must rely on the existing lawsuit, which also lost in the trial court and is now on appeal. However, the issues in that lawsuit are in fact much more “iffy” than the iron-clad issue in my lawsuit. But just like the very ones they constantly accuse, those of Becky O’Malley’s ilk do not look at the merits of an issue, but only at the status of the lawyer bringing the lawsuit. They do not really believe in the democracy of ordinary people any more than the high-flyers like Chancellor Birgeneau and Mayor Bates. Theirs is a bourgeois interest in promoting themselves up to the level of other members of the petite and not so petite bourgeoisie. 

Peter J. Mutnick 

• 

DOWNTOWN DENSITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I feel I have to respond to Becky O’Malley’s Oct. 23 editorial about the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee. For what it’s worth, I strongly support the proposals to allow much greater density in downtown Berkeley. O’Malley would apparently assume that I must be either a shill for the university, or a smug denizen of the hills who would never consider living in one of the downtown condominium buildings myself. I do, as it happens, live in the hills; I also work at the university, which (for what it’s worth) strikes me as far and away the best and most interesting thing about Berkeley. A downtown plan that permits higher densities would in fact help the university build the laboratories and museum buildings we need to retain our competitive edge as one of the world’s leading centers for higher education. But that is not the main reason I support such a plan. My concerns are rather to make our city a more urban and livable place, and to support a more environmentally and socially responsible pattern of development for our region. 

When contributors to the Daily Planet carry on about the threat that density poses to the cherished character of our town, I must confess I have no idea what they are talking about. Downtown Berkeley is at present a pretty desolate and unattractive place, one that many citizens avoid if at all possible. This is a real pity, because—unlike Westwood and Santa Cruz—our downtown has the potential to be a vibrant, small-scale urban center, with a dense network of public transportation options at the foot of a great international university. The obvious problem with downtown Berkeley right now is that it is not dense enough; we need more people on the streets at all times of the day and the evening, supporting shops and cafes and restaurants and theaters, and contributing to a flourishing urban culture. I believe a denser downtown Berkeley would become a much more attractive place for everyone who lives in and visits our city. I might even be willing to sell my house and the hills, give up my car, and move into one of the new condominiums. It would be terrific to be able to walk to work and to BART—but only if there is enough density in the downtown area to support a wider array of urban amenities than the area is able to offer at present. 

R. Jay Wallace 

• 

DENSITY AND DEVELOPMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If there ever was a good illustration of Mark Twain’s statement that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics, it is Neil Mayer’s piece supposedly giving us the “facts” about Berkeley’s population density. 

First, it does not appear to me that he has his statistics right. Mayer claims that Berkeley ranks 172nd out of 25,150 “places” in the entire country, meaning that “we are denser than 99.3 percent of all other places in the United States.” I don’t know where he gets his figure for the number of “places” in the United States, but the source he cites, DataPlace, lists Berkeley as 172nd out of 848 cities in population density, putting us in the 80th percentile, not the 99th. DataPlace also shows that Berkeley is less dense than, for example, Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and San Francisco, Santa Monica and Hawaiian Gardens, California, to name only a few. 

Moreover, population density is a rather meaningless figure when it is computed simply by dividing the number of residents of a particular city by the number of square miles within that city’s borders. City boundaries are arbitrary, as we all know. For example, if Tilden Park were included in the City of Berkeley, the City would have 13.7 square miles, not “just under 10.5” and our population density would be 7,751 per square mile, not 10,158. That would make us 324th out 848 cities in population density, putting us barely in the 60th percentile. Everybody I know who lives in Berkeley uses Tilden Park extensively and counts it as part of the Berkeley experience. Why shouldn’t its acreage count in our density figures, just as Central Park counts for New York City and Golden Gate Park counts for San Francisco? 

Anyone who has spent 40 years living in Berkeley (as I have) and a fair amount of time visiting cities and towns around the country, can probably speak more wisely about comparative densities than Mayer’s statistics do. In my opinion, Berkeley can house a great many more people than it currently does, and we are all better off if population growth happens in cities like Berkeley rather than in further suburban sprawl. 

Fred Feller 

• 

DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a modest contribution to the downtown development discussion, I would like to say that living in a fourth-floor apartment downtown has been wonderful. While I see that some people will not live without a motor vehicle, I do not need one at all, as I use BART, AC Transit, my feet, and a bicycle. It is reasonable to think that people who elect to live downtown will be less inclined to use cars than if they chose to live in lower density areas. 

It is also wonderful to be able to walk to everything downtown has to offer, and I would think that downtown could offer even more if more people lived there. I certainly wouldn’t want a downtown that shuts down after office hours, or where parking structures dominate the scenery, both situations that happen when people spread out to lower density neighborhoods. 

Guy Tiphane 

• 

DOWNTOWN SUBSIDY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It has recently come to my attention that Mayor Bates and/or the Berkeley City Council are “floating the idea of a $15 to $30 million subsidy” using city funds for the development by Carpenter and Company of a hotel complex in the middle of our downtown! Can this really be true! Not knowing all the facts, I hesitate to question their action. However… 

I was personally in a meeting when Carpenter and Company presented their idea in October, 2006 about how they were looking forward to doing this project and were very proud of a similar project in Boston. The same month I learned from the then-director of the Berkeley Art Museum that BAM “paid a significant fee share for the firm SMWM, who were retained by the Carpenter Company to develop a master plan for the block.” At no time whatsoever was there any indication that the firm SMWM was going to be doing this project for anything other than profit. 

This project has always been presented to those interested in the downtown as a business investment not in need of a subsidy! 

How can it be that our City Council is considering giving a subsidy to a for-profit organization that has already expressed the opinion that it is doing this project because they think it will be a fantastic financial success. If it is not a financially viable project for SMWM then they should not be in the business of such a development. 

If SMWM and Carpenter and Company are to reap a financial profit then SMWM and Carpenter and Company should make the financial investment to reap such a profit. Too much has been said for organizations that take from the public without remuneration and use it to benefit the already financially endowed commercial enterprise. 

I hope that in no way have Mayor Bates and/or the City Council undermined the hard and determined work of those citizens on the DAPAC who have sought to include this project in their recommendations. Please note, if it was not for the interference of the university in the business of running our city then such an effort would never have to have been made in the first place. 

Wendy P. Markel 

• 

RENT BOARD DUTIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I wrote a commentary piece for the Oct. 5 issue of the Daily Planet in which I asserted that the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board has virtually nothing to do. Their three mandated tasks are gone or damn near gone. The Annual General Adjustment is now automatic, the Board itself has promulgated such regulations that there are now virtually no Individual Rental Adjustments and Costa Hawkins, the state law that imposed vacancy decontrol upon Berkeley, makes registration unnecessary. And yet the Rent Board has 18 employees and spends $3.5 million a year.  

As sensitive as Berkeley’s progressive community is to criticism, I expected a wave of rebuttals. And yet, the Daily Planet has published five editions since printing my commentary and no one has come forth to refute my position. If I am wrong, I would love to hear the opposing viewpoint. I challenge to Rent Board or any of its supporters to justify the size and cost of its bureaucracy. I am making some serious charges. Defend yourselves! If no one will prove me wrong, I can only assume that the Rent Board indeed spends millions to do virtually nothing.  

Albert Sukoff 

• 

REPUBLICAN RESIGNATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last year I resigned from the Republican Party. It no longer represents me, nor does it represent America. It represents a relative handful of conscienceless, greedy people who are willing to destroy our country to feather their nests. I pray that enough people wake up and repudiate (a great word: reject with shame) the Republican party while “America” is still restorable. 

K.C. Rourke 

• 

RISKY BUSINESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Planet’s characterization of the biotech industry’s latest risky adventure as “tweaking genes in the drive to turn plants into fuel for planes trains and automobiles” suggests that this project is not only innocent enough, but maybe green as well. The biotech industry has gone to great lengths to repackage their dangerous work as to appear to be legitimate. The work that will be done here is a part of the larger effort to promote ethanol/GMO technology and has the same disastrous environmental and biological consequences as planting GMO crops for food.  

The corn favored by the industry for ethanol is GMO corn. Much of the land used to grow food for people would now be used to grow GMO plants for “planes, trains and automobiles.” This means less food for people and higher prices. To insure that all people can eat, we should be working to establish local control of lands to grow, harvest and distribute food, not federal control. This is vitally important if we are to regain our health and freedom. Eating naturally produced foods that are locally produced are important in maintaining healthy people and healthy communities. 

Let’s also remember the problems of cross-pollination by growing GMO are also the same, whereas non-GMO crops are easily contaminated when the wind blows. Recent studies in Colorado have shown that consuming GMO plants weakens natural immune function. 

In short, the biotech industry’s experiment with ethanol and other plant derived fuels, now being conducted, in part, right here in Berkeley is risky business with unintended consequences. A closer look at the big money and the players involved tells the rest of this sad story. 

Michael Bauce 

• 

PRO AND ANTI 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Dear Debbie Dresser of Hayward: You sound like a good person, and I believe you are not “pro war.” I would consider myself “anti-war,” but if another country’s government bombed my home and killed my loved ones, I know I could become warlike, maybe even strap on a suicide bomb. That is what our country has done to innocent Iraqis over and over and over. Do you ever imagine what they feel like? They are human beings just like us. Please don’t say that Saddam Hussein attacked the World Trade Center. That has been disproved. I believe you and I are not pro war, but there are people who are. Like Dick Cheney and George Bush and Blackwater and the other rich military contractors who are making a killing off this war. They can’t seem to get enough. They want to attack Iran with nuclear bombs now. Do you believe we should not have any say in what wars are just? Leave it up to those is power and blindly follow? Do you believe stealing their oil is a good motive for war? Some of us question these things. Maybe you should watch the video “Iraq for Sale.” I think you are being used. Do you not think Melanie Morgan is raking in big bucks to carry water for our corrupt administration? Have you heard the expression, “follow the money”? There is not big money in being antiwar. Think about it. 

Vivian Warkentin 

• 

PATRIOTIC COPS? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I came to the Wednesday Oct. 17 demonstration at the Marine recruiting station in Berkeley just as the anti-war protesters being herded to the east side of Shattuck yet I realized instantly how tactical a move that was for BPD who were in charge of keeping “the peace.” Each side, Code Pink and other anti-war groups on the east side and Melanie Morgan’s pro-war groups on the west side of Shattuck, was shouting, chanting, and singing in competition and, at times, in response to each other. It was raucous and angry. I decided to stay among the pro-war side to film some of their singing. When a young solder came to the mic and accused the anti-war side of “not knowing what they’re talking about,” I asked if he thought General Abizaid and General Sanchez, both former commanders in Iraq, knew what they were talking about. I was immediately pushed and shoved toward the other side of the street. I was incensed by their violence and asked a Berkeley police officer to cite them for assault. He laughed at me and after cooling off (on the east side of the street) I realized that BPD had their hands full with keeping overall crowd safety. So I watched as the pro-war people sent roaring Harleys crawling past the anti-war side racing their engines as loudly as possible, and as a pro-war “patriot” raced across the street and cut the cable of Code Pink’s bull horn. None of these acts of provocative violence were sufficient to merit BPD’s response. It was as I’d surmised. When I asked an officer if he couldn’t enforce the noise statute against the motorcycle drivers I was told “I’ve got bigger problems.” Nevertheless when an anti-war protester torched a small American flag a booted BPD cop was on him in less than five seconds. The burning flag was not near anyone close enough to endanger them immediately. I want to know why the BPD so blatantly chose to ignore the various violations of the law by the pro-war side and were so quick to abandon their “bigger problems” to act against an anti-war protester. 

Joseph Liesner 

Oakland 

• 

BERKELEY’S POPULATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding recent letters from Gale Garcia and Revan Tranter: We won’t really know until the 2010 census whether Berkeley’s population has declined or increased from the 102,743 found by the 2000 census. The California Department of Finance’s most recent estimate is 106,347. However, that claim seems dubious given that in 2000, thanks to the dot-com boom, the rental vacancy rate was an unusually low 3 percent. The vacancy rate has since, thanks to the dot-com bust, roughly doubled, so the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent estimate that the population has dropped slightly to 101,555 seems more plausible. 

However, even if the CDF estimate is closer to the truth, that is still a substantial drop from the peak population of 116,716 recorded by the 1970 census. In other words, in those days our town housed 10,000 to 15,000 more people with fewer buildings than we have today. 

Robert Lauriston 

• 

ABAG’S CONFLICT OF INTEREST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was surprised at Revan Tranter’s claim (Oct. 23) that the US Census Bureau doesn’t make annual estimates. They can be found on the Census Bureau website here: www.census.gov/popest/cities/SUB-EST2006-4.html, showing the population of Berkeley at 103,068 in 2000 and at 101,555 in 2006.  

The American Community Survey (mentioned in another article in the same issue) states that while it produces various estimates, “it is the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Program that produces and disseminates the official estimates of the population. . .” 

Still, I’d like to thank Mr. Tranter, who was executive director of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) from 1973-1995, for responding to my letter, and for his interesting and educational article of 2001: “ABAG: A Concise History” which I first read years ago. 

In this history, Mr. Tranter details the hard times experienced by ABAG during the 1970s and early ’80s, when a third of their staff were laid off and the remaining staff took a cut in pay. Following are three quotes from the article. 

“What probably helped restore a measure of financial security [to ABAG], and even persuade most of the few remaining non-members to join, was the decision to make up for the reduction in planning capacity by becoming more of a service agency.” 

“In 1983, ABAG launched its first financial services program: credit pooling. . . . and with roughly a hundred jurisdictions (let alone many more if the program could be marketed outside the Bay Area) there would always be at least a few cities or counties contemplating capital funding. . . “ 

“Today borrowers include not only cities and counties, but special districts, hospitals, universities, schools, nonprofit housing and health care organizations, housing partnerships, and private businesses. More than $1 billion dollars has been provided in tax-exempt financing. Visit the University of California’s handsome systemwide headquarters in downtown Oakland and you are looking at a building financed by ABAG. Seven different programs are offered on a statewide basis, and the savings to members have been immense.” 

ABAG’s power is about capital funding—largely for construction. It is not surprising that ABAG promotes a belief in relentless population growth, no matter what is actually occurring. If construction came to a halt in California, ABAG might, once again, experience hard times. 

Finally, I think that many Berkeleyans are tired of the term NIMBY, and tired of the name-calling directed at those who try to preserve what is left of Berkeley’s charm, its revenue generating small businesses, and its wholly unique small-town—yet cosmopolitan—flavor. 

Gale Garcia 

• 

CHEVRON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Chevron, with headquarters in San Ramon, is one of the largest corporations in California and has a presence throughout the Bay Area. 

Chevron’s human rights human rights violations (or complicity in violations) span three continents: 

• Chevron, one of the largest foreign investors in Burma is allowed to operate in Burma by a loophole in existing U.S. sanctions against the country, and has provided significant revenues to Burma’s military regime. Chevron continues to do business in Burma despite the current upsurge in repression there. 

• Chevron is being sued in Ecuadorian courts for intentionally dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest during the 28 years (1964 to 1992) it operated an oil concession there. 

• Chevron also faces a trial in U.S federal court in San Francisco on charges it paid Nigerian military and police personnel to fire weapons at villagers staging a protest at a Chevron oil platform in 1998, killing two. Nigerian villagers also charge the company with being complicit in an attack on two villages that left four others dead. Chevron has no defined human rights policy despite shareholder pressure. Amazing as it would seem, Chevron is a sponsor of a Business for Social Responsibility Conference being held in San Francisco today. 

Given all this information (which can be found at www.chevrontoxico.com and www.amazonwatch.org), I believe people in Berkeley would want to explore ways to address concerns about Chevron’s business practices including learning what, if any, is the nature of the City of Berkeley business with Chevron. 

Judy Shattuck 

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Like so many disputes in Berkeley, the arguments over Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) make me want to hit the mute button. 

The AC Transit proposal would not convert Berkeley into a mini-Curitiba as some proponents imply. 

What it would be is a significant improvement over the existing Rapid Bus and its predecessor services. It would attract some people who would otherwise drive. As is always the case in transit, much depends on how land is developed adjacent to the stops. 

BRT would not compete with BART. Anyone who pretends that it would is either woefully ignorant or deliberately deceiving. BART and BRT are intended for different markets. BRT would have many more stops than BART. Few of them would even be within walking distance of BART stations. BRT would also run more frequently. 

Some opponents argue that the money could be better spent on different projects. This is a bogus argument. AC Transit needs state or federal money to implement the project. They either get it or they don’t. If they do get outside funding, it will be for the BRT project. They will not be able to divert it to another project. If their BRT project materializes, it will bring benefits to Berkeley at no additional local cost. 

There are also fears that automobile traffic would spill over on to neighborhood streets. The allegation that such spillover with BRT would be worse than without it lacks analytical or logical support. 

The BRT program lays a good foundation for future, higher capacity and less petroleum-dependent alternatives like trolley buses and/or Light Rail. That is the right direction for Berkeley to go if we believe that human activity is responsible for global warming. 

Some would rather see BRT replace the notoriously unpredictable Route 51 service along University Avenue. In AC Transit’s long range plan, that would be the next step after the current proposal is implemented. 

We should all encourage Council to do what they can to realize the AC Transit BRT project. 

Bob Piper 

Former Berkeley Director of  

Transportation 

• 

BHS ADVISORY PROPOSAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I don’t know whether I should have laughed or cried while reading “School Council Releases Draft Proposal” in the Oct. 23 issue. To replace academic instructional time with a lamebrain advisory whose goal is to “help students create a vision of their future” is downright criminal. Students are failing because they are not being taught basic academic skills. It’s obvious what kind of future awaits those who can’t write a simple sentence or make change for a $20 bill. It’s bleak. And the conjoined twin of advisories, block scheduling, has already been tried at Berkeley High. It was abandoned as a complete failure seven years ago. Surely the Berkeley School Board won’t approve removing an hour and a half a week of instructional time and replacing it with an advisory program that has a sketchy at best curriculum, especially when similar high schools are abandoning the advisory/block scheduling program as another failed education trend. 

Maureen Burke 

• 

SOUTH BERKELEY ANTENNAS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The residents of South Berkeley won an important victory at Tuesday night’s City Council public hearing. They pursuaded the council to abstain on Verizon’s application to install 11 cell phone antennas atop UC Storage at 2721 Shattuck Ave. The night before the hearing a demonstration at Mayor Tom Bates’ house was also very successful. With 12 hours of notice beforehand, 30 people showed up with signs reading “Stand Up And Lead” and “Don’t Sell Us Out.” 

At the public hearing itself, more than 60 residents turned out to convince the City Council of our intent to continue fighting for greater local control over the siting of cell antennas. The council listened, stood up and led. They did not run away from the Verizon lawsuit. Of special note, Mayor Bates joined Max Anderson and Dona Spring in supporting the Zoning Adjustments Board denial of Verizon’s application. (The rest of the council abstained.) This action sets the stage for a final action to keep the ZAB’s decision intact at the next City Council meeting on Nov. 6. Keep that date in mind for a final resolution at the City Council level. We hope to have a good turnout for that meeting as well. Thank you to the community for all your support. 

Michael Barglow 

Berkeley Neighborhood  

Antenna-Free Union 

• 

CROSSROADS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is a mistake for the Crossroads Co-op to try to evict Carol Denney, who was an original member of the co-op and has lived there for the last 17 years. When we started the Village Co-op (original name) at 1970 San Pablo Ave. in Berkeley, the vision was simple. We thought it should be a place where the existing tenants could have a home free of racism, sexism or homophobia, where we would be free of landlord exploitation and slum conditions. The board of directors became the ruling body and took over the landlord’s position. They were never supposed to be an elite body looking down on its members. One unit, one vote, was how the project was set up, and each member voted as they pleased. Your unit was your home and no one had any right to force you to make changes you did not approve of; your home is your castle.  

Another thing that was discussed was that no member should ever be evicted for any reason. How could a person be evicted from their home? Limited equity was also to be part of the contract with each unit to guarantee that each person’s rights were realized. There was also supposed to be professional mediation to resolve conflicts.  

Payments were supposed to only be increased because of housing or mortgage conditions, and then only by the board and only by vote of a committee, which means that everything was supposed to be done in a democratic manner.  

We knew that we were not building a utopia, that there would certainly be conflicts and that we would have to deal with them humanly to make life tolerable for our families and friends. It was also apparent that we would have to police ourselves and that we did not live in a perfect world.  

The present atmosphere in the building is one that contradicts the very principles that the co-op was founded on. The Board has decided that innuendo and personal vendettas should replace mediation and common sense. The very idea that the board should push to evict a long time resident without mediation is an injustice in itself. If this continues and the present eviction of Carol Denney goes forward, I will appear on her behalf in Superior Court. Professional mediation should begin posthaste so that no further harm comes to the reputations of Carol Denney or the Crossroads Village Co-op.  

Gary Isom Spencer 

Founder, Crossroads Co-Op  

• 

TIME TO RE-INSTITUTE  

THE DRAFT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

No, I’m not recommending sending more of our young people to Iraq to be cannon fodder. I’m talking about sending them to places where we can begin to repair the image of the United States, and do work that will actually benefit the countries we visit, the environment, and (indirectly) ourselves. Some could be administered by the Peace Corps. Others could help restore habitat, train park rangers, and help people learn how to survive without killing endangered species. I’m sure that there are many charitable organizations already doing such work, which could come up with other good ideas. If we had a Department of Peace, it could oversee this work, and do a lot more good than our Department of “Defense.” Of course, it would require thinking about other countries in a new way, not just in terms of whether they are part of an “Axis of Evil.” To avoid contributing to global warming, perhaps they could travel by bicycle or sailboat. . . . I think that such work would do far more good than the Olympics, which harms the environment by causing huge amounts of airplane travel and by promoting environmentally destructive sports like mountain biking. 

Mike Vandeman 

San Ramon 

• 

THE WAR PRESIDENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The “war president “ is up to his old tricks. Bush is deceiving America again; the president wants a missile defense system in Europe to counter the emerging threat of attack by Iran. What we have here is another contrived lie and scaremongering out of the White House. If it wasn’t so crazy, it would be laughable.  

Iran has no missiles, Iran has no nuclear weapons, and Iran is a threat to no one, Europe, America or Israel.  

Will Americans fall victim to Bush’s duplicity and fearmongering and get sucked into another Middle East war? 

Hey, wake up, you’ve had seven years to figure out George W. Bush. This madman could start a global war; he’s got nothing to lose. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley 

In his Oct. 19 letter to the editor, Steven Donaldson didn’t mention that he is one of the West Berkeley property owners trying to set up a new tax to fund privatizing city services. He posed instead as just another interested neighborhood guy, who no doubt attended the “Town Hall Meeting” partly to register his support for the tax and partly to observe the antics of dozens of “folks” whose earnest and articulate arguments he professes never to understand. Indeed, in 12 paragraphs of Steven’s prose, he never engages his opponents’ arguments at all. It’s as if we had nothing to say. But of course we did. 

His metaphor of landowners digging into their own wallets to pay for all this “improvement” has a homey feel, but it’s wrong. The fact is that the people who will pay the tax he wants funneled to his Business Improvement District (BID) will largely be the tenant businesses who occupy the land and who work hard for the money they make. The primary mechanism that will ensure the profit transfer is the all-too-common triple net lease, which when signed requires the commercial tenant to pay the landlord’s property taxes. Even without a triple-net, the increased cost will surely find itself into the monthly rent figure that these tenants pay. 

Much is made by Mr. Donaldson and his WBBA allies of the theme “there’s only one Berkeley beat officer for all of West Berkeley after midnight.” In my nearly three decades of operating a business in West Berkeley I have had many occasions in the early morning hours to be rousted out of bed by our burglar alarm service. Berkeley police always get to the site before me. In fact, the beat officer has a key to our business, so she or he is usually already inside, and hardly ever alone. And on occasions when there has been a real burglar onsite, there have always been at least three or four other officers present to help apprehend the suspect. These Berkeley police officers are fine people; polite, competent, well-equipped. I’ve had the privilege of meeting a bunch of them, albeit at unusual hours. So maybe one beat officer for West Berkeley is sufficient, no?  

Mr. Donaldson thinks taxing Berkeley small businesses to fund a privatized security system run by landowners is just ducky, but I think it sounds like a Middle Eastern militia or worse. At the town hall meeting, when I got my chance to speak to the neighbors, I said I would be willing as a small business owner to pay additional taxes to fund additional city services if they are needed, but not to fund a duplicative service controlled by a BID. Sounds too much like Blackwater! 

