Doug Buckwald 

Three people were taken to area hospitals after two cars collided at the intersection of College Avenue and Dwight Way at 10:45 a.m. Thursday. A witness said one of the injured was a bicyclist who was struck by one of the cars following the collision. A police report was still being prepared at press time.

By Richard Brenneman 

Eugene Austin Evans, the Berkeley scoutmaster who sued the city after it refused a free berth to a Sea Scout ship because of the organization’s anti-gay policies, was arrested Tuesday on six counts of child sexual abuse. 

Another 18 counts were added later by the Alameda County District Attorney’s office, charging ongoing acts with four youths. The crimes were allegedly carried out on the troop’s ship after scout meetings. 

Berkeley Police Youth Services Detail investigators served warrants at several locations, including Evans’ home in Kensington, said Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, the department spokesperson. 

Charges against the 64-year-old skipper of the S.S.S. Farallon include lewd and lascivious acts with a minor under the age of 14, oral copulation with a minor under age 16, sexual penetration by an object of a youth under age 14, and 18 counts of commission of a sex crime on a youth of 14 or 15 by an adult at least 10 years older. 

After booking at the Berkeley City Jail, he was taken to the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, where he was initially held on $1 million bail—a figure reduced to $190,000 during his initial court appearance Wednesday. 

Evans is due back in Alameda County Superior Court Friday to enter a plea.  

The alleged victims range in age between 13 and 17, and police said the crimes took place over a period of years, “but they have yet to determine definitively how long Evans may have been molesting youths,” Kusmiss reported. 

Berkeley Police declined to offer additional details of the crimes or to provide details of the child pornography recovered from Evans’s computer. 

But, Kusmiss said, “We are quite confident in saying there is very strong evidentiary value to support what the boys are telling us.” 

Jim Novosel, a Berkeley architect whose two sons have been members of Evans’s troop, said neither of them had any suspicion of the alleged crimes. 

“My 14-year-old told me ‘no way,’” he said. Another son, a 19-year-old now attending Chico State, also had no inkling of anything amiss. 

“Gene teaches them everything,” said the architect. “Engine work, steering, navigation.” 

Troop members work every other weekend on the boat, a former World War II craft used to recover downed pilots, Novosel said. Troop members also take the craft out on the Bay and make two 10-day trips up the Sacramento River to the state capitol every year. 

Novosel said the craft holds up to 40 youths at a time. 

Others sought 

Police believe other youths may have been molested and are actively seeking to identify anyone who may been inappropriately approached by the scout leader. Sgt. Kusmiss asked anyone with information about Evans’s alleged crimes to call the Youth Services Detail at 981-5715. Callers may remain anonymous. 

Berkeley officers said they found sexually explicit photos of children on the computer seized during their search of the scoutmaster’s home. One former troop member said he hadn’t witnessed anything himself, but added that he was uncomfortable with the atmosphere aboard the Farallon. 

Both supporters and detractors of the scoutmaster posted online comments on the San Francisco Chronicle story of Evans’s arrest which appeared on that newspaper’s website, including several in his defense from people who claimed to be former members of his troop. 

Current and former troop members and some parents came to Alameda County Superior Court to offer Evans support during his brief appearance Wednesday. 

During many of the years he served as skipper of the scouting ship, Evans was also a teacher at Encinal and Alameda high schools in Alameda, where he and the Farallon had a second scouting group. 

According to an Aug. 10, 2006, profile by conservative columnist James J. Kirkpatrick, Evans joined the Berkeley Sea Scout troop in 1957 at age 13, and had served as the skipper of the ship since 1971. 

He became a hero of the political right when he filed a legal challenge of city policies that deny free city services to organizations which practice discrimination based on sexual preference. 

The Sea Scouts are part of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), an organization which mandates religious belief as a precondition for membership and bars anyone who is openly or commonly known to be gay. Justification of the “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy is justified by the BSA’s National Council legal issues website as part of the obligated to be “morally straight” affirmed in the scout oath. 

According to the BSA’s official position statement on diversity, posted on the organization’s website, “The Boy Scouts of America has selected its leaders using the highest standards because strong leaders and positive role models are so important to the healthy development of youth. Today, the organization still stands firm that their leaders exemplify the values outlined in the Scout Oath and Law. 

“On June 28, 2000, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed the Boy Scouts of America’s standing as a private organization with the right to set its own membership and leadership standards.” 

Litigation 

The scoutmaster’s legal challenge had been celebrated by conservatives and hailed in hundreds of posts on web sites like Freerepublic.com and in stories on a large number of similar Internet forums and news sites. The conservative Pacific Legal Foundation championed Evans’ cause and took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court after the California Supreme Court upheld the city’s decision in March 2006. 

The BSA national council decried the city’s decision to charge for a marina berth, and charged that the state supreme court ruling upholding the city’s action “denied the Sea Scouts its First Amendment rights of free speech and association.” 

But the nation’s highest court announced on Oct. 16, 2006, that it would not hear the appeal, leaving intact the state decision in the case of Evans v. Berkeley. 

The state court upheld the city’s anti-discrimination policy, adopted in 1997, which barred free use of the Marina to any organization which discriminated on the basis of “a person’s race, color, religion ... age, sex, [or] sexual orientation.” 

With the adoption of the anti-discrimination policy, the city ended a half-century policy of providing free berthing space to the scouts, but the city did not bar the scouts from using the marina on the same terms as other boaters. 

While the BSA didn’t join Evans as a co-plaintiff in his suit against the city, it did file a friend of the court brief when he appealed to the state supreme court. 

The BSA, declared the brief, “has an interest in seeing that its individual members and leaders ... are not subject to unconstitutional treatment by misguided government officials who forget that their role is one of scrupulous neutrality, and not one of censorship of private views.” 

But in finding unanimously for the city, California’s justices declared: “We agree with Berkeley and the Court of Appeal that a government entity may constitutionally require a recipient of funding or subsidy to provide written, unambiguous assurances of compliance with a generally applicable nondiscrimination policy. 

“We further agree Berkeley reasonably concluded the Sea Scouts did not and could not provide satisfactory assurances because of their required adherence to BSA’s discriminatory policies.” 

Numerous conservative groups cited the decision last year in opposing Carol A. Corrigan and Joyce L. Kennard, the two State Supreme Court Associate Justices then up for reelection. Kennard, the first appointee of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, had also drawn ire from the right for endorsing same-sex marriage. 

Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington said he was saddened by the news. He said he has been working with the members of the scouting movement in the hopes the organization “will change its discriminatory policies.” 

It was former councilmember Diane Woolley who led the prolonged struggle to end the city’s policy of providing free berthing to the Farralon. 

She said the issue began when she was serving on the city’s waterfront commission and was attempting to clean up the irregularities in leases at the marina. 

“As a matter of law, the city can’t give anything away,” she said. So the relevant questions became what, if anything, Berkeley and its citizens received in return for waiving the berthing fees for the scouts, and whether the benefits, if any, were equally available to all. 

The issue then became the scouts’ discriminatory policies which selectively denied the use of the boat to certain Berkeley residents. 

After Woolley was elected to the city council, the commission voted to extend the lease for a year, but Woolley stuck to her guns, and the free lease was ended. 

The lawsuit that resulted named Woolley personally as well as the chair of the waterfront commission, but the former councilmember said she didn’t learn she had been sued until a reporter called her. 

A similar struggle just ended this week in Philadelphia, where the city is evicting the scouts from a city-owned building where they have held a low-cost lease since 1928. 

The eviction comes six months after a 16-1 city council vote which ordered the scouts out unless they dropped their ban on homosexuals. 

Scouts Honor 

The scouting movement has been concerned about sexual abuse of youth in its ranks, and California is no stranger to scouting scandals. 

In one highly publicized case in Santa Monica in the 1970s, an assistant scoutmaster admitted trading thousands of images of boys he had molested with other pedophiles.  

Another Southern California scandal ended in the dismissal of officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood Division after they became involved with underage female members of the Police Scouts. 

But the most notorious incident of recent years was the arrest of a national scouting official from Texas whose job had been to protect children from sexual predators. 

Douglas Sovereign Smith Jr., the national BSA official who had chaired BSA National Council’s Youth Protection Task Force, was himself convicted of receiving and distributing child pornography. 

The case began in November 2003, when police in Dusseldorf, Germany, arrested a man in that city for possession of child pornography, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Dallas. 

A search of the German’s computer revealed images he had received from Smith—triggering an international investigation. An undercover German officer, posing as a kiddie porn collector, began working in cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators. 

On Feb. 3, 2005, a federal search warrant served on America On-Line turned up email video attachments he had sent of underage boys engaged in sexual acts. 

A Feb. 22, 2005, raid on Smith’s Colleyville, Texas home, confiscated a computer which contained 520 kiddie porn images, including a video file and 111 sexually explicit images of boys under the age of 12. Investigators said none of the images appeared to be Boy Scouts.  

Smith pled guilty to a single felony count and received an eight-year prison sentence on Dec. 5, 2005.

A group of local swimmers are irked by the City of Berkeley’s hastily announced closure of the King Swim Center, the last working pool in the city. 

A handwritten notice informed patrons arriving for their daily laps Monday that the pool will be closed for maintenance for three weeks, beginning Dec. 17, but a subsequent e-mail from Scott Ferris, the city’s youth and recreation services manager, informed users that the pool closure dates had been changed to facilitate the contractor’s timeline. 

According to his letter, the King pool will be closed from Dec. 25 through Jan. 13 but will open for its traditional New Year’s swim Jan. 1. 

Maintenance work includes replacement of 160 feet of benches on the north side of pool, a four-day chlorine shock to clean mold and bacteria off the main and dive pool, repainting the locker room floors and doors, and recalibrating the pool’s chemical automation system. 

Some King pool users protested the closure through letters and e-mails to Ferris and Mayor Tom Bates. 

“I am a longtime Berkeley resident who supports the pools with a $64 prepaid swim card, good for 30 days,” wrote Karen Davis. 

“I purchased this card a day before the handwritten POOL CLOSED DEC 17 notice was posted on the door of King Pool. My question is this: How can you possibly justify charging residents a monthly fee for pool use during a 30-day timespan in which the facility is open for ONE WEEK? You may say that this is an ‘unforseen-circumstance-related closure’—but to those of us paying $64 for a month of ‘use’ which consists of only seven days of pool use ... we call that a RIP-OFF, plain as day.” 

Davis demanded to know whether refunds would be issued. 

Calls to Ferris and the Deputy City Manager’s office for comment were not returned. 

“It shows you that the city disrespects its own employees,” pool regular Iain Boal told the Planet. “It did not even bother informing its own employees, one of whom sold Karen the monthly ticket.” 

Boal, along with a group of swimmers, have asked the city to reconsider the closure or to keep one of the three pools open for use. 

“We want somewhere to swim,” he said. “At least one place where we can swim all year in Berkeley. Preferably we want all three public pools open at the same time. There should be some kind of a public discussion about a public amenity.” 

According to Boal, hundreds of pool patrons signed a petition to protest closure, but the city removed the petition from the site Wednesday. 

“The Parks Recreation and Waterfront Department posted a notice saying public postings must be cleared from the main office,” he said. “It has now become a free speech issue.” 

The Willard and West Campus pools are currently closed for maintenance. All three pools are approximately 60 years old and suffer from pipe leaks, decaying concrete and faulty pumps.  

Berkeley residents approved a $200,000 bond measure to repair the pools at the last election, and the city is currently investigating costs for additional upgrades. 

At a recent disability commission meeting to discuss plans for the relocation of the Berkeley High warm water pool to Milvia Street, Pools for Berkeley had discussed the idea of a multi-pool complex. 

Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna told the Planet in an earlier interview that the City Council had never formally discussed the idea of a multi-pool complex or directed city staff to preview needs, feasibility and sites. 

“The swimming public has worked hard for the promise to keep one pool open all year,” said Summer Brenner, another pool user. “We believed there was a commitment from the city to uphold that promise ... The issue of pools for all people and a long-term vision of an Aquatic Center is currently under discussion. However, I think it’s important to keep the short-term issues alive and well. The health and well-being of many people depend on daily access to public pools.” 

The King swimming facility is used by senior aerobic classes, lap swimmers, youth teams and a Masters class. 

For more information contact Rosemary Fonseca at 981-5152 or email at rfonseca@ci.berkeley.ca.us.

For some, Suzanne Ryan is the North Berkeley Senior Center.  

When Ryan stepped down from her position as the center’s director Tuesday, more than 200 seniors turned up to shake her hand, hug her, share stories or simply take part in the celebration that marked 32 years of her service to Berkeley’s elderly and disabled. 

