Metal sculptor Yves Darius of Croix Bosquets, Haiti, shows off one of his pieces. His work will be among the many crafts available at the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant Crafts fair Saturday and Sunday. Photograph by Jennifer Patntaléon.
Metal sculptor Yves Darius of Croix Bosquets, Haiti, shows off one of his pieces. His work will be among the many crafts available at the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant Crafts fair Saturday and Sunday. Photograph by Jennifer Patntaléon.

Page One

Buying with a Conscience at the International Holiday Crafts Fair

By Judith Scherr
Friday November 30, 2007

The “tap-tap-tap” you hear coming from the shops that line some of the narrow streets in Croix des Bosquets is the sound of artisans pounding nails into metal, crafting the recycled iron mermaids or butterflies that have given the bustling, dusty town, just 15 minutes northeast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, its reputation for metal sculpture, says Jennifer Pantaléon, whose nonprofit, Zanmi Lakay, brings Haitian arts and crafts to buyers in the U.S. -more-



Council Cleans Up Commons for Shoppers

By Judith Scherr
Friday November 30, 2007


Next Steps for the Public Commons

By Judith Scherr
Friday November 30, 2007

While enforcement for new restrictions against those lying on the sidewalk and smoking in commercial areas will likely begin within six weeks, new services—lauded by supporters as an integral part of the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative passed by the City Council Tuesday—will take more time. -more-



BioFuel Project Clashes with Kandy’s Car Wash at Corner

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday November 30, 2007

A vehement burst of community protest compelled the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) to postpone permitting BioFuel Oasis to establish a filling station at 1441 Ashby Ave. Thursday. -more-



Council Approves Funds For Ed Roberts Campus Fund

By Judith Scherr
Friday November 30, 2007

For some, council meetings are drudgery. But for Dimitri Belser, president of the Ed Roberts Campus board of directors, and others who came to Tuesday’s meeting to support the ERC, the session proved to be exactly what they had hoped for. -more-



Features

Stadium Grove Tree-Sitters Set for First Anniversary

By Richard Brenneman
Friday November 30, 2007

Berkeley’s tree-sitters and their supporters are getting ready for Sunday’s celebration that will mark the end of the first year of a colorful campus protest. -more-


BUSD Selects BHS Superintendent Finalists

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday November 30, 2007

The Berkeley Board of Education selected the finalists Monday to fill the post of superintendent for the Berkeley Unified School District. -more-


Oakland School Officials Await Decision on Local Control

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday November 30, 2007

State Schools Superintendent Jack O’Connell appears ready to turn over two more areas of control to the Oakland Unified School District on the recommendation of the Fiscal Crisis & Assistance Management Team (FCMAT), a move that could lead directly to the hiring of a new OUSD superintendent under local control. -more-


FCMAT Oakland Schools Report Summary

Friday November 30, 2007

FCMAT rates on a 10-point scale, with scores given to several individual standards within each of the five operational areas (community relations and governance, finance, facilities management, personnel management, and pupil achievement), and then the operational area itself is given an average of the individual standards scores. -more-


Planners Tackle West Berkeley Density, Housing Rules

By Richard Brenneman
Friday November 30, 2007

Planning Commissioners began their trek through one of Berkeley’s most complex and cabalistic arts Wednesday night—deciphering the city’s policies on density bonus and inclusionary housing. -more-


Dellums to Break Up Police Department

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday November 30, 2007

The administration of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums moved swiftly to consolidate its recent police 12-hour day arbitration victory, announcing that the Oakland Police Department will be broken up into three “geographically accountable” command areas effective Jan. 19. -more-


Berkeley High Beat: Help Needed for BHS Holiday Meal

By Rio Bauce
Friday November 30, 2007

On Dec. 15, hundreds of people around Berkeley will come to eat a holiday meal at Berkeley High School (BHS) from 1-5 p.m. The BHS Associated Student Body (ASB) is calling on Berkeley residents and businesses to help by volunteering or donating money or food. -more-


You Write the Planet

Friday November 30, 2007

It’s time to submit your essays, poems, stories, artwork and photographs for the Planet’s annual holiday reader contribution issue, which will be published on Dec. 21. Send your submissions, preferably no more than 1,000 words, to holiday@berkeleydailyplanet.com. Deadline is 5 p.m. on Dec. 16. -more-


Police Blotter

By Rio Bauce
Friday November 30, 2007

Domestic violence -more-


Fire Log

By Richard Brenneman
Friday November 30, 2007

Cat on a hot thin rug -more-


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Friday November 30, 2007

WORK IT OUT TOGETHER -more-


Commentary: Whom Do We Blame?