The fact is that in our area of West Berkeley, south of Ashby Avenue, the businesses take care of their own streets and sidewalks. With few exceptions, we mostly paint out graffitti as it happens. We even repair our own potholes, thanks to a new bagged asphalt patch product that is simple, cheap, and effective. We don’t want to look like a slum, so we pick up trash. We’re recyclers, so most of what we pick up goes for beneficial reuse, but we’d prefer for people to use proper containers and not the streets for their discards. Trash is inefficient and irresponsible. We weedwhip our weeds and replace them when possible with tough ornamentals. We employ a cottage industry of private security services to give us clues as to when police services are to be called and when not.  

Mr. Donaldson’s assurances that the BID will not be used to lobby for landowner interests fall flat in the face of the rules giving the biggest property owners control of the tax money. How are such promises to be monitored, enforced, adjudicated? The City Council is too busy to do it. Besides, what a wonderful invitation to downstream conflict as people debate whether an infraction has occurred!  

Indeed, the WBBA is and has been part of what seems a triumvirate consisting of certain city Economic Development staff and City Councilmembers who are working to destroy the West Berkeley Plan and replace it with a wrecking ball for the local artisanal and industrial economy. Manufacturers and materials recovery enterprises are joining the ranks of the artisans who are pushing back.  

Dan Knapp is a co-founder of Urban Ore, Inc. in West Berkeley.

Dear Captain Lund, 

We thank you for your Oct. 2 letter to Code Pink published in the Daily Planet. Your letter and our weekly protests at your Marine Corps Recruitment Center are emblematic of the difficult times we live in. Declaring our intentions over matters of public concern invokes the democratic spirit of debate. Perhaps together, Capt. Lund, we can represent to Berkeley and to the world that is watching, what it means to engage in America’s democratic process meaningfully, vigorously and, most importantly, peacefully.  

Capt. Lund, we would like to honor the concerns that you set forth in your letter. These are: 1) you were insulted; 2) you felt that our statements about military recruitment were unfair; and 3) you believe that our efforts at ending this war by targeting your Marine Corps Recruitment Office were misdirected. We are happy to respond to all of your concerns. 

For the past five years, Code Pink chapters across the nation have been at the forefront of the peace movement. From meeting with our local politicians, to attending hearings in Congress, to picketing war profiteers, Code Pink has consistently demonstrated that we understand that war mongering is not an isolated activity, played out by a few warm bodies. You, Capt. Lund, are one of the most powerful components of the war machine. Without recruiters, the war has no players. Please be clear, Capt. Lund, that this is not an attack on you as a person. Instead, this is a multi-pronged, well-orchestrated, nation-wide attack on the War Machine and everything that feeds it, by the women of Code Pink.  

We have had the honor of protesting the war in Iraq with thousands of Iraq war veterans. What they have shared with us is that they were not told the truth by the recruiters, they did not understand the full and deadly consequences of signing on the dotted line, and that they did not get what they were promised in terms of medical care and benefits upon discharge. It is important to note that the American public was intentionally lied to by our own government in order to get into this war. We will not continue to be deceived, but will work until those political leaders tell the American people the truth. The truth is that soldiers who are returning from Iraq are committing suicide at an alarming rate and becoming deathly ill with cancers. We are women for peace, and our obligation is to the people, not to the military chain of command. 

Capt. Lund, you object to our use of the word “traitor” in connection to the word “recruiters.” The definition of “traitor” is one “who betrays another’s trust or is false to an obligation or duty.” The connection between the two terms goes to the very heart of what we are protesting: misinforming individuals and/or encouraging recruitment of uninformed individuals. This allegation is supported by the stories of returning veterans, and lying has been extensively documented to be a regrettably common practice among recruiters. We are here to question such recruitment tactics.  

You concede to telling potential recruits that becoming a Marine is “not an easy path.” Without specifics, this is a dangerous euphemism. Do you tell them this war is recognized as illegal by international law, the UN, and our own U.S. Constitution? Do you tell the kids that come into your office that eighty percent of Americans, including Republican and Democratic members of Congress, and even high ranking members of the military have denounced this war as unjust and something we need to extricate ourselves from immediately? Do you tell them that if they do survive their tour of duty, they will very likely return with undiagnosed illnesses due to contamination from depleted uranium? Do you tell them that they may be injured with irreparable brain injury and loss of limbs or even genitals? Do you tell them they are likely to return broken by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and will be statistically more likely to beat and/or kill their wives than men in the civilian population? Do you tell them that 100,000 plus military personnel have reported that they lack adequate medical coverage? Do you tell the young women that the Department of Defense reports sixty percent of women in the military and National Guard are sexually assaulted or harassed by their peers or superiors? We understand that you couldn’t possibly tell them that because—who would go? Would you have gone?  

Finally, you state that “any independent nation must maintain a military to ensure the safety and security of its citizens.” You go on to ask Code Pink the following questions: “Who will defend us if we are directly attacked again as we were at Pearl Harbor? Who would respond if a future terrorist attack targets the Golden Gate Bridge, the BART systems, or the UC Berkeley clock tower?” We too wonder who will protect us from attacks on U.S. soil, or in times of natural disaster since you state that everyone you recruit “will almost certainly go to Iraq.” We wonder if the wildfires now raging in southern California could have been contained if 8,182 California National Guard and their equipment were not in Iraq. When Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans, there was no one to protect Americans here at home. Our military is not here.  

You contend that by protesting in front your Marine Officer Recruiting Center, Code Pink is misdirected. You ask us to direct our efforts towards politicians, the president, and Congress, saying: “They are the ones who have the power to change the policy in Iraq, not members of the military.” We must disagree with you on this matter, Capt. Lund, because you forgot one very important group that has incredible power: the people. The politicians, President, and Congress work for us—no matter what their actions show. The first step in taking back this country is ending the war. Berkeley voters passed several political initiatives since Sept. 11, 2001 to publicly state, from the outset, that we oppose this war. Your Recruitment Office flies in the face of these resolutions. We are here to ensure that the people’s mandate against the war is meaningful.  

We understand that you have taken an oath to follow orders sent down to you through the chain of command. We understand this requires that you set aside your personal beliefs. We, however, did not sign on the dotted line and we will not “do as we’re told.” To shut up and go elsewhere with our protest would effectively make us traitors to our cause. We will never sacrifice our steadfast commitment to peace. We will not forsake the courage it takes to restrain ourselves as we bear witness to a continuous parade of flag-shrouded coffins. We reject the violence and intimidation that is hurled in the direction of the peace movement. While we do not have the might of guns, generals, and sinister legislation, we have the truth. Eventually and inevitably, truth will win out. 

Peacefully Yours, 

Zanne Joi on behalf of Code Pink 

P.S. We want to set the record straight by pointing out that the anti-war statements left outside of your office were made with sidewalk chalk and duct tape, none of which is permanent. We are very respectful of the environment, and did not deface your Center. 

Most of the world today has access to competing sources of news, each claiming to present a balanced version of truth. While the professional media reports from multiple primary sources and permits a variety of opinion in letters to the editor, no single source is truly capable of “balance” in reporting the news. At some point, an editor ultimately controls what gets published; at that point “balance” is compromised and the editor’s bias inevitably influences public opinion and policy. 

Balance can only flow from the free expression of competing views. We founded KitchenDemocracy.org 18 months ago to promote that expression. We envision a competitive marketplace of ideas informed by traditional news sources yet free from central control; a place where every idea from every citizen has an equal opportunity for presentation and consideration. No one person sets the agenda on Kitchen Democracy—all editorial control is exerted democratically by our users. At the end of this “public comment process,” the most persuasive ideas influence public opinion and policy. 

This vision is not new. The traditional town hall meeting has played that role for centuries. What’s new is the number of people who, thanks to the Internet, can now participate. The town hall meeting is no longer limited to those who can afford to attend (or send their representative to) late night meetings. Anyone with access to a connected computer, including those at the public library, can contribute to our marketplace of ideas on their own schedule. 

Unfortunately, the Internet—like the town hall meeting—can become a hostile cacophony of spontaneous utterance. Our challenge has been to craft a framework which encourages thoughtful, civil expression in the absence of central control. Over the past 18 months we have evolved the Kitchen Democracy framework so that now in our established communities: 

• Any user can propose any issue for public comment on KitchenDemocracy.org. 

• Other users confidentially suggest improvements to issue proposers, making the formulation of issues a community process. 

• Users democratically select which issues open for public comment. Only issues which are rated sufficiently “Actionable,” “Balanced,” “Clear” and “Important” actually open. 

• Each user can add their statement, anonymously or signed, to the public comment process. In either case, the user must confidentially provide us their email and home address to help us verify that each user submits at most one statement per issue. This policy encourages shy residents to contribute, while restraining others from dominating the process. 

• Statements are monitored for personal attacks and inappropriate material. This is the only compromise we have made to the idea of “central control,” and it has been quite successful: Less than 0.1 percent of users receive invitations to rephrase offending statements, and most of them do. 

• Responses to statements made on Kitchen Democracy are not encouraged. Instead, statements are grouped together by ‘position’: All the yeas are presented together, and all the nays are presented together. This keeps the process focused on the issue, rather than flame-wars between participants. 

To date more than 3,500 East Bay residents in four communities have contributed insightful civil statements which regularly influence public policy. Though this represents substantial progress, we still have work to do. There are concerns that our public comment process may be interpreted as a scientific sampling of public opinion, or worse, as a referendum which binds elected officials to follow trends in Kitchen Democracy statements. Though the website clearly states that the process is neither, and though official decisions do not always follow Kitchen Democracy trends, we may have inadvertently contributed to those concerns by labeling each user’s statement a ‘Vote’. 

In response to those concerns, we changed the language on the website. Starting with issues suggested this month, the word “vote” no longer describes a user’s contribution; instead we call it a “statement.” The vote process is now called a “public comment process.” We hope these changes will help clarify that like a town hall meeting, ours is a process designed to facilitate the formulation of public policy—not to conduct public opinion research or a binding referendum. 

As Kitchen Democracy evolves, so we hope will our users’ relationship to our public comment process. Because there is no central edit or, the responsibility to identify pressing issues and frame them in an unbiased fashion rests with our users. With every freedom comes a responsibility; in this case, the freedom from central editorial control imposes a responsibility to propose, select and/or state your position on the issues of the day. 

Please take a few minutes to exercise your power and help set public policy on KitchenDemocracy.org. If you don’t, someone else will.

Regrettably, UC Berkeley, which just had a big opening show Oct. 22 for its Joint BioEnergy Institute, will soon see the bioenergy concept drop dead after so much hoopla from the University and BP on bioenergy having great “possibilities to save the world.” The hydrogen fuel future may be fast approaching as German scientists at the Max Planck Institute announced a few weeks ago their finding a catalyst that uses sunlight energy to convert water into hydrogen. Hydrogen for fuel and windmills for electric power have no pollution or residual junk problems and should be setup as fast as possible to give us clean energy, and most of the bioenergy concept will soon be laughed about for its shortsightedness. 

Unfortunately, we have the legacy from fossil fuel burning and nuclear power of environmental overloads of carbon dioxide and heat energy that will not go away without some program to reduce their levels on the globe. Some might claim especially on seeing the October National Geographic article on “Carbon’s New Math” that somehow due to a misleading chart there, we will see the level of that gas in the atmosphere drop with clean energy. But that defies the basic laws of conservation of mass and energy, meaning that the overloads will remain to continue global warming that is melting ice faster than predicted and is making nastier weather every month now. 

As I have indicated in several previous Planet letters describing one way to get control of global warming, we have to have a program to actually remove some of the overloads. 

One step to at least recycle some of the extra heat energy causing higher wind speeds is to establish windmill farms in place of fossil fuel power plants. The much more efficient windmills set up last year in the Rio Vista area get very little mention for some reason in our Governor’s green hoopla. The much bigger step to reduce levels of GHGs especially carbon dioxide is the pyrolysis of our massive amounts of organic wastes that cost megabucks in dump maintaining fees while giving off that gas plus methane and energy as the wastes biodegrade. Our organic wastes are a massive biofuels crop wasted, which could be converted by pyrolysis into some energy and charcoal to remove some of the carbon nature trapped in plants, but instead we allow those wastes to re-emit that gas in dumps and especially in the major composting operations being done now by dumps and especially in the major composting operations being done now by many waste handling companies. Using wastes in pyrolysis requires no usurping of land and water from food crops, several of which have seen big price jumps affecting consumers according to several recent news articles. In addition to the charcoal, pyrolysis releases a distillate of water and organic compounds that could be refined to supply the needs for drug and plastic products free from the usual oil starting basis. 

What the Institute could turn to is making the pyrolysis process as efficient as possible, and, for speeding the removal of carbon dioxide, it could look into some tree crops to be harvested in a regular manner to be pyrolyzed. Tree crops with alfalfa growing under them could provide food still especially for various animals, and we may need a considerable amount of tree planting for wind breaks to prevent soil erosion, an oncoming global warming problem, that the UN-Scientific Expert Group report from Sigma Xi warned about last May. With pyrolysis, everything but the beauty of trees gets utilized to reduce global warming especially if hydrogen can fire the process. Remember trees are recyclers, not permanent sinks, of carbon dioxide as they shed leaves, flowers, etc. to decay, so getting any real action on controlling global warming requires taking advantage of nature’s trapping of carbon dioxide while stopping her from using her biodegrading system to reemit the gas.  

Fremont resident James Singmaster is a retired environmental toxicologist.

WEST BERKELEY  

COMMUNITY MEETING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Tuesday night I attended a meeting sponsored by Councilmember Darryl Moore ostensibly about issues in West Berkeley, but precipitated by strong neighborhood opposition to the West Berkeley Business Alliance’s proposed Business Improvement District (BID). In addition to hearing from the WBBA and many concerned residents, there were also presentations by select city staff including City Manager Phil Kamlarz, Department of Public Works Director Claudette Ford, the police chief and a representative from Mental Health Services. 

Phil Kamlarz gave an update regarding property tax revenue, listing where the bulk of city expenses are allocated. Predictably, the theme was how little money is left over to address basic services like more than one evening beat cop for West Berkeley, graffiti abatement, illegal dumping and public works maintenance. He neglected to mention all the other sources of revenue the city receives—think business licenses, building permits and the traffic tickets and fines. He also did not address how money is managed or what commitment there has been to fiscal responsibility. 

The Department of Public Works director proceeded to concede they do the best they can with budget and resources they have. She then suggested we help out, by getting up on a Saturday morning to assist in cleaning out the storm drains. As I understand things, she was suggesting her customers get up and take care of a service they have already paid for! This after my neighbor shared with the audience her experience making 14 phone calls to get a street light changed. 

What is crystal clear is the fact that if every business in West Berkeley managed their finances the way the city does (especially labor costs) there would not be enough solvent business to even suggest a BID. 

Why doesn’t the city focus on a performance improvement plan before they jump on the CBD/BID bandwagon? Why should their average to poor performance be rewarded with more money and assistance from an outside entity? I would like to know how they intend to fulfill their commitments for general service before entertaining any “special” benefits. 

Maresa Danielsen 

• 

CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The 15 or so developers and property owners who, along with the City of Berkeley, recently launched an undemocratic power grab disguised as an “improvements district” in West Berkeley couldn’t have done it at a worse time. Telegraph and downtown Berkeley, ably represented by just such business improvement districts, are still pounding their high chairs over—you guessed it— homelessness, cleanliness, safety, and crime. 

I loved going to the fraudulent “town hall” meeting, however, to celebrate the citizens who noticed their city representatives were in bed with developers and educated the neighborhood, which, with relative courtesy considering what was being proposed, refused to be told by the city-paid facilitator that they were not allowed to discuss the outrageous attempted theft of their money and their right to a say over their own neighborhood and its future. 

You can’t have it both ways; city staff can’t tell one neighborhood that business improvement districts, or BIDs, are so ineffective that we need new anti-homeless laws to jail the poor, while telling another neighborhood that they are better than sliced bread. 

West Berkeley, the oldest, most economically productive neighborhood with the hottest art and the deepest roots, deserves more respect than this. City staff and politicians show up in our neighborhood to spread a facade of fake inclusion over a decision made long ahead of time in some private room. Maybe next time, instead of the stock speeches about how helpless they are due to budget constraints, etc., they should sit down, dial back their prejudiced facilitator, and listen to a neighborhood that really knows how to take an imperfect world and make it work. 

Carol Denney 

• 

RESPONSE TO COMMENTARY  

ON READING RECOVERY  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have been a volunteer literacy tutor with Berkeley schools over a span of thirty years. This experience, coupled with my skills and interests as a CPA, with an MBA from Berkeley, continue to make me particularly fascinated by the rigor of Reading Recovery’s data evaluation. The positive results continue to keep me involved with Reading Recovery students and teachers in Berkeley. Concerned by the misconceptions presented in the letter to the editor on Oct. 16, I am writing this response to provide links to help readers get the facts about Reading Recovery. 

Reading Recovery was evaluated along with other reading programs for early readers to determine what programs work best. The What Works Clearinghouse, a branch of the United States Department of Education, found that Reading Recovery was the most effective program that they reviewed. (www.readingrecovery.org/research/what_works/index.asp). 

Until another early literacy intervention is proven to be more effective, I’ll remain supportive of Reading Recovery.  

I regularly review the additional research links at the Reading Recovery Council of North America web site (www.readingrecovery.org). Following are some of these links, relevant to the Oct. 16 commentary. 

In North America 75 percent of the children who complete their series of lessons, 12-20 weeks, reach classroom averages (www.readingrecovery.org/reading_recovery/accountability/factsandfigures/index.asp). This was also our data in Berkeley last year even though most of the children served were poor and/or were English language learners. 

Reading Recovery helps to reduce the achievement gap by rapidly increasing the achievement of the lowest literacy performers. Results are similar across diverse settings and population attributes of gender, ethnicity and income (www.readingrecovery.org/pdf/reading_recovery/Closing_the_Gap_Brief-07.pdf). 

Reading Recovery’s sole mission is to provide high-quality intervention for the lowest first grade readers so they can catch up with their classroom peers in less than 20 weeks. Reading Recovery teachers take the children with the lowest literacy skills as required by the national Standards and Guidelines (www.readingrecovery.org/implementation/standards/index.asp). 

These facts, and the joy I get seeing the children who had the lowest literacy skills learn to read and write with enthusiasm, make me a strong advocate of Reading Recovery. 

Susan Lewis 

• 

ISLAMO-FASCIST AWARENESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (IFAW) is coming to UC Berkeley, Oct. 22-26. In Orwellian fashion reactionary pundit David Horowitz claims this campaign is to promote “academic freedom” and “women’s rights.” As part of the actions for this week Horowitz has called for college Republicans to sit-in at Women’s Studies departments and demanded these departments sign on to his petition “Calling on Feminists to End Their Silence on the Oppression of Women in Islam.” 

Horowitz’s newfound concern about women brings to mind how the Bush Administration bamboozled some women’s rights organizations into supporting the invasion of Afghanistan because it would “liberate women” from oppression and the burqa. The result? In today’s Afghanistan fundamentalists fill parliament and the burqa is ubiquitous – women risk being beaten if they appear in public without it. And in Iraq, the brutal U.S. occupation has strengthened religious authority and honor killings are on the rise. If David Horowitz really cared about the status of women under Islamic fundamentalism, he would be protesting at the White House. 

Of course, David Horowitz has no problem with a Christian brand of fascism, nor do IFAW crusaders ex-Senator Rick Santorum, a Christian fundamentalist who opposes abortion, contraception, equates homosexuality with bestiality and promotes the teaching of intelligent design as science. Or Robert Spencer, author of Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t. Or Ann Coulter who says of Muslims, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” 

Contrary to wishful thinking, ignoring these people will not make them go away. Their campaigns have serious consequences. Horowitz’ spawned the “Students for Academic Freedom,” who take notes and record lectures to harass professors who stray from the status quo. Other activities are “games” like “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” on campus. Progressive professors Ward Churchill and Norman Finklestein were recent Horowitz targets who were first hounded and then fired. IFAW demonizes Muslims for the purpose of building support for the open-ended “War on Terror,” which is really an open-ended war for empire. IFAW lies that the only options we have are either Muslim fundamentalism or US imperialism. Another world and another way is possible. There is an urgent need to politically confront, and deeply expose IFAW’s heinous (and fascist) agenda, to defend real academic freedom and critical thinking, and to struggle for a world where all women and men can truly be liberated human beings. 

Reiko Redmonde 

Revolution Books 

Berkeley 

• 

DOWNTOWN BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Unfortunately, I could not attend Saturday’s public workshop in regard to future downtown development in Berkeley, but as a 12-year resident of this city, I feel obliged to voice some of my concerns. 

I have just read Mr. Will Travis’ letter/commentary to other DAPAC members, the subject of which is Downtown Land Uses And Urban Form, and I feel the need to voice some dissent. 

Yes, very tall buildings do create wind tunnels, cast shadows and generally limit light and access to sky-scapes. Many of us do find these human created tall structures to be problematic at times. Many of us would prefer to not live in neighborhoods that are dominated by their height. Many of us visit the financial district of San Francisco, marvel at the tall buildings, and return to our abodes, located in parts of Berkeley that reflect a more human scale. Many of us do not find urban parks sandwiched between skyscrapers to by much of an amenity. Yes, to some of us, maybe many of us, those tall buildings seem ugly. They seem cold. That is an aesthetic judgment made by some of us, maybe many of us, and it is a judgment that is certainly worthy of consideration. 

I walk a lot in downtown Berkeley, and when I see all the vacant and underutilized buildings that exist now, I have a difficult time in understanding the need to build more and more, bigger and bigger. And yes, I understand the concerns of creating more housing, especially more affordable housing in Berkeley. Yes, I understand the need to limit sprawl and develop workable transit systems that are not totally automobile dependent. I fully support plans to reduce waste, and minimize our collective carbon footprint. 

But there has got to exist a way in which to do that, that pleases our senses. Light and air, a sense of space and openness, many of us need this in order to flourish. Some of us even think that we can find this in some urban environments. Maybe if our mass transit systems were better developed throughout the entire region, the concept of density could be shouldered by all of our communities. Maybe downtown areas with beautifully designed and realized three or four story buildings would suffice. 

We need urban planning that meets this earth’s needs and meets our human needs. Not every urban environment must look like Manhattan, just as not every urban environment must look like Berkeley. 

I send a genuine thank you to all the citizens who have donated countless hours, attempting to envision our downtown of the future. I am sure that it has been an arduous task. But please do not dismiss the specific aesthetic concerns of some of us citizens, like myself, who are sensitive to the scale of our environments. 

Diana Rossi 

A Berkeley resident, artist and mother 

• 

PUBLIC COMMENT AT  

DAPAC WORKSHOP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

People are capable of great sacrifice for a higher purpose. All through history, there are examples of this phenomenon, whether the higher purpose is a religious or cultural ideal, or some seemingly moral value. Masses of people are known to make collective sacrifices and to do things that with hindsight, from the perspective of more enlightened times, are considered stupid, if not evil.  

At this moment in history, the bill of goods we’re being sold is that we have to sacrifice our city for global warming. We are suppose to accept two 19-story buildings, five 16-story buildings, multiple 10-story buildings, and unlimited eight-story buildings for the betterment of our world.  

But instead, there are a lot of other things that need to be done before we sacrifice our city. For example, we stand with other older, built-out, already high-density cities, e.g. Oakland and San Francisco, in being given unfair housing allocations by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). Pressure needs to be put upon ABAG to change the allocation formulas so that cities with vacant and highly underutilized land carry their fair share and increase production. There are other things as well that can be done, and need to be done, and haven’t been done. 

Rather than sacrificing our city, I think we need to make city life exceptionally appealing. 

And plunking down a cluster of towers in the middle of Berkeley is not appealing. A recent series of covers on the New Yorker magazine illustrated the human cost of such structures.  

A vertical design solution is no better, and instead far worse, than a plan more horizontal in dimension and design. For the life of me, I cannot understand why revitalization of the downtown does not include the very short distance between the Downtown BART station and the Ashby BART station. Investing horizontally and not vertically would mean rejecting out of scale development and instead revitalizing with human-scale, preservation-sensitive design. Such a plan would spread more equitably the housing and businesses that support community life.  

Any plan should be sensitive to the topography of the land to enhance our sense of where we are. People should be able to know where they are by looking east and seeing the Berkeley hills and looking west and seeing water. This is Berkeley. It is not Anywhere, USA.  

I want a Berkeley solution. I don’t want lazy thinking that adopts some other city’s solution because it has currency. I want us to figure this out.  