As the short, gray-haired, blue-sweater-clad figure made her rounds inside the building’s Main Room, it was easy to spot why she was the most beloved of all the seniors there. 

“Suzanne, don’t leave us,” exclaimed Catherine Willis, 73, who serves lunch to seniors at the center. “Oh, I am going to cry ... She’s just wonderful.” 

And she has always been available, as a hundred other testimonials proved during the course of the party. 

The old and the feeble, the forgotten and the lonely—Ryan took them all under her wing one by one and created a multiracial, multicultural second home for all. 

“And believe me, with these seniors it’s not easy,” said Elizabeth Snowden, the center’s former treasurer. “But Suzanne has a rare quality. She can hold everyone together. One time two of the men here were physically fighting with each other. She was able to tear them apart. She has a kind of sweetness that’s special.” 

A native of Louisville, Ky., Ryan moved to Pasadena after attending the University of Wisconsin. 

“I was 22 at that time,” she said. “And wanted to explore different options. While working for the YWCA in Pasadena, I saw that the City of Berkeley had an ad for the director of the North Berkeley Senior Center in the Health and Human Services Department.” 

Ryan began her new job from the much smaller confines of the Lutheran Church at 1847 University Ave. Back then, her office was a hallway. 

“I got to work with the architect who designed the new North Berkeley Senior Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Hearst,” she said. “Never in a million years did I think that the city would build three senior centers—North, South and West. For this building, we had to keep in mind accessibility ... especially hand rails for the disabled,” she said, hugging a man in a wheelchair. 

Despite the abundance of space at 1901 Hearst Ave., problems such as a shortage of parking space and deferred maintenance continue to plague its regulars. 

Ryan’s term at the senior center did not come without its share of problems. There were building and people problems, the latter often solved with the help of the city’s mental health services. 

During the last three decades, Ryan created innovative programs for seniors—including the French and the Chinese clubs—and turned it into a thriving place of comfort. 

“She not only has a good brain but also the biggest heart,” said Allen Stross, a nonagenarian. “Recipes, stories, advice, she has given me everything.” 

Fred Medrano from the city’s Health and Human Services Department presented Ryan with a proclamation for being an ambassador and an advocate for seniors. 

“There have been lots of challenges and she solved them all with a lot of hard work,” he said. “When I think of the North Berkeley Senior Center, I can’t separate Suzanne from the place. When I think of what she stands for, acts of kindness and the rights, needs and aspirations for our elderly community, it’s just amazing.”  

Giving up what she loved doing was not easy for Ryan, but she admitted she was ready. 

“There’s never been one day that’s been boring at the center,” Ryan said. “But I am 60, and I need to do something else,” she said. “I am going to do what all these happy people are doing ... I will be going to a senior center, but it will probably be the one in Albany. I don’t want people here to think that I am watching behind their shoulder.”

In a rush for the green, Berkeley officials and their staffs may be bypassing the city’s Energy Commission, members said at a meeting Wednesday.  

Some commissioners also expressed concern with a staff-written draft plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which aims emission-reducing policies at a limited number of energy consumers, leaving out the largest number of Berkeley residents and business owners. 

Solar Financing District  

process questioned 

Mayor Tom Bates’ aide Cisco DeVries’ idea to create a “solar financing district,” “caught everyone by surprise,” Neal DeSnoo, the city’s energy officer and secretary to the commission, told commissioners. 

The unintended consequence of the publicity around the idea has been that people considering going solar have stepped back to wait and see what the city has to offer. “People stopped signing contracts,” DeSnoo said. 

The financing plan, still sketchy at this point and not likely to be off the ground for months, would aggregate homeowners and business owners who want to use city-arranged financing. The city would borrow the funds through a bank or bond, which homeowners or business owners would pay back over 20 years through property taxes. 

In principle, it would cost the group less to borrow through the city than individually through a bank, although, by waiting, homeowners could lose tax credits now available, DeSnoo said.  

“I wonder why [the idea] didn’t come to us,” said Commissioner Gerry Abrams. 

Commissioner Jane Bergen agreed and asked, “How could they put it forward [prematurely]?”  

While Commissioner Bruce Chamberlain said he too was concerned about process, he underscored the value of the financing district. “This is a huge win,” he said. 

DeSnoo defended Mayor Tom Bates’ office, saying the council had approved the concept. However, a look at the mayor’s website shows that DeVries announced the plan in a press statement Oct. 23 and that the council approved it two weeks later, on Nov. 6. 

DeVries “shouldn’t be making policy,” Bergen said. “Some individual had an idea and suddenly it became policy.” 

An active member of the League of Women Voters, Bergen said she was concerned with policy made behind closed doors. The LWV believes that “the accountability of government should not be tampered with,” she said. 

Commissioner Josh Kornbluth said he understood that “experts” might feel the need to move quickly, but underscored, “It’s also vastly important [to honor] the responsibility to be democratic.”  

DeVries did not return a Daily Planet call for comment by deadline. 

Preliminary Greenhouse Gas  

Reduction plan unveiled 

Several commissioners criticized a portion of the preliminary draft of the city’s plan to reduce greenhouse gases, which they reviewed at the meeting Wednesday. 

The report, written by consultant Timothy Burroughs and DeSnoo, will be presented in draft form to the City Council in January, then submitted in final form for adoption in the spring.  

The question commissioners debated was whether to have a top-down or bottom-up approach to greenhouse gas reduction.  

DeSnoo argued: “You prime the pump to draw others in,” working with a limited number of users to greatly reduce emissions, rather than working with the entire community to achieve small reductions. 

“Leaders will go to near zero [emissions],” DeSnoo said, adding that they will be known as “true Berkeley heroes.” 

The plan targets “early adopters to lead by demonstrating leading edge solutions such as zero energy buildings.” These leaders will create new expectations in green building, and “existing programs will be expanded and new programs developed to increase the availability of advanced energy practices to the mass market.”  

“This is the only possible way to get to 80 percent [reduction by 2050],” DeSnoo said, arguing for the “cutting edge” approach, aimed at reaching 25 percent of Berkeley energy users. “Twenty-five percent is a huge penetration,” he said. 

Bergen, however, said the program should be directed to the average Berkeley resident, she said. “We’re not the Lawrence Berkeley Lab,” she argued. “We need to start with something that people feel they can get their hands on, that people feel they can be a part of.” 

Commissioner Scott Murtishaw argued that the approach on the ground level with the homeowners needs to be efficient. Rather than an individual going into a home to pitch lighting efficiency, that person should be “somebody who looks at the whole home,” whether windows fit in their frames and are double-paned, whether a rebate on an energy-efficient furnace is available and more. 

Funds for a range of efficiencies would be available through the proposed financing district, DeSnoo said. 

Commissioner Tim Hansen added another element. “I don’t see social justice in the conversation,” he said, asking how renters and Section 8 people could be included in the mix. 

The draft proposes that the city look at incentives for landlords to install efficient energy and water systems. The report suggests that an increase in rent, to pay for the efficiencies, would be limited to “the monthly cost savings tenants experience on their energy/water bills as a result of the landlord’s investment in energy saving measures.” 

Community Choice Aggregation  

moves ahead 

While new solar energy and financing initiatives have made large demands on city resources, the Community Choice Aggregation proposal continues to be a high priority for a number of members of the Energy Commission. 

The proposal, which would have to be approved by Berkeley voters, would create a district to combine Berkeley, Oakland and Emeryville as an independent entity which would be responsible for supplying energy to the three cities. While PG&E would still own the power lines through which the energy would be distributed, the cities’ joint agency would purchase the power.  

A report from Navigant, the city consultant on the project, is slated to go to the commission in January and to the council in March, according to DeSnoo. 

Whither the Green Corridor? 

Asking why they had not been informed of the collaboration in advance, commissioners said they learned about the “green corridor” plan—a grouping of the mayors of Richmond, Oakland, Emeryville and Berkeley, along with UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley Lab—from media reports.  

The collaboration is supposed to benefit green industries and job creation and put the group, as opposed to single cities or agencies, in a favorable position to receive grants, according to news releases on the collaboration. 

DeSnoo said he had not been briefed. “I can’t explain it,” he said, promising to fill the commission in on the details at its January meeting.

Parents attending Berkeley Unified School District’s annual Kindergarten Fair on Saturday will get to sample classroom life and ask questions about the district’s assignment process. 

Hosted by LeConte Elementary, the fair aims to make enrollment easier for parents and to introduce them to faculty, staff and special programs. Francisco Martinez, the district’s manager for attendance and enrollment, will give a presentation on Berkeley's Student Assignment Plan. 

The district’s assignment system came under scrutiny in 2003 after it was sued by the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of a parent who charged the district with race-based assignment of students. 

The foundation also filed a lawsuit against the district last year for allegedly violating California’s Proposition 209 by racially discriminating among students during placements at elementary schools and in programs at Berkeley High. 

Although the district went on to win both lawsuits, a recent U.S. Supreme Court hearing—which limited the consideration of race in school integration plans—poses a new challenge for the district. 

District officials continue to defend the assignment system and have even called it a model for other schools. 

“Everything around the student assignment process is of great interest,” said district spokesperson Mark Coplan. “Not only to those who will be going through it now, but everyone else interested in Berkeley's role in integrated classrooms ... 99 percent of the population are happy with it. There’s a very small fraction who don’t like the program. They want specific assignments for their child and continue to ask the question about whether it’s fair or not.” 

The district’s assignment system allows parents to register their first, second and third school choices, and then a computer lottery—which takes account of factors such as race, ethnicity, student background and parental income and education—gives the final placement.  

The students are assigned schools based on their address, which falls into one of three distinct geographical categories. 

“No individual student is identified by race, ethnicity or economic background,” said school board Vice President John Selawsky. “It’s based on where they live. We don’t have to change our process because we prevailed twice in the California Supreme Court.” 

Selawsky added that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling left room for the kind of approach the district was trying. 

“Schools can use strategic-attendance zoning as well as magnet schools and special programs to ensure diversity,” he said. “I occasionally do hear complaints, but we have no intention of changing what we have. Parents who are new to the district should know that the assignment system has been used for a long long time now and it’s what ensures diversity at each school site. It serves a bigger good and the interest of our students and education.” 

According to Martinez—who analyzes multi-year enrollment patterns to calculate enrollment numbers every year—610 students are expected to enroll in kindergarten in 2008. 

Last year, the number was 630. 

“The enrollment numbers for kindergarten have ranged between 570 to 630 for the last five years,” he said. “It’s very stable ... Applications from out-of-district students will be accepted over the summer. We first enroll students who are Berkeley residents and then open it up to others if there is space.” 

With 427 students, Thousand Oaks Elementary School has the largest enrollment rate, followed by Rosa Parks (386) and Cragmont (382). 

The district’s Office of Admissions and Attendance will begin accepting forms for the first lottery for fall 2008 on Jan. 7 with the deadline of Feb. 8 at 4 p.m. 

Assignments for the first lottery will be mailed out by March 7. 

Besides representatives from the 11 elementary schools, volunteers from the city’s transportation services, after-school programs and libraries will also be present. 

The schools will also be open to visitors from Nov. 27 to Dec. 18 and Jan. 10 to Feb. 8 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. 

Kindergarten Nights—mainly directed at new families—will also be hosted by each elementary school in January.

A Berkeley High senior who had been missing since Wednesday morning was found unconscious in Tilden Park Thursday afternoon and taken to the hospital. 

Last spotted riding her bike from her house in Kensington to school, the student did not show up at school Wednesday and failed to return home at night. The teenager suffers from Type I diabetes and wears an insulin pump. 

Berkeley Unified School District spokesperson Mark Coplan declined to comment on the incident or the students current condition. 

The Kensington Police Department launched a massive search with the help of the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department, the Berkeley Police Deparment early Thursday 

An initial search—aided by tracking dogs—did not yield any results. 

According to media reports, the student had been depressed for the last six months and some of her blogs had caused the police to be concerned about her mental state. 

Calls to the Kensington Police Department for comment were not returned.

In an e-mail to the Planet Thursday, Budget Manager Tracy Vessely shared city staff calculations showing that a 25-cent hourly parking meter fee increase would yield $1 million per year in new funds. These funds are earmarked for programs for chronically homeless persons, in conjunction with the mayor’s “Public Commons” initiative.  

It will take further council action to formalize the fee increase and also take council action to specify where the new funds are to be spent. There are no fee hikes projected for non-metered city parking lots. 

There are a total of 3,110 meter spaces, plus or minus about 50 at any given moment due to construction. 

In fiscal year 2006 (July 1, 2005–June 30, 2006), the city generated $3 million in parking meter revenue with rates set at $.75 per hour, averaging $965 per meter per year. 