By Alan Miller
Friday November 30, 2007

In last Friday’s issue of Berkeley Daily Planet, Jonathan Stevens asks one of the most discussed questions today: “Whom do we blame....” for the failures in public education? This is easy to answer: let’s start with the citizens of California, who passed Proposition 13 and began the process of starving what was once considered the premier public education system in the country. That initiative quickly gutted the state budget and made it unlikely that, without an appeal, California could ever add the per pupil funding expenditures necessary to achieve the results citizens say they desire. California has the highest class sizes in the nation and moves between 40th and 48th in per pupil expenditures (depending upon which numbers one uses). Thank God for Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the nation, and one of the few to be as consistently stingy as we are with our students. Nina Simone said it all in her classic song! And thanks to Berkeley citizens for Measure A and all of the bond measures which have supplemented the district budget. -more-


Commentary: Schools Are Better Now

By Al Durrette
Friday November 30, 2007

In “The State of Education” in the Nov. 23 Daily Planet, teacher Jonathan Stephens decries the “diminishing intellectual returns” in today’s classrooms, but fails to appreciate the deepened understanding of other cultures and behaviors, and the internalization of the idea of justice, that students achieve in today’s multi-cultural equal-opportunity classrooms. -more-


Commentary: Talking Points for the Superintendent Selection Process

By Michael Miller
Friday November 30, 2007

The following text is the United In Action “Talking Points for Superintendent Selection Process,” submitted to the Leadership Associates (“Leadership”) consulting group. Leadership is the agency contracted by the BUSD to find our next superintendent. -more-


Commentary: Real Solutions Needed for Greenhouse Gases

By James Singmaster
Friday November 30, 2007

Richard Brenneman’s comment in Nov. 20 issue of the Planet continues to point to the deficiencies of the BP grant and agrofuel programs, but the real deficiency has gotten little mention until Dr. J. Overpeck’s statement on the last IPCC report in the San Francisco Chronicle on Nov. 18. In the front page article, Dr. Overpeck, director of the University of Arizona, Institute for the Study of Planet Earth and member of the IPCC, is cited as saying “It’s going to get warmer” from industrial emissions remaining in the atmosphere for decades to centuries without making mention of new emissions that will be adding to raise the level of greenhouse gases (GHGs) mainly carbon dioxide. The real issue that has to be addressed to get some control of global warming is finding a means to remove some of the 35 percent overload of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution. In the same article, Dr. S. Schneider of Stanford cited that overload in the article as being the main cause of warming seen in the last 40-50 years. Almost all proposals for curbing of emissions from vehicles and power plants, which still allows some adding to that 35 percent, and for growing agrofuels, which allow a lot of non-energy generating recycling of that gas, do nothing to remove any of that 35 percent. -more-


Editorial

Editorial: Pie in the Sky for the Holiday Table

By Becky O’Malley
Friday November 30, 2007

If you want a good laugh, type “sex on the sidewalk” into Google News. This will give you the opportunity to witness, firsthand, the birth of an urban legend. And where has it been born? Why, in our beloved San Francisco Chronicle, of course. Carolyn Jones reported on Tuesday that: “The new plan cracks down on yelling, littering, camping, drunkenness, smoking, urinating and sex on sidewalks and in parks.” I know she was at the City Council meeting—so was I, and I saw her. But where did she get that sentence? Never mind, it’s been picked up all over the map as the key component of whatever the City Council thinks it passed on Tuesday night. -more-


Columns

Column: Undercurrents: A Ride, Or a Walk, In Uptown-Downtown Oakland

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday November 30, 2007

Last summer, I happened to be walking with an out-of-town couple who had come, early, to a Paramount Theater concert and, with some time to kill, wanted to know if I knew of any good places in the downtown area to get something to eat. I did, actually. Several places. But Jack London Square seemed too far for them to walk and, with little city signage to help them along the way, I thought they might be mistrustful of any directions a strange local might give them that took them off Broadway to Old Oakland or Chinatown. They got a hot dog from one of the vendors who works outside the Paramount events, I think, and an opportunity was lost. -more-