Janice Thomas 

• 

READING RECOVERY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How pleased I was to read about the use of the Reading Recovery Program in the Berkeley Schools. I became familiar with that program as a PhD student in early literacy development at USC in the ‘80s. What impressed me about the program, and was emphasized in your article was that it was applied very early with children struggling to learn to read rather that waiting until academic failure, social isolation, and discouragement have set in. Contrary to Jean Clyde’s Opinion comments (Oct. 19) that teaching “guessing” is detrimental to learning to read, I am convinced of the opposite. Namely, that “predicting” is the best tactic for learning to read. Try this little example: The dog went into his dogh_____. To “sound out” o-u-s-e is unnecessary, and children who learn to read by this kind of tight phonic approach get so slowed down that by the time they have sounded out the letters or a word they have forgotten the meaning of the first part of the sentence. No wonder so many children taught by a rigid phonics method “read” without comprehension! Another example: The d_g is chewing on a b___. One does not need to sound out d-o-g to know dog or to sound out b-o-n-e. Reading the word comes from the child’s knowledge of spoken language. I’m not saying don’t teach phonics. It is very helpful to know consonants (and relatively easy to learn). However, vowels (especially in English) for many children are a confusing hindrance. Reading requires the strategies of guessing/predicting AND some sound/letter knowledge. Another plus of the Reading Recovery Program is the one-on-one student/coach relationship it establishes. Not all children learn well in even a small group; some absolutely need one young beginning reader pared with an experienced reader side by side. As for economy, much better to invest the money now than later in years of far less successful remediation. 

Tedi Siminowsky 

• 

‘PRO-WAR’? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In regards to Judith Scherr’s Oct. 19 article I first must voice my objection to the use of “pro-war groups” to describe the people who were there to show their support for our troops and to keep the anti-war groups from future vandalizing the Marine Officer Selection Office which the Daily Planet keeps referring to as a Marines Recruitment Office. Everyone seems to think that the staff of this office is out to grab children off the street and force them to sign up for the Marines. If you go to the URL which is posted right on the window it will take you to the site that explains all about becoming an officer. The men and women that they are looking for are college graduates and post-graduates for Officer Candidates School, not high school students. These men and women are intelligent enough to make their own decisions on this matter without the interference of third parties.  

As one of the pro-troop supporters that were in attendance on Wednesday I am bothered by your reference to the comment that our group was mostly male. Although over 50 percent of the group was male there were a great many women......most being mothers and many being military mothers such as myself.  

I saw no mention in this article of the knife which was dropped by one of the anti-war people after they tried to infiltrate the pro-troop side which had been done repeatedly throughout the rally. Besides the one flag burning that you mention someone from the anti-war group also tore up a flag and threw it down on the ground plus another woman was carrying the flag upside down which is a sign of distress. I see no mention of the vulgarities and obscene gesturing that all these peaceful people were making. The men who were on the Harley-Davidson’s were all Vets...some were from the Patriot Guard Riders, a group which was started to keep demonstrators away from the funerals of our sons and daughters who have given their lives so that people such as those anti-war groups and reporters have the rights to do what they do. The gunning of the engines was done to drown out the profanity and insults from the anti-war groups side of the street. Code Pink organizer Zanne Joi took credit for the fact that that the Officer Selection Office was closed that day but no mention was made that they were at a Career Day function which had been scheduled well in advance of this protest. It would be wonderful if we lived in a peaceful world without war and no need for a military but as that is not now possible what does Code Pink, the other anti-war groups and the Berkeley Daily Planet think would happen if we didn’t have a military? I really I appreciate you must report the news but I would like to request that you do so fairly and unbiased as the news should be.....a source of information and not opinion.  

Debbi Dresser 

Hayward 

• 

JUST A DREAM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If the Daily Planet were a true tabloid, there would be a 32-point headline reading “Berkeley Central Planning sucker punches the DAPAC dreamers (again).” My thanks to Zelda Bronstein for bringing up this Tuesday’s City Council Item 33 for the city to accept as its own, a report written by and for the developer of the Downtown Convention Center and Hotel to justify a $15 million rebate of hotel taxes; funds earmarked for downtown improvements, and in particular to make Center Street more pedestrian-friendly.  

As my comments to the meeting focused on Neighbors for a Livable Berkeley Way’s efforts to reserve the ugly backside of the Golden Bear for family housing, I did not have time to mention the proposal from the Planning, Housing, and Economic Development Departments that is making its way through various Commissions to cap affordable housing in-lieu fees for all buildings over five-stories. These in-lieu fees were going to fund a few crumbs of affordable housing in the downtown and provided much of the ‘public benefit’ justification for not only the much reviled point towers, but even their evil little sister, the eight-story Gaia-like mid-rises.  

Hopefully these two proposals will cause some DAPAC members to reconsider their support for vastly increased density in the downtown. It has been inspiring to watch the DAPAC work earnestly to plan for a more livable and inclusive downtown livable downtown, but push has come to shove, and, surprise, development interests have decided that the cost to their profits is simply too high, and they have gotten their civil servants to remind us all that citizen plans are nothing but a mid-summer’s night dream when real money and power are involved. 

Stephen Wollmer 

• 

DON’T ASK, DON’T SMELL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your Oct. 19 article about Pacific Steel Casting was misleading and inaccurate, and failed to highlight the ongoing toxic emissions problems created by the notorious east bay polluter Pacific Steel Casting. Residents in Berkeley and Albany are still affected daily by the toxic emissions from PSC and have reported adverse health affects caused by the pollution. 

What your article didn’t say: 

1. The report was prepared by the company after they were allowed to conceal emissions with new equipment. 

2. The report’s questionable results are based in part on old data from 1989, and poorly estimated data rather than actual continuous source monitoring data. 

3. Rather than testing the air and fallout in the neighborhood, the report relies on limited company based tests and a computer model to guess at health risks. 

4. Every day PSC is in operation, they continue to release Arsenic, Benzene, Cadmium, Chromium, Copper, Formaldehyde, Flourene, Mercury, Nickel, Manganese, Phenol, and Toluene (page 22 in the report). 

5. PSC failed to do any community health survey, even though residents in Albany and Berkeley have reported health problems caused by the emissions. 

6. Recent independent air quality tests have shown unhealthy levels of Nickel and Manganese in the neighborhood. 

7. Mayor Tom Bates and Council Member Linda Maio have known about Pacific Steel Casting for more than a decade, and have failed to stop this notorious east bay polluter. 

8. Kids and older residents are most vulnerable to the toxic emissions produced by PSC. Within a few block of PSC are day care centers, parks, churches, and a senior center. 

Who are you going to believe? The company doing the polluting? Their PR firm? The politicians who are afraid to do anything? Or the people living and working in the area who have problems with their health? 

Pacific Steel Casting is a bad neighbor, a major East Bay polluter and cannot be trusted. We all wish they would stop hiding behind workers and start telling the truth. 

Andrew Galpern 

• 

THE LAW OF ATTRACTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s all too often that I read news reports of loss, tragedy, corruption and violence. The media seems to feed off these stories and their audience responds shaking their head and discussing the demise of the country and the world we live in. Even reading through the letters to the editor it seems the majority has a problem or some negative tone. Truth be told I believe the world is what we make of it. I recently had a discussion with my fiancé about how positive thinking yields positive results. We were on College Avenue shopping and the CAL fans were flocking to the stadium. She said to me “we’ll never find a parking space” but me being the eternal optimist, I assured her there would be a space and in fact it would be right next to the local merchant we were in route to see and that there would be change in the meter to pay for our visit. As we inched along College Avenue she said, “OK, I believe you.” Two doors down we found our spot just as described, change in the meter and all. So perhaps there is something to this Law of Attraction and we should all take the time to turn our focus to what is working and what is positive. So next time you’re ready to rip on someone for their inadequacies or blog about the horrible injustices of the world, just maybe you’ll pause and be reminded of what you’re thankful for.  

Jason Bradley 

• 

SOUTH BERKELEY CELL TOWERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We the members of BNAFU are asking the City Council and the mayor, in particular, not to sell out South Berkeley citizens. We ask, instead, that the Council uphold the decision of the Zoning Adjustments Board to deny Verizon’s application to install more antennas in South Berkeley. Twice the ZAB has opposed the installation of 12 additional antennas in our already inundated South Berkeley neighborhood.  

As a threat to the city, Verizon is suing in Federal Court to mandate 12 antennas at UC Storage, 12 antennas at the French Hotel in North Berkeley, and another group of multiple antennas in West Berkeley, at 2002 Acton St. The Verizon suit also demands the elimination of our city ordinance governing the installation of cell phone antennas throughout the city. 

BNAFU learned on Sunday that the City of Berkeley has yet to respond to the lawsuit filed by Verizon. Instead, Berkeley City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque and Kirk Trost, a Sacramento public interest attorney hand-picked by her, are working with Verizon attorneys, all of whom are pressuring the City Council to reach a “behind closed doors” settlement. Citizens, including BNAFU, are being kept out of this negotiation process entirely. This action could result in a mockery of the entire concept behind a public hearing, if before this hearing, decisions have already been negotiated for us.  

BNAFU is a group of approximately 150 citizens from all over Berkeley. Our group has spent the last two years educating ourselves about cell antennas and RF radiation. You may contact us at jllib2@aol.com. Following the “Precautionary Principle,” we are trying to slow down a city decision-making process so that an equitable and safe system of cell antenna placement can be developed. We ask the city to resist the intimation it is facing. We ask to be genuinely included in the city’s decision-making process.  

1. Please attend Tuesday evening’s Final Public Hearing, 7 p.m., at Old City Hall to support the ZAB and the neighborhood.  

2. Make three phone calls to three council members: Tom Bates (981-7100), Linda Maio (981-7110), Darryl Moore (981-7120). 

Tell your councilmembers not to sell out to Verizon, and not to sign off on any agreement without the full public participation and consent of Berkeley citizens. Legally, the City Council has until Nov. 6 to respond to the Verizon suit. We are asking councilmembers: Demonstrate your leadership! Show your independence! Don’t sell us out! 

Michael Barglow 

• 

SATURDAY PLANS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Are you busy Saturday? What am I saying? Of course you are. We all are. Who would we be if we weren’t busy? And there’s so much going on. Lemme see…you might have a soccer game, or need to go grocery shopping. You might need to work on the garden or the house. You might need to clean your place or do a wash. You might have a fall wedding or reunion or a party you were invited to. You might need to go down to Fourth street for something, or to the gym. Or take the kids to the movies. You might have to work too. Or study. I bet there’s also some garage sales or craft sales, and there’s the Ashby Flea Market and don’t forget the Berkeley Farmers’ Market! 

But if you didn’t make any plans to do anything yet, maybe you’ll be able to go to San Francisco for the anti-war demonstration at Civic Center. I understand if you can’t though. As I imagined, you’re probably busy or just plain run down from your week. Or maybe you have a young child and the wheel is broken on the stroller. Or maybe you don’t like to stand on your feet very long, or worse, stand on the BART. Maybe you don’t like crowds. 

Actually, maybe demonstrations just aren’t your thing. You don’t relate to the people there and you feel kind of vulnerable being ‘political’. Maybe your boss or company or hometown and parents are a bit more conservative than liberal you in the Bay Area. Maybe the war will just go away on its own. 

Also, if it’s really nice out, I imagine you were considering taking a walk, or a hike, or a drive to Napa, or maybe even making it a beach day! And if it’s not nice, and it’s rainy, you wouldn’t want to go to the demonstration anyway. You could get wet and sick, and you can’t afford to do that, you’re too busy to risk getting sick.  

So that’s cool. Don’t worry about it. Other people will go and you can maybe see it for a flash on the evening news. But one thing please, check out www.nomorevictims.org. Please, do that. 

Gala Blau 

• 

BERKELEY PUBLIC LIBRARY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Berkeley Public Library really out did itself today! At their free noon concert in the Art and Music Room, they presented the Baguette Quartette, a San Francisco Bay Area group performing Parisian Cafe Music, music heard in Paris between 1920 and 1940 on street corners, in cafes, and in dance halls. Led by accordionist Odile Lavault, these talented musicians played valses musettes, tangos, fox trots, marches and familiar songs. The music was so infectious, one couple jumped up and performed a tango. Truly, we were all transported to Gay Paree, if only for 45 minutes. How lucky we are to have a library that continues to offer outstanding, imaginative programs—free. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

KSFO VS. CODE PINK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Melanie Morgan and KSFO vs. Code Pink. Sounds like some Friday night wrestling match up. Have you ever noticed how lost the far right and the far left would be without each other? Imagine each not having the other to hate, fear, and despise… 

For the rest of us who live somewhere in the living moving middle, we can, for example, respect and appreciate the military, and be strongly opposed to this war. We can respect, love, and appreciate this country, and be strongly opposed to its mistakes, excesses, and sins against others.  

Of course, for people on the edge, the far left or far right cliff of political persuasion, what I just said is proof of ignorance, or cowardice, or even worse, proof of being a traitor, either to this country, or to the earth or humanity. 

Thanks a lot, my sometimes extremist associates, for all the pain and fear and rage and occasionally simplistic certainties through which you see the world that we all share. 

OH, what’s that you say, I’m guilty of it too? Sure! That’s the point, see, we all are…got it? 

Michael Steinberg 

• 

THE HOMELESS PROBLEM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

For 30 years I’ve been hearing all the worthless “solutions” to the homeless problem. None of them have worked. They’re all useless. The homeless problem continues to get worse and worse every year. So here’s another very obvious solution to the homeless problem that you probably haven’t read about in any of your fine Bay Area publications for the last 30 years. A solution that is guaranteed to inspire countless indignant letters to the editor in this fine publication (and be sure to mention all those knee-jerk buzzwords like “racism” and “xenophobia” and “etc.” that we’ve already heard a million times before): Let’s get the estimated 20 to 30 to 40 million illegal immigrants out of the American homes that they are presently illegally occupying. And let’s get American citizens into those homes. OK? There it is. And now, let your brilliant rebuttals begin.  

Ace Backwords 

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Many criticize AC’s operating large articulated 1R buses saying they are not needed for they see only a few riders using it. They do not realize that as buses approaches its terminus, for the 1R is Berkeley, generally the ridership begins to drop off. If one rode the 1R over the total route one will experience there are sections where the 1R has a full load and many times with standees. 

For AC, it is impossible to change the size and frequency of buses just for the public to see buses fully utilized along all sections of its route. In addition, the ridership also varies over the course of the day and as most know it has greater use during morning and evenings where riders are going or leaving work. 

It is difficult to accommodate this changing demand, so AC usually uses the bus that can carry the peak demand for the whole day without adding or changing size of buses. Changing size of bus requires a added fleet of buses that will be used part of the day is not only very costly but it also requires added property to store them. 

Adding or changing buses for peak periods raises another problem that many are not aware of, which is when a driver is called up and assigned to drive he/she is guaranteed a full 8 hour pay even if the work is just a few hours. This is why the agency operates large buses that serves the peak period through the whole day even though much of the off peak period the buses operate with few riders. 

Another often mentioned criticism is that AC BRT only duplicates BART since it parallels BART. It is known that many transit users are willing to walk up to half mile to access a transit system if the transit system is fast, frequent and reliable. Considering this as the basis, AC BRT having 5 times the number of stops will serve over 3,000 equivalent city blocks more than BART, excluding BART and AC BRT downtown stations. In addition, most other BART stations areas are not as fully developed as those where AC BRT Stops. Comparing the systems frequency, AC BRT will operate every 3.6 to 5 minutes versus, 15-20 minutes for BART. The EIR estimates that AC BRT will actually draw 2,000-5,800 riders per day away from BART. The reason is clear, since the AC BRT operates more frequently with reliability and speed, is more accessible and will be mostly for local trips. 

Roy Nakadegawa 

• 

FOUL PLAY? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Somebody might have done a foul play on copies of Berkeley Daily Planet in two newspaper racks next to French Hotel. I usually pick a copy from the newspaper racks immediately next to French Hotel. This morning I found both racks empty. Either your delivery crew forgot to put copies of the Planet in these racks, or someone has dumped them. People in Berkeley may have adopted the habit of dumping newspapers from the Mayor who did so years ago. 

Well, I see people post signs and posters around French Hotel, but they get removed quickly mysteriously. I believe that French Hotel does not like publicity due to the Verizon plan to put 12 antennas on the roof of this hotel. In Friday’s issue of the Planet, there is a long article about Verizon. So, someone may have decided to dump copies of the Planet available next to French Hotel to keep people uninformed. 

Please have your delivery crew put copies of the Planet in the two newspaper racks next to French Hotel. 

Helen Bautin 

• 

REGULATE GASOLINE PRODUTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Standing in the post office line, I overheard a woman confidently tell a friend, “Oh yes, gas prices will be $4 or $5 by Christmas.” How did she know, and why was she so blasé? My guess is that she heard this speculation on some talk shows or propaganda-posing-as-news programs. How did this idea get planted? My guess is that the oil companies are using slick public relations techniques to “inoculate” the public from a feeling of outrage as the prices go up, up, and up.  

Me? I am outraged at the high prices, and even more so at the craven profits these oil companies gouge out of our paychecks. Each quarter marks yet another record-breaking level of profit.  

Gasoline is needed for transportation. As such, it should be regulated as a public utility, just as bus service and subways are regulated, to control their prices and profits.  

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

• 

EDUCATING CHILDREN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I think the best way for us to solve the crisis in education is by bringing a group of people into the field who understand the reason many students are unwilling to learn. We have failed to motivate children to become self-learners. Today’s teachers don’t have the observational skills. They do not understand a child’s mind and they are not able to leave behind their worries at home to fully be available to the child. They don’t give ample time to children to express their needs. The absence of open attention from teachers results in classroom problems. 

I don’t like to see children doing any thing out of fear of punishment or the attraction of rewards. One child told me, “You don’t give us candy. And you don’t punish us, So we don’t have to do the class work.” I decided to ignore the comment and to see what the students would do next. To my surprise, slowly but surely they all wanted to do the artwork I had proposed. I asked them later why they refused first time. Four of them told me they go to bed late watching movies and they were tired. I am of the view that children need more sleep time. Teaching is not cramming information into students. Good teaching should not ignore the needs of the taught. Every child has a different style of learning. Each child needs a different kind of motivation and a different way to help improve his or her self-esteem. Each child needs quiet moments to think and reflect. 

Let us return to quiet observation of our students. Our awareness of how to guide them on their individual paths will arise naturally from our open and sympathetic attention. 

Romila Khanna 

Albany

It’s clearly battle time over the shape of Berkeley, most imminently over downtown’s height limits, with more battles to follow. Let’s arm ourselves for the upcoming showdown on density, development, and downtown with some basic facts. Where does Berkeley stand, in the spectrum of communities, in terms of people crowding into space?  

Happily, we can easily access reliable and consistent data, from a website called DataPlace created by mortgage giant Fannie Mae’s philanthropic arm, using data from the U.S. Census. DataPlace compiles population density data (residents per square mile) for every settlement—from small towns to big cities—in the nation. And it allows site visitors to request information about the ranking of a given city against others in the state or nation, organized if you wish by the size of communities.  

Here is the Berkeley story in a nutshell. We are already one of the most crowded communities in the country, large or small. And our few competitors in California are hardly places we want to imitate. The specifics: 

There are 25,150 “places” in the entire country. Berkeley ranks 172nd of all of them in density, at 9,823 people per square mile (in year 2000)—102,743 people living in just under 10.5 square miles. That means we are denser than 99.3 percent of all other places in the United States. That was our position already at the start of the decade, before the recent spurt in construction in the city.  

Berkeley’s population has increased by 3,500 between 2000 and 2006, according to the Census Bureau’s new American Community Survey. That pushes our density up another 335 people per square mile, to 10,158. 

Ah, you say, but Berkeley is a fairly large urban place in the midst of a major metropolis, expected to be denser than villages and towns. OK, let’s look at the 245 U.S. cities with 100,000 residents or more. Berkeley is after all among the very smallest of those. Our city ranked 20th in density among those major communities, ahead of 92 percent of the big cities including places such as Washington, D.C. and next-door neighbor Oakland. Oakland in particular had, amazingly, less than one third of Berkeley’s density in 2000. Forget about Jerry Brown and his 10K plan. Oakland could add 150,000 residents tomorrow and not reach Berkeley’s density level.  

Let’s then turn to our home state of California exclusively. Here Berkeley ranks eighth in density among all of the state’s communities of any size. Who are the seven “ahead” of us? At the front, East Los Angeles—a prototype for urban ills of every type, where low-income people, often recent immigrants, crowd multiple families into a single home or apartment in order to afford the rent. Second, Inglewood, another Los Angeles-area concentration of poor people—this time African Americans—rivaling in social problems largely Hispanic East L.A. What is notable and clear is that, in such places, higher densities are forced on people by their lack of resources and perhaps other factors including discrimination, not selected deliberately as matters of preferred municipal policy. Third in the density line, El Monte, East L.A.’s near neighbor. Fourth, Santa Ana, where 4.6 people are crowded into each housing unit, 75 percent more than in New York City or L.A. Next, Daly City—literally the living model for Malvina Reynolds’ song about “Little Boxes Made of Ticky Tacky.” Then Norwalk, the final ending place for three of the L.A. region’s busiest freeways. And seventh, San Francisco, where, if I may shift to a less scientific mode, we see a jewel whose treasured contours and bay and coastal vistas are being obliterated by Rincon Towers and more, where working families and African-American communities and households with children are disappearing in a sea of gentrification, and all of BART and Muni together can’t leave a parking space available or a moment between one 24-hour “rush hour” and the next.  

Are these the seven “models” we hope to “catch” by building more and higher? 

We are already a high-density city. What are we to gain from further density, when the competition looks so far from attractive? Apparently not what we’ve been promised. Proponents of more building say it’ll keep families in town. The facts: From 2000 to 2006 alone, in a period of booming housing construction, the number of Berkeley households with children under 18 fell by one seventh. Or, say pro-development folks, we’ll keep housing cost from skyrocketing. Nope: In the same six years median house prices nearly doubled, and rents—partly protected by rent control for continuing tenants—rose 38 percent. That rent increase was nearly half again faster than the average for the rest of the (non-controlled) country. Residents of more modest means might be retained, as part of our treasured diversity? Unh, uh. Family income in Berkeley, which exceeded the national median by 40 percent in 2000, was instead 50 percent higher than national levels by 2006, at $87,000. Our African-American population might hold on? Sorry. African Americans were nearly 14 percent of Berkeley’s 2000 population and down to less than 10 percent by 2006. 

Pounding away on Berkeley’s limited remaining living space is not going to change a housing submarket set in a burgeoning region 60 times its size. 

So we have to ask, for what reason are we to be headed toward more development and seemingly away from our values? We run the risk of ruining our community, where the wisdom of citizens’ commitment to resident diversity, historic preservation, human scale, local independent entrepreneurship, and care for all elements of the environment and open space have allowed us to accommodate richness of humanity, building, and space, at already high densities. Push beyond, where the downtown developers and pro-development folks want to take us, and we risk despoiling our own community. For society at large, we risk proving that density, rather than a part of the solution to global warming they want to pursue, is, as so many already fear, a path to be avoided.  

Let’s save the limited space we have left for dealing directly with our needs: for affordable housing, places for our kids and ourselves to play and learn, models of architectural mastery new and old, green commerce and innovation—none of which we can find trickling down from new masses of high end condos. Greater density does make sense in some places. How about if Berkeley lets Orinda, or for that matter Oakland, start catching up and husbands its own “space” for our top priorities? 

Neil S. Mayer was the founding director  

of Berkeley’s Office of Economic Development.

I very much appreciate the Daily Planet posting the text of the memo I sent to my fellow members of DAPAC regarding downtown land use, building forms and heights. However, it’s a disservice to your readers for Becky O’Malley to suggest that my comments can be summarized by quoting the following single phrase: “We should be calling for as many tall buildings as possible to be built.” 

I respect the right of others to disagree with me, but it would be unfortunate if they do so because they believe my ideas on a complex issue like the planning our downtown are captured by a simple statement taken out of context for the purpose of being inflammatory. 

I hope that your readers read the entirety of my memo. However, I realize that not everyone has the time or interest to do so. Therefore, I’ve taken the liberty of doing what I had hoped the journalists at the Daily Planet would do, which is to quote the following several sentences that fairly capture the nuances of the challenge DAPAC is facing. 

“The most contentious issue [DAPAC has] yet to settle is how many taller buildings we should have in our downtown and how tall they should be. This is a complicated issue, but if this issue is evaluated on an analytical basis and we rely on the previous decisions DAPAC has made, we should be calling for as many tall buildings as possible to be built...[because] we’ve settled on environmental sustainability as our overarching objective. To achieve this objective, we can draw on the abundant data and numerous studies demonstrating that higher density development results in lower per capita greenhouse gas emissions.” 

“The reason we haven’t embraced higher density development is because the shape and form of our downtown shouldn’t be based only on objective analysis. Cities are more than machines that house people, provide jobs, accommodate movement and manage pollutants. Cities are expressions of who we are, what we value, what we aspire to be.” 