Effective March 2007, rates increased to $1 per hour. For the first four months of the current fiscal year, meter revenue was $3.45 million. 

Current projected FY 2008 revenue, based on a full year of $1 per hour, is $4 million, averaging $1,286 per meter per year.  

Based on the current inventory of spaces and hours of operation, each additional 25 cents generates about $1 million per year. 

An increase of 25 cents per hour to $1.25 per hour of parking will result in total annual meter revenue of about $5 million, averaging $1,608 per meter per year. That yields $1 million in new revenue for the program. 

Vessely further noted that costs for conversion to the higher rates would cost $12,500 for new decals and $14,000 for staff time. 

Arson suspected 

Investigators believe an arsonist set the blaze that caused more than $50,000 in damage to a Berkeley apartment at 1912 Addison St. Wednesday morning, said Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth. 

Orth said the apartment’s tenant had apparently befriended several homeless people who had moved into the apartment after he left. 

“The situation had become untenable, and so he left, but the other people apparently stayed on,” said the firefighter. 

The blaze, which was reported at 6:04 a.m., caused an estimated $50,000 to the apartment and $3,000 in damage to its contents. Additional damage to nearby units was caused by water and by firefighters breaching the walls to see if flames had spread. 

No one was injured in the blaze.

You won’t have to remove your shoes when you enter Khalil Bendib’s White House. 

“I will not bring the mosque into the oval office,” promised the Algerian-Berkeleyan cartoonist, who’s mounting a run for the presidency. 

“I want to be top dog in a top-dog country—master of the universe,” he told the Planet in an exclusive one-on-one interview in his light-filled north Berkeley home, surrounded by his sculptures, paintings and campaign signs. It would be unthinkable to run for a lesser office, such as mayor or governor, he said. 

Unfazed by what might be seen as a technical lack of eligibility as a naturalized citizen—“I’ll ride Schwarzenegger’s coattails. After he has the law changed for him, I’ll pass him up,” Bendib said, ignoring the timing problem that may present for the 2008 election cycle. And undaunted by the lack of funds and a heightened prejudice against Arabs since 9/11, Bendib’s taking his “Pres in the Fez” campaign—inspired he says by Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat—to the people. 

He has a campaign stop Dec. 13, 7:30 p.m., at La Pena, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Bendib will bring along copies of his newest book: Mission Accomplished: Wicked Cartoons by America’s Most Wanted Political Cartoonist, Interlink Publishing Group, $17.95. 

Cynthia McKinney and Howard Zinn’s accolades appear on the book cover. The forward is written by Norman Solomon. “This book refuses to accept … false choices. Bendib’s cartoons scramble a deck that has been stacked by the demagogues and crusaders who feel that they must diminish the humanity of others to exalt their own,” Solomon writes. 

Unabashedly, Bendib admits marketing the book is behind the idea to run for president. When he saw photos of huge lines of people snaking around city blocks to buy Jimmy Carter’s and Bill Clinton’s books, “I thought—I have a book, too. I have got to become an ex-president. Unfortunately—and I’ve researched it—in order to become an ex-president, you have to be President first,” he said. 

The first thing Bendib would do as president is get rid of the influence of money, which, he says, has corrupted politics and “so-called public education” along with academic freedom.  

“You see it right here in Berkeley,” he said, flipping open Mission Accomplished to a cartoon depicting a man giving directions to a freshman. The man was pointing the way to the university president’s office on a campus map dotted with corporate logos and saying: “Go towards the McDonald’s Nutritional Science Building, past the Monsanto Sustainable Agriculture Department, down to the Lockheed-Martin World Peace Hall, turn right at the Enron School of Business Ethics, and you’ll see it there: Doctor Faust’s office….”  

Born to parents seeking refuge in France during the Algerian war for independence, and having spent his youngest years in Morocco, Bendib became keenly aware of politics as a small child. 

His earliest memories were of his parents sitting in their Rabat, Morocco living room listening intently to the radio for every scrap of news from Algeria. Politics permeated every conversation. Friends were killed; an uncle working for the resistance—an artist—was captured and tortured. “It was a very popular war. Everyone was involved in it in one capacity or another,” he says. Of 10 million Algerians, 1.5 million died. “It was an incredibly bloody war; we call it a genocide,” he said. 

Bendib says he uses humor as a way to speak to those who may not otherwise listen to what he has to say.  

“To reach people, I have to sugar-coat my argument, otherwise I run into a wall in the face of a huge propaganda machine on the other side,” he said. 

For example, he often uses cartoons to show the hypocrisy he sees in George Bush’s politics. In the Mission Accomplished cartoon, labeled “Habeas Corpus Suspended,” the statue of liberty has been hung; the U.S. House and Senate are saying, “You’re guilty until proven innocent,” and G.W. Bush is saying to the hung Statue of Liberty, “Sorry, Ma’am, but in times of war…” Then the little bird Bendib calls his alter ego reminds the reader what Bush has said about the cause of 9/11: “Because the terrorists hate our freedom,” the little bird says. 

A call for justice runs through Bendib’s work, with special consideration for the rights of the Palestinian people. “Nobody else in this country does cartoons about Palestine from a fair perspective,” Bendib said. “There’s incredible censorship when it comes to Palestine. I feel it’s my special mission to bring a little bit of the alternative view.” 

He brings this perspective to all of his work, as he is also a serious sculptor, painter and radio show host of KPFA’s Voices of the Middle East and North Africa. 

One of his best-known sculptures is a 1994 statue, which stands in Santa Ana Civic Center, of Alex Odeh, once regional head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, killed by a pipe bomb in his office. Bendib describes the work as a tribute to Odeh’s “courageous defense of the maligned Arab-American community.” 

Bendib’s sculptures and paintings can be seen at www.studiobendib.com and his cartoons at www.bendib.com. His campaign website is not up yet.

As the City of Berkeley entered its fourth week under a state of emergency, State Assembly Legislative leaders un-veiled a bill package in response to last month’s massive oil spill from the Cosco Busan crash in the San Francisco Bay. 

It included proposals addressing shipping safety, spill containment standards, communications between agencies and communities, clean-up responses and on-going monitoring of the bay. 

Legislators also called on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to create an independent commission to “review the oil spill and recommend additional reforms to improve spill prevention and response policies.”  

Mary Kay Clunies-Ross, Berkeley’s public information officer, told the Planet Thursday that the prohibitions imposed by City Manager Phil Kamlarz—including staying 50 feet away from the shoreline—were still in place. 

“The re-ratification of the state of emergency will be on the City Council’s agenda for Tuesday, so yes, we’re continuing it until at least then,” she said, adding that small boats were now being allowed to sail in the bay. 

“There were some contractors cleaning around the boat launch earlier today, but I would imagine it would hard to clean during the weather that’s expected for the next couple of days.” 

Berkeley Animal Care Services is currently serving as the drop-off point for sick birds in the East Bay. 

“The bird rescue group comes and collects from us when we call them,” Clunies-Ross said. “We’ve had about six to 10 dead ones and a couple of live ones in the last ten days or so.” 

More than 2,700 birds were injured or killed in the aftermath of the spill, which spread from the East Bay to San Francisco to the Gulf of Farallones and eventually as far south as the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. 

The federal government sued Cosco Busan owners Regal Stone Ltd. of Hong Kong; the company’s insurer, Shipowners’ Insurance & Guaranty Co.; and ship’s pilot John Cota Friday, seeking compensation for clean-up costs and the harm caused to natural resources from the 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel.

The Rev. Gus Schultz, pastor emeritus of the University Lutheran Chapel in Berkeley, died Monday at his home in Berkeley. He was 72 and had suffered for the past 10 years from Lewy body disease. 

As pastor at the Lutheran Chapel, Rev. Schultz was a tireless advocate for social justice, both locally and globally. He was widely recognized for his work and received the first Berkeley Peace Prize in 1985. He played an integral role in 1970 in starting the Berkeley Emergency Food Project, which serves a hot meal daily to those in need. 

Born in Foley, Ala., Rev. Schultz attended the University of Alabama at Tus-caloosa before entering Concordia Seminary in Illinois. Ordained by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, he served parishes in Rome, Georgia, and Riverside, Illinois, before he came to his post in Berkeley in 1969. 

Rev. Schultz was at the forefront of the Sanctuary Movement. Under his leadership, the Lutheran Chapel offered sanctuary to American soldiers during the Vietnam War, to Central American refugees and to American soldiers during the first Gulf War. He was president of the board of the SHARE Foundation (Salvadoran Humanitarian Aid Research and Education), founder and board president of the National Sanctuary Defense Fund, and a founder of the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant.  

He traveled frequently to Central America, sometimes accompanying Salvadoran refugees as they returned to their homes from camps in Honduras. 

And in the 1970s and 1980s he traveled as part of delegations to both North and South Korea to promote democracy, reunification and communication between American and Korean Christian churches. In 1980 he and the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen’s Union played a crucial role in saving the life of South Korean opposition leader Kim Dae Jung, who had been sentenced to be hanged. Kim later was elected president of South Korea and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In the 1990s, along with the members of the Committee for Korea Studies at UC Berkeley, Reverend Schultz organized an annual symposium at the university on Korean reunification, hosting guests from North and South Korea together in the United States for the first time.  

He was also active in local civic affairs, serving as a member of the Berkeley Planning Commission from 1981 to 1983. In 1981, Rev. Schultz was endorsed for a city council seat by Berkeley Citizens Action (BCA) and finished second among the BCA candidates in the municipal election. But after one of the city’s nastier campaigns, the entire BCA slate was defeated. 

During the 1970s, Rev. Schultz helped form the American Evangelical Lutheran Church, later to merge into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and was elected Bishop.  

As pastor of the Lutheran Campus ministry at UC Berkeley for over 28 years, he touched the lives of many students and counted his friends from all over the globe. He retired from active ministry in 1997. 

Rev. Schultz is survived by Flora Redd Schultz, his wife of 49 years; his brother Ken Schultz of Dallas, Texas; his sister Kathryn Ann Schultz Ford of Foley, Alabama; son Bart Schultz, daughter Locke Schultz Jaeger, daughter Betsy Pauley, all of Berkeley; son Tim Schultz of Walnut Creek; daughters-in-law Gina Lim and Kristie (Kunich) Schultz; son-in-law Chuck Jaeger; and grandchildren Jackson, Matt, Lee, Jesse, Eva and Ross. 

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, Dec. 8, at 2 p.m. at University Lutheran Chapel at 2425 College Ave. in Berkeley. Donations may be made to University Lutheran Chapel, 2425 College Ave. Berkeley, CA 94705; SHARE Foundation 598 Bosworth St. #1, San Francisco, CA 94131; Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, 2770 Marin Ave. Berkeley, CA 94708; or Committee for Korea Studies, 2223 Fulton St., room 508, Berkeley, CA 94720-2318 

Berkeley police have arrested three men they believe are responsible for a string of armed robberies at Bay Area Radio Shack stores, reports Lt. Wesley Hester, the department’s Public Information Officer. 

In a statement released Thursday, Lt. Hester said the arrests followed a 5:11 p.m. Sunday call that a robbery was underway at the 2500 Shattuck Ave. store, where a single gunman entered the store, robbed the clerk and leapt into a waiting car. 

Berkeley officers Scott O’Donnell and David Bartiani spotted a vehicle matching the description broadcast after the robbery as it was leaving the city limits southbound into Oakland. 

The officers gave chase and managed to stop the car at 59th St. and Shattuck. 

The officers arrested three suspects, Frederic Tillman, 21, and Jason Brooks, 24, both of Oakland, and Richmond resident Tiffany Raab, 26. Police also recovered the cash they believed was taken during the hold-up, as well as a pistol and a mask, Hester said. 

The three were charged with armed robbery, use of a firearm while committing a felony and probation violations.  

The three suspects have admitted their participation in three more Radio Shack robberies in Berkeley, including another one at the 2500 Shattuck store on Sept. 10, as well as two separate robberies at the 1652 University Ave. store on Sept. 30th and Nov. 23rd. 

The three are the principal suspects in a string of Radio Shack robberies in San Leandro, Hercules, Vallejo, El Cerrito, Albany, Oakland, Union City, Hayward and in the unincorporated areas of Alameda County. 

The county District Attorney’s office has charged the suspects in a total of 18 robberies in Alameda County—including those in Berkeley—though not all three are charged in all of the cases county-wide, Hester reported. 

“These guys have been very, very, very active,” said Lt. Hester.  

They are also suspected in a number of other commercial and gas station robberies in addition to the Radio Shack stick-ups, he said.