East Bay: Then and Now: North Gables: Early Exemplar of Equal Opportunity Housing

By Daniella Thompson
Friday November 30, 2007

In 1948, University of California enrollment at the Berkeley campus reached 22,000 students, making adequate housing the number-one problem facing the student body. That year, the California Alumni Association published the book Students at Berkeley, which contained a large chapter devoted to housing and analyzed potential student housing sites. -more-


Garden Variety: Shopping for the Gardener On Your List, Part 1

By Ron Sullivan
Friday November 30, 2007

It’s post-Thanksgiving: socially, it’s December. Time to think about holiday shopping. -more-


About the House: A Resident’s Guide to Our Mushy Landscape

By Matt Cantor
Friday November 30, 2007

Welcome to my watershed. I really like it here but it is, basically, a big clay bowl and we’re all salad. -more-


Arts & Events

Moving Pictures: 'True Heart Susie' Shows Griffith's Softer Side

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday November 30, 2007

D.W. Griffith is known these days primarily for his large-scale epics Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). And while these films contributed greatly to the history and art of motion pictures, they do not fully convey the range and power of Griffith's talent, nor are they his most enjoyable films. -more-


Moving Pictures: The Movie Heard ‘Round the World

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday November 30, 2007

The great thing about DVD is that it has given the major studios the opportunity to finally do right by the classics in their archives. For the first six or seven years of the format’s existence, the studios were, for the most part, content to simply reissue their back catalogues in cheap editions, often without any attempt to remaster the image. -more-


Moving Pictures: The Talkies Learn to Move: Pabst's 'Threepenny Opera'

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday November 30, 2007

When Bertolt Brecht and G.W. Pabst decided to collaborate in bringing the former's Threepenny Opera to the screen, both men were at the peak of their careers. But the collaboration would be anything but smooth. Indeed it was fraught with conflict, as so many Brecht projects were. -more-


Lorna K. to Record First CD Live At San Francisco’s Plush Room

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday November 30, 2007

Vocalist and Berkeley resident Lorna Kollmeyer—Lorna K. to her many Bay Area fans—is topping off her 15-year “overnight success” career of singing the American songbook with a live recording session for her first CD at the Plush Room in San Francisco Monday evening, Dec. 3. -more-


Arts Listings

Arts Calendar

Friday November 30, 2007

James Rosen’s ‘Homage’ at GTU Library

By Peter Selz, Special to the Planet
Friday November 30, 2007

Goines Posters on Display at Hillside Club

By Karen Jacobs, Special to the Planet
Friday November 30, 2007

Jazz Drummer Roy Haines at Yoshis

By Ira Steingroot
Friday November 30, 2007

Moving Pictures: Early Cinema’s Grandest Spectacle

By Justin DeFreitas
Tuesday December 30, 2008 - 09:23:00 PM

Events Listings

Berkeley This Week

Friday November 30, 2007

Back Stories

Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: Pie in the Sky for the Holiday Table 11-30-2007

Editorial: Substituting Private Profit for Public Policy 11-27-2007

Public Comment

Letters to the Editor 11-30-2007

Commentary: Whom Do We Blame? By Alan Miller 11-30-2007

Commentary: Schools Are Better Now By Al Durrette 11-30-2007

Commentary: Talking Points for the Superintendent Selection Process By Michael Miller 11-30-2007

Commentary: Real Solutions Needed for Greenhouse Gases By James Singmaster 11-30-2007

Letters to the Editor 11-27-2007

Commentary: The DAPAC Finale: A Convoluted But Positive Ending By Jim Novosel 11-27-2007

Commentary: Act Rationally: Go Independent By Joanna Graham 11-27-2007

News

Buying with a Conscience at the International Holiday Crafts Fair By Judith Scherr 11-30-2007

Council Cleans Up Commons for Shoppers By Judith Scherr 11-30-2007

Next Steps for the Public Commons By Judith Scherr 11-30-2007

BioFuel Project Clashes with Kandy’s Car Wash at Corner By Riya Bhattacharjee 11-30-2007