“DAPAC has agreed that...we want more parks, open space, clean streets, affordable housing, better social services, green construction, public restrooms, and improved transit. Good things all, but they cost money. And where...will Berkeley get the money to pay for the things we want? Largely through taxes, fees and other fiscal extractions that are derived from the approval and operation of new development. Thus, the more new development we have downtown, the more revenue the City of Berkeley will gain to provide the sort of amenities called for in our plan.” 

“I’m not advocating any particular land use or density alternative. My only objective is to ensure that DAPAC has a clear sense of the tradeoffs on the issues of height and density. If we accept a plan that sharply limits the capacity of our downtown to accommodate residents, workers, shoppers, students and visitors, we need to confront the tradeoff we’re making head-on. We shouldn’t pretend that such a choice can be made without paying the price of reduced amenities, poorer environmental performance, and lost economic and cultural opportunities.” 

“It will take great courage to put aside our preconceptions and become community leaders, rather than followers, as we forge our plan for the future. But if we don’t do so, we won’t be fulfilling the honor that has been bestowed upon us to craft public policies that will make downtown Berkeley a truly great place.” 

Will Travis is chair of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee.

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve become accustomed to Gale Garcia’s increasingly strident NIMBY correspondence, and usually just let it go by with a sigh. But the complete inaccuracy of her claim that the population of Berkeley and surrounding cities has declined since the last census needs an answer. She refers to the U.S. Census Bureau, but the Bureau (unlike the California State Dept. of Finance) doesn’t make annual estimates. I hope she’s not relying on the Bureau’s Community Survey of 2005, which the Chronicle totally misinterpreted. Here are the State Finance Dept.’so latest figures (2000 and 2007 respectively) for the cities Ms. Garcia cites in her Oct. 19 letter:  

Berkeley: 102,743 and 106,347. 

Alameda: 72,259 and 75,254. 

Albany: 16,444 and 16,764. 

El Cerrito: 23,171 and 23,194. 

Oakland: 399,566 and 415,492. 

Piedmont: 10,952 and 11,055. 

San Leandro: 79,452 and 81,466. 

Every one of them has grown in size. 

Revan Tranter

The great 19th century Tory prime minister Benjamin Disraeli once remarked there were three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. It is a dictum the Bush administration has taken to heart when it comes to totaling up the carnage in Iraq: If you don’t like the numbers, just change them; and when in doubt, look ‘em in the eye and lie. 

For instance, according to the Department of Defense (DOD), the United States does not track civilian casualties. As former commander General Tommy Franks put it, “We don’t do body counts.”  

But testimony in the recent trial of U.S. Army snipers from the First Battalion of the 501 Infantry regiment indicated the generals indeed do body counts. In a July hearing at Fort Liberty, Iraq, Sgt. Anthony G. Murphy said he and other snipers felt “an underlying tone” of disapproval from their commanders when they didn’t rack up big body counts. 

“It just kind of felt like, ‘What are you guys doing wrong out there?’” he testified. When the snipers started setting traps to lure in unsuspecting Iraqis, the kill ratios went up and the commanders, he said, were pleased. 

The choreography the Bush administration does around casualties is aimed at creating a dance of lies and disinformation to cover up one of the worst humanitarian crises to strike the Middle East since the Mongols sacked Baghdad. 

That is not an overstatement. 

A recent poll by the British agency ORB found that the war may have killed more than one million people, a toll that surpasses the 800,000 killed in the Rwandan genocide. 

Trying to figure out the butcher bill is an uphill task. 

For instance, according to the London-based organization Iraq Body Count, by March of this year, civilian deaths stood at 65,160. Iraq Body Count also noted that 2007 has seen “the worst violence against civilians in Iraq since the invasion.” The conservative Brookings Institute’s Iraq Index posts slightly higher figures, and the United Nations higher still.  

The Iraq Interior Ministry is highly critical of the UN’s conclusion that 34,000 Iraqis died in 2006, calling it “inaccurate” and “unbalanced” but refusing to release its own figures. The administration has only come up with one sum: In December 2005 President George W. Bush commented to the press that the number of Iraqis killed was “30,000, more or less.” 

The first serious statistical investigation of the war’s impact was a survey by Johns Hopkins University published in the British medical magazine, the Lancet. According to the study, from the March 2003 invasion through September 2006, the number of deaths due to the war was between 426,369 and 793,663, with 601,027 as the median figure. Over half of those were women and children. Like the ORB study, Johns Hopkins used the “excess mortality” methodology, which measures not only deaths from war, but violent crime and disease. It found that 91.8 percent of the excess mortality was due to violence, 31 percent of that inflicted by coalition forces. 

President Bush immediately dismissed the study’s methodology as “pretty well discredited,” and the media either ignored it or accepted the White House’s characterization. 

In fact, biostatisticians and mortality experts are virtually unanimous that the John Hopkins study is accurate. Liala Guterman, a senior reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education, says she contacted 10 experts in the field about the Lancet article, and “not one of them took issue with the study’s methods or conclusions.” Indeed, she said, the experts found the conclusions “cautious.” 

According to John Zogby of Zogby International, one of the world’s most respected polling services, “The sampling [in the Lancet survey] is solid, the methodology is a good as it gets.” Ronald Waldman, a Columbia University epidemiologist, said the method was “tried and true,” and British Defense Ministry science advisor, Sir Roy Anderson, said the survey was “close to the best practice.” 

Indeed, the Bush administration used exactly the same methodology to determine the number of deaths in Darfur, figures that were used to convince the U.S. Congress to label the current crisis in the Sudan “genocide.” 

The administration’s sleight of hand on deaths and casualties even extends to its own forces. There are, for instance, no hard figures on the number of private U.S. and British contractors wounded or killed, even though private contractors outnumber the number of coalition troops in Iraq. 

And when casualty statistics come out in ways the DOD doesn’t like, the department just changes how they are counted.  

On Jan. 29, 2007, the Pentagon listed 47,657 “non-mortal” casualties in Iraq. One day later this number had fallen to 31,493 by the simple device of dropping any casualty that did not require “medical air transport.” The DOD also doesn’t include vehicle accidents, or soldiers who are taken ill, including those with mental problems.  

No one has systematically collected information on the number of Iraqis wounded by the war, although a ratio of two to one wounded to killed—between one and two million—is considered a good rule-of-thumb figure. 

Besides the deaths and injuries, the war had unleashed, according to the Financial Times, “The worst refugee crisis in the Middle East since the mass exodus of Palestinians that was part of the violent birth of the state of Israel in 1948.” 

According to the Global Policy Forum, 2.2 million Iraqis have fled their country, mostly to Jordan and Syria, and another 2 million have been turned into internal refugees. If one adds to that the ORB figures for deaths, it means at least 20 percent of Iraqi’s pre-war population of 26 million has been killed, wounded, exiled or displaced. 

The White House has simply ignored the refugee crisis. 

In 2006, the U.S. budgeted $3 million for refugees, although according to Amman-based researcher Noah Merrill, none of the relief organizations, including the UN, has seen any of that money. And if they had, Merrill points out, it would come to a grand total of $3.50 per person. “Jordan is an expensive country,” he says, “and $3.50 will not help anyone—not even for a day.” 

Half of Iraq’s population are children, nearly 20 percent of them under the age of five. Some 25 percent are malnourished, and 10 percent suffer from acute malnutrition. According to a study by Adil Shamoo of the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine, 70 percent of Iraqi’s children suffer from traumatic stress syndrome. 

Food rationing, a system on which five million Iraqis rely to stay alive, is breaking down, and according to Patrick Cockburn of the Independent, two million can no longer be fed because of security concerns. Unemployment is at 68 percent. Once the most industrial country in the Arab world, Iraq is devolving into an oil-rich, agrarian backwater. Some 75 percent of the country’s doctors and pharmacists have fled, bringing its medical system—at one time the best in the Arab world—to the point of collapse. 

And finally, like a biblical plague, cholera is working itself down the country’s river system, from the Kurdish north to Basra in the south. Between 7,000 and 10,000 Iraqis have already been sickened. 

In 1258 the Mongol generals Hulagu and Guo Kan besieged and took the city of Baghdad. They murdered its inhabitants, burned its libraries, and ravished its lands. The Bush Administration has done the same but hidden it behind a smoke screen of lies and voodoo statistics. 

For the average Iraqi, there is little difference between the Mongols and the United States. Both have laid waste to their country.

Back South, where I once lived, I used to know an older man who I’d greet every time I saw him with the question, “How’s the world treating you?”  

“The world treating me pretty good,” he’d always answer. “It’s some of them rotten peoples in it, I’m having most of my trouble with.” 

It’s an old joke, of course, but in many ways it describes the attitude of some Oakland commentators and policymakers, who seem to approach the city like the old European explorers approached the American shores, dreaming over all the wondrous things they might do with this wondrous new land, if they could only clear out some of the heathen savages wandering around. 

And so we have whoever has set up the OaklandSucks blog at http://oaklandsucks.blogspot.com (they fail to provide a profile to identify themselves further), who writes in a “Oh How We Hate Urban Economics” posting earlier this week: “Guess what? The residents of West Oakland would rather live in a hyper-crime ghetto than in a nice area, at least that’s what everyone found out at a West Oakland Project Area Committee meeting. And honestly, we don’t blame them. Why should they be forced to change their lifestyle of drug dealing, aggravated assault, and general theft to accommodate outsiders that want something better? Well, they shouldn’t! In fact, the residents of West Oakland believe that their current existence is the way things have always been (failing to realize of course that West Oakland was once 83 percent white-folk). Therefore, if everything has always been this horrible, new development to try and improve West Oakland is only going to change things, and probably for the worse.” 

Ha. And ha. 

There is much that is patently incorrect in this bit of anti-Black bigotry, the major one being that it is the poster herself (himself) who appears to make the nexus between drug dealing, aggravated assault, and general theft and a community that is no longer 83 percent white. Long-time Oakland residents themselves remember that two generations back, West Oakland was the anchor of the city’s African-American middle class, the place where “the nicest people lived,” my grandmother used to tell her children, with 7th Street the center of a nationally-renowned African-American social scene that drew visitors from around the area to see the likes of Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, and such. When West Oakland residents say they wish to fight gentrification in order to protect and restore their community, my guess is that it is to this golden period they look. Their concern is that if West Oakland is restored to its old grandeur as a series of gated communities where current residents can no longer afford to live, viewing it from a distant height only as they pass along 880 on their way to Vallejo or Antioch, then what is the benefit to most of the current residents? 

The thinking that is present in the OaklandSucks post is what fueled a good bit of the development binge during the Jerry Brown years, from the Estuary loft district to the Forest City Uptown project to Oak To Ninth, with the unsubtle goal of developing housing designed specifically to attract people who do not live in Oakland and currently do not consider giving us the time of day. The smelly underside of that policy was a studied neglect of improvement in many of the lower income neighborhoods where the darker people live for the benefit of the people currently living there, along with concurrent efforts to make the city unpopular for les undesirables, slowly and methodically pushing them out. If such twin policies were to succeed, a generation from now Oakland would be a largely whitebread, middle class city, with merely a smattering of color here and there to give it flavor. 

There are many such communities ringing the Bay Area, of course, to which so many of my white neighbors fled in the ’50s and ’60s when the greater Oakland neighborhoods began opening up, first to African-Americans, then to Latinos, then to the world. Tired of the long commute, however, the children and grandchildren of those old neighbors now seek to return to the city their families long ago abandoned. 

There are some people of dark color—perhaps unknowing of its ultimate consequences, perhaps not, who knows what lurks within the hearts of men?—who are loud advocates of these policies of resettlement. 

One of them is former AC Transit Director Clinton Killian, who full disclosure obliges me to reveal once represented, in his capacity as an attorney, the opposite side in a legal matter to which I was a party. That was long ago, and the matter is no longer pending. 

In a series of “Killian Analysis” columns in the local Globe newspaper, Mr. Killian has taken on the development policies of Mayor Ron Dellums. Those policies, based in the mayor’s Model City agenda, are quite the opposite of the Jerry Brown Resettlement Doctrine, seeking instead to make the city safer and more economically vibrant for those who currently live here, encouraging all of us to stay. 

For reasons of his own, Mr. Killian chooses to attack Mr. Dellums’ Budget Chief, Dan Lindheim, rather than Mr. Dellums himself, although on the surface, at least, the proposals Mr. Killian is objecting to appear to be coming from the mayor rather than his subordinate. 

In an Oct. 17 column entitled “Dr. No” (that being the title he gives Mr. Lindheim because he believes Mr. Lindheim is blocking development projects), Mr. Killian writes “Mayor Ron Dellums has consistently stressed his priority to expand and diversify the initial economic revitalization. However, it does not appear that all his staff is fully supportive of his stated goal to rebuild Oakland. His economic development director Dan Lindheim has taken actions that are in clear contradiction of the mayor’s stated policies and the desire of the overwhelming majority of Oakland citizens. … [Lindheim] has become a project killer of the types that the mayor supports and would benefit Oakland.” 

The three projects Mr. Killian accuses Mr. Lindheim of specifically blocking are the Mandela-Gateway Project at the old Pacific Pipe site on West Grand and Mandela in West Oakland, the Embarcadero Cove project in the Coliseum development area, and The Transit Gateway project near the Fruitvale Bart station west of International. In each instance, Mr. Killian says that in opposition to both the staff reports and community support, Mr. Lindheim has prevented the development of three projects that would bring needed jobs, housing, and commercial development to West Oakland, Deep East Oakland, and the Fruitvale. 

Mr. Killian says that Mr. Lindheim’s views have been improperly influenced by Oakland industrial property owner Robert Schwartz, who he says “has a strong economic and personal connection” with Mr. Lindheim, being “the business partner of Mr. Lindheim’s uncle and cousin.” 

“For years,” Mr. Killian writes, Mr. Schwartz “has railed against transforming Oakland’s industrial land. Under Jerry Brown, his views were roundly discredited. Now under Dellums, he has his friend Dr. NO’s [Mr. Lindheim’s] ear. As a result, [Mr. Schwartz] chaired the mayor’s land use taskforce and has strongly pushed the city to a no industrial transformation policy. This opposition is extremely curious and appears to be motivated by blind self-interest and not in the best interest of Oakland citizens.” 

Oakland became known in some circles as “money town” during the Brown-and-State-Senator-Don-Perata years, with ongoing accusations and federal investigations that developers gave bribes to local officials and state officials with local ties in order to grease the way for particular developments. We should always take seriously, therefore, any charges that personal gain by city officials rather than community gain may be the real reason behind the approval or disapproval of any particular development. 

However, in his column, Mr. Killian fails to show how Mr. Schwartz would personally gain directly from either the retention of the existing industrial lands in Oakland or the denial of the three projects in question (obviously, anyone with industrial development interests might ultimately benefit from retaining Oakland’s industrial land, but that hardly qualifies as improper advocacy). 

Further, in talking about the Mandela-Gateway Project, Mr. Killian fails to mention that the first city official to oppose the project was not Mr. Lindheim, or Mr. Dellums, but was the longtime Councilmember representing that district, Nancy Nadel. 

In December of last year, before Mr. Dellums took office as mayor, Ms. Nadel told a gathering of a “gentrification bus tour” of West Oakland sponsored by Just Cause Oakland that the proposed Mandela-Gateway posed “a problem of incompatible mixed use. Mandela Parkway is being transformed in a way that is driving out long-term residents. Most of the existing residents don’t have the capital to buy the live-work spaces that are being proposed, or to set up small businesses in the spaces that are being offered.” Mr. Lindheim was one of the listeners at that gathering. 

In a later newspaper interview, Ms. Nadel said that industrial zoned land constitutes only 3 percent of Oakland, and that the remaining industrial-zoned acres ought to be treasured and preserved so that industries can be attracted to provide jobs for current Oakland residents. 

Meanwhile, that same fall, members of the mayor’s housing task force voted 19-0 (seven members abstaining) to recommend that the mayor’s office “develop and review an industrial land conversion policy to prioritize industrial retention and prioritize rezoned industrial to residential land for affordable housing.” 

The Mandela-Gateway developers, in fact, had asked for a change in the zoning of the old Pacific Pipe property from industrial to mixed-use in order to accommodate their project. Last March, the Zoning Update Committee of the Oakland Planning Commission was scheduled to consider that request, but delayed it at the request of the Dellums Administration until an overall look at the General Plan, the zoning ordinances, and the city’s industrial needs can be undertaken. Mr. Dellums has said that he wants a zoning policy that reflects the overall needs of the city rather than a chameleon policy—my words, not the mayor’s—that changes colors and hues depending on the needs of a current developer. 

There’s a need to have this discussion on the goals of Oakland development policy—whether it should transform Oakland by clearing out “undesirable” residents and communities, or whether it should serve as a rising lake to lift the boats of everyone currently living in the city. Let’s all of us reveal our agendas, personal and political, so we know where each other stands, and the conversation can move forward without all this rancor and personal attack and slurs against entire communities. 

Around a North Berkeley bend, quickly by-passed by those busily headed someplace else, there’s a gem of a creek side house. The architecture and setting embody much of what gives residential Berkeley a special sense of place. 

1214 The Alameda is a three bedroom, two-story home currently on the market for $799,000. Terry Pedersen of Marvin Gardens Real Estate is the listing agent, and information on the house is available at www.1214TheAlameda.com  

An Open House will be held 2-4:30 p.m., this coming Sunday, Oct. 28. 

The real estate listing describes this as a “Hansel and Gretel” house. It also has an English Cottage feel, with more than a touch of Berkeley Craftsman on the interior. 

The street side (east) elevation of the house is dominated by a large, two-story, gable and a dormer projecting from the steep roof. A quirky garage is off to the left; more about that later.  

Walk the narrow porch lengthwise to the front door, which turns left through a vestibule into the living room. Three casement windows look out on the porch and a bay window faces south. A working fireplace of clinker brick is centered on the west wall. Box beam ceilings, redwood paneling, and diamond-paned windows establish an Arts and Crafts character.  

The living room is in the southeast corner. Southwest, entered from the living room on either side of the fireplace, is a tile-floored sun-porch. Northwest, diagonal from the living room, is a formal dining room also with a bay window, but here modified into a west-facing window seat.  

The kitchen is at the northeast corner of the house, reached from the dining room. Like the living room it looks out to the east through diamond casement windows. Turn the corner into a small pantry/laundry/half-bath area. 

A stairway ascends to the second floor from the far northwest corner of the dining room. Although this is curiously far from the front door it gives the upstairs a welcome, private, feel. Square wooden balusters, rising from stair tread to ceiling, screen the stairwell from the dining room.  

Upstairs a short central hall runs at right angles to the stair. Straight ahead, the master bedroom is underneath the south gable of the house. Like the living room below it has a fireplace and French doors open to a balcony, perched above the front porch.  

Right, off the hall, there’s a second bedroom above the dining room, facing west. A pair of interior French doors connects it on the south to a sleeping porch which has another door to the master bedroom, linking the three rooms in an “L” shaped circuit.  

The bathroom tucks into the eastern gable, off the hall. Open the low door to the right of the shower to a closet neatly outfitted with its own built-in chest of drawers. Bathroom and bedrooms have sloping ceilings in parts and angled corners where the dormer and gable roofs meet. The feeling is more cozy than claustrophobic, but watch your head as you walk about. 

Listed at a little less than 1,500 square feet this is not an especially large house and it could easily become crowded with several residents or a McMansion load of possessions. But it also feels instinctively comfortable and has a lot of versatility if you think of it as two-bedroom, with two generous “plus” rooms. The current owner, the realtor reports, raised two children here and has owned the house for about 17 years. 

Scattered through the house are several handcrafted Sue Johnson lamps. Some built-in fixtures—including a butterfly-decorated wall sconce in the upstairs hall, and a ceiling fixture with a dragonfly motif over the dining table—were designed for the house and stay with it, according to the realtor.  

The diamond-paned windows—true divided lites, with sturdy mullions—set much of the character of the house inside and out. The living room and dining room bays have a larger, undivided “picture window” in the middle to frame the view, flanked by the smaller-paned windows. 

Hardwood floors are found in most rooms, cork floors (perhaps from a mid-century remodel?) in the second bedroom and sleeping porch upstairs.  

The unpainted woodwork is nut brown or tan, lighter in color than you might expect for an old Craftsman house. The realtor says the present owner was told by earlier residents that it was once darker, but the original finish was removed and the walls—and, my guess is, the box beams downstairs—lightened with a wash.  

The exterior of the house is now painted a light cream yellow with white trim. The first story is shingled, while the gable ends above have a sort of English-Tudor false work timber pattern. Deep eaves give the house a sheltered feel. From the window box outside the second story bathroom window an immensely long tubular succulent trails like some topiary Rapunzel’s hair, all the way to the ground. 

The only early photographs that can be readily found—black and white, from 1951, and 1971—show a dark exterior, probably unpainted wood.  

Behind and below the house an open stretch of Codornices Creek—burbling, not roaring, this time of year—loops through the property. A small wooden footbridge crosses to a surprisingly spacious rear yard. Two light-standards with large glass shades stand on each side of the creek. They look rather like salvaged early Berkeley street lamps to me.  

Much of the garden is under the canopy of an immense, thick-trunked, California live oak. Most is informally landscaped, with a light covering of ground covers and shrubs. Large, tropic-looking crinums with white flowers punctuate the landscape as do an interesting variety of unusual shrubs and perennials. 

“That site is California pastoral!” says Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association’s Lesley Emmington. Rustic house, huge oak, embracing creek, and artfully informal plantings front and back come together for a quintessentially Berkeley “living with nature” feel. 

Adjacent to the house a one-car garage, tilting a bit, perches on wooden supports above the steeply sloping creek bank. Notice how it’s “inside out”, with visible exterior framing and interior board siding.  

It angles towards a similar freestanding garage that juts out from the property just south of the creek. Garages show up on the 1929 Sanborn map, and in the 1951 photograph, although whether the present day ones are modified originals or later “rebuilds” is not entirely apparent at first look. 

Who designed and created this house and placed it so? 

It seems to have been built in the early 1910s. The Ormsby Donogh file at Berkeley Architectural Heritage notes for 1913 that the house was owned by, or perhaps had a mortgage through, the Berkeley Bank of Savings, and was valued at $1,900. The 1951 real estate listing says it was then-38 years old (which equates to around 1913) and it was certainly there by 1929 when the Sanborn map for that year shows the house footprint and detached garage. 

When former BAHA President JoAnn Price interviewed one Frederick Peake nearly 40 years ago, he told her—according to an entry in Dave Bohn’s 1971 book, From East of This Golden Shores—“he had built the entire block. I asked if Maybeck had been involved and he replied ‘Oh no’.”  

“However, he said he had employed a draughtsman for the house who had been an employee of Maybeck. He also said he and Maybeck had been charter members of the Hillside Club, which was a social club for residents of Northeast Berkeley.” 

A 1951 real estate listing notation preserved at BAHA says the house had “Maybeck design” and “Style: Maybeck,” according to BAHA Executive Director Anthony Bruce. Not firm evidence that Maybeck was the architect, especially given Peake’s contrary statement.  

And maybe it’s not even a relevant question. The Maybeck influence was strong in this neighborhood without Berkeley’s best-remembered architect being professionally involved in every project. 

The Maybeck family lived just a block to the south of this lot in what’s now a much altered house, and a City Landmark, on the southwest corner of Berryman and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. It was there in the 1890s that Bernard Maybeck, a drawing instructor at the University, invited some of his UC engineering students for extracurricular talks about architecture. 

“I think that neighborhood has more unknown influences by him than he’s been given credit for,” says Emmington of BAHA. “There’s a lot between 1892 (when the Maybeck’s moved here) and when they went uptown, that they were doing in that neighborhood.”  

“An important part of his legacy is his effect as a catalyst who changed the world round him, not only through his own buildings, but through his persuasiveness in converting others to pursue his visions,” a BAHA brochure from 1986 notes. “He encouraged friends to design their own homes and worked with them on drawing the plans…Maybeck’s ideas are a source of communal inspiration…”  

And “architecture” was not back then the codified, licensed, practice it is now. Many people in Berkeley who had no formal training came up with their own ideas for houses and capably had them built without ever employing a “design professional.” Skilled contractors and builders also executed what, today, are often misinterpreted as architect-designed homes. 

In sum, there’s no good reason to feel that a house like 1214 The Alameda had to have had plans done by a formal architect or had to have been directly associated with someone like Maybeck in order to end up the way it did. 

The house is on the southern fringe of the Northbrae subdivision, one of Berkeley’s early 20th century “streetcar suburbs.” Stately landmark stone gateway pillars are just half a block north of the house.  