For the sixth year in a row YEAH (Youth Emergency Assistance Shelter) has opened their winter shelter for homeless 18- to 24-year-olds—and their pets—at the Lutheran Church of the Cross on University Avenue in Berkeley.  

It might have as many as 55 or 60 young people—no one has ever been turned away. If someone appears with nowhere else to go, “we put a mat on the floor and they’re there,” says Sharon Hawkins Leyden, co-founder and co-director of YEAH.  

When people come in, they get a number which is put on a chart, and they are given boxes with that number containing blankets, pillow and linens and toiletries which are theirs for the whole time that they’re in the shelter. They can stay in the shelter as many nights as they need to. Pets are allowed in and sleep on the mats with their owners.  

“The pets are often an extension of people’s family and you can’t ask them to leave their pets somewhere or get rid of their pets just because they don’t have a house. Sort of feels like a social justice issue,” Leyden says. “So we say pets are really important—they’re really important to housed people, they’re really important to unhoused people.”  

Besides providing a bed for the night, YEAH offers a number of programs and activities that go on throughout the year: men’s groups and women’s groups, a youth council to gain leadership skills, workshops and a GED program to prepare the youth for the General Education Diploma test, which is being run and paid for by the First Congregational Church. In the evenings in the shelter there are games, movies, creative writing and poetry groups. Dinner and breakfast are provided; there are showers, laundry and referrals to doctors and community resources. “And,” Leyden says, “they get a community of people.” 

It would be hard to underestimate the importance of that community of people, something so many of these youth are lacking. Of the young people coming to the YEAH shelter, many of them are out of the foster-care system. Others have left or been forced out of abusive family situations. 

“We have about 80 percent of our youth come completely unattached. They don’t have any support systems,” Leyden explains. “We have emergency cards at intake. We ask them who should we contact in case of an emergency and nine out of ten times they say there’s no one. Which is stunning! To be 20, 21, and have no one that you could call.”  

She tells about talking to youth who have tried to kill themselves, “and I say to them, ‘Who should we call if you die?’ And they’d say, ‘No one’. And I’d say ‘Who’s going to bury you?’ and they say ‘YEAH.’ It’s profound isolation with some of these kids. Just profound.” By comparison a group of UC Berkeley students asked to name the most important factor contributing to their success unanimously responded “family support.” 

“That’s why we want to make YEAH not a social service organization ... we want to make it a community. Because if you belong to something, and you feel valuable, and you feel worthwhile, then from that you get a sense of responsibility and from that you get to actually make strides in your life ... But if you don’t have that and you feel it doesn’t really matter if you’re on the planet or not, nobody really cares whether you’re on the planet, you do all kinds of [negative] behavior.” 

The YEAH community encompasses not only the youth who come to the shelter and those who participate in the year- round programs offered there but also the many volunteers. 

Leyden talks about the “community volunteers who want to come because they feel like they have something to give. But they also want something too. This is reciprocal. People don’t come down here because they’re saints, they come down here because they too want to be part of something that’s bigger than themselves and their day-to-day struggles. They too want to feel like what they do is important in their communities.” 

In contrast to other churches, Pastor Sarah Isakson and her congregation at the Lutheran church of the Cross have opened their doors and their hearts to YEAH. Many of the YEAH volunteers are members of the congregation. Pastor Sarah is on the board and participates actively in the program.  

What Leyden says YEAH really needs is a building of their own where they can operate full time to provide year-round shelter and comprehensive services in a supportive environment.

Eugene Evans, the scoutmaster who sued the city after it refused a free berth to the Sea Scout ship Farallon because of the organization's anti-gay policies, was arrested Tuesday on six counts of child sexual abuse. 

Berkeley Police Youth Services Detail investigators served warrants at several locations, including Evans's home in Kensington, said Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, the department spokesperson. 

Charges against the 64-year-old skipper of the S.S.S. Farallon include lewd and lascivious acts with a minor under the age of 14, oral copulation with a minor under age 16 and sexual penetration by an object of a youth under age 14.  

After booking at the Berkeley City Jail, he was taken to the county lockup at Santa Rita, where he was being held in lieu of $1 million bail. 

The alleged victims range in age between 13 and 17, and police said the crimes took place over a period of years, "but they have yet to determine definitively how long Evans may have been molesting youths," Kusmiss reported.  

The officer said more details would be revealed after his arraignment in Alameda County Superior Court Wednesday in Oakland. 

Police believe other youths may have been molested and are actively seeking to identify anyone who may been inappropriately approached by the scout leader. 

During many of the years he served as skipper of the scouting ship, Evans was also a teacher at Encinal and Alameda high schools in Alameda. 

According to an Aug. 10, 2006, profile by conservative columnist James J. Kirkpatrick, Evans joined the Berkeley Sea Scout troop in 1957 at age 13, and had served as the skipper of the Farallon for the previous 35 years.  

Evans became a hero of the political right when he filed a legal challenge of city policies that deny free city services to organizations which practice discrimination based on sexual preference. 

His legal challenge of the city policy was celebrated by uber-conservatives and hailed in hundreds of posts on the Freerepublic.com web site. 

The conservative Pacific Legal Foundation took his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court after the California Supreme Court upheld the city's decision in March, 2006. 

The nation's highest court announced on Oct. 16, 2006, that it would not hear the appeal, leaving intact the state decision in the case of Evans v. Berkeley. 

The state court upheld the city's anti-discrimination policy, adopted in 1997, which barred free use of the Marina to any organization which discriminated on the basis of "a person's race, color, religion. . .age, sex, [or] sexual orientation."  

As part of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), the Sea Scouts bar youths from membership who are openly gay, as well as agnostics and atheists. 

With the adoption of the anti-discrimination policy, the city ended a half-century policy of providing free berthing space to the scouts. 

In finding for the city, California's justices declared: "We agree with Berkeley and the Court of Appeal that a government entity may constitutionally require a recipient of funding or subsidy to provide written, unambiguous assurances of compliance with a generally applicable nondiscrimination policy.  

"We further agree Berkeley reasonably concluded the Sea Scouts did not and could not provide satisfactory assurances because of their required adherence to BSA's discriminatory policies." 

Berkeley Police are asking anyone with information to call the Youth Services Detail at 981-5715. Callers may remain anonymous.

Berkeley protesters and their supporters gathered Sunday to celebrate the end of the first year of what they hailed as “America’s longest-running urban tree-sit.” 

The mood was festive, if at times surreal: UC Berkeley police had two officers videotaping the proceedings, while tree-sit supporters photographed the officers as they were in turn photographed by the media. 

Most of the tree-sitters wore masks, as did many of their supporters—a response to the university’s recent arrests of arboreal activists and members of their earthbound supply crew. 

UC Berkeley students have been swept up in the arrests, including one committee chair from the Associated Students of the University of California, said Matthew Taylor of the Free Speech-Free Trees Student Coalition, 

“We have renamed this site Guantanamo Berkeley,” said Zachary Running Wolf, the Native American activist who sparked the tree-sit a year ago on the morning of Big Game day when he ascended a redwood in the heart of the Coastal Live Oak grove along Memorial Stadium’s western wall. 

Sunday’s mood was generally upbeat as tree-sitters, students, activists and members of the broader community gathered along the sidewalk on Gayley Road. 

Among those in attendance were two members of the recently expired Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee—Juliet Lamont and Steve Weissman—and neighborhood activists Mike Kelly, Sharon Hudson and Gail Garcia. 

One colorfully clad contingent aimed their protests at BP, the British oil giant, and the half-billion-dollar pact it recently completed to sponsor biofuel research at the Berkeley campus. 

At one point, a reporter counted about 200 people gathered along the wide stretch of sidewalk, with numbers fluctuating throughout the afternoon. 

Karen Pickett of the Bay Area Coalition for the Headwaters, one of the earliest and most outspoken supporters of the protest, said community support for the tree-sitters has increased with time. 

The ongoing action at the grove challenges the tree-clearing operation planned if the university wins a pending court decision and builds a $125 million, four-level-high tech gym and office complex where the trees now stand. 

The legal challenge now before Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Miller will determine whether or not the UC regents properly followed state law in voting to approve the gym complex and adopting an environmental impact report that cleared the way for the gym and a set of other nearby projects. 

Free speech 

For Michael Rossman, one of the leading activists of the Free Speech Movement that rocked the Berkeley campus more than four decades ago, it was the erection of the fences that transformed the protest into a free speech issue. 

“I didn’t know then that even earlier campus police had seized tables and literature” during the tree-sit, he said. 

Campus police action against tables where literature for a range of causes ranging from civil rights activism to the campus Young Republicans was displayed led to the eruption of the free speech protests that changed the face of campus politics across the nation. 

“This protest is an exercise in free speech,” he said, comparing the oak grove to a biological indicator species, a plant or animal which serves as a signal of the overall health of an ecosystem. 

“This is a fragment of an ecology that functions,” he said, “a biological ecology and a social ecology.” 

Rossman said the grove was a familiar scene to activists of his day, where members of the Free Speech Movement rested and sometimes distributed literature. 

“UC needs to respect its students,” said Hillary Lehr, a recent graduate who faulted university Chancellor Robert Birgeneau for his consistent refusal to meet with students protesting the plans to chainsaw the grove. 

By providing students with a well-rounded education that leads them to question, the university also has an obligation to listen and respond to the questions they raise, Lehr said. 

Taylor said one student had been arrested soon after meeting with university administrators, after she reportedly left blankets and a pillow outside the fence on one of the coldest nights of the year. 

“Two students spent Thanksgiving in jail,” following their arrests at the grove, he said. 

Running Wolf, who has been arrested nine times at the grove, has charged that the university’s plans to build at the grove would desecrate a tribal burial ground. 

Speaking to supporters Sunday, he said that the university’s approval of the BP research program—which aims to develop fuel crops to be grown in tropical climates—creates a two-continent struggle for indigenous Americans. 

University response 

More than two hours after Sunday’s celebrations began, Dan Mogulof, executive director of the campus Office of Public Affairs, arrived at the grove, meeting with reporters well out of sight of the gathering below to decry what he called the “ongoing illegal and dangerous occupation” of the grove. 

He said the university’s response has thus far cost nearly $370,000, including the costs of two barbed-wire-topped fences that now ring the site, salaries for campus police and private security and costs for equipment and cleanups. 

While he declined to discuss the specifics of law enforcement strategies, he said the second fence was installed as part of the process of “putting pieces in places so that once this is resolved in court, we can bring this process to a peaceful and safe conclusion.” 

Asked if any community groups are working with university officials to resolve the standoff in the branches, Mogulof said, “We continue to be open to dealing with any group that is maintaining an illegal and dangerous occupation.” 

He said campus police have been admirably restrained throughout the year the protest has endured. 

Are Native Americans buried beneath the oak grove along the western wall of Memorial Stadium? 

Zachary Running Wolf and some members of the Ohlone people say the site is sacred, the resting place of villagers who once dwelt along the shores of Strawberry Creek. 

“There is no specific, verified evidence of burials,” other than one cited by a consulting archaeologist, said Dan Mogulof, UC Berkeley’s executive director of public affairs.  

But Richard Schwartz, a writer with several books on Berkeley history to his credit, says a look at the record raises critical questions about the university’s claim. 

There is no dispute that a dozen or so burials were found at Faculty Glade, a short walk downstream from the stadium. 

The evidence is less clear about the stadium area itself, but Schwartz would argue that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. 

James M. Allan, a consulting archaeologist hired by the university, declared in a written report that “there is no verifiable evidence for a burial ground at the site of the Stadium.” 

Part of the dispute centers on newspaper accounts, with one key account in a June 21, 1925 edition of the San Francisco Examiner alleging that several burials had been uncovered during construction of the stadium two years earlier. 

Allan’s report alleges that the account conflates the Faculty Glade burials with a single burial found at the stadium. 

“The only museum records (the accession record and card catalogue listing) we have found are for the aforementioned single Native American male burial at this site,” he reported to the university. 

But Schwartz responds with another 1925 article printed a day earlier in the Oakland Tribune, which quotes anthropologist Leslie Spier as stating that “many skeletons have been found in Faculty Glade, along Strawberry Creek and under the site of Memorial Stadium.” 

“If you take away the buildings and the roads and look at the area, you will see that it’s all one site from Faculty Glade to the site of the stadium,” Schwartz said. 

The Berkeley writer commented on yet another article—a piece appearing on the front page of Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle—which cited claims by an unnamed archaeologist that the grove site was too steep for burials. 

“Nonsense,” said Schwartz, who has himself discovered and registered a burial site in Berkeley on even steeper ground. 

The real question for Schwartz, who numbers university anthropology faculty among his friends, is why the university hasn’t set out to do a thorough survey of the land where it plans to excavate for a largely subterranean athletic training facility. 