Council Approves Funds For Ed Roberts Campus Fund By Judith Scherr 11-30-2007

Stadium Grove Tree-Sitters Set for First Anniversary By Richard Brenneman 11-30-2007

BUSD Selects BHS Superintendent Finalists By Riya Bhattacharjee 11-30-2007

Oakland School Officials Await Decision on Local Control By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor 11-30-2007

FCMAT Oakland Schools Report Summary 11-30-2007

Planners Tackle West Berkeley Density, Housing Rules By Richard Brenneman 11-30-2007

Dellums to Break Up Police Department By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor 11-30-2007

Berkeley High Beat: Help Needed for BHS Holiday Meal By Rio Bauce 11-30-2007

You Write the Planet 11-30-2007

Police Blotter By Rio Bauce 11-30-2007

Fire Log By Richard Brenneman 11-30-2007

Flash: Council Cleans Up Commons for Shoppers By Judith Scherr 11-27-2007

Reader Report: Grandmothers Break Oak Grove Siege By Matthew Taylor, Special to the Planet 11-27-2007

Street Behavior, Solar Contract Top Council Agenda By Judith Scherr 11-27-2007

Downtown Panel Meets Thursday for Final Votes By Richard Brenneman 11-27-2007

Berkeley Marina Bird Rescue Center Closes as Cleanup Continues By Riya Bhattacharjee 11-27-2007

International Baccalaureate Site Visit Positive, Says BHS By Riya Bhattacharjee 11-27-2007

Centennial Exhibit Tracks History of Berkeley Parks By Steven Finacom, Special to the Planet 11-27-2007

Berkeley City College Announces Selection Of New President By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor 11-27-2007

Port Commission Considers New Bay Bridge Billboard Deal By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor 11-27-2007

University Seeks Bids for Kerr Campus, Li Ka-Shing Building By Richard Brenneman 11-27-2007

Planning Commission Faces Light Agenda By Richard Brenneman 11-27-2007

Columns

Column: Undercurrents: A Ride, Or a Walk, In Uptown-Downtown Oakland By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor 11-30-2007

East Bay: Then and Now: North Gables: Early Exemplar of Equal Opportunity Housing By Daniella Thompson 11-30-2007

Garden Variety: Shopping for the Gardener On Your List, Part 1 By Ron Sullivan 11-30-2007

About the House: A Resident’s Guide to Our Mushy Landscape By Matt Cantor 11-30-2007

Column: The Public Eye: Cloning Dubya By Bob Burnett 11-27-2007

Wild Neighbors: Thanksgiving with the Grebes and Scoters By Joe Eaton 11-27-2007

Arts & Events

Arts Calendar 11-30-2007

James Rosen’s ‘Homage’ at GTU Library By Peter Selz, Special to the Planet 11-30-2007

Goines Posters on Display at Hillside Club By Karen Jacobs, Special to the Planet 11-30-2007

Jazz Drummer Roy Haines at Yoshis By Ira Steingroot 11-30-2007

Moving Pictures: Early Cinema’s Grandest Spectacle By Justin DeFreitas 12-30-2008

Moving Pictures: 'True Heart Susie' Shows Griffith's Softer Side By Justin DeFreitas 11-30-2007

Moving Pictures: The Movie Heard ‘Round the World By Justin DeFreitas 11-30-2007

Moving Pictures: The Talkies Learn to Move: Pabst's 'Threepenny Opera' By Justin DeFreitas 11-30-2007

Lorna K. to Record First CD Live At San Francisco’s Plush Room By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet 11-30-2007

East Bay: Then and Now: North Gables: Early Exemplar of Equal Opportunity Housing By Daniella Thompson 11-30-2007

Garden Variety: Shopping for the Gardener On Your List, Part 1 By Ron Sullivan 11-30-2007

About the House: A Resident’s Guide to Our Mushy Landscape By Matt Cantor 11-30-2007

Berkeley This Week 11-30-2007

Arts Calendar 11-27-2007

Vincent, Reed Talk Poetry at Pegasus By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet 11-27-2007

Around the East Bay 11-27-2007

Books: Looking Beyond Ken Burns’ ‘The War’ By Helen Rippier Wheeler 11-27-2007

Wild Neighbors: Thanksgiving with the Grebes and Scoters By Joe Eaton 11-27-2007

Berkeley This Week 11-27-2007

Correction 11-27-2007