To the south, southwest, and east, the neighborhoods are somewhat older and eclectic with Victorians, cottages, Colonial Revival houses, modest bungalows, and architecturally unclassifiable homes. Walk through some of the surrounding blocks if you can and enjoy them house by house. For a long time this area was near the northern fringes of urban settlement in the inner East Bay. The natural topography and creek-carved landscape are evident in the dips and rises of the district.  

Nearby community fixtures include Martin Luther King, Jr. Junior High a few blocks to the southwest and the elegant North Berkeley Library one block north at an extensive angled intersection where The Alameda meets Hopkins. A tiny street island south of the Library grew into a landscaped pedestrian park after neighbors gathered there for post 9-11 memorials. 

The Monterey Market district, beloved by North Berkeley shoppers, is a left turn and several blocks down Hopkins to the west, and the “Gourmet Ghetto” and North Shattuck shopping district are uphill to the east, along with Live Oak Park through which Codornices Creek also flows. The Solano Avenue shopping district is a bit further to the north along The Alameda, and Downtown Berkeley and the UC campus are a long walk or short drive southeast.  

One change between Maybeckian days and the present. The Alameda and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way (once Grove Street) have turned into a busy commute route and cross-town thoroughfare. The block where 1214 The Alameda is located curves northwest to south, as The Alameda narrows from a broad boulevard to a narrow two-lane street headed towards Downtown Berkeley.  

The house sits back and downhill a bit from the street and inside it seems fairly quiet, while the bulk of the building may shield much of the rear garden from street noise. Still, traffic is a factor to consider.  

Those hunting for a home in a setting like this should also make sure to become familiar with Berkeley’s ordinances detailing the rights and obligations of those whose property includes a creek, along with city regulations concerning heritage oak trees on private property. 

One of our own is on her way to Washington DC to receive a long-deserved award. Kathy Kramer, who founded and runs the annual Bringing Back the Natives garden tour, will be honored on Nov. 1—appropriately enough, All Saints’ Day—along with Bill McKibben (The End of Nature), Al Gore, Rev. Richard Cizik (who has stirred up a hornets’ nest with the Evangelical Climate Initiative’s “Call to Action” statement, insisting on Christians’ responsibility toward stewardship of the earth), Steve Curwood (host of NPR’s Living on Earth show) and others including more dubious company like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  

OK, the Guv gets it for continuing to resist offshore oil drilling. For that he deserves a cookie.  

The “Connie Award” is given by the National Wildlife Federation, which has worked with Kramer over the past three years to facilitate the free and fascinating local springtime tours.  

The tours’ premise is that gardens on the tour should have at least 30 percent California native plants; usually they have more, and some, like Scott and Jenny Fleming’s treasure of a native garden in the Berkeley hills, are entirely natives.  

Others, like Idell Weydemeyer’s delightful patch of El Sobrante, combine human-food production with wildlife habitat: the perfect blend of responsible land use and sensual fun. There’s every shade of nativity in between, and I’ve sung the tour’s praises here before. I’m right, too. Don’t miss the next one: Sunday, May 4, 2008.  

Kramer also got The Watershed Project off the ground, back when it was the Aquatic Outreach Institute. It’s been featuring educator-training programs for over a decade: Kids in Creeks, Kids in Marshes, Kids in Gardens, Watching Our Watersheds; wildlife and composting workshops, lots more.  

TWP has helped local creek-lovers found seven grassroots watershed/friends-of-creeks organizations, and continues to help sustain them. It has a fiscal sponsorship program and does fundraising assistance—the sort of thing that hands-on nature fiends like me need and typically don’t do well ourselves—and individual consultation for people who want to start such groups and keep them going.  

The Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour arose from the same set of concerns as Kramer’s watershed work: “My interest in native plants stems from the fact that they don’t need the pesticides that non-natives do, they don’t require much water, they are the best for attracting wildlife, and they are part of California’s natural landscape.” 

When she wanted natives for her own garden, “It was harder to find out what native plants would do well in your area than it should have been. It should be easier for people to learn how to select and care for native plants.” 

The free, self-guided annual tour includes teaching sessions by garden owners and experts; plant, book, and poster sales and plant give-aways in individuals’ gardens and in plant nurseries; children’s activities, and most importantly, chances to see native gardens flourishing in the various climates of Alameda and Contra Costa counties.  

Past Connie award recipients include Jimmy Carter and Lady Bird Johnson, two people who made graduating from top-tier American politics look like a great vocation. Kramer’s in good company, and the National Wildlife Federation dignifies itself by giving her recognition. 

www.thewatershedproject.org 

www.bringingbackthenatives.net 

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

More Earthquake Tidbits 

Each year the southern California area has about 10,000 earthquakes. Most of them are so small that they are not felt. Only several hundred are greater than magnitude 3.0, and only about 15-20 are greater than magnitude 4.0. If there is a large earthquake, however, the aftershock sequence will produce many more earthquakes of all magnitudes for many months 

Alaska is the most earthquake-prone state and experiences a magnitude-seven earthquake almost every year, and a magnitude eight or greater on average every 14 years. 

Make your home secure and your family safe. 

Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and gas shut-off valve installation service. Call him at 510-758-3299 or visit www.quakeprepare.com 

The other day a recent inspection client of mine called up and asked if I could help answer a few questions. She proceeded to ask if her new house had copper piping. 

I clicked, dragged and said, in sequence, “You have mainly copper piping with some galvanized steel, you have knob and tube wiring and fuses at a subpanel but breakers at the main, your roof is roughly 3 years old and your foundation is bolted and braced.”  

She laughed, asking how I knew what the rest of her questions had been. I told her that she was pursuing the answers to a series of questions that her insurance provider had asked her to declare. I could hear the smile over the phone. We talked a bit more and said our so-longs. 

Although these queries are all fairly silly and not very useful in determining the safety of the home (mostly because of the lack of specificity), insurance companies continue to ask these same questions. I tried to sit down with a S.F. based insurance provider many years ago and help them to develop a better form but it was, sadly, beyond them. Something about falling on dead ears comes to mind. 

Though there was much in my client’s list of questions worthy of further discussion, I’d like to explore just one today, that being the merits or failings of knob and tube wiring. 

Knob and tube was the first wiring type installed in our homes. The term comes from the insulators used to keep the wiring out of contact with the flammable wooden framing it bobs and weaves though on its way though walls, floors and ceilings. Knobs are two-part insulators that nail onto wooden framing, snugly sandwiching the insulated wire between two neatly cast porcelain cylinders as the nail gets its final smack. 

Tubes are also porcelain and are long hollow pipes with a flared end that can be slid partly through a hole drilled in a joist or stud. A wire can be run through the inside of the tube and be thus kept away from rough and flammable edges. These also sometimes get used when wires cross over one another. 

Knob and tube wiring is inferior to modern wiring in a few respects but these deficiencies are often not significant, especially in the face of the poor wiring sometimes done using modern methods. 

Knob and tube wiring is almost never grounded. That means that the devices in your home that need grounding, such as your fridge, computer or microwave oven are left without a requisite safety feature; so for these, please add a new grounded outlet. However, if you were to spread all your plug-in devices out on the lawn (yardsale!), you’d find that a very small number of them had three-prong (grounding) plugs and therefore do not require grounding.  

This means that, whatever upgrade you may require, it is not axiomatic that those old, two-prong, knob and tube fed outlets, need to be replaced. They need only be augmented with a few modern circuits bearing three-prong grounded outlets. 

This works out nicely since almost all houses with knob and tube wiring (which haven’t been the subject of upgrade) are lacking in an adequate distribution of outlets and possibly lighting. Therefore, the need for more outlets and the need for some to be grounded can be fulfilled in one fell swoop. 

Some of the other disadvantages of knob and tube wiring include its unsuitability to 240 volt devices such as electric stoves, oven or dryers. This can be done, but is rarely done properly as knob and tube was being phased out before most of these devices had arrived on the scene. Also knob and tube is generally coupled with fuses (our next article will go there) and so there is no way to make one of these big devices fully disconnect, when a fuse blows, as can be done with breakers. 

Knob and tube systems were also designed for far fewer electrical devices than most people have today. In 1925 there were no computers, microwave ovens or TVs and refrigerators were few and far between. The systems are generally too small for today’s watt-hungry world. 

Early knob and tube systems are also sometimes wired with the fusing on the neutral wire, allowing a blown fuse to leave current running and to shock the explorer who attempts to fix the seemingly dead device. 

All this said, I like knob and tube and have rarely found original, unaltered, wiring to be less than impressive in the neatness and care of its layout and assembly. One of the best things about this wiring is that it is soldered at the connections. The Western Union splice, developed during the era of telegraph wiring, is far superior to today’s methods of connecting wires because they virtually never pull apart. A sticky, thick, cloth-covered tape was well applied to the wire splices and is rarely faulty after as much as 85 years.  

One of the great things about these soldered connections is that they are much less prone to overheat because the connections have very low resistance. I have often opened a “modern” junction box to see wires, bound in a plastic “wire-nut” spring apart due to having been joined with almost no diligence or care. It’s actually much easier to perform this sort of screw-up today than it would have been in 1925 when knob and tube wiring was king (and quality control was rote). 

This bit about soldering means that fires are less likely to occur and circuits are less likely to behave badly. 

So with all these plusses and minuses, what should a person do if they’ve just moved into a 1925 house with two, two-prong outlets per room and no grounding outlets for the fridge or computer. My advice is to have the wiring checked, upgrade the panels that feed the knob and tube wiring and add some new circuits. That’s all. Now see, that didn’t hurt a bit! 

Chinese tallow tree, Triadica sebifera, Sapium sebiferum or Croton sebiferum, is pretty, tough, and dons beautiful leaf colors in autumn. The small rounded kite-shaped leaves have a gentle green color before that, and dance engagingly in the breeze flashing their soft gray undersides, a little like aspen leaves.  

It really is Chinese—well, East Asian in general, including Japan—and it really does supply a sort of tallow. (It really is a tree, too, in case you were wondering.) The tallow is a waxy coating on the seeds. These, somewhat perversely, stay on the tree when its fruit, a capsule that starts out green, matures to black, and then falls away. The seeds’ coatings give them a subtle translucence that looks nifty in the sunshine; they’re round and tend to hang in threes, making some of us (OK, also perversely) think about teeny forest-elven pawnshops.  

Have I overdosed on Terry Pratchett again? 

The “tallow” covering the seeds is actually useful too. It’s gathered, not by leprechauns with tiny little vegetable peelers, but by ordinary humans who throw a load of seeds into a vat of hot water, wait for the wax to melt off the seeds and rise to the top, and then skimming it off.  

The stuff makes decent candles (with beeswax added) and soap. I’ve seen it proposed as a source for biodiesel. I’ve heard that it can be used as cooking oil, and I’ve heard that it’s a strong purgative. I’ve heard similar things about red palm oil; maybe it’s a matter of quantity or of individual susceptibilities. Either way, don’t say I didn’t warn you. 

Some birds like the seeds, and apparently whatever the intestinally controversial element for us is, it doesn’t bother them. In particular, birds that eat bugs—woodpeckers, for example—like the fatty coating; hardly surprising if you’ve seen them go for suet cakes. They eat the whole seed and, at whatever speed and interval, eventually excrete the working part along with a nice dose of guano fertilizer. And therein lies the rub. 

How rough a rub? Here’s a hint: In Florida, it’s illegal to introduce, release, move, or possess a tallow tree without a special permit. It’s on the Noxious Weed List there and in Texas, Georgia, Puerto Rico, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and it’s being strongly proposed for addition to the official list here in California.  

This, as such steps often are, is a bit of barn-door locking as the horse disappears over the horizon. Tallow tree is so entrenched in Florida that many people think it’s a native; it was offered by nurseries as “Florida aspen.” (It’s also “popcorn tree” because of the alleged resemblance of those white berries. Somebody’s evidently been making some nasty popcorn in the Southeast.)  

You can hear or read complaints about tallow tree from all those other states, too. You can also see it defended. No surprise, since individually it’s really charming, and since people seem to confuse garden-invasive with wildland-invasive or not even to know the latter category exists or matters. 

This tree is a perfect exemplar of the myopia problem. If its seeds fall into your garden and sprout a zillion little seedlings, you know it’s garden-invasive. It’s a problem in flowerbeds; less so, in lawns and tame meadows, because seedlings are easily controlled by mowing. So, if you see only your own garden and maybe the neighbors’ (That tacky old juniper hedge! That obsessive brickwork!) you won’t see any danger in a tallow tree; just that neat shape, those pretty “berries,” that gorgeous autumn color.  

When the flock of songbirds has had its picturesque fill and flown off, though, they’re going to be flying over and hanging out in places that people don’t mow, where the hundreds of myriads of other Earthlings must live and raise their offspring and eat and sleep.  

The tree that feeds those songbirds won’t necessarily have anything the other animals and plants can use—no oak leaves or acorns for the bugs that live on them, therefore nothing for the local species that live on those bugs, therefore no pollinators for the flowers that need something with those bugs’ particular habits ... 

No acorns for the acorn woodpeckers, who might relish a tallowseed snack but can’t store it against the needs of next spring’s breeding season. No oakleaf mulch for the native understory plants either. Tallowtree leaves, in fact, might be a bit toxic to other plants as well as animals. 

And tallow tree, like so many other invasives, can make a monoculture thicket that goes on for yards, and another like it just downstream, and in five years yet another downstream from that. For some species, that’s no better than paving. The catch is that we don’t know which species those will be, or who else depends on them.  

Dang. And I really like tallow tree; it looks good and feels pleasant to work on. Too bad.  

Photograph by Ron Sullivan  

Chinese tallow trees, these in the , Oakland hills, in fall color right now.  

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

FRIDAY, OCT 26 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., through Nov. 17. 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. 

International Theater Ensemble A Propos of the Wet Snow” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Metal Shop Theatre, Willard Middle School, 2425 Stuart St. Tickets are $20-$30. 415-440-6163.  

Shotgun Players “Bulrusher” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. through Oct. 28. Tickets are $17-$25. For reservations call 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.  

Youth Musical Theater Company “Man of La Mancha” Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 7 p.m. at Longfellow Auditorium, 1500 Derby St. Tickets are $8-$15. 595-5514. info@ymtcberkeley.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

RIP.MIX.BURN.BAM.PFA Opening and performances at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

FILM 

Arab Film Festival Berkeley Fri.-Sun. at California Theater 2113 Kittredge St. Tickets are $8-$10. www.aff.org 

“Canto a lo Poeta” A documentary about La Paya, a style of improvisational singing in Chile, at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lonny Shavelson and Fred Setterberg introduce “Under the Dragon: California’s New Culture” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com  

George Taber discusses “To Cork or Not To Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science, and the Battle for the Wine Bottle” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Miami City Ballet at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$90. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Russian Patriarchate Choir at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, Durant at Dana. Tickets are $42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

martha and monica, cello-piano duet of Monica Scott and Hadley McCarroll at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $15. www.hillsideclub.org 

“Witches & Warlocks, Ghosts & Goblins” Opera scenes and art songs at 7 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Alameda, 2001 Santa Clara at Chestnut, Alameda. Tickets are $12-$15, children 13 and under, free. 522-1477. www.alamedachurch.com 

University Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-9988.  

Crooked Road Tour, mountain music from Virginia at noon at Down Home Music Store, 1809b Fourth St. 204-9595. 

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

Hot Hot Caribbean Nights with Steele in motion and other performers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Wake the Dead at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761.  

Nomad and Alex Schumacher at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Plum Crazy, Shelley Doty at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $TBA. 841-2082.  

San Pablo Project at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Isul Kim Band at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Oliver Mtukudzi & Black Spirits at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200.  

SATURDAY, OCT. 27 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Amy Meyers Band at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“The Stone Flower” Puppet show Sat. and Sun. at 11 a.m., 2 and 4 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave. 452-2259. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Halloween Happenings The art of Kim Bass, Ed Monroe and Kynthia. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at 4th Street Studio, 1717d Fourth St. Come in costume. 527-0600. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Ancient Roots/Urban Journeys: expressions for Dias de los Muertos” Gallery Talk at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

May-Lee Chai reads from her new book “Hapa Girl: A Memoir” at 3 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. 

Diana Nyda and Bonnie Stoll introduce their new fitness DVD and book at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Janet Fletcher discusses “Cheese & Wine: A Guide to Selecting, Pairing and Enjoying” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Miami City Ballet at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$90. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Live Oak Concert “Harvest of Song” at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $12-$15. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Dr. Drew Mays, winner of the Van Cliburn Amateur Competition, Sat. and Sun. at 7:30 p.m. at the Interstake Auditorium, 4780 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, located just inside the entrance to the Mormon Temple. Free. 

Kensington Symphony with Daniel Glover, piano, at 8 p.m. at Northminster Presbyterian Church, 545 Ashbury Ave., El Cerrito. Suggested donation $12-$15. 524-9912. 

An Afternoon of Chopin with Rebecca Trujillo, piano, at 4 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Cost is $20. 

University Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-9988.  

Unplugged, joined by Skylar and Mother of Pearl, at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. 704-9378. 

The Wild Magnolias at 1 p.m. at Down Home Music Store, 1809b Fourth St. 204-9595. 

Yancie Taylor Jazztet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Baba Ken & Kotoja at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Moment’s Notice, improvised music, dance and theater at 8 p.m. at Western Sky Studio, 2525 8th St. Costumes welcome. Tickets are $8-$15. 992-6295. 

Land of the Blind and Anna Laube at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The Stairwell Sisters at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Refuge Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

Murder Ballads Bash featuring 5Cent Coffee, Joe Rut, the Happy Clams at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Disappear Incompletely, the music of Radiohead, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Oliver Mtukudzi & Black Spirits at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200.  

SUNDAY, OCT. 28 

CHILDREN 

Colibri at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $5 for children, $10 for adults. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

“Act in a Box” Owen Baker Flynn’s show of juggling, fire eating and more Sat. and Sun. at 10:30 a.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave. 452-2259. 

Spooky Stories in the Redwood Grove with Jean Ellisen and Bobbie Kinkead from 1 to 2:30 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. Tickets are $3-$10. Come in costume and bring a blanket. 643-2755. 

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. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bill Evans describes “Banjo for Dummies” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. Concert at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. 559-9500. 

“The Harlem Renaissance” with Dennis M. Chester at 1 p.m., followed by a screening of the film “Their Eyes Were Watching God” at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6275. 

“The Pastor’s Family” A dramatized reading in English of the 1891 Finnish drama by Minna Canth, at 2 p.m. at Finnish Kaleva Hall, 1970 Chestnut St. Donation $5. 849-0125.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Miami City Ballet at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$90. 642-9988.  

Concert/Labyrinth Walk with musician Margie Adam and special guest, Lauren Artress, from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant. Benefit for Berkeley Marina labyrinth installation. Tickets are $25-$30. 526-7377. 

Live Oak Concert “Harvest of Song” at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $12-$15. 644-6893.  

Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, tabla artist at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $15. www.hillsideclub.org 

Indian Classical Jugalbandi at 4 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $20-$30. 925-798-1300. 

Dr. Drew Mays, winner of the Van Cliburn Amateur Competition in 2007, at 7:30 p.m. at the Interstake Auditorium, 4780 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, located just inside the entrance to the Mormon Temple. Free. 

Songs and Stories from Ukraine with Kitka at 7 p.m. at Oakland Metro Opera Theater, 201 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $20-$25. 444-0323. 

Grupo Falso Baiano at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Ron Thompson at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Americana Unplugged: Jeannie & Chuck’s Country Round-up at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Yaelisa, flamenco, at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. 525-5054.  

Susan Muscarella Trio at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373.  

Jody Stecher and Bill Evans “The Secret Life of Banjos” at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

MONDAY, OCT. 29 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“New Media Art: In Search of the Cool Obscure” with Geert Lovink, Media Theory, Amsterdam University, at 7:30 p.m. at 160 Kroeber Hall, UC Campus. 643-9565.  

Joshua Henkin reads from his new novel “Matrimony” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express theme night on “life and death” at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Project Attacca Children’s choral music at 7:30 p.m. at Holy Names University, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Free. Suitable for all ages. http://piedmontchoirs.org 

Yolanda and Ric, opera and lieder, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

Parlor Tango, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Tito y su Son De Cuba at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.  

TUESDAY, OCT. 30 

THEATER 

“Quilombo” Performance and fundraiser for Kim McMillon’s play on the Diaspora at 6 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. 836-4649.  

FILM 

“Alternative Requirements” Works by Bay Area students at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tell on on Tuesdays Storytelling at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Cost is $8-$12 sliding scale. www.juiamorgan.org 

“Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol Between Jews and Christians” with author David Biale at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

“Journey in Ancient Arabia” with photographer Mamade Kadreebux at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, UC Campus. Cost is $5. http://ihouse.berkeley.edu 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Don Lattin describes “Jesus Freaks: A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Singers’ Open Mic with Kelly Park at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

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

The Bluesbox Bayou Band at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 31 

FILM 

“The Last Man on Earth” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Amiri Baraka, founder of the Black Arts Movement, and winner of the American Book Award reads at 6:30 p.m. at 315 Wheeler Hall, the Maude Fife Room, UC Campus. http://holloway.english.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Frederica von Stade in a benefit for the Sophia House, at noon at Oakland City Center, 12th and Broadway. www.oaklandcitycenter.com, www.sophiaproject.org 

Music for the Spirit HAlloween Concert with Ron McKean on harpsichord at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Erin Inglish & Joe Ridout at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

UC Jazz Ensembles at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $6. 841-JAZZ.  

Zabava!, Disciples of Markos, Yalazia at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Costumes welcome. Cost is $10-$12. 525-5054.  

Orquestra Borinquen at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

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

Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, NOV. 1 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Goya: The Disasters of War” An exhibition of prints by the Spanish artist opens at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way, and runs through March 2. Cost is $3-$8. 642-0808. 

Photographs of Hill Tribe Women in Northern Thailand by Adrienne Miller opens in the Catalog Library, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6241. 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Guided tour at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. 642-0808. 

FILM 

“Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad” about the people of Oaxaca, Mexico at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lunch Poems with Amiri Baraka at 12:10 p.m. at the Morrison Library, inside the Doe Library, UC Campus. 642-0137 

Susan Dinkelspiel Cerny on “Observations: The San Francisco Bay Area and its Built Environment” at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Reception to follow. Tickets are $15. Sponsored by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assoc. 841-2242.  

Joshua Clover, D.A. Powell and Juliana Spahr read in celebration of the publication of “American Poets of the 21st Century: The New Poetics” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Alan Williamson explores both Buddhism and Christianity in his new series of long, interrelated poems at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720 ext 17.  

Lucy Jane Bledsoe reads from her new novel “Biting the Apple” at 7:30 p.m. at Laurel Bookstore, 4100 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 531-2073. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mud, The New Up, Phonofly, female-fronted rock, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. 525-5054.  

Iva Bittova, fiddler and vocalist, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

Roberta Picket Trio 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 

Superthief at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Kinsella, Thurs.-Sat. at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200.  

Among the bodies in the famous heap at the end of Hamlet, two are notably missing: the Melancholy Prince’s schoolmates (though Hamlet himself can’t seem to tell them apart), summoned by his usurper uncle to spy on him in his presumed madness, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. 

It’s this uneasy anonymity in the highest profile of tragedies that Tom Stoppard hit upon for his breakthrough play of the ’60s, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a skewed buddy tale (though owing a lot to an off-beat parody of a much deeper comedy, Waiting for Godot). 

Actors Ensemble is presently essaying Stoppard’s unmannerly comedy, under the able direction of Stanley Spenger at Live Oak Theatre. It’s not a bad Halloween treat, with its atmospherics of a rotting Elsinore Castle, from part of the beautifully painted set, a Gothic crypt, from Helen Pau’s Viaticum. 

To describe what he was up to, Stoppard lifted a line from Jean Cocteau, saying Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was a view of Elsinore as seen by tourists driving by. It is a playful piece of chance meetings, with ominous overtones that the meetings aren’t so chancy. The audience’s familiarity with Hamlet’s plot and the aura of fate borrowed from this great original give ballast to the burlesque sense of what goes on behind the famous scenes and soliloquies.  

What are the other characters saying or whispering? 

According to Stop-pard, not much: just killing time and trying to square their seemingly meaningless lives with the bigger issues playing out around them, in which they find themselves caught up and finally swept away. It opens with the two pitching coins, which seem to fall heads up, against all probability, and closes at sea, a road trip to England, the voyage wherein Hamlet is spirited away by pirates, but not before he makes the switch of a secret order of execution.  

On the way, the ill-starred pair meet up with the band of itinerant players Hamlet ends up hiring for his mousetrap to catch the king. The players make a kind of mirror between one play and another, the venerable tragedy and contemporary comedy. 