While Mogulof said an archaeologist will be on hand to monitor excavations, Schwartz said discoveries could come too late, after earth-moving equipment had already wreaked its havoc on the site. 

“A great learning institution like UC Berkeley should want to preserve history and to make sure its legacy is preserved,” he said. 

Schwartz cited another article, from a 1929 edition of the Berkeley Daily Gazette, in which a longtime resident reported that an Ohlone shellmound had once stood at the site of the stadium. 

“No one’s done a thorough year-by-year search of all the newspapers, which might reveal a lot more,” he said.

The City Council continued the discussion on the Aquatic Park dredging to Dec. 18 because of time constraints at last week’s council meeting. 

Councilmember Darryl Moore told the Planet that he had asked the Public Works Department to provide a more comprehensive report about the toxicology tests.  

The city’s Public Works Department dredged the lagoon at the north end of the Aquatic Park and unloaded the spoils along the shoreline almost a month ago without requesting a permit from the California State Water Resources Control Board. 

The incident drew criticism from city officials and local environmentalists—including the Sierra Club—because the spoils were discarded on a popular bird-watching site and adjacent to one of the main wading-bird foraging spots. 

City officials provided the state water board with a full report of the dredging on Nov. 8 and stopped the project after inquiries from the community and the Planet. 

The lagoon is dredged every 15 years to clear out the debris around the tidal tubes and clean out the Strawberry Creek storm drain to improve circulation. At the time the city last conducted the dredging in 1992, the spoils were barged out and deposited near Alcatraz Island. This is no longer permitted. 

The city report states that if the “Strawberry storm drain overflow is not cleaned and maintained, there is added chance of flooding occurring in West Berkeley during heavy rains.” 

According to the report prepared by public works for the City Council, the project had originally been scheduled for summer, but fell behind schedule. 

The report blamed the department’s engineering division’s failure to inform the regulatory agencies, the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department officials and the Public Works director on its “quest to expedite the work before the rainy season.” 

Preliminary results for toxins on spoil samples indicated a high but not hazardous lead level. 

W.R. Forde, the contractor hired by the city to dredge the lagoon, was responsible for taking samples of the sediment from the tidal tubes and the spoils to determine whether any contaminants were present in order to identify where the spoils could be disposed. 

According to the report, the samples were sent to Analytical Sciences testing laboratory in Petaluma.  

“Since the soil is contaminated with lead and hydrocarbons, we have to take it to a Class 2 waste disposal site in Altamont in watertight trucks,” said Jeff Egeberg, manager of engineering at public works. “But first we have to let the spoils dry. That could take up to two months. We will present the council with a full report of the approved work plan, the final test results and the ultimate disposal plan for the spoils at the December meeting.” 

The report states that the city would have to build a completely water-tight containment on-site to allow the soil to dry by evaporation.  

Forde has also indicated that it could take charge of the material and haul it off to its own facility. 

The city has requested Laurel Marcus, the environmental consultant working on the Aquatic Park Improvement Program, to review and identify any additional measures required for mitigating the environmental impacts to the dredging location and the spoils dumpsite. 

Councilmember Moore told the Planet that he expected the city to conduct its own tests. 

“The very contractor doing the dredging is doing the toxic tests,” he said. “It doesn’t really help.” 

The Planet has submitted a public records act request to the city for the test results. 

The state water board has asked the city to include in its work plan whether the cleaning operation caused any water issues or if any of the decant water made its way back to the lagoon. 

According to Brian Wines, who oversees permits for Alameda County at the state water board, signs of turbidity or dissolved oxygen demand in the water are detrimental for fish and water birds. The report states that no issues were observed. 

Egeberg told the Planet that it was unlikely that the project would resume before Christmas. 

“We are considering delaying the remainder of the dredging until after the wet weather season,” he said. 

Costs for consulting by Marcus and other expenses associated with environmental mitigations resulting from stockpiling the spoils are estimated not to exceed $20,000. 

The report states that these costs would have been the same regardless of errors in permit approvals.

Downtown Area Planning Advisory Committee (DAPAC) members voted 17-4 to adopt their draft of a new downtown plan, but one of the nays came from the head of the Berkeley Planning Commission. 

The proposed plan gets its next public airing Dec. 18, when city councilmembers will hold a workshop on the document from 5 to 7 p.m. 

Planning Commission Chair James Samuels was joined in his opposition by former UC Berkeley development executive Dorothy Walker, former city school board member and Zoning Adjustments Board member Terry Doran and Erin Banks, the spouse of former city Planning Manager Mark Rhoades. 

Shortly before the meeting ended, Walker said she wanted to submit a minority report. 

Thursday night’s vote passes the plan and accompanying documents to Samuels’ commission and the City Council. 

“It’s a terrific document and I’m very proud to be associated with it,” said city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks. 

“The university is pleased with everything that’s happened to date,” Mayor Tom Bates told committee members at the start of the meeting. “I’m pleased that we’ve reached a place where we’re all on the same page.” 

It was a city lawsuit challenging UC Berkeley’s expansion plans into the heart of the city that triggered a lawsuit which was settled, in part, by the agreement to create a new plan for the city’s central business district. 

The new plan significantly enlarges the district beyond the boundaries of the current Downtown Plan, adopted in 1990, in part because the settlement requires space to accommodate university plans to add 800,000 square feet of new buildings and 1,200 new parking spaces. 

Marks said some of the plan’s transportation element appears to be inconsistent with other plans, leaving those decisions to Samuels and his commission. 

He said the planning commissioners will also set the final details of the land use plan to be used in the state-mandated environmental review, which will begin in February and end with the presentation of the final environmental impact report (EIR) to the City Council the following January. 

And then, following revision by the City Council—and if the University of California agrees—the plan would be adopted in May 2009 as a city ordinance, Marks said, making it self-enforcing. 

“Our goal is that when the plan goes to the City Council for approval in January 2009, it has or will soon have the support of the university,” Marks said. 

The settlement agreement, which was signed on May 25, 2005, mandates that no downtown plan can be adopted without the university’s concurrence, and Marks said the university will be conducting its own review while the city runs through its adoption process. 

The university’s planning staff, represented by Kerry O’Banion and Jennifer Lawrence McDougall, have attended most of the committee’s meetings, and McDougall was present in the audience Thursday night. 

The university also holds veto power over the EIR, which must be complete before the plan can be adopted. Work on the EIR will begin early next year. 

For Matt Taecker, the planner hired by the city to work on the plan, the emphasis now shifts to the Planning Commission, where members will come up with their own recommendations. 

Thursday night’s DAPAC meeting, which ended with a group photograph, marked the 50th time members had gathered, including two public workshops and joint sessions with the city’s Landmarks Preservation, Transportation and Civic Arts commissions. 

Members spent their final session making last-minute changes to the eight chapters they’d already adopted, including the closely contested sections on historic preservation and land use. 

The land use chapter passed last month on an 11-1-8 vote, with four more members joining Thursday night’s opponents in abstaining on a proposal that set lower limits on building heights than critics had wanted. 

Foes also said they would not vote for any height limits without an economic study showing that the city would still get the affordable housing, open space, parks and other benefits included in the plan if the proposed limits were adopted. 

Early in the meeting, Downtown Berkeley Association President Mark McLeod urged the committee not to adopt the plan without providing for the economic study. 

The fate of DAPAC’s plan remains uncertain. 

Early Thursday evening member Lisa Stephens asked Marks whether their plan would be one of the options considered in the EIR. 

“I presume so,” said the city planner. 

But there was no assurance that their plan would be the preferred alternative considered in the EIR process. 

“There may be five votes for a different idea,” she said, referring to the Planning Commission, where Samuels—often in the minority on DAPAC votes—usually votes with a five-member majority. 

And then there’s the City Council, which will make its own decisions on the plan. 

After the meeting ended, Commission Chair Will Travis handed out ceremonial coffee mugs, complete with a scanned copy of the city seal, to committee members. 

“There are two versions,” he said. “One has a historic building on the back, the other has a point tower.” 

But the mugs had only one image, downtown’s landmarked Wells Fargo building, which rises to the same height as the controversial point tower projects repeatedly rejected by the commission’s majority.

A member of the Berkeley Unified School District’s Merit Commission said the Berkeley school board may not have reappointed him because he took an independent position on budget allocations, one out of step with the board’s wishes.  

Merit Commissioner Roy Doolan, whose three-year term came to an end Saturday, received a letter from the board in August notifying him that they were opening up the application process and that he could apply for the position if he wanted to. “It may be that I was not reappointed because I took a position contrary to that of the school district and the school board,” he said. 

Comprised of three members—one appointed by the Board of Education, one appointed by the collective bargaining units and the third approved and appointed by both—the commission deals with issues of personnel management. 

Superintendent Michele Lawrence told the Planet Monday that Doolan’s concern was premature. 

“His term was over,” said Lawrence. “He is more than welcome to apply again. No decision has been made about anything yet. It doesn’t mean that he [Doolan] is off.” 

Board president Joaquin Rivera said that the district wanted to open up the process to the community. 

“We want to know who else is interested,” he said. 

According to Doolan and Commission Chair Margaret Rowland, who was chosen by both bodies acting jointly, the disagreement between the commission and the school board arose from the commission’s budget allocations beginning in late February. 

“The Education Code gives the Merit Commission the complete authority to set its own budget,” Doolan said. “In this particular case, the question was whether the salary of the director of classified personnel would be paid primarily out of the district’s budget or the commission’s budget. When the salary is paid out of the Merit Commission’s budget the commission has more authority to supervise the director of classified personnel. Otherwise the district calls the shots.” 

According to Doolan, the Merit Commission sought to pay 100 percent of the director’s salary from its budget. He said that two years ago the position had been fully paid by the commission budget, but Lawrence pushed for the change to pay 80 percent of the salary out of the district budget, a move, Doolan said, which limited the commision’s power. Lawrence took issue with Doolan’s comments. 

“When the district was in financial trouble some years ago, we tried to look at ways to cut back on money in all the departments in the district,” she said. “We shifted the director’s salary to another account to balance the General Fund.” 

“When we increased the budget allocation to 100 percent, it was an accounting entry that had no total impact on the district’s budget or on the duties performed by the director,” Doolan said. “Either way the funds are still coming from the district’s General Fund.” 

The County Board of Education approved the Merit Commission’s 100 percent budget allocation to pay the director’s salary in July. It will be effective until June 30, 2008. 

Doolan said he received a letter from the board in June which stated that he was not representing the interests of the school board. 

“Since you are the board’s representative to the commission, the board has asked that I express to you concerns we have on positions you have taken that we do not feel represent our philosophy and view-points,” the letter, signed by board President Joaquin Rivera said. “I want to assure my fellow board members that you do represent our views and that you will convey this position at the Merit Commission meetings.”  

Rowland responded through a letter to the board in September that its letter indicated a serious misunderstanding of the essential role of the Merit Commission.  

“Nowhere is there language indicating that any appointee is the representative of the appointing authority,” she wrote. “All three commissioners are charged with upholding the rules of the Merit System and the appropriate sections of the Education Code. In order to fulfill its mandate, and by statute, the commission must function as an independent body, representing neither the district nor the unions.” 

Rowland told the Planet that the clearest example of the need for independence was the commission’s role in hearings. 

“If there is a grievance against the district brought by an employee, the commission is the ultimate hearing body,” she said. “How could an unbiased hearing be conducted by ‘representatives’ of either the district or the unions?” 

Rowland added that she was disappointed that Doolan had not been reappointed. 

“It’s too bad,” she said. “He has a lot of experience and is a valuable asset. It’s very common that people serve for multiple years.” 

She said that the controversy over the commission’s independence had not yet been resolved. 

The school board may have also violated the mandates of the Education Code when it failed to announce the name of the person it intended to appoint to the commission by Sept. 30 and open up a public comment period within 30 to 45 days of the announcement. 

It passed a resolution in October which stated that the board would appoint someone to the Merit Commission at its first meeting in December and that a public hearing would be held within 30 to 45 days after the announcement. 

However, the board did not send out a public notice until Nov. 29 which stated that the deadline for applications was Dec. 12 and that interviews would be scheduled in January 2008. 

“They are way, way behind,” Doolan said. “I think the superintendent has failed to properly advise the school board on the rules and regulations of the Merit System.” 

Superintendent Lawrence said that there was no mandated time for the appointment. 

“There are no penalties for this,” she said. “The laws allow the board to take time for the interviews and the public hearing. Since the board had a tight agenda, they were not able to make the selection before.” 

Board president Joaquin Rivera echoed her thoughts but added that the board would pay more attention to the timeline in the future. 

