Arts & Events
The Theater: Altarena Stages ‘Man Who Saved Christmas’
Christmas in wartime America—but it’s the First World War, and the administration is set to declare a moratorium on toy sales to encourage families to buy Liberty Bonds. -more-
Wild Neighbors: Junco Testosterone and Water Snake Bites
A couple of odds and ends: Robert Sapolsky, the Stanford neurobiologist, published a collection of his provocative essays a few years back as The Trouble with Testosterone. Where do you begin? Sapolsky was mostly interested in the hormone’s effect on the behavior of East African savannah baboons (see his A Primate’s Memoirs for tales of fieldwork) and on humans. But it’s not just a primate thing, or even a mammalian one. Birds have testosterone too, as do reptiles, amphibians, even fish: a common vertebrate heritage. -more-
Correction
The logo for Berkeley’s Hillside Club was not designed by David Lance Goines as captioned in the last issue. The logo was designed by Hillside Club member Bernard Maybeck. -more-
You Write the Planet
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-
James Rosen’s ‘Homage’ at GTU Library
James Rosen’s paintings at the Graduate Theological Union library are called “Homage.” They are indeed in praise of the old masters as chosen by the painter, who sees himself as a messenger, detecting his signals from the past so that he can employ his artistic talent to send them on to us, the viewers. Rosen, like all good artists, is aware that his work is part of a flow which goes back to Paleolithic times. -more-
Goines Posters on Display at Hillside Club
See 100 posters by David Lance Goines at the Hillside Club this weekend. -more-
Jazz Drummer Roy Haines at Yoshis
In the 1940s, jazz drummer extraordinaire Roy Haynes worked with Lester Young, Charlie Parker (“My Little Suede Shoes”), Bud Powell (“Dance of the Infidels”) and Miles Davis. -more-
Moving Pictures: Early Cinema’s Grandest Spectacle
Though he is often credited with more than he contributed, D.W. Griffith is undoubtedly the first of the great cinematic artists. He did not create the tools of the trade, nor invent its techniques, but he imbued them with meaning, gave significance and weight to them, and thus established the grammar of motion pictures. -more-
Moving Pictures: 'True Heart Susie' Shows Griffith's Softer Side
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
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'
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
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-
East Bay: Then and Now: North Gables: Early Exemplar of Equal Opportunity Housing
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
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
Welcome to my watershed. I really like it here but it is, basically, a big clay bowl and we’re all salad. -more-