Harold Pierce shines as the resilient and matter-of-fact Player King, good at dying over and over, or knowing when to slip away. Marcus Liefert plays a truly doddering Polonius, who all but paralyzes Claudius (Jerome Solberg) and Gertrude (Melanie Curry), offering up Ophelia (Wendy Welch, who seems made for the part) to the Prince (a slightly punkish Ariel Herzog), who spurns her famously. Snippets of Hamlet are cleverly shoehorned into this study of the least of his retainers, played by Patrick Glenn and Gabriel Ross, each taking up the slack for the other—even though they, too, can’t really tell themselves apart. 

It’s a long play, not as long as Hamlet, but sometimes hitting doldrums when Rosen-crantz and Guildenstern quibble over inconsequentials without the sharp edge of British club humor. But in the end, even though “the rest is silence,” even those quibbles are caught up in the sweep of artistry that grants an elusive meaning to life and lives. 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley at Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck Ave. 8 p.m. Thurs.-Sat.through Nov.17. 525-1620.

Altarena Playhouse, Alameda’s venerable community theater, is celebrating its 70th anniversary—and 50 years at its present location on High Street—with a venerable old comedy of just about the same vintage as the troupe, Paul Osbourn’s Morning’s at Seven (1939).  

The production offers something more than nostalgia. With the direction of Sue Trigg, whose Death of a Salesman at Altarena was one of the best shows in the Bay Area last year, Morning’s at Seven gives audiences a chance to see a finely tuned ensemble show and to witness a compelling interpretation of a prewar family stage comedy. The play shows what’s become unfamiliar to many of us and what is, after all, strangely familiar—the way Americans looked at themselves right before the start of an ongoing period of change that hasn’t abated. 

The two porches and doorways into backyards that take up much of the set mark the comings and goings (and the interplay) of the two families, the Swansons and the Boltons, around whom the story is built. They’re related: Cora Swanson (Maureen Coyne) and her live-in spinster sister, Aaronetta (Arry) Glass (Sarilee Janger), are two of four sisters, one right next door (Sue Williams as Ida Bolton) and the other up the road a piece (Peggy DeCoursey as Esther “Esty” Crampton), married to a seemingly snobbish academic (David Crampton, played by Chris Chapman), who’s forbidden her to associate with “those morons” down the road. 

Those morons are an eccentric bunch, even if their extravagances are just stretched-out normal peccadilloes. Homer Bolton (Richard Robert Bunker), pushing 40 and still living at home, brings his fiancee of some years, Myrtle Brown (Shauna Shoptaw) to meet the folks—and Homer’s father, Carl (Tom Leone), picks the day to have a spell.  

Carl’s long felt he’s a failure, not knowing who he is. Meanwhile, everybody’s speculating on what the relations might be between Homer and Myrtle during their long wooing, and if there’s a triangle among the in-laws in the arrangement that’s dragged on for a half-century; Arry insists on her place in the home, and Theodore (Thor,” played by T. Louis Weltz) agrees but doesn’t want to talk about it. 

As in classic comedies, there are many funny reversals. Underneath the stolid or squirrely exteriors of the tightly knit neighbors lurk opposite tendencies, which prove very amusing when seen in the light of day. The interplay among characters and dilemmas prove dense, and more accrues as this well-written plot unfolds, tying the audiences up in knots—of laughter. 

It’s great to see a present-day crowd fall under the spell of something that by current standards of urban self-image seems light years away from our present state of affairs. But one thing Altarena’s production demonstrates is the enduring nature of Americans’ ability to laugh at our own foibles when they’re presented in an appropriate light. 

An older kind of play, well-wrought, Morning’s at Seven holds hidden delights and entertainment, thanks to the sensitivity of Sue Trigg’s direction and the wonderful ensemble’s ongoing discovery of their characters’ true interrelationship.  

Every time the play seems to be slipping into the maudlin or the sentimental, which characterized much popular culture then—and now—there’s a happy surprise reversal, right up to the classically comic happy end. The cast is composed of regulars in the little theater (and even dance) scene of the East Bay; here, together, they show what they can really do. It’s a great evening, a great celebration of seven decades of Altarena Playhouse and of a perennially pleasing American comedy. 

MORNING’S AT SEVEN 

Alterena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda. 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., Sun. 2 p.m. 

through Nov. 11. $17-$20. 523-1553.

The seventh annual Harvest of Song features new vo-cal and instrumental compositions by Bay Area composers headed by Ann Callaway, Allen Shearer and Peter Josheff, in collaboration with writer Jaime Robles. Composers Alexis Alrich and Laurie San Martin join this year’s mix. Performers include the Harvest Players, some of the Bay Area’s finest musicians, augmented by marimba and vibraphone. A women’s vocal ensemble adds to the festivities.Sat.Oct. 27 and Sun. Oct. 28 at 7:30 p.m.  

A pre-concert discussion will be held at 6:30 p.m. Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. $15–$12. 644-6893.  

www.berkeleyartcenter.org.

The 11th annual Arab First Festival continues this weekend at the California Theater in downtown Berkeley.  

This year the festival has turned its focus to issues of youth and urban life, with a range of films on these topics showing at venues in San Francisco, San Jose and Berkeley. 

The festival’s mission is to explore the depth and diversity of filmmaking in the Arab world with an array of documentaries and feature-length and short narrative films.  

Hisham Zaman’s Winterland makes its American debut at 7 p.m. Sunday.  

The film examines the relationship between Renas, a middle-aged Kurdish immigrant from Iraq who has made his home in the snow-covered hills of rural Norway. Renas has been looking forward to the arrival of his bride-to-be from Iraq. It is an arranged marriage with a woman he has never met, except by way of a few letters and phone calls. He has pictures of Fermesk, however, that depict a young woman, perhaps still a teenager, gently smiling and wearing a flowing dress.  

Upon her arrival, however, Renas is perturbed to find a larger and older woman. She is still young, but it is clear that the photos are quite outdated. And Fermesk too faces disillusionment, for Renas too sent photos of his younger self, dashing and svelte in military garb, and also managed to greatly inflate his status and income from his humble job in Norway. And each has still more surprises for the other along the way.  

What follows is a tense drama of disillusionment and reconciliation, of hopes dashed on the snowy banks of cold reality. Renas and Fermesk must deal simultaneously with their estrangement from one another and from their home country, from family, friends and culture. The stunning photography of the wide-open fields and snow-blanketed hillsides of rural Norway presents a beautiful but alienating environment, pristine and harrowing at the same time. Zaman’s camera transforms the landscape into a vast white desert, where the two protagonists have no reference points other than each other. 

Nasser Bakhti’s Night Shadows examines similar themes of Arab displacement but in a dark, urban environment. His film follows the interlocking lives of five characters, each adrift in the darkness and decadence of Geneva nightlife.  

A jaded cop, nearing retirement, faces another night on the beat with his obnoxious brute of a partner. Hans’ dedication to his job has cost him his health and his marriage, and those losses have in turn cost him his passion for his job. His partner, a brash, insensitive thug, cares nothing for the immigrants he is tasked with tracking down, and his cruelty and ignorance are only brought to his attention when his wife threatens to pack up the kid and leave him. Claire is a down-and-out junkie with no friends or family, forced to consider prostitution to sustain her habit. Adé is an illegal Malian immigrant who dreams of a professional soccer career while working as a waiter. And Mohammed, a Moroccan immigrant, has been forced to abandon his medical studies just to get by while supporting his family back home.  

Each, whether a native or an immigrant, faces the same hostile environment, one that undermines their common humanity and puts them at each other’s throats much of the time in a thoughtful parable of ignorance and xenophobia. 

ARAB FILM FESTIVAL 

Through Sunday, Oct. 28 at the California Theater in Berkeley and at the Castro Theater and Roxie Film Center in San Francisco. 

Image: Two Kurdish immigrants from Iraq struggle with displacement and romance in rural Norway.

Jimmy Carter is more active in his 80s than I was at any time during my 20s. If that’s an exaggeration it’s not much of one. The man’s zest for life is well known, but it is still awe-inspiring to see. In addition to his work with Habitat for Humanity and the Carter Center and a writing career that results in a book per year, the man somehow manages to find time to paint, preach, hike, bicycle and travel the world. 

And that seems to be at least one of the points director Jonathan Demme is trying to make with his new film, Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains, opening today (Friday) at Shattuck Cinemas. 

The film follows Carter during his 2006 book tour after the publication of his best-selling book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Demme and his crew tracked Carter across the country as he answered myriad questions on countless radio and television shows, defending his positions and clarifying his arguments in the face of a storm of controversy. Usually the debate in these appearances centers on the title of the book, since that is as far as most of these media types, and, it seems, many of Carter’s critics, have read. The result, as so often happens in discussions of the Middle East, is a debate that can quickly degenerate into name-calling and deeper entrenchment into opposing camps. Throughout the film Carter is seen struggling to keep honest debate alive, never allowing himself the luxury of the tactics chosen by many of his critics. 

Demme too has problems with his title, for one might easily get the impression that the film will provide an overview of Carter’s life and career, or at least his post-presidency career. Nothing doing. The film might well have been titled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid — The Movie. If you subscribe to the Hemingwayesque notion that a man is best defined by his performance under pressure, the film does indeed provide something of a portrait of the man, with plenty of evidence of his honesty, his optimism, his sincerity and his mettle. And though it touches on the depth and range of Carter’s work, with side trips to Habitat for Humanity projects in New Orleans and to meetings of the Carter Center board, the film consists primarily of countless scenes of media interviews and behind-the-scenes chatter in transit to and from those interviews. Most of it is fun and fascinating, but some of it is simply repetitive, and at 126 minutes, the film drags a bit, with Demme at times losing sight of any larger purpose for the production. 

Still, it is instructive and inspiring to see Carter in action, still working for a better world at a time when most of his fellow former presidents were content to while away the hours on a golf course.  

JIMMY CARTER:  

MAN FROM PLAINS 

Directed by Jonathan Demme. 126 minutes.  

Playing at Shattuck Cinemas.

House of Games, David Mamet's 1987 directorial debut, was and still is like no other film.  

Mamet had already established himself as a successful writer for both stage and screen, receiving Oscar nominations for a couple of screenplays and Tony nominations for his plays. His 1984 play Glengarry Glen Ross won the Pulitzer Prize. 

When it came time for Glengarry to adorn the silver screen, Mamet had to break the news to his long-time collaborator, actor Joe Mantegna, that he was going to replaced in the lead role by Al Pacino for the film version. As Mantegna recounts in an interview in Criterion's new DVD release of House of Games, Mamet walked into the actor's backstage dressing room after a performance, broke the bad news, and immediately dropped two screenplays on the table, and said "But I won't make these without you."  

The two screenplays were House of Games and Things Change, films that would firmly establish Mamet as a film director and Mantegna as a solid screen actor. 

Mamet is known for is precisely mannered, crisply delivered dialogue. It is his hallmark, a unique approach that brings the enunciation and stylization of the stage to the screen, but without the requisite staginess that hinders the efforts of so many lesser talents. Mamet instills his words with a heightened dramatic tension, much in the way that the rapid-fire cadences of the Warner Bros. gangster films and noirs of the 1930 and '40s brought a dramatic hyper-realism to their melodramatic plots. 

Like those earlier films, House of Games is full of deep shadows and drifting smoke that obscure motivations; of steam rising from sewers like forbidden thoughts rising furtively to the surface; of backroom dealings and shifting alliances that remake the world as a dangerous game of intrigue and deceit. 

Twenty years later, the film still packs a punch. Mantegna's smooth, street-wise hustler Mike is captivating as he dismantles the pretensions of respectability that shackle Lindsay Crouse's Margaret to an unsatisfying bourgeois life. The labyrinth of lust and greed, of cons and revelations, is still mesmerizing even after multiple viewings. 

Extra features on the new release include current interviews with Crouse and Mantegna, the two actors reflecting on the film and their work with Mamet; a commentary track by Mamet and Ricky Jay, a con artist turned actor who served as a consultant on the film; an essay by film critic Kent Jones; and a short documentary, made at the time of filming, featuring interviews with Mamet, information on the genesis of the film, and rehearsal sessions in which Mamet walks his principal players through their characters' motivations. 

HOUSE OF GAMES (1987) 

Written and directed by David Mamet. Starring Joe Mantegna and Lindsay Crouse.  

102 minutes. $39.95. www.criterion.com.  

Around a North Berkeley bend, quickly by-passed by those busily headed someplace else, there’s a gem of a creek side house. The architecture and setting embody much of what gives residential Berkeley a special sense of place. 

1214 The Alameda is a three bedroom, two-story home currently on the market for $799,000. Terry Pedersen of Marvin Gardens Real Estate is the listing agent, and information on the house is available at www.1214TheAlameda.com  

An Open House will be held 2-4:30 p.m., this coming Sunday, Oct. 28. 

The real estate listing describes this as a “Hansel and Gretel” house. It also has an English Cottage feel, with more than a touch of Berkeley Craftsman on the interior. 

The street side (east) elevation of the house is dominated by a large, two-story, gable and a dormer projecting from the steep roof. A quirky garage is off to the left; more about that later.  

Walk the narrow porch lengthwise to the front door, which turns left through a vestibule into the living room. Three casement windows look out on the porch and a bay window faces south. A working fireplace of clinker brick is centered on the west wall. Box beam ceilings, redwood paneling, and diamond-paned windows establish an Arts and Crafts character.  

The living room is in the southeast corner. Southwest, entered from the living room on either side of the fireplace, is a tile-floored sun-porch. Northwest, diagonal from the living room, is a formal dining room also with a bay window, but here modified into a west-facing window seat.  

The kitchen is at the northeast corner of the house, reached from the dining room. Like the living room it looks out to the east through diamond casement windows. Turn the corner into a small pantry/laundry/half-bath area. 

A stairway ascends to the second floor from the far northwest corner of the dining room. Although this is curiously far from the front door it gives the upstairs a welcome, private, feel. Square wooden balusters, rising from stair tread to ceiling, screen the stairwell from the dining room.  

Upstairs a short central hall runs at right angles to the stair. Straight ahead, the master bedroom is underneath the south gable of the house. Like the living room below it has a fireplace and French doors open to a balcony, perched above the front porch.  

Right, off the hall, there’s a second bedroom above the dining room, facing west. A pair of interior French doors connects it on the south to a sleeping porch which has another door to the master bedroom, linking the three rooms in an “L” shaped circuit.  

The bathroom tucks into the eastern gable, off the hall. Open the low door to the right of the shower to a closet neatly outfitted with its own built-in chest of drawers. Bathroom and bedrooms have sloping ceilings in parts and angled corners where the dormer and gable roofs meet. The feeling is more cozy than claustrophobic, but watch your head as you walk about. 

Listed at a little less than 1,500 square feet this is not an especially large house and it could easily become crowded with several residents or a McMansion load of possessions. But it also feels instinctively comfortable and has a lot of versatility if you think of it as two-bedroom, with two generous “plus” rooms. The current owner, the realtor reports, raised two children here and has owned the house for about 17 years. 

Scattered through the house are several handcrafted Sue Johnson lamps. Some built-in fixtures—including a butterfly-decorated wall sconce in the upstairs hall, and a ceiling fixture with a dragonfly motif over the dining table—were designed for the house and stay with it, according to the realtor.  

The diamond-paned windows—true divided lites, with sturdy mullions—set much of the character of the house inside and out. The living room and dining room bays have a larger, undivided “picture window” in the middle to frame the view, flanked by the smaller-paned windows. 

Hardwood floors are found in most rooms, cork floors (perhaps from a mid-century remodel?) in the second bedroom and sleeping porch upstairs.  

The unpainted woodwork is nut brown or tan, lighter in color than you might expect for an old Craftsman house. The realtor says the present owner was told by earlier residents that it was once darker, but the original finish was removed and the walls—and, my guess is, the box beams downstairs—lightened with a wash.  

The exterior of the house is now painted a light cream yellow with white trim. The first story is shingled, while the gable ends above have a sort of English-Tudor false work timber pattern. Deep eaves give the house a sheltered feel. From the window box outside the second story bathroom window an immensely long tubular succulent trails like some topiary Rapunzel’s hair, all the way to the ground. 

The only early photographs that can be readily found—black and white, from 1951, and 1971—show a dark exterior, probably unpainted wood.  

Behind and below the house an open stretch of Codornices Creek—burbling, not roaring, this time of year—loops through the property. A small wooden footbridge crosses to a surprisingly spacious rear yard. Two light-standards with large glass shades stand on each side of the creek. They look rather like salvaged early Berkeley street lamps to me.  

Much of the garden is under the canopy of an immense, thick-trunked, California live oak. Most is informally landscaped, with a light covering of ground covers and shrubs. Large, tropic-looking crinums with white flowers punctuate the landscape as do an interesting variety of unusual shrubs and perennials. 

“That site is California pastoral!” says Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association’s Lesley Emmington. Rustic house, huge oak, embracing creek, and artfully informal plantings front and back come together for a quintessentially Berkeley “living with nature” feel. 

Adjacent to the house a one-car garage, tilting a bit, perches on wooden supports above the steeply sloping creek bank. Notice how it’s “inside out”, with visible exterior framing and interior board siding.  

It angles towards a similar freestanding garage that juts out from the property just south of the creek. Garages show up on the 1929 Sanborn map, and in the 1951 photograph, although whether the present day ones are modified originals or later “rebuilds” is not entirely apparent at first look. 

Who designed and created this house and placed it so? 

It seems to have been built in the early 1910s. The Ormsby Donogh file at Berkeley Architectural Heritage notes for 1913 that the house was owned by, or perhaps had a mortgage through, the Berkeley Bank of Savings, and was valued at $1,900. The 1951 real estate listing says it was then-38 years old (which equates to around 1913) and it was certainly there by 1929 when the Sanborn map for that year shows the house footprint and detached garage. 

When former BAHA President JoAnn Price interviewed one Frederick Peake nearly 40 years ago, he told her—according to an entry in Dave Bohn’s 1971 book, From East of This Golden Shores—“he had built the entire block. I asked if Maybeck had been involved and he replied ‘Oh no’.”  

“However, he said he had employed a draughtsman for the house who had been an employee of Maybeck. He also said he and Maybeck had been charter members of the Hillside Club, which was a social club for residents of Northeast Berkeley.” 

A 1951 real estate listing notation preserved at BAHA says the house had “Maybeck design” and “Style: Maybeck,” according to BAHA Executive Director Anthony Bruce. Not firm evidence that Maybeck was the architect, especially given Peake’s contrary statement.  

And maybe it’s not even a relevant question. The Maybeck influence was strong in this neighborhood without Berkeley’s best-remembered architect being professionally involved in every project. 

The Maybeck family lived just a block to the south of this lot in what’s now a much altered house, and a City Landmark, on the southwest corner of Berryman and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. It was there in the 1890s that Bernard Maybeck, a drawing instructor at the University, invited some of his UC engineering students for extracurricular talks about architecture. 

“I think that neighborhood has more unknown influences by him than he’s been given credit for,” says Emmington of BAHA. “There’s a lot between 1892 (when the Maybeck’s moved here) and when they went uptown, that they were doing in that neighborhood.”  

“An important part of his legacy is his effect as a catalyst who changed the world round him, not only through his own buildings, but through his persuasiveness in converting others to pursue his visions,” a BAHA brochure from 1986 notes. “He encouraged friends to design their own homes and worked with them on drawing the plans…Maybeck’s ideas are a source of communal inspiration…”  

And “architecture” was not back then the codified, licensed, practice it is now. Many people in Berkeley who had no formal training came up with their own ideas for houses and capably had them built without ever employing a “design professional.” Skilled contractors and builders also executed what, today, are often misinterpreted as architect-designed homes. 

In sum, there’s no good reason to feel that a house like 1214 The Alameda had to have had plans done by a formal architect or had to have been directly associated with someone like Maybeck in order to end up the way it did. 

The house is on the southern fringe of the Northbrae subdivision, one of Berkeley’s early 20th century “streetcar suburbs.” Stately landmark stone gateway pillars are just half a block north of the house.  

To the south, southwest, and east, the neighborhoods are somewhat older and eclectic with Victorians, cottages, Colonial Revival houses, modest bungalows, and architecturally unclassifiable homes. Walk through some of the surrounding blocks if you can and enjoy them house by house. For a long time this area was near the northern fringes of urban settlement in the inner East Bay. The natural topography and creek-carved landscape are evident in the dips and rises of the district.  

Nearby community fixtures include Martin Luther King, Jr. Junior High a few blocks to the southwest and the elegant North Berkeley Library one block north at an extensive angled intersection where The Alameda meets Hopkins. A tiny street island south of the Library grew into a landscaped pedestrian park after neighbors gathered there for post 9-11 memorials. 

The Monterey Market district, beloved by North Berkeley shoppers, is a left turn and several blocks down Hopkins to the west, and the “Gourmet Ghetto” and North Shattuck shopping district are uphill to the east, along with Live Oak Park through which Codornices Creek also flows. The Solano Avenue shopping district is a bit further to the north along The Alameda, and Downtown Berkeley and the UC campus are a long walk or short drive southeast.  

One change between Maybeckian days and the present. The Alameda and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way (once Grove Street) have turned into a busy commute route and cross-town thoroughfare. The block where 1214 The Alameda is located curves northwest to south, as The Alameda narrows from a broad boulevard to a narrow two-lane street headed towards Downtown Berkeley.  

The house sits back and downhill a bit from the street and inside it seems fairly quiet, while the bulk of the building may shield much of the rear garden from street noise. Still, traffic is a factor to consider.  

Those hunting for a home in a setting like this should also make sure to become familiar with Berkeley’s ordinances detailing the rights and obligations of those whose property includes a creek, along with city regulations concerning heritage oak trees on private property. 

One of our own is on her way to Washington DC to receive a long-deserved award. Kathy Kramer, who founded and runs the annual Bringing Back the Natives garden tour, will be honored on Nov. 1—appropriately enough, All Saints’ Day—along with Bill McKibben (The End of Nature), Al Gore, Rev. Richard Cizik (who has stirred up a hornets’ nest with the Evangelical Climate Initiative’s “Call to Action” statement, insisting on Christians’ responsibility toward stewardship of the earth), Steve Curwood (host of NPR’s Living on Earth show) and others including more dubious company like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  

OK, the Guv gets it for continuing to resist offshore oil drilling. For that he deserves a cookie.  

The “Connie Award” is given by the National Wildlife Federation, which has worked with Kramer over the past three years to facilitate the free and fascinating local springtime tours.  

The tours’ premise is that gardens on the tour should have at least 30 percent California native plants; usually they have more, and some, like Scott and Jenny Fleming’s treasure of a native garden in the Berkeley hills, are entirely natives.  

Others, like Idell Weydemeyer’s delightful patch of El Sobrante, combine human-food production with wildlife habitat: the perfect blend of responsible land use and sensual fun. There’s every shade of nativity in between, and I’ve sung the tour’s praises here before. I’m right, too. Don’t miss the next one: Sunday, May 4, 2008.  

Kramer also got The Watershed Project off the ground, back when it was the Aquatic Outreach Institute. It’s been featuring educator-training programs for over a decade: Kids in Creeks, Kids in Marshes, Kids in Gardens, Watching Our Watersheds; wildlife and composting workshops, lots more.  

TWP has helped local creek-lovers found seven grassroots watershed/friends-of-creeks organizations, and continues to help sustain them. It has a fiscal sponsorship program and does fundraising assistance—the sort of thing that hands-on nature fiends like me need and typically don’t do well ourselves—and individual consultation for people who want to start such groups and keep them going.  

The Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour arose from the same set of concerns as Kramer’s watershed work: “My interest in native plants stems from the fact that they don’t need the pesticides that non-natives do, they don’t require much water, they are the best for attracting wildlife, and they are part of California’s natural landscape.” 

When she wanted natives for her own garden, “It was harder to find out what native plants would do well in your area than it should have been. It should be easier for people to learn how to select and care for native plants.” 

The free, self-guided annual tour includes teaching sessions by garden owners and experts; plant, book, and poster sales and plant give-aways in individuals’ gardens and in plant nurseries; children’s activities, and most importantly, chances to see native gardens flourishing in the various climates of Alameda and Contra Costa counties.  

Past Connie award recipients include Jimmy Carter and Lady Bird Johnson, two people who made graduating from top-tier American politics look like a great vocation. Kramer’s in good company, and the National Wildlife Federation dignifies itself by giving her recognition. 

www.thewatershedproject.org 

www.bringingbackthenatives.net 

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

More Earthquake Tidbits 

Each year the southern California area has about 10,000 earthquakes. Most of them are so small that they are not felt. Only several hundred are greater than magnitude 3.0, and only about 15-20 are greater than magnitude 4.0. If there is a large earthquake, however, the aftershock sequence will produce many more earthquakes of all magnitudes for many months 

Alaska is the most earthquake-prone state and experiences a magnitude-seven earthquake almost every year, and a magnitude eight or greater on average every 14 years. 

