Opinion

An e-mail from an old friend chided me recently for this space’s seeming pre-occupation with local land use issues (and with opera). He pointed out that serious national matters like Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s inexcusable endorsement of Michael Mukasey deserve attention too, and he’s got a point. Luckily here in Berkeley we’ve got a good number of writers, some better than me, to keep track of Feinstein’s lapses, and they’re doing a sterling job, so we are off the hook. -more-

If anyone wonders if there’s a role for classical music in the hard-edged 21st century, they should acquaint themselves with the Oakland East Bay Symphony, which had its season’s opening on Friday night at the Paramount in Oakland. We go to a good number of musical events, some of them really big hits with their audiences, but it’s only at the Paramount with Maestro Michael Morgan wielding the baton that bravura performances are rewarded with shouts of “right on” from the balcony. Sometimes (horrors) they come even after a particularly thrilling movement, in defiance or ignorance of the classical convention which counsels waiting until the whole piece is finished to cheer. It’s not just polite clapping, or even the vigorous foot-stomping on the wooden floor of Berkeley’s First Congregational Church which is used to applaud the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. When the enormous Paramount audiences like something, it’s expressed by full-throated roars, often ornamented with the kind of piercing whistles normally heard at rock concerts or baseball games. -more-

CLEANUP PART II -more-

The Biggest Game in Town is Mayor Tom Bates’ favorite—Deals for Developers. -more-

EDITOR’S NOTE: This correspondence between Downtown Area Planning Advisory Committee staffer Matt Taecker and former city land-use Planning Manager Mark Rhoades was sent to the DAPAC and has been circulating on the Internet for the last week. -more-

In his Nov. 9 letter, Jeffrey Jensen of North Oakland is unsatisfied with nebulous crime-fighting plans and bigger-picture orations from Mayor Dellums. -more-

Dear Chancellor Birgeneau, -more-

It is human nature to form our opinions out of small bits of available information, a large dose of personal experience, with random bits of stuff we’ve heard from other sources thrown in; that’s how we figure out the world. Unfortunately, all too often we form our opinions based on too little information combined with too much “stuff we’ve heard”—and that’s how we wind up with bigotry and prejudice. -more-

FRESH AIR? -more-

Despite its mission of dialogue, KPFA has become a venue for increasingly nasty attacks, which exhaust the station and turn listeners off. I would like to set the record straight on a number of allegations that have been printed in these pages and to ask the question: can KPFA afford to be at war with itself? -more-

The current conflict within the KPFA community is a cauldron of bitter feelings and resentments. There are three slates of candidates currently running for the Local Station Board. I’ll discuss the two slates that are most directly at loggerheads: “Peoples Radio” and “Concerned Listeners.” The former group has severe criticisms of current station management and governance—criticisms that have been voiced quite persuasively here in the pages of the Planet, one of the venues where this debate has taken place. -more-

Despite how he tried to portray himself in a recent East Bay Monthy article, Patrick Kennedy is no “Jane Jacobs.” He’s more like Jane’s nemesis, Robert Moses —the infamous developer who decimated New York City with freeways and oversized housing projects from 1920 to 1970. -more-