“We never intend not to comply with the Education Code,” he said. 

The BUSD Board of Education is seeking qualified candidates for a board representative on the BUSD Merit Commission. The new merit commissioner must be: 

• A registered voter and a resident of Berkeley. 

• A known adherent to the principle of the merit system. During the term of service, a member of the commission cannot be an employee of BUSD or a member of the governing board of the school district or the County Board of Education. 

Applications will be forwarded to the Board of Education, and interviews will be scheduled in January 2008. Deadline for applications is Dec. 12, 2007. 

For more information contact: 644-6320 or publicinfo@berkeley.k12.ca.us. 

Claiming its intent is to support future state and county candidates—though it has scarcely done so in the past—Business for Better Government, the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee, has hired a San Francisco law firm to go to bat for the Chamber PAC’s right to continue filing campaign finance statements with Alameda County rather than the city of Berkeley. 

A May 30 letter from Deputy City Attorney Kristy van Herick to the California Fair Political Practices Commission says that given that the Chamber PAC has contributed exclusively to Berkeley candidates—with just one exception—she believes that the chamber PAC is required to file its campaign contribution statements in Berkeley 

The state agreed with van Herick. An Aug. 15 response signed by FPPC General Counsel Scott Hallibrin states that in a five-year period the Chamber PAC had spent just 0.4 percent of its campaign funds on a race outside Berkeley.  

“…the single $500 contribution the PAC [out of about $126,000 over five years] made to a non-city candidate should be deemed de minimis and the PAC (at this point) should be deemed a ‘city general purpose committee,’” the letter says. 

Whether a committee records its contributions in Berkeley or in Alameda County makes a significant difference for Berkeley voters, Stephen Bedrick, a Fair Campaign Practices Commission member, told the Planet in an interview Monday.  

When the statements are filed locally, “It’s easier for Berkeley voters to find the information—the Berkeley City Clerk puts the information online,” he said. The county puts contribution reports online only when the filing party uses particular software to record contributions. 

“The point of filing is so voters can see who is contributing to what measures or candidates,” he said.  

A Nov. 14 response to the FPPC, written by Melissa A. Mikesell of the Sutton Law Firm, argues that the FPPC did not take into account the Chamber PAC’s “intended future activities, in reaching this determination” and that making a decision based only on where contributions were spent “is only one factor in determining whether a general purpose committee should file as a county or city committee.” 

Mikesell’s letter argues that courts have ruled that committees should file in the highest jurisdiction “in which they intend to be regularly active, even if some or all of the committee’s past activity is in a different jurisdiction.” 

Mikesell further contends that the Chamber PAC’s other county-focused activities should be taken into consideration, such as monitoring county politics and legislation for its impact on Berkeley business. 

PAC chair Miriam Ng did not return calls from the Planet. 

Chamber Executive Director Ted Garrett, new to the post and to Berkeley, said, while the chamber and the PAC are separate and make separate decisions, he wants to “make sure we’re always doing the right thing.” 

“I’d be disappointed if the PAC were to do something [different from what] I’m trying to do at the Chamber,” he said. 

“I’m reviewing everything,” he added. “If there’s a Chamber PAC, it has to blend well with the Chamber.”

Registered nurses at Alta Bates Summit facilities in Berkeley and Oakland will join colleagues at other Sutter Health facilities for a two-day walkout next week, their union announced. 

The California Nurses Association (CNA) served notice on the hospitals Friday. 

The action will begin on the morning of Thursday, Dec. 13, according to union spokesperson Charles Idelson. 

CNA members staged an earlier two-day job action Oct. 10-11 which resulted in the chain locking out strikers for five days, the period for which it had hired replacements. 

While Sutter is a chain with more than 20 hospitals, labor compacts are negotiated between the union and each hospital or hospital group. 

No talks are currently scheduled at the Berkeley and Oakland facilities, according to the union. 

The chain operates two hospitals in Berkeley, the Alta Bates campus at 2450 Ashby Ave. and the Herrick Campus at 2001 Dwight Way, and the three facilities at its Summit Campus in Oakland: the Merritt Pavilion at 350 Hawthorne Ave., the Providence Pavilion at 3100 Summitt St., and the Peralta Pavilion at 450 30th St. 

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will hold hearings on draft environmental impact reports (EIR) on two major buildings in coming weeks. 

The first hearing, set for Dec. 10, will focus on the 140,000-square-foot Computational Research and Theory (CRT) Building. 

Planning Commission Chair James Samuels criticized the design during the commission’s meeting two weeks ago, but he had praise for the second structure, the Helios Energy Research Facility (HERF). 

The hearing on the second building, which is designed to house the controversial $500 million biofuel research program sponsored by BP, plc, the former British Petroleum, is set for Dec. 17. 

Both hearings will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

The 160,000-square-foot Helios building will house the Energy Biosciences Institute, the name BP has given the research effort the multinational oil company hopes will develop crops to be farmed in the tropics for transformation by genetically engineered microbes into vehicle fuels. 

The draft EIRs are both available online. For the CRT building, see www.lbl.gov/community/CRT, and for the HERF building, see www.lbl.gov/community/helios. 

The two structures are located at opposite ends of the 200-acre lab property in the Berkeley hills. 

The Berkeley Planning Commission will hear a lab presentation on the projects Dec. 19, when the commissioners will offer responses of their own. 

Debra Sanderson, the city’s land use planning manager, said her boss, city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks, will be providing an official response as well. 

The final EIR must address concerns raised during the current comment period, which extends through Jan. 4 for the CRT Building and Jan. 11 for the Helios/EBI facility. 

The final EIRs will be issued later in January, with the UC Board of Regents slated to approve the EIRs in March. 

If the regents approve, construction on the Helios building is to begin in spring 2008, with completion by fall 2010. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has pledged $40 million in state bond funds towards construction costs. 

Work on the CRT building should begin in June 2008, with completion set for May 2011. 

The Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission will vote on whether to approve a permit to rehabilitate and make alterations to the exterior of the city-landmarked Shattuck Hotel Thursday. 

Originally designed by architect Benjamin G. McDougall, the hotel—built in 1909—is considered one of the historical jewels of downtown Berkeley. 

The hotel tripled its size in the early 1910s when the original building was extended. Additions were also made to it in 1926 and 1957.  

The project proposes to reconstruct the original arched Allston Way entry, fenestration and doors and to add a new steel and frosted glass canopy, sconces, handicapped-accessible ramp and entry steps. 

Applicant Mark Hulbert of Preservation Architecture also plans to paint the hotel in its original colors and recreate the balconies. 

Since the current elevators in the hotel do not provide disabled access, Hulbert proposes to construct a new elevator tower—containing two new elevators and a penthouse—just south of the location of the existing ones. 

Parimal “Perry” Patel of Palo Alto-based BPR Properties, the company that owns Shattuck Hotel, told the Downtown Area Planning and Advisory Committee in September that he wants to expand the building to house around 320 rooms, part of which includes the construction of the 16-story tower. 

Located at 2086 Allston Way, the hotel is currently undergoing modernization of its rooms, after which the owners want to begin the construction of the tower.  

Since the proposed height of the addition exceeds current downtown zoning and violates Berkeley’s existing General Plan, it would require variances from the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board. 

Changes to the exterior of the building, a designated historic resource, would have to be approved by the city landmarks commission. 

In a letter to city Planning Director Dan Marks, Patel said that the height of the tower had been determined from a financial and not an aesthetic standpoint. 

He stressed the need for more meeting space in the city and his desire to work with UC Berkeley to expand conference rooms. Patel said he was also considering plans to build a parking structure downtown and valet services to meet parking demands. 

Long-term residents of the hotel have filed a petition with the Rent Board alleging that the owners are trying to force them out. 

Melinda Jane Morales, 59, of Richmond was struck and killed at 7:25 p.m. Saturday by an Amtrak Capital Corridor train heading south toward San Jose at or near the Gilman Street crossing. 

The accident, still under investigation, follows on the heels of the Nov. 15 death of Scott Slaughter, 31, of Oakland, killed when he crossed the train tracks north of the Berkeley Amtrak Station taking a short cut through a hole in the fence by the tracks to get to his job at Truitt & White on Hearst Avenue. 

On Saturday, the train was traveling at about 73 miles per hour, according to Vernae Graham, Amtrak spokesperson. It was able to stop by the time it got to Virginia St., Lt. Wesley Hester, Berkeley Police Department told the Planet.  

Witness testimony could not be verified, Hester said. One person told police the victim was walking along the tracks and another said the person on the tracks appeared to be waving at the train. 

The two train-track deaths happened not far from one another, both in Councilmember Linda Maio’s district. When reached Monday afternoon, Maio said she had spoken to the police chief, who was trying to get more information on the incident from Union Pacific, which is the lead agency conducting the investigation. 

“I’m very concerned about these trains going through urban areas—they can be quite dangerous,” she said, noting that in the East, some trains run through tunnels underground in heavily populated areas. 

UC Berkeley needs to clean up any remaining radioactivity at a laboratory in the Gill Tract where biologists combined cancer cells with lymphocytes to produce antibodies a decade ago. 

State law requires the cleanup before the university can take the site—and the Gill Tract—off of its radioactive materials handling license. 

“The facility’s recent history included the use of radioactive material in biomedical and environmental research,” said Ken August of the Radiological Health Branch state Department of Public Health. 

“The research was conducted under a broad scope license issued to UC Berkeley,” he said. “Currently the site is pending decommissioning, and the only activities authorized are those needed by UC to prepare the decommissioning plan.”  

The Gill Tract research facilities are located near the southwest corner of the intersection of San Pablo Avenue and Buchanan Street in Albany, adjacent to UC’s family housing units.  

Radioactive isotopes were used as tracers at the Hybridoma Center, and two nearby sheds were used for temporary storage of radioactive wastes, said Greg Yuhas, the university’s radioactive safety officer. 

Hybridoma cells, which are essentially immortal, are used for the production of monoclonal antibodies, produced by the lymphocytes—the body’s infection-fighting cells. 

The resulting antibodies and another class of compounds called lymphokines are used in treating a variety of diseases. 

Experiments were conducted in the one-story wood-frame stucco-covered center from 1988 through 1997, Yuhas said, while the wastes were stored in a plywood shed and a shipping container. 

Before the university can drop the property from the list on its radioactive materials license, the state administrative code requires a complex decommissioning survey. 

Yuhas said there are two isotopes which create ongoing safety concerns: carbon 14 and tritium, an isotope of hydrogen. Other isotopes used had much shorter half-lives. 

The first stage of the survey involves preparation of a proposal for how the survey will be conducted, covering all aspects of the sites that need to be examined for residual traces of radioactivity.  

Yuhas took would-be survey contractors on a tour of the site Wednesday, and they have until Dec. 14 to prepare their proposals. 

The decommissioning survey must include measurements of radiation on floor surfaces, the surrounding soil and nearby agricultural plots, walls above sinks, laboratory hoods and sink traps, floor drains, ducts, intake and exhaust vents and refrigerators and freezers. 

Once prepared and reviewed by Yuhas and the university’s office of Environmental Health and Safety, bids will be forwarded to the university’s capital projects office, and the winner will be sent to the state radiological office. 

State officials can approve the survey or require additional survey work by another contractor or its own scientists. 

The survey itself could take from one to six weeks, depending on its complexity, and the resulting cleanup could take “from months to years,” Yuhas said. 

Once completed to the state’s satisfaction—and also according to the requirements of the federal Nuclear Regulation Commission—the site and the Gill Tract itself could be removed from the university’s nuclear materials license. 

Any radioactive wastes found would be removed to a designated disposal facility, Yuhas said. 

As a result of an investigative report by India-West on alleged safety and labor code violations at several Indian American-owned orchards in the Sacramento River valley, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board plans to launch an outreach and education effort in the Indian American agricultural labor force. 

“We have to admit, we’ve had no contact with the workers from that community,” ALRB assistant general counsel Ed Blanco told India-West. “We had some contact with the (Indian American) growers involving some Mexican workers, but that was in 1990.” 

According to micro-data samples from the 2000 census, there are about 2,000 Punjabi farm laborers living in Sutter and neighboring Yuba County, and most of them spend at least a few months each year working in Punjabi-owned orchards. 

South Asian growers account for less than 1 percent of the farmers in the California, but records show that they have been the targets of 5 percent of civil actions 

Kulwant Johl, the president of the Yuba-Sutter County Farm Bureau, a trade association of farm owners, and the owner of over 900 acres of orchards, said Punjabi Americans make up approximately 15 percent of the local farm labor force. They cling to agricultural work, he said, because they lack the English language skills required for driving trucks or working in local stores. 