Make your home secure and your family safe. 

Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and gas shut-off valve installation service. Call him at 510-758-3299 or visit www.quakeprepare.com 

The other day a recent inspection client of mine called up and asked if I could help answer a few questions. She proceeded to ask if her new house had copper piping. 

I clicked, dragged and said, in sequence, “You have mainly copper piping with some galvanized steel, you have knob and tube wiring and fuses at a subpanel but breakers at the main, your roof is roughly 3 years old and your foundation is bolted and braced.”  

She laughed, asking how I knew what the rest of her questions had been. I told her that she was pursuing the answers to a series of questions that her insurance provider had asked her to declare. I could hear the smile over the phone. We talked a bit more and said our so-longs. 

Although these queries are all fairly silly and not very useful in determining the safety of the home (mostly because of the lack of specificity), insurance companies continue to ask these same questions. I tried to sit down with a S.F. based insurance provider many years ago and help them to develop a better form but it was, sadly, beyond them. Something about falling on dead ears comes to mind. 

Though there was much in my client’s list of questions worthy of further discussion, I’d like to explore just one today, that being the merits or failings of knob and tube wiring. 

Knob and tube was the first wiring type installed in our homes. The term comes from the insulators used to keep the wiring out of contact with the flammable wooden framing it bobs and weaves though on its way though walls, floors and ceilings. Knobs are two-part insulators that nail onto wooden framing, snugly sandwiching the insulated wire between two neatly cast porcelain cylinders as the nail gets its final smack. 

Tubes are also porcelain and are long hollow pipes with a flared end that can be slid partly through a hole drilled in a joist or stud. A wire can be run through the inside of the tube and be thus kept away from rough and flammable edges. These also sometimes get used when wires cross over one another. 

Knob and tube wiring is inferior to modern wiring in a few respects but these deficiencies are often not significant, especially in the face of the poor wiring sometimes done using modern methods. 

Knob and tube wiring is almost never grounded. That means that the devices in your home that need grounding, such as your fridge, computer or microwave oven are left without a requisite safety feature; so for these, please add a new grounded outlet. However, if you were to spread all your plug-in devices out on the lawn (yardsale!), you’d find that a very small number of them had three-prong (grounding) plugs and therefore do not require grounding.  

This means that, whatever upgrade you may require, it is not axiomatic that those old, two-prong, knob and tube fed outlets, need to be replaced. They need only be augmented with a few modern circuits bearing three-prong grounded outlets. 

This works out nicely since almost all houses with knob and tube wiring (which haven’t been the subject of upgrade) are lacking in an adequate distribution of outlets and possibly lighting. Therefore, the need for more outlets and the need for some to be grounded can be fulfilled in one fell swoop. 

Some of the other disadvantages of knob and tube wiring include its unsuitability to 240 volt devices such as electric stoves, oven or dryers. This can be done, but is rarely done properly as knob and tube was being phased out before most of these devices had arrived on the scene. Also knob and tube is generally coupled with fuses (our next article will go there) and so there is no way to make one of these big devices fully disconnect, when a fuse blows, as can be done with breakers. 

Knob and tube systems were also designed for far fewer electrical devices than most people have today. In 1925 there were no computers, microwave ovens or TVs and refrigerators were few and far between. The systems are generally too small for today’s watt-hungry world. 

Early knob and tube systems are also sometimes wired with the fusing on the neutral wire, allowing a blown fuse to leave current running and to shock the explorer who attempts to fix the seemingly dead device. 

All this said, I like knob and tube and have rarely found original, unaltered, wiring to be less than impressive in the neatness and care of its layout and assembly. One of the best things about this wiring is that it is soldered at the connections. The Western Union splice, developed during the era of telegraph wiring, is far superior to today’s methods of connecting wires because they virtually never pull apart. A sticky, thick, cloth-covered tape was well applied to the wire splices and is rarely faulty after as much as 85 years.  

One of the great things about these soldered connections is that they are much less prone to overheat because the connections have very low resistance. I have often opened a “modern” junction box to see wires, bound in a plastic “wire-nut” spring apart due to having been joined with almost no diligence or care. It’s actually much easier to perform this sort of screw-up today than it would have been in 1925 when knob and tube wiring was king (and quality control was rote). 

This bit about soldering means that fires are less likely to occur and circuits are less likely to behave badly. 

So with all these plusses and minuses, what should a person do if they’ve just moved into a 1925 house with two, two-prong outlets per room and no grounding outlets for the fridge or computer. My advice is to have the wiring checked, upgrade the panels that feed the knob and tube wiring and add some new circuits. That’s all. Now see, that didn’t hurt a bit! 

FRIDAY, OCT. 26 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Camille Minichino, author of “Sister in Crime: Who Will Murder Whim, and How?” 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.  

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll have a nature scavenger hunt from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Computer Recycling, Safe Medicine Disposal and Thermometer Exchange from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 1000 Folger Ave. at San Pablo. near Ashby. Please bring unwanted medicine in original containers with your name marked out. Bring thermometers in two plastic zipper bags to prevent spills. 287-1651. 

“Until When” a film by Dahna Abourahme which follows four Palestinian families living in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp at 7 p.m. followed by update & discussion with Jeanne Shaterian at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donation requested, no one turned away. 841-4824. 

“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.  

Community Dance/Barn Dance at 8 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$10. 650-365-2913.  

Auction and Sale of Beardless Irises at 8 p.m. at the Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Sponsored by the Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society. Free. http://bayareairis.org. 

SATURDAY, OCT. 27 

Bat Show at 1 and 3 p.m. at the Kensington Community Center, 59 Arlington Ave., Kensington. For ages 5 and up. Free, but tickets required. 524-3043. 

Fall Fruit Tasting at the Saturday Farmers’ Market with appleas, Asian and European pears, and persimmons, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Center St. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Way 

Fall Birdwalk in the UC Botanical Garden with Dennis Wolf and Chris Carmichael from 9 to 10:30 a.m., 200 Centennial Dr. Cost is $12-$15. Registration required. 643-2755. 

Haunted House and Pre-Halloween Party from 6:30 to 8:15 p.m. at St. John’s Church, 2727 College Ave. For all ages, adjustable scariness. Wear costumes. Bring a book, food item or toy for a hungry or homeless child. Donations also welcome. Grades 6-12 invited to come at 3 p.m. to help set up the Haunted House. 845-6830. 

Halloween Celebration in Albany and Berkeley from 5 to 8 p.m. at Ray’s Pumpkin Patch, 1245 Solano Ave., Albany. 527-5358. www.SolanoStroll.org 

Celebrate Halloween at the Haunted Harbor Festival from 3 to 7 p.m. at Jack London Square. Safe and fun activities for children including live music, puppet show and costume contest.  

Jack O’ Lantern Jamboree A Halloween Celebration for the whole family Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Belleview Ave., Oakland. Cost is $8. www.fairyland.org 

Feast of the Angelitos Come build a “nicho,” and other arts and crafts and enjoy traditional sweets, Sat. and Sun. from 2 to 4 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Dias de los Muertos Procession, featuring Ernesto Olmos at 6 p.m. Free and open to all ages. 228-3207. 

“Demystifying the Tarot, It's in the Cards” with a Halloween Happening from 7 to 9 p.m. at 4th Street Studio, 1717d 4th St. 527-0600. 

Monster Bash Aboard the Aircraft Carrier USS Hornet from 7:30 p.m. to midnight at 707 W Hornet Ave., Pier 3, Alameda. Tickets are $20 for adults, $10 for children. 521-8448, ext. 282. www.hornetevents.com 

Rebecca’s Books Grand Opening in South Berkeley from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 3268 Adeline St. 852-4768. 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around Preservation Park to see Victorian architecture. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Preservation Park at 13th St. and MLK, Jr. Way. Tour lasts 90 minutes. For reservations call 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

3rd Not-So-Silent Church Auction with live music by jazz ensemble The House Band, at 7:00 p.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. at Napa. $10. 524-2921. www.epworthberkeley.org 

Berkeley Digital Media Conference “Current and Emerging Intersections” from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Haas School of Business, UC Campus. Organized by Berkeley MBA students and hosted by the Berkeley Digital Media and Entertainment Club. http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/haas/maps.html 

Computer Recycling from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200.  

Meet Your Friendly Firefighters For ages 3 to 7 at 10:30 a.m. Central Berkeley Public Library, 4th Floor, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223.  

Protest the War in Iraq from 2 to 4 p.m. on the corner of Acton and University. Sponsored by the Strawberry Creek Lodge Tenants Assoc. and Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers. 841-4143. 

“Uyghurs on the Silk Road” A celebration of people and culture, dinner at 6 p.m. followed by program at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, UC Campus. Cost is $5, plus $9.25 for dinner. http://ihouse.berkeley.edu 

“Creating a Mixed Border for Year Round Color” with gardener Aerin Moore at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Ongoing Vocal Jazz Workshop at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin at the corner of Masonic, on Saturdays from 2:30 to 4 p.m. 524-6797. 

“Savvy Woman’s Guide to Buying a Home” at 2 p.m. at The Bellevue Club, 525 Bellevue Ave.. Oakland. 451-1000. 

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. 28 

Oakland Heritage Alliance House Tour of the Historic San Antonio Neighborhood A self-guided tour of ten houses open from 1 to 5 p.m. Tour begins at 2002 10th Ave. Tickets are $25-$35. 763-9218.  

Fall Colors of Briones Join a moderate 4 mile hike with naturalist Tara Reinertson to learn about the diversity of oaks. Bring lunch, sunscreen and water. 525-2233. 

Haunted Caves of the Environmental Education Center at Tilden Explore and learn the facts and fictions of Halloween at 1 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. Cost is $3 for ages 3 and up. 525-2233. 

Spooky Tales in the UC Botanical Gardens at 1 p.m. at 200 Centennial Drive. Come in costume and bring a blanket. Cost is $3-$10. 643-2755.  

Dia de los Muertos Festival from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on International Blvd., between Fruitvale Ave. and 40th Ave. with community altars, traditional dance, live music, children’s ativities, international food and more. 535-6900.  

Chabot Elementary School Fall Carnival with games, activities, refreshments and entertainment for all ages, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 6686 Chabot Rd. at Patton, Rockridge.  

Ghostwalk and Graveyard Tales from 7 to 9 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 228-3207. 

Free Market at Oak Grove Tree-Sit from 1 to 5 p.m. at Piedmont Ave. north of Bancroft. Autumn Ritual at 5:30 p.m. 938-2109. www.saveoaks.com 

Women of Color Resource Center 9th Annual Sisters of Fire Awards Ceremony at 11 a.m. at Oakland’s Scottish Rite Center. Honorees are Assemblywomen Karen Bass, Ishle Park, Linda Tillery. Tickets are sliding scale from $45-$75. 444-2700, ext. 306. 

Ecumenical Peace Institute Annual Dinner with Dr. Joseph Gerson on “Empire and the Bomb, from Hiroshima to Iraq and Iran” at 6 p.m. at Redwood Gardens, 2951 Derby St. Suggested donation $15-$35, no one turned away. RSVP to 655-1162.  

Tour of the Berkeley City Club, Julia Morgan’s “little castle” at 1:15, 2:15, and 3:15 p.m. at 2315 Durant Ave. Free, donations welcome. 883-9710. 

Alameda Architectural Preservation Society “Historic Wood Finishes” A presentation by John Dilks at 7 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 2001 Santa Clara Ave., Alameda. Cost is $5 for non-members. www.alameda-preservation.org 

“The Question of the Supernatural” with Sarah Lewis at 10 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

“Marx’s Ecology” A discussion of Ralph Bellamy Foster’s book presented by Raj Sahani at 10 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. 595-7417. www.tifcss.org 

beatsitasana UrbanYoga Open House from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Center for Urban Peace, 2584 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. 866-732-2320. 

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

“What is Humanistic Judaism?” with Rabbi Jay Heyman and Marcia Grossman from 10 a.m. to noon at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Avenue. Suggested donation $5. To register call 428-1492.  

MONDAY, OCT. 29 

“Diaspora Talk with From Heart to Hand Teens” with film screening, at 6 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Free. 836-4649. 

Halloween Spooktacular! Join us for not so scary stories, songs, and a costume parade fro ages 3-8 at 6:45 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 4th Flr Children’s Story Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223.  

“Green and Healthy Homes” A presentation on indoor environmental quality and sustainable design at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

TUESDAY, OCT. 30 

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 Sobrante Ridge, Coach Drive. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Fall Fruit ‘n’ Fright at the Tuesday Berkeley Farmers’ Market with pears, pomegranates and persimmons, a Pumpkin Carving Contest, Day of the Dead festivities, and Fall Fruit Pies by Mission Pies from 3 to 7 p.m. on Derby St. at MLK, Jr. Way. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

“Volunteer at Any Age” A Peace Corps Information Session at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 1-800-424-8580. www.peacecorps.gov 

“Quilombo” Performance and fundraiser for Kim McMillon’s play on the Diaspora at 6 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. 836-4649. 

“Reincarnation and Buddhism” with Reverend Harry Bridge, Lodi Buddhist Temple from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave. at Fulton St. Donation $20. 809-1460. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.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.  

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 31 

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. 

Ancestor Night “Quilombo Communities of Rio de Janeiro” with Robert King at 6 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. 836-4649. 

Halloween Storytime and Costume Party for ages 3 to 8 at 3:30 p.m. at Claremont Branch, Berkeley Public Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave. 981-6280.  

Halloween at Habitot A not-too-spooky event for infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers, from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $6-$7. 647-1111. 

Howl-o-ween Celebration with tricks and treats, for dogs and humans from 5 to 6 p.m. at Ohlone Dog Park, Grant St. and Hearst Ave. Dress up your pup and bring them out to the ball! Treats for dogs and humans, costume pageant at 5:45 p.m. Sponsored by the Ohlone Dog Park Association. 845-4213. ohlonedogpark.org 

Studio One Art Center Annual Pumpkin Potluck with sharing of squash recipes and treat bags for youth, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at 1428 Alice St., off 14th St. Costumes welcome. 597-5027. 

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Colloquium with Caroline Chen on Dancing in the Streets of Contemporary Beijing: improvised USes of Space” at 1 p.m. at Wurster Hall, Room 315A, UC Campus. All welcome. laep.ced.berkeley.edu/events/colloquium 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, NOV. 1 

El Sabor de Fruitvale with a farmers’ market, bilingual storytelling with puppets, face painting, free books for children and information on community services from 3 to 7 p.m. at Fruitvale Village Plaza, 3411 East 12th St., Oakland. 535-6900. www.unitycouncil.org  

“Observations: The San Francisco Bay Area and its Built Environment” with author Susan Dinkelspiel Cerny at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Reception to follow. Tickets are $15. Sponsored by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assoc. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

Mario Savio Memorial Lecture: “From Jim Crow to Guantanamo: Prisons, Democracy and Empire” with Angela Davis, social activist and UC Santa Cruz professor at 7 p.m. at Pauley Ballroom, Martin Luther King, Jr. Student Union, UC Campus. Free. 707-823-7293. 

“Last Man Out” with William Rodriguez, a janitor in the World Trade Center North Tower who was the last person to leave the tower before it fell on 9/11, at 7 p.m. at Grand Lake Thearer, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10. 650-857-0927. www.communitycurrency.org 

“A Little Bit of So Much Truth” A film on the 2006 popular uprising in Oaxaca, Mexico at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $5-$10. Sponsored by the Task Force on the Americas. 415-924-3227. www.mitfamericas.org 

“Preventing Falls for 50+ Adults” Learn about changing behaviors, nutrition and medication management at 1:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club meets at 6:45 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza, 3290 Adeline at Alcatraz. namaste@avatar. 

freetoasthost.info  

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755.  

ONGOING 

Donate the Fruit From Your Fruit Trees We will gladly pick and deliver your fruit to community programs that feed school kids, the elderly, the homebound and the hungry. The fruit trees should be located in or very near North Berkeley and the fruit should be organic (no pesticides) and edible. This is a volunteer/ 

grassroots thing so join in!! Please email northberkeleyharvest@gmail.com or 812-3369. 

Bay-Friendly Gardening Offers Discounted Compost Bins to Alameda County residents. In addition to the bins, they also offer free workshops, videos, brochures, and answers to your compost questions. To order a bin call the compost information hotline 444-7645. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon. Oct. 29, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission meets Wed. Oct. 31 at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7487.

TUESDAY, OCT. 23 

FILM 

“Free Radical: The Films of Len Lye” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

Arab Film Festival Leila Khaled: “Hijacker” Screening and panel discussion at 7 p.m. on UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$10. For details see www.aff.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Alta Ifland and Gary Young at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College auditorium, 2050 Center St. 525-5476. 

Norman Soloman talks about his new documentary “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” and his new book “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

“East Wind Melts the Ice: A Memoir through the Seasons” A conversation with author Liza Dalby at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

“The Ecstasy of Influence” Local writers try out new material at 7:30 p.m. at Laurel Bookstore, 4100 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 531-2073. 

Katha Pollitt talks about “Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mariza, Mozambique-born fado singer, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$46. 642-9988.  

Swamp Coolers at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. 

Singers’ Open Mic with Kelly Park at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Harry Manx at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

George Cotsirilos Trio at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Dafnis Prieto Absolute Quintet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $8-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 24 

FILM 

Arab Film Festival in Berkeley Wed., and Fri.-Sun. at California Theater, 2113 Kittredge St. Tickets are $8-$10. www.aff.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

A.J. Jacobs describes “The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donations accepted. 559-9500. 

“Writing Teachers Write” Monthly student/teacher reading series at 5 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland East Bay Symphony Brass Quintet 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. 

Susan Rancourt & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ.  

Bernard Anderson & the Old School Band at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Saoco 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.  

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

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

Catie Curtis, Rachel Garlin at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $21.50-$22.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Montclair Women’s Big Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$15. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, OCT. 25 

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. 

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. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Richard Schwartz describes “The Eccentrics of 19th Century Downtown Berkeley” at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Reception to follow. Tickets are $15. Sponsored by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assoc. 841-2242.  

Gail Tsukiyama reads from “The Street of a Thousand Blossoms” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

“Words of Hope” A discussion led by Stop the Traffik featuring the book “Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Catie Curtis, Rachel Garlin at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $21.50-$22.50. 548-1761.  

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

Laura Klein and Ted Wolff at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Redhouse, Ancient Mystic & the Real Far Band at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. 

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

New York Voices at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $18-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, OCT 26 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., through Nov. 17. For information call 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. www.altarena.org 

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 

International Theater Ensemble A Propos of the Wet Snow” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Metal Shop Theatre, Willard Middle School, 2425 Stuart St. Tickets are $20-$30. 415-440-6163.  

Shotgun Players “Bulrusher” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. through Oct. 28. Tickets are $17-$25. For reservations call 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

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 

Youth Musical Theater Company Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 7 p.m. at Longfellow Auditorium, 1500 Derby St. Tickets are $8-$15. 595-5514. info@ymtcberkeley.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

RIP.MIX.BURN.BAM.PFA Opening and performances at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

FILM 

Arab Film Festival Berkeley Fri.-Sun. at California Theater 2113 Kittredge St. Tickets are $8-$10. www.aff.org 

“Canto a lo Poeta” A documentary about La Paya, a style of improvisational singing in Chile, at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lonny Shavelson and Fred Setterberg introduce “Under the Dragon: California’s New Culture” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. www.codysbooks.com  

George Taber discusses “To Cork or Not To Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science, and the Battle for the Wine Bottle” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Miami City Ballet at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$90. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Russian Patriarchate Choir at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, Durant at Dana. Tickets are $42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

martha and monica, cello-piano duet of Monica Scott and Hadley McCarroll at 8 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $15. www.hillsideclub.org 

“Witches & Warlocks, Ghosts & Goblins” Opera scenes and art songs at 7 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Alameda, 2001 Santa Clara at Chestnut, Alameda. Tickets are $12-$15, children 13 and under, free. 522-1477. www.alamedachurch.com 

University Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-9988.  

Crooked Road Tour, mountain music from Virginia at noon at Down Home Music Store, 1809b Fourth St. 204-9595. 

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

Hot Hot Caribbean Nights with Steele in motion and other performers at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Wake the Dead at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761.  

Nomad and Alex Schumacher at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Plum Crazy, Shelley Doty at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $TBA. 841-2082.  

San Pablo Project at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Isul Kim Band at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Oliver Mtukudzi & Black Spirits at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200.  

SATURDAY, OCT. 27 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Amy Meyers Band at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“The Stone Flower” Puppet show Sat. and Sun. at 11 a.m., 2 and 4 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave. 452-2259. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Halloween Happenings The art of Kim Bass, Ed Monroe and Kynthia. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at 4th Street Studio, 1717d Fourth St. Come in costume. 527-0600. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Ancient Roots/Urban Journeys: expressions for Dias de los Muertos” Gallery Talk at 2 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

May-Lee Chai reads from her new book “Hapa Girl: A Memoir” at 3 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. 

Diana Nyda and Bonnie Stoll introduce their new fitness DVD and book at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Janet Fletcher discusses “Cheese & Wine: A Guide to Selecting, Pairing and Enjoying” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Miami City Ballet at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$90. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Live Oak Concert “Harvest of Song” at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $12-$15. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Dr. Drew Mays, winner of the Van Cliburn Amateur Competition, Sat. and Sun. at 7:30 p.m. at the Interstake Auditorium, 4780 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, located just inside the entrance to the Mormon Temple. Free. 

Kensington Symphony with Daniel Glover, piano, at 8 p.m. at Northminster Presbyterian Church, 545 Ashbury Ave., El Cerrito. Suggested donation $12-$15. 524-9912. 

An Afternoon of Chopin with Rebecca Trujillo, piano, at 4 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Cost is $20. 

University Symphony Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-9988.  

Unplugged, joined by Skylar and Mother of Pearl, at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. 704-9378. 

The Wild Magnolias at 1 p.m. at Down Home Music Store, 1809b Fourth St. 204-9595. 

Yancie Taylor Jazztet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Baba Ken & Kotoja at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Moment’s Notice, improvised music, dance and theater at 8 p.m. at Western Sky Studio, 2525 8th St. Costumes welcome. Tickets are $8-$15. 992-6295. 

Land of the Blind and Anna Laube at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The Stairwell Sisters at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Refuge Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

Murder Ballads Bash featuring 5Cent Coffee, Joe Rut, the Happy Clams at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Disappear Incompletely, the music of Radiohead, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Oliver Mtukudzi & Black Spirits at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, OCT. 28 

CHILDREN 

Colibri at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $5 for children, $10 for adults. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

“Act in a Box” Owen Baker Flynn’s show of juggling, fire eating and more Sat. and Sun. at 10:30 a.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave. 452-2259. 

Spooky Stories in the Redwood Grove with Jean Ellisen and Bobbie Kinkead from 1 to 2:30 p.m. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. Tickets are $3-$10. Come in costume and bring a blanket. 643-2755. 

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 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bill Evans describes “Banjo for Dummies” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. Concert at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. 559-9500. 

“The Harlem Renaissance” with Dennis M. Chester of Cal State East Bay, at 1 p.m., followed by a screening of the film “Their Eyes Were Watching God” at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6275. 

“The Pastor’s Family” A dramatized reading in English translation of the 1891 Finnish drama by Minna Canth, at 2 p.m. at Finnish Kaleva Hall , 1970 Chestnut St. Suggested donation $5. 849-0125. latoja86@hotmail.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Miami City Ballet at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$90. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Concert/Labyrinth Walk with musician Margie Adam and special guest, Lauren Artress, from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant. Benefit for Berkeley Marina labyrinth installation. Tickets are $25-$30. 526-7377. www.margieadam.com 

Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, tabla artist at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $15. www.hillsideclub.org 

Dr. Drew Mays, winner of the Van Cliburn Amateur Competition in 2007, at 7:30 p.m. at the Interstake Auditorium, 4780 Lincoln Ave., Oakland, located just inside the entrance to the Mormon Temple. Free. 

Songs and Stories from Ukraine with Kitka at 7 p.m. at Oakland Metro Opera Theater, 201 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $20-$25. 444-0323. 

Grupo Falso Baiano at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Ron Thompson at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Americana Unplugged: Jeannie & Chuck’s Country Round-up at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Yaelisa, and flamenco open stage at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. 525-5054.  

Susan Muscarella Trio at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373.  

Jody Stecher and Bill Evans “The Secret Life of Banjos” at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

William Beatty and The Unconditionals at 6:30 p.m. at The Mt. Everest Restaurant 2011 Shattuck Ave. at University. 665-6035. 

MONDAY, OCT. 29 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“New Media Art: In Search of the Cool Obscure” with Geert Lovink, Media Theory, Amsterdam University, at 7:30 p.m. at 160 Kroeber Hall, UC Campus. 643-9565.  

Joshua Henkin reads from his new novel “Matrimony” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express theme night on “life and death” at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Project Attacca Children’s choral music at 7:30 p.m. at Holy Names University, 3500 Mountain Blvd., Oakland. Free. Suitable for all ages. http://piedmontchoirs.org 

Yolanda and Ric, opera and lieder, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

Parlor Tango, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Tito y su Son De Cuba at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.  

An engaging man, neither young nor old, tries to convince us of mankind’s inability to perform the good, the rational, the self-interested. He takes us through a veritable sideshow hall of mirrors, acting out a reunion with his old school friends who spout banalities. He challenges them, only to be humiliated.  

Then, when all go to a brothel, he moralizes sternly to a young prostitute. But his plans backfire: his friends don’t take him seriously, yet the prostitute takes him too seriously, looking up to him as her savior—a role he’s not ready to fill. 

This is a thumbnail account of Oleg Liptsin’s remarkable production and performance of Apropos of the Wet Snow. Based on Dostoyevsky’s Notes From the Underground, the show is playing Thursday through Saturday for two weeks at the Metal Shop Theater, after a run of several weeks near Union Square in San Francisco. 

But no brief description—or any description, really—can do justice to the extraordinary manner in which Liptsin stages and performs this classic tale. 

He makes every second on the stage count, whether in his intriguing initial address to the audience or alone in a rapturous moment, wreathed with the bright image of snowflakes falling as he trails his umbrella behind him. He both narrates and acts out the cartoonish characters carousing and arguing at the reunion, as well as the protagonist engaging in the intimate yet wry dialogues with Liza, the prostitute. 

He’s joined by a fine young Taiwanese actress, Ai-Cheng Ho, a graduate of the Sorbonne and the Jacques Lecoq Theatre School in Paris, on her first visit to the states. She’s the perfect foil for Liptsin’s physical dynamism, often saying everything with her eyes or the slightest gesture, even as Liptsin will express his characters in a flash perfectly with body language or quick, mask-like facial expression. 

Here the third creative component of the show comes into its own, Kevin Quennesson’s prodigious interactive video artistry, which begins with images that expand on the narrator’s address to the audience, then captures in graceful arabesques the plastic image of Liptsin performing in the space onstage, a swirl of attitudes and expressions captured in a fresco of light. 

Those who saw Liptsin’s unusual adaptation of Beckett’s Happy Days at the Berkeley City Club, where he played Beckett’s heroine Winnie, will welcome a chance to see a brilliant actor and director playing his changes over the octaves of a scale with greater range, yet still set as intimate, captivating chamber theater. 

Liptsin is a protege of Anatoly Vasiliev, one of the great postwar figures in Russian theater. There’s been a great deal of talk in recent years about Russian theater and its legacy, from the great days of Stanislavsky’s realism and Meyerhold’s stylizations—but it’s usually talk or the work of students of academic approaches to the original techniques. Liptsin’s art comes from many years of staging exciting performances like Apropos of the Wet Snow around the world. It’s the sort of show usually seen only at international theater festivals, if you’re lucky.  

It touches on the deepest origins of drama, mime, vaudeville and commedia dell’arte in popular entertainment, and of that thing Francis Fergusson called “the Histrionic Impulse,” when (as Roland Barthes fleshed it out), one person changes his appearance and turns to face his community as if beyond the pale, telling or showing them the stories of their origins and of the quality of their soul. 

Liptsin and Ho do all this as they act out Dostoyevsky’s tale of the individualist caught in the web of his own thoughts and actions. I’m tempted to say it’s the most brilliantly original, most completely theatrical show I’ve seen in seven years of reviewing. I’m tempted to say you should go if you go to nothing else during this season that’s just opened—or next. But that’s just the measure of my own enthusiasm. I hope you do see it, and that we see Oleg Liptsin & Co. more often in the very near future. 

APROPOS OF THE WET SNOW 

8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday through Nov. 3 at Metal Shop Theater, off Telegraph Avenue on Regent Street, behind Willard School. $30; $20 for senior and students. www.brownpapertickets.com or (415) 440-6163. For more information, see www.olegliptsin.

By KEN BULLOCK 

Special to the Planet 

The thunderous sound of a cane’s concussion on the old, hollow walls of an Inland Empire home in the San Gabriel Mountains ushers in Central Works’ funny, unnerving revival of its 2002 hit original, Every Inch a King, playing at the Berkeley City Club. Wielding the cane is rubber stamp king Reginald Leroy, facing his demise from a panoply of geriatric ailments and signaling his three daughters in the next room that he’s still kicking. 

As the title indicates, Gary Graves’ play has a special relationship to that great tragedy of age and familial disintegration, King Lear. What’s lifted from its forebears, though, is only the slightest pretext for outrageous comedy that might make Lear’s Fool blush. The three daughters, the acquisition and division of his kingdom, the loopiness and reported nudity of the old bastard are all there, but Central Works’ wild, bawdy tale fixes our bemusement on the daughters, not the unseen king of the hill. 

And the daughters are quite a trio: Gwen (Sandra Schlecter), spinster schoolmarm whose prologue to her kindergarten students only touches on her glass eye; entrepreneur and dynamo Rae (company co-founder Jan Zvaifler), steely-eyed and determined to turn over the old man’s property to Disney and reap the profits; and aspiring medicine woman Leah (Rica Anderson), baby sister and loose cannon, ready to burst into spirit dance and chant at the drop of an attitude. 

Through mutual recrimination, confessions, constant skirmishing and reflective moments of recollection, the three define, redefine and rip to shreds their sibling sorority, while the old bastard carries on, just out of our sight. 

There are offstage chase scenes as funny as silent film can be in the telling. And the smallest physical humor of the sisters-at-odds provokes explosions of laughter, as do even the mere crossing of paths and evil glances during parallel phone conversations. 

It’s a revival involving most of the original cast; only Jan Zvaifler, who directed the original run, is a newcomer in her role as Rae. This time playwright Graves directs, and very well, with Central Works’ signature stagecraft in the chamber theater of the Julia Morgan-designed City Club. Greg Scharpen is at his post with a panoply of sound effects, from storm to spooky visitations, and Chad Owens designed the set again, though the lights this time are by the author and the costumes are Tammy Berlin’s. 

It’s a showcase for the marvelous talents of a theater company that knows its business and never disappoints. 

EVERY INCH A KING 

8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 5 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 18 at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. $25-$29, sliding scale; Thursdays, pay-what-you-will. 558-1381. centralworks.org.

Chinese tallow tree, Triadica sebifera, Sapium sebiferum or Croton sebiferum, is pretty, tough, and dons beautiful leaf colors in autumn. The small rounded kite-shaped leaves have a gentle green color before that, and dance engagingly in the breeze flashing their soft gray undersides, a little like aspen leaves.  

It really is Chinese—well, East Asian in general, including Japan—and it really does supply a sort of tallow. (It really is a tree, too, in case you were wondering.) The tallow is a waxy coating on the seeds. These, somewhat perversely, stay on the tree when its fruit, a capsule that starts out green, matures to black, and then falls away. The seeds’ coatings give them a subtle translucence that looks nifty in the sunshine; they’re round and tend to hang in threes, making some of us (OK, also perversely) think about teeny forest-elven pawnshops.  

Have I overdosed on Terry Pratchett again? 

The “tallow” covering the seeds is actually useful too. It’s gathered, not by leprechauns with tiny little vegetable peelers, but by ordinary humans who throw a load of seeds into a vat of hot water, wait for the wax to melt off the seeds and rise to the top, and then skimming it off.  

The stuff makes decent candles (with beeswax added) and soap. I’ve seen it proposed as a source for biodiesel. I’ve heard that it can be used as cooking oil, and I’ve heard that it’s a strong purgative. I’ve heard similar things about red palm oil; maybe it’s a matter of quantity or of individual susceptibilities. Either way, don’t say I didn’t warn you. 

Some birds like the seeds, and apparently whatever the intestinally controversial element for us is, it doesn’t bother them. In particular, birds that eat bugs—woodpeckers, for example—like the fatty coating; hardly surprising if you’ve seen them go for suet cakes. They eat the whole seed and, at whatever speed and interval, eventually excrete the working part along with a nice dose of guano fertilizer. And therein lies the rub. 

How rough a rub? Here’s a hint: In Florida, it’s illegal to introduce, release, move, or possess a tallow tree without a special permit. It’s on the Noxious Weed List there and in Texas, Georgia, Puerto Rico, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and it’s being strongly proposed for addition to the official list here in California.  

This, as such steps often are, is a bit of barn-door locking as the horse disappears over the horizon. Tallow tree is so entrenched in Florida that many people think it’s a native; it was offered by nurseries as “Florida aspen.” (It’s also “popcorn tree” because of the alleged resemblance of those white berries. Somebody’s evidently been making some nasty popcorn in the Southeast.)  

You can hear or read complaints about tallow tree from all those other states, too. You can also see it defended. No surprise, since individually it’s really charming, and since people seem to confuse garden-invasive with wildland-invasive or not even to know the latter category exists or matters. 

This tree is a perfect exemplar of the myopia problem. If its seeds fall into your garden and sprout a zillion little seedlings, you know it’s garden-invasive. It’s a problem in flowerbeds; less so, in lawns and tame meadows, because seedlings are easily controlled by mowing. So, if you see only your own garden and maybe the neighbors’ (That tacky old juniper hedge! That obsessive brickwork!) you won’t see any danger in a tallow tree; just that neat shape, those pretty “berries,” that gorgeous autumn color.  

When the flock of songbirds has had its picturesque fill and flown off, though, they’re going to be flying over and hanging out in places that people don’t mow, where the hundreds of myriads of other Earthlings must live and raise their offspring and eat and sleep.  

The tree that feeds those songbirds won’t necessarily have anything the other animals and plants can use—no oak leaves or acorns for the bugs that live on them, therefore nothing for the local species that live on those bugs, therefore no pollinators for the flowers that need something with those bugs’ particular habits ... 

No acorns for the acorn woodpeckers, who might relish a tallowseed snack but can’t store it against the needs of next spring’s breeding season. No oakleaf mulch for the native understory plants either. Tallowtree leaves, in fact, might be a bit toxic to other plants as well as animals. 

And tallow tree, like so many other invasives, can make a monoculture thicket that goes on for yards, and another like it just downstream, and in five years yet another downstream from that. For some species, that’s no better than paving. The catch is that we don’t know which species those will be, or who else depends on them.  

Dang. And I really like tallow tree; it looks good and feels pleasant to work on. Too bad.  

Photograph by Ron Sullivan  

Chinese tallow trees, these in the , Oakland hills, in fall color right now.  

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

TUESDAY, OCT. 23 

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 Miller/Knox Keller Beach. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

“Oil, Gas, and Global Warming: Youth Confronting America’s Petroleum Addiction” with recent recipients of the Brower Youth Award at 6 p.m. at Free Speech Movement Cafe, Moffitt Library, UC Campus. 643-6445. 

“Party Planning for the Holidays” Benefit for Alameda County Community Food Bank with Barbara Llewellyn and Ron Morgan from 10 a.m. to noon at the Food Bank, 7900 Edgewater Drive, Oakland. Tickets are $20, plus a canned food donation, and includes continental breakfast and a guided tour of the facility. 635-3663. www.accfb.org 

“Who Are the Real Fascists?” a panel discussion on the assault on critical thinking at US universities at 8 p.m. at 145 Dwinelle, UC Campus. 848-1196. 

Berkeley High School Governance Council meets at 4:15 p.m. at Berkeley Community Theater Lobby. Topics include School Governance Council Officers, BSEP Officers, ELL Budget. 644-4803. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from noon to 1 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library. 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 24 

Birding with the Golden Gate Audubon Society at Lake Merritt and Lakeside Park in Oakland. Meet at 9:30 a.m. at the large spherical cage near Nature Center at Perkins and Bellevue. 834-1066. 

Walking Tour of Jack London Waterfront Meet at 10 a.m. at the corner of Broadway and Embarcadero. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234.  

“Senior Housing Crisis: How to Fight Back” with Rae Mary, Berkeley Housing, and Jesse Arreguin, Housing Advocate, at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst, Corner of MLK. Sponsored by the Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers. 548-9696. 

Berkeley Community Gardening Collaborative with guest speaker, Martin Borque, executive director of the Ecology Center, at 6:30 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Potluck. 548-2220. 

United Nations 62nd Anniversary Celebration at 6 p.m. in the I-House Auditorium, UC Campus. For cost and reservations contact larnie@berkeley.edu 

“Sabotaging Education” How workplace bullying and psychological abuse can undermine students’ education with William Lepowsky at 10 a.m. at Room G-209 at Laney College, 8th and Fallon Streets, Oakland. 464-3181. 

“From Seed to Supper with Mollie Katzen and Friends” at 6:30 p.m. at Windrush School, Multipurpose Room, 1800 Elm St., El Cerrito. Free. 970-7580. http://windrush.org 

“Nuestro Petroleo y Otros Cuentos” A documentary on the oil and coal industries in Venezuela at 8 p.m. at Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shatttuck Ave. www.thelonghaul.org 

“An Evening with Elvia Alvarado” Honduran human rights activist and peasant leader at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. at 27th, Oakland. Cost is $5-$20 sliding scale. 1-800-838-3006. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will have a nature scavenger hunt from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Black Cat Pocket Pals Crafts inspired by the book for ages 8 and up at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 4th floor, Children’s Department. 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223.  

Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Day Open House from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the AIMC Berkeley, 2550 Shattuck Ave. at Blake. 684-2552. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets t 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

THURSDAY, OCT. 25 

Birding with the Golden Gate Audubon Society at the Albany Mudflats at Eastshore State Park, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. For meeting place call 540-8749. 

Oakland Bird Club with Allan Ridley and Helen McKenna-Ridley on “The Anatomy of Flying” at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, Rockridge Branch, 5366 College Ave. 444-0355. 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll have a nature scavenger hunt from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will have a nature scavenger hunt from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Halloween Stories and Songs for Preschoolers at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Public Library, 1170 The Alameda, at Hopkins. 981-6250.  

Election 2008: Presidential Forum with representatives from the Clinton, Obama and Edwards Campaings at the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, at 6:45 p.m at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. 

“The Eccentrics of 19th Century Downtown Berkeley” with author Richard Schwartz at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Reception to follow. Tickets are $15. Sponsored by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Assoc. 841-2242. www.berkeleyheritage.com 

“Seeking Palestinian-Israeli Peace” A discussion with Maha Abu-Dayyeh Shamas, Women’s Centre for Legal Aid & Counseling, Jerusalem; Anan Attiri, Director, Nablus Governorate; Naava Eisin, Director of the Archives of Jewish Education at Tel Aviv Univ.; Molly Malekar, Director of Bat Shalom of the Jerusalem Link and Jessica Neuwirth, Founding President, Equality Now, at 5 p.m. at Goldman School of Public Policy, Room 150, LeRoy Ave. entrance near Hearst. 

DataCenter’s 30th Anniversary Celebration Dinner and Reception to honor the DataCenter and its partners at 6 p.m. at Historic Sweet’s Ballroom, 1933 Broadway, Oakland Tickets are $100 per person, $50 per grassroots organizer, RSVP required. 839-3100.  

“Words of Hope” A discussion led by Stop the Traffik featuring the book “Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

“Global Awakenings: Communities that Work for Everyone” An evening with Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne, founder of the Sarvodaya in Sri Lanka, at Alta Bates Health Education Center, 400 Hawthone Ave., Oakland. Donation $10.  

“Behind the Scene Efforts to Recover Hostages in Iraq” with Colonel Gerald Schumacher at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, UC Campus. Cost is $5. http://ihouse.berkeley.edu 

“Homeschooling 101” with parents and young people from Family Village, Berkeley, and Alameda Oakland Home Learners at 7:30 p.m. at Grace North Church, 1938 Cedar St. 895-2312. 

Easy Does It (EDI) Board of Directors’ Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 1636 University Ave. 845-5513. www.easyland.org 

FRIDAY, OCT. 26 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Camille Minichino, author of “Sister in Crime: Who Will Murder Whim, and How?” 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.  

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll have a nature scavenger hunt from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

“Until When” a film by Dahna Abourahme which follows four Palestinian families living in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp at 7 p.m. followed by update & discussion with Jeanne Shaterian at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donation requested, no one turned away. 841-4824. 

“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.  

Community Dance/Barn Dance at 8 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$10. 650-365-2913. bacds@bacds.org 

Auction and Sale of Beardless Irises at 8 p.m. at the Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Sponsored by the Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society. Free. http://bayareairis.org. 

SATURDAY, OCT. 27 

Bat Show at 1 and 3 p.m. at the Kensington Community Center, 59 Arlington Ave., Kensington. For ages 5 and up. Free, but tickets required. 524-3043. 

Fall Fruit Tasting at the Saturday Farmers’ Market with appleas, Asian and European pears, and persimmons, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Center St. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Way 

Fall Birdwalk in the UC Botanical Garden with Dennis Wolf and Chris Carmichael from 9 to 10:30 a.m., 200 Centennial Dr. Cost is $12-$15. Registration required. 643-2755. 

Haunted House and Pre-Halloween Party from 6:30 to 8:15 p.m. at St. John’s Church, 2727 College Ave. For all ages, adjustable scariness. Wear costumes. Bring a book, food item or toy for a hungry or homeless child. Donations also welcome. Grades 6-12 invited to come at 3 p.m. to help set up the Haunted House. 845-6830. 

Halloween Celebration in Albany and Berkeley from 5 to 8 p.m. at Ray’s Pumpkin Patch, 1245 Solano Ave., Albany. 527-5358. www.SolanoStroll.org 

Celebrate Halloween at the Haunted Harbor Festival from 3 to 7 p.m. at Jack London Square. Safe and fun activities for children including live music, puppet show and costume contest.  

Jack O’ Lantern Jamboree A Halloween Celebration for the whole family Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Belleview Ave., Oakland. Cost is $8. www.fairyland.org 

Feast of the Angelitos Come build a “nicho,” and other arts and crafts and enjoy traditional sweets, Sat. and Sun. from 2 to 4 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Dias de los Muertos Procession, featuring Ernesto Olmos at 6 p.m. Free and open to all ages. 228-3207. 

“Demystifying the Tarot, It's in the Cards” with a Halloween Happening from 7 to 9 p.m. at 4th Street Studio, 1717d 4th St. 527-0600. 

Monster Bash Aboard the Aircraft Carrier USS Hornet from 7:30 p.m. to midnight at 707 W Hornet Ave., Pier 3, Alameda. Tickets are $20 for adults, $10 for children. 521-8448, ext. 282. www.hornetevents.com 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around Preservation Park to see Victorian architecture. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Preservation Park at 13th St. and MLK, Jr. Way. Tour lasts 90 minutes. For reservations call 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

3rd Not-So-Silent Church Auction with live music by jazz ensemble The House Band, at 7:00 p.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. at Napa. $10. 524-2921. www.epworthberkeley.org 

Berkeley Digital Media Conference “Current and Emerging Intersections” from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Haas School of Business, UC Campus. Organized by Berkeley MBA students and hosted by the Berkeley Digital Media and Entertainment Club. http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/haas/maps.html 

Computer Recycling from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200.  

Meet Your Friendly Firefighters For ages 3 to 7 at 10:30 a.m. Central Berkeley Public Library, 4th Floor, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223.  

Protest the War in Iraq from 2 to 4 p.m. on the corner of Acton and University. Sponsored by the Strawberry Creek Lodge Tenants Assoc. and Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers. 841-4143. 

“Uyghurs on the Silk Road” A celebration of people and culture, dinner at 6 p.m. followed by program at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, UC Campus. Cost is $5, plus $9.25 for dinner. http://ihouse.berkeley.edu 

“Creating a Mixed Border for Year Round Color” with gardener Aerin Moore at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

Ongoing Vocal Jazz Workshop at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin at the corner of Masonic, on Saturdays from 2:30 to 4 p.m. 524-6797. 

“Savvy Woman’s Guide to Buying a Home” at 2 p.m. at The Bellevue Club, 525 Bellevue Ave.. Oakland. 451-1000. 

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. 28 

Oakland Heritage Alliance House Tour of the Historic San Antonio Neighborhood A self-guided tour of ten houses open from 1 to 5 p.m. Tour begins at 2002 10th Ave. Tickets are $25-$35. 763-9218. info@oaklandheritage.org 

Fall Colors of Briones Join a moderate 4 mile hike with naturalist Tara Reinertson to learn about the diversity of oaks. Bring lunch, sunscreen and water. 525-2233. 

Haunted Caves of the Environmental Education Center at Tilden Explore and learn the facts and fictions of Halloween at 1 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center. Cost is $3 for ages 3 and up. 525-2233. 

Spooky Tales in the UC Botanical Gardens at 1 p.m. at 200 Centennial Drive. Come in costume and bring a blanket. Cost is $3-$10. 643-2755.  

Dia de los Muertos Festival from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on International Blvd., between Fruitvale Ave. and 40th Ave. with community altars, traditional dance, live music, children’s ativities, international food and more. 535-6900. www.unitycouncil.org 

Chabot Elementary School Fall Carnival with games, activities, refreshments and entertainment for all ages, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 6686 Chabot Rd. at Patton, Rockridge. www.chabotelementary.org 

Ghostwalk and Graveyard Tales from 7 to 9 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 228-3207. 

Free Market at Oak Grove Tree-Sit from 1 to 5 p.m. at Piedmont Ave. north of Bancroft. Autumn Ritual at 5:30 p.m. 938-2109. www.saveoaks.com 

Women of Color Resource Center 9th Annual Sisters of Fire Awards Ceremony at 11a.m. at Oakland’s Scottish Rite Center. Honorees are Assemblywomen Karen Bass, Ishle Park, Linda Tillery. Tickets are sliding scale from $45-$75. 444-2700, ext. 306. 

Ecumenical Peace Institute Annual Dinner with Dr. Joseph Gerson on “Empire and the Bomb, from Hiroshima to Iraq and Iran” at 6 p.m. at Redwood Gardens, 2951 Derby St. Suggested donation $15-$35, no one turned away. RSVP to 655-1162.  

Tour of the Berkeley City Club, Julia Morgan’s “little castle” at 1:15, 2:15, and 3:15 p.m. at 2315 Durant Ave. Free, donations welcome. 883-9710. 

Alameda Architectural Preservation Society “Historic Wood Finishes” A presentation by John Dilks at 7 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 2001 Santa Clara Ave., Alameda. Cost is $5 for non-members. www.alameda-preservation.org 

“The Question of the Supernatural” with Sarah Lewis at 10 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

“Marx’s Ecology” A discussion of Ralph Bellamy Foster’s book presented by Raj Sahani at 10 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. 595-7417. www.tifcss.org 

beatsitasana UrbanYoga Open House from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Center for Urban Peace, 2584 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. 866-732-2320. 

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

“What is Humanistic Judaism?” with Rabbi Jay Heyman and Marcia Grossman from 10 a.m. to noon at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Avenue. Suggestion donation $5. To register call 428-1492. 

MONDAY, OCT. 29 

“Diaspora Talk with From Heart to Hand Teens” with film screening, at 6 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Free. 836-4649. 

Halloween Spooktacular! Join us for not so scary stories, songs, and a costume parade fro ages 3-8 at 6:45 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 4th Flr Children’s Story Room, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6223.  

“Green and Healthy Homes” A presentation on indoor environmental quality and sustainable design at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

ONGOING 

Donate the Fruit From Your Fruit Trees We will gladly pick and deliver your fruit to community programs that feed school kids, the elderly, the homebound and the hungry. The fruit trees should be located in or very near North Berkeley and the fruit should be organic (no pesticides) and edible. This is a volunteer/grassroots thing so join in!! Please email northberkeleyharvest@gmail.com or 812-3369. 

Bay-Friendly Gardening Offers Discounted Compost Bins to Alameda County residents. In addition to the bins, they also offer free workshops, videos, brochures, and answers to your compost questions. To order a bin or for free information about composting, visit www.BayFriendly.org or call the compost information hotline 444-7645. 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., Oct. 23, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., Oct. 24, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6601. 

Civic Arts Commission meets Wed., Oct. 24, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7533.  

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meets Wed., Oct. 24, at 7 p.m., at the Emergency Operations Center, 997 Cedar St. 981-5502.  

Energy Commission meets Wed., Oct. 24, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5434.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Oct. 24, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484. 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Oct. 24, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Mental Health Commission meets Wed., Oct. 25, at 6:30 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. 981-5213. 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Oct. 25, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7410.