Records at the California Department of Pesticide Regulation indicate that Indian American growers have been found in violation of pesticide safety regulations more frequently than other growers in the state. 

According to USDA’s 2002 Census of Agriculture, South Asian growers account for less than one percent of the farmers in the California, but DPR records show that they have been the targets of five percent of civil actions brought by county agricultural commissioners for pesticide use violations over the past two years. Thirteen Indian American growers have paid field violation fines of over $15,000 in the past two years. 

Within the year, ALRB will begin holding general informational meetings at Mahal Plaza, a Yuba City housing complex for low-income farmworkers, with the goal of “letting workers know what their rights are,” Blanco said told India-West. 

ALRB, founded under the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, aims to help farmworkers set up secret ballot elections to decide whether or not they wanted to be represented by labor unions; and also to combat unfair labor practices that pose a threat to collective bargaining. 

Blanco said that Punjabi farmworkers are likely to raise concerns about wage payment, overtime and access to healthcare, which do not fall under his agency’s purview. “If we hear of any violations or complaints of discrimination that don’t pertain to us, we’ll forward that on to the appropriate agency.” 

India-West accompanied an Employment Development Department outreach coordinator on a field visit to the Sierra Gold Nurseries in Yuba City, where a team of Punjabi laborers was observed grafting young cherry trees. While their Hispanic counterparts spoke openly to the official, the Punjabi workers were oddly reticent. 

“The farmers are giving us everything we need,” one man told India-West. “Everything is perfect. The government should do more, though. It should provide classes, do inspections and translate things into Punjabi.” 

Punjabi American farmworkers interviewed at their homes in Mahal Plaza agreed that state agencies are failing to provide adequate outreach and education, but they also went so far as to say that their work conditions are less than perfect. 

All the individuals interviewed reported that they have never been paid overtime wages, and several claimed to have had work-related injuries that they didn’t report for fear of being blacklisted by local labor contractors. 

Most people said that they were allowed to take two unpaid 15-minute breaks for eight to 10 hours of work. One woman accused Indian American growers of discriminating against the elderly and not providing their workers with adequate drinking water. 

Another woman, when asked whether she thinks Punjabi farmworkers know their health and safety rights, answered, “Something wrong could be happening, but we would never know it.” 

Blanco said ALRB would “move forward” based on what India-West has reported. He added, “It seems like there’s a real need for workers to know that their rights are, and as the agency that enforces those rights, we are going to be spearheading the effort.” 

ARLB, in a joint effort with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, has been planning the outreach effort for the past month. 

“Our board and the governor’s office are all interested in becoming more effective,” Blanco said. “In the past our work was done with primarily Mexican and monolingual Spanish speakers. We recognize that there is a certain amount of diversity, and we really need to reach out. In this area with the Punjabis, and in Fresno, too, with the Hmong.” 

If ALRB officers determine that Indian American growers are engaging in unfair labor practices under the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which includes anything from firing workers engaged in collective bargaining to listening in on lunch-time union meetings, then the agency could order an injunction and bring the parties involved into ALRB’s administrative court process. Blanco himself or ALRB general counsel Michael Lee will represent any farmworkers who file charges against their employers. 

“Most people are just looking for guidance, and we have to figure out a way of providing that,” Blanco said. “We can only go onto farms in certain situations—when we go through a case and win, or if workers want to form a union.” 

Most of the outreach to Punjabi American farmworkers will have to be carried out through community organizations, such as Sikh temples and social centers, and local advocacy groups. 

“One way or another, we’ll reach them,” Blanco assured. “We’ll be using a translator, and our materials will be translated into Punjabi.” 

Lee Pliscou, a lead attorney at the Marysville office of California Rural Legal Assistance, said the news is heartening. He added that CRLA, too, has brought a Punjabi-speaking legal intern on board, who has been holding informational sessions on pesticide safety. 

CRLA and ALRB will together launch an outreach effort in the Punjabi American community during next year’s pruning season in April and May. Although the sites of the outreach efforts have not as yet been finalized, they are sure to include Mahal Plaza. “I’ve also suggested bringing another person that people would want to talk to, like an immigration specialist who can talk about the citizenship process, or a person who does job skills training in computers or English,” Pliscou told India-West.

Michael Caplan, acting manager of the Office of Economic Development, was named as manager, and Zach Cowan, assistant city attorney, was named acting city attorney, said Phil Kamlarz in a memo Monday to the mayor and City Council.  

“[Caplan] is a great advocate for the unique blend of businesses and jobs that Berkeley has to offer,” Kamlarz wrote. He has been with the city since 1989, serving both in the Office of Economic Development and as a neighborhood liaison. 

Cowan will replace Manuela Albuquerque, who retired from her post as city attorney, effective Nov. 30. A member of the city attorney’s office since, 1993, Cowan has been assistant city attorney since 1994.  

“We are happy to have Zach as the acting head of the city attorney’s office,” Kamlarz said. 

Both positions were effective Dec. 2. 

State School Superintendent Jack O’Connell came to Oakland on Friday to formally announce that he is turning over two more areas of operation to the Oakland Unified School District.  

The two areas are personnel and facilities management. O’Connell also announced that once a Memorandum of Understanding is signed between his office and local district officials concerning the power transfer, the OUSD board can begin the selection and hiring of a new school superintendent. 

Under the arrangement, the state will continue to hold complete control over the two remaining operational areas—finances and pupil achievement—and will hold a veto power over any actions of the local board or superintendent. OUSD was given back local control over a fifth operational area—community relations and governance—earlier this year. 

O’Connell’s announcement, at Crocker Highlands School in the Oakland hills, came just two days after the release of a report by the Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team recommending the release of state power over the two operational areas. 

OUSD has been under state control since 2003 when the discovery of a massive budget shortfall forced the district to take out a state loan. 

While international attention is focusing on President Hugo Chavez and the Sunday referendum on the Venezuelan constitution, a conflict that is just as profound is shaking Bolivia. Evo Morales, the first Indian president of the country, is forcing a showdown with the oligarchy and the right wing political parties that have stymied efforts to draft a new constitution to transform the nation. He declares, “Dead or alive I will have a new constitution for the country by December 14,” the mandated date for the specially elected Constituent Assembly to present a constitution for the country to vote on by popular referendum. 

A violent conflict that left three dead and hundreds injured erupted over the past weekend in the city of Sucre where the Constituent Assembly has been meeting. After more than a year of obstructionism by the right wing parties, Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and its allied parties that control 60 percent of the Assembly’s vote, approved the broad outlines of a new constitution designed to alleviate economic inequalities, codify a new agrarian reform program and end the apartheid system that the indigenous population has lived under for centuries. 

The “New Left” presidents that have emerged in Latin America in recent years reflect a social insurgence that is challenging the old political leadership and demanding an economic alternative to the neo-liberal policies of Washington that favor foreign interests and the multinational corporations. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador and even Chilean leaders are carrying out social and economic reforms, although with the possible exception of Ecuador under President Rafael Correa, these reforms are taking place with little or no defiance of their country’s dominant business and financial interests. Upheavals verging on a revolution are taking place in Venezuela and Bolivia. 

In Bolivia the upheaval is very different from Venezuela’s in that it is lead by the Indian majority against the historically dominant “k’aras,” meaning whites and mestizos. The opposition to Morales is lead by the eastern city of Santa Cruz where the business elites and the right wing parties exercise political and economic control. In Sucre and some of the other major departmental (state) capitals where the whites and lighter-skinned peoples tend to concentrate, Santa Cruz has recruited allies, particularly among young university students who are acting as shock troops to confront indigenous organizations and members of the Constituent Assembly.  

In Sucre, the opposition demanded that the new constitution move the executive and congressional branches of government from La Paz to Sucre, which used to be the center of government until the late 19th century. This was clearly a spoiler strategy that plays heavily to racist sentiments – as La Paz and its nearby sister city of El Alto are at the heart of the country’s majority Indian population that supports Morales and mobilized in 2003 to topple a “k’aras” president in La Paz who murdered Indian demonstrators in the streets. 

When the Assembly passed a draft of the new constitution last weekend, the opposition violently took over the streets and all the major public buildings in Sucre using dynamite and Molotov cocktails, demanding the resignation of “the shitty Indian Morales.” Parts of the city were in flames as the Assembly members fled, followed by the police a day later, who had been ordered not to use live ammunition against the mobs. 

The right wing and the business organizations in Santa Cruz and allied cities are threatening to declare autonomy and even talking of secession. A special assembly convoked by the Santa Cruz Civic Committee declared that it would only recognize Sucre as the “location of all the powers of the state.” Branko Marinkovic, a major business magnate and the head of the Santa Cruz committee, declares, “The fight has begun for our autonomy and liberty…. ” Along with Santa Cruz, civic committees in five other major departmental capitals are calling for an economic boycott to withhold basic consumer commodities from the market and sow economic chaos. A move is afoot by the Civic Committees to “declare de facto autonomy” on December 14. 

A massive mobilization of the Indian population in La Paz and the western highlands is taking place in support of Morales and the new constitution. Even in the eastern departments where the opposition controls the major cities, rural indigenous organizations are on the move, including in the department of Santa Cruz. The leader of Bolivia’s largest peasant workers confederation, Isaác Ávalos, is calling for a blockade of the cities, declaring, “we will seize their lands …if they impose de facto autonomy.” 

“We are at a national impasse,” says Miguel Urisote, a political analyst and director of the Land Foundation, an independent research center in La Paz. “The right wing led by the Santa Cruz oligarchy is in open rebellion, but Morales, the Movement Towards Socialism and the popular movements will not back down. The military is supporting the president.  

The radical upsurges in Venezuela and Bolivia have very different roots. In Venezuela, where over 80 percent of the population lives in the cities, it is primarily an urban upheaval that predates the rise of Hugo Chavez. In 1989, the “Caracazo” threw the existing political order into crisis when tens of thousands of people from the outlying slums of Caracas descended on the center of the city where the rich lived. The social and economic transformations of the past eight years under the presidency of Chavez have been carried out in tandem with the popular classes. The main battle has centered over the control and distribution of oil revenues, while in Bolivia the struggle over land and the right of the Indians to grow coca plants are major areas of conflict.  

While a close rapport exists between Chavez and Morales, the transformations in each country will assume distinct trajectories. They are part of the broader process of social change occurring at different paces and intensities throughout Latin America as the old models of the 20th century and the historic dominance of the United States are disputed. 

Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA) and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. 

“The issue of support for the presence of a USMC Officer Selection Office in Berkeley pits Berkeley’s traditional anti-war stance against its historic commitment to free speech and assembly.  

Citizens, and some City Council members, have spoken out against the location of a Marine Officer Selection Office in Berkeley—a city that officially opposes the current conflict in Iraq. There is a desire to protect our youth from contact with recruiters and a concern about the actions of dishonest recruiters in other parts of the country. 

As traditional as is Berkeley’s anti-war philosophy, the city has an equally long and passionate history of support for the rights of free speech and assembly, which supports the right of this Office to exist in Berkeley. The essence of the Free Speech Movement was protecting the right of all voices to be heard, even those at odds with the prevailing political climate of the time and place. 

Free Speech must not be limited to speech with which one agrees. To allow a legally permitted Office to be shut down, or to limit its right to do business because one disapproves of its message, gives lie to Berkeley’s claim as a city tolerant of diverse viewpoints, and home of the Free Speech Movement. 

No one can limit the right of individuals to ignore a recruiting office, but a city must not take the position of opposing the existence of that Office. It is appropriate that the City Council of Berkeley affirm the right of this office to exist and allow it to succeed or fail on its own merits. 

Should Council Members support the right of this Office to exist in Berkeley?” 

This current “issue” as posed on the website of the Kitchen Democracy organization is an excellent illustration of my old friend George Lakoff’s theory that how something is framed makes all the difference. Why the ironic quotes around “issue”?  

Well, has anyone proposed silencing the marine recruiter who’s currently working Berkeley? Not that I’ve noticed. And yet, consider the frame in the first sentence: 

“The issue of support for the presence of a USMC Officer Selection Office in Berkeley pits Berkeley’s traditional anti-war stance against its historic commitment to free speech and assembly.”  

The whole statement is called an “article” on the website, also misleading, since that’s a term normally associated with professional journalism or with academic research—it carries with it the aura of impartial scholarship. But the piece is really a somewhat poorly informed expression of opinion. It creates a polarity where none exists: Do you say yes or no to free speech? Have you stopped beating your wife yet?  

Allowing wishy-washy “neutral” or “maybe” votes (oh, “positions,” they don’t call them votes anymore) doesn’t make much difference, since few correspondents select them. And since anonymous posting is allowed, there’s a lot of arm-waving taking up space on the site in both the “yes” and the “no” columns.  

Among the posters who’ve signed their names are a good number of people I know to be ordinarily intelligent and thoughtful. Here they’ve come down on both sides of the non-issue, clearly because they haven’t given it much thought this time. The format encourages knee-jerk reactions even among the best and the brightest. It’s too easy to “vote” without thinking much about what you’re doing.  

In fact, no one—no surprise in Berkeley—goes on record as being opposed to free speech. Most, though not all, are opposed to the war in Iraq and even to militarism in general. Most of them, however, don’t seem to be thinking very hard about what the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, traditionally the mainstay of support for freedom of speech, is all about, and to whom it applies.  

Quick review: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” 

Historically, this has been extended to include lower governmental entities such as the Berkeley City Council. The council even takes an oath each year to support and defend the U.S. Constitution, as well as the California constitution, which has similar prohibitions. So why, in this case, does anyone think the council needs to have a whole special discussion about whether or not the marine recruiter is free to do his business in Berkeley? Don’t they have other things to do? 

Now, we do have a City of Berkeley tradition, not mentioned on the K-D site, of hoping to ignore those constitutional law decisions which say that you can’t control the content of speech. That’s why City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque, thankfully now just a bad memory, went all the way to losing in federal court trying to keep panhandlers from asking for money on the street. But in this case no one at City Hall seems to be saying that the marines aren’t allowed to talk about signing up kids up to make war, or that their opponents aren’t allowed to tell them that they’re dead wrong. 

It is accepted legal doctrine that some restrictions on the time, place and manner of speech are allowed, of course. If the marines decided to hire a sound truck and cruise the hills in the middle of the night blasting residents out of bed with John Phillip Sousa marches and their recruiting message, they could be stopped in a hot minute. But does running a discreet, low-key office downtown during business hours qualify? Probably not. 

The more interesting question is what restrictions, if any, could be placed on their current opponents, who favor, shall we say, more colorful and graphic expressions of opinion. If I were their lawyer, I’d enjoy arguing that because they don’t have the same grandiose taxpayer-funded budget the marines do, they’re forced to make their point in creative ways. The aggregate excitement around the recruiting office might be used as an argument for limiting all such activities to streets which aren’t so busy, but that would be a hard one to make. 

The whole discussion is yet another demonstration of the deficiencies of the Kitchen Democracy format. Anonymous or pseudonymous comments are almost always pointless, which is why the Planet doesn’t print them, though we will occasionally withhold a name from publication on request if we know the writer faces some real threat. The comments on news articles which many papers are starting to allow on their websites signed by cutesy false names are similarly poor, verging on illiterate.  

On the other hand, we’re constantly amazed at the excellent signed submissions we get for our printed opinion pages, even when we don’t agree with them. There seems to be something about knowing that your ideas will appear on paper with your real name attached that makes writers pull up their socks—think things through a bit before writing, revise text if needed, use normal grammar and spelling—refinements which are usually lacking in quick responses posted only on the web. We appreciate them, and our readers do too. 

—Becky O’Malley

Out and about in Berkeley over the weekend, we had a chance to observe numerous examples of the truism that it’s not what you do, it’s who you are that counts. We walked up Ashby to Peet’s on Domingo, one of the oldest locations for Berkeley’s pride and joy, the original leading edge of the gourmet coffee revolution. In the many years we’ve been walking to Peet’s, the shops in the small commercial enclave on that corner have had a lot of turnover. Since we’ve been in the business of selling newspaper advertising, we’ve learned that there are many more people in Berkeley who’d like to run small businesses than there are people who know how to do it.  

The successful businesses (Peet’s is a prime example) take good care of their customers, even pamper them. The unsuccessful ones, those that last a year or two and then vanish, often seem to regard customers as unwelcome interlopers on private territory. For some reason the Domingo-Ashby corner has always attracted a larger-than-average number of these, elegantly appointed displays but with implicit “don’t touch anything” rules. Those come and go often.  

But there’s a store there now which seems to be a keeper, a bicycle shop which attracts crowds of recreational bicyclists on Saturdays and Sundays. They stop in to refuel at Peet’s, and then congregate by fives and tens on the sidewalk at the bike store to check out the new merchandise. The store has accommodated them by installing a bike rack on the street side of the sidewalk and lining up green plastic chairs alongside the shop-window. It’s a cheery testosterone-drenched gathering, all in all. 

But, of course, it does block two-thirds of the sidewalk. Does anyone complain about this? Not that I’ve noticed.  

The riders are clean, don’t seem to smell bad, have attractive bodies and eye-catching (and expensive) costumes. They seldom run down pedestrians, though old folks and small children sometimes have to jump out of the way quickly if a rider forgets to dismount on the sidewalk.  

That block has a wide sidewalk, and it’s well used. The kiddie boutique almost always has a sale rack outside, and the cafe has put out benches for its wait-listed overflow. There’s still a narrow walking area down the middle, but on weekends it can get tight. 

Outside of Peet’s there’s a courtyard with more benches for the coffee-drinkers and the bakery patrons. There and on the adjacent sidewalk you can observe numerous examples of aggressive and intimidating street behavior on Sunday mornings. 

There are children who are frightened by dogs, and there are dogs who are frightened by children. Parents of both children and dogs take the feelings of their charges seriously, and are alert to anything that might be interpreted as a threat. Some of the children have been trained in the proper way to speak to a strange dog: ask the owner if it’s all right, extend a hand for the dog to smell before petting it. Others have not, and it can get ugly. Many of the dogs are on leashes and/or friendly, but some are neither. Everyone knows the rules, however, and police are never called. 

There are even bathrooms for the right kind of public. They have combination locks, with combinations revealed by employees of the businesses to people who look right. They’re fairly clean, even on busy weekends.  

Over the years we’ve seen the occasional beggar out in front of Peet’s. Patrons of the businesses tend to look annoyed and turn away. There’s an extensive line-up of newspaper boxes along the curb, but we’ve never seen a live Street Spirit vendor there.  

On the way home we stopped off at nearby John Muir School, which functions as a public park on weekends. There we saw a small dog, perhaps a Yorkie, romping off-leash on the grassy lawn. It defecated, admittedly with a tiny output. The owner, engaged in conversation, ignored it. No pooper-scooper for him, but no one called the cops.  

A little boy, seemingly furious because his father said it was time to go home, hollered loudly and for a long time. The father yelled back at top volume. It was a disturbing display, but everyone else ignored it. 

Our grandchild played on the whirligig near the fence on Claremont. At the curb, less than 50 feet away, a man sitting in his car smoked up a storm and blew the smoke out his window in the direction of the playground. A complaint was not filed. 

Does the triply-redundant Public Commons for Everyone law apply near the corner of Ashby and Domingo, and does it affect the kind of people who usually hang out there? What about belligerent children, menacing dogs?  

If a winded bicyclist stretches out across the sidewalk for a moment or a merchant blocks part of the sidewalk with a sale rack, are the police called? Of course not.  

All in all, this seemed on Sunday to be an ideal shared-space oasis, a veritable Camelot, where seldom is heard a discouraging word despite small annoyances. How does it differ from, for example, Telegraph Avenue?  

The city of Berkeley has just expended more than a (conservatively estimated) hundred thousand dollars studying complaints about the Telegraph and Shattuck areas, and it’s poised to expend hundreds of thousands more. Many complainers say that they stay away from the areas in question, but they still claim to know what’s happening there.  

Much of what’s going on downtown and on Telegraph, however, is not unlike what happens elsewhere, for example near the intersection of Ashby with Domingo and Claremont. On Telly the hangers-out are not thirtyish bicylists with pricey gear and snappy outfits. Many are scruffy young with (to my ageing eyes) hideous tattoos and piercings, and their merchants of choice are there to supply them with more of the same. Retailers come and go, many with the same problems of poor business sense as those on Domingo. Peet’s has just opened another outlet for the same legal drug popular on Domingo, but other drugs can also be obtained on the Avenue.  

The Telegraph sidewalk is frequently partially blocked, just like the one on Domingo, not only by chairs and sale racks, but also sometimes by people who don’t have chairs and sit on the sidewalk. There are noisy and belligerent people (not as many of them chronologically children) and offensive dogs there too. There are no obvious public benches, however, and there are no public bathrooms, so defecation in the wrong place is not unknown, and not only by dogs.  

All in all, the activities in both locales are remarkably similar. Why have the mayor and his council majority chosen to get exercised by what happens downtown and on Telegraph, while ignoring Domingo and Claremont at Ashby? Could it be that the offending parties downtown are somehow different from the people who hang out in the Claremont district on weekends? Perhaps. Think about it. 

CURSE OF THE GROVE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On Monday, Oct. 1, Judge Richard Keller issued a UC-requested injunction against the tree sitters who were protecting the disputed oak grove. Within two weeks, Saturday, Oct. 13, the Bears—almost ranked number one nationally—lost to Oregon and continuing losing five out of the next six games. The UC Athletic Department should pause in its pursuit of the grove’s destruction. It took the Boston Red Sox 87 years to shake the Curse of the Bambino!  

Don Santina 

Oakland 

• 

RECRUITMENT OFFICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

An e-mail from Kitchen Democracy this week asks “should Berkeley City Council affirm that free speech and assembly rights apply to U.S. military recruiters?” Is this a survey about the Marine Recruitment office controversy, and if so, why is it incorrectly framed as a free speech issue? This question will produce survey results that are irrelevant, misleading, and useless. Even worse, the results could be used to convince the City Council to allow the recruitment office to remain open. Free speech is not at the heart of this issue, and I urge City Council members to disregard the results of this survey. I’m also asking Kitchen Democracy to pull the survey right now and instead ask a question that provides meaningful information. 

Our community wholeheartedly supports free speech for everyone, but a “yes” to free speech rights doesn’t mean “yes” to the recruitment office. 

In my view, this isn’t about the First Amendment rights of military recruiters, who aren’t merely handing out literature, holding meetings, or writing letters to the editor. They are operating a business and are subject to the laws governing any business. No exceptions for the military. The fact is, we don’t allow some businesses in Berkeley, particularly when the business is immoral, unethical and illegal. The nature of this business is war, killing people and destroying lives, including lives of military personnel and innocent civilians, and squandering our tax dollars. But morals aside, this business employs illegal business practices, including lying to potential employees about their job descriptions, luring recruits to sign up by promising benefits they don’t get, unilaterally extending the length of service specified in the employment contract, and discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation. We have an obligation to require businesses operating in our community to obey the laws. 

I wondered why the recruiters aren’t located on the UC campus if, as they say, they are strictly interested in hiring college graduates? This item from the upcoming Dec. 10 issue of the “National Law Journal” may provide the answer: At Stanford Law School, 80 percent of the law school faculty, including the dean, signed an e-mail asking students to meet with recruiters off-campus, because the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy violates the nondiscrimination policies for job recruiters of nearly all law schools. 

I encourage you to join Kitchen Democracy and let your views be known at www.kitchendemocracy.org. 

Cynthia Papermaster 

• 

BERKELEY PARKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Wendy Schlesinger writes in the Nov. 30 Planet that I erred in my Nov. 27 article on Berkeley parks by placing the planning and creation of Ohlone Park in the “late ’70s and early ’80s” rather than 1969. 

I’m guessing she’s referring to the creation of an instant “People’s Park Annex” by demonstrators on the land which had been cleared of houses so the BART tunnel could be dug. 

That was certainly an important milestone in the process of making the land a permanent city park. 

The Berkeley park centennial exhibit organizers dated the city’s official approval of plans for Ohlone Park to 1978, the dedication to 1979, and the final acquisition of the surface land from BART to 1990. 

In her Nov. 29 talk on the exhibit and Berkeley park history, one of the exhibit organizers, Louise Mozingo, noted that accurate dating of the creation of parks—even those established in the relatively recent past—is a challenge. 

There are often several relevant dates. They include when the idea of a park on a particular site came about, when the idea was incorporated into city plans or policies, when the property was formally acquired or designated as open space, when park acquisition or “improvements” were funded and took place, when people could finally use it as a park, and when it was “officially” dedicated. 

In Berkeley, as Wendy Schlesinger suggests, the dates that community members took independent action to turn a vacant space into public open space are also quite relevant in park history. 

These events extend over years and, sometimes, decades, making the creation of a park an evolutionary process, rather than a single moment in time. 

The exhibit organizers—Mozingo, Marcia McNally, and Sadie Graham Mitchell—are very open to expanding and amending their park history and chronology as community members supply further information and insights. 

Marcia McNally suggests that comments and information on the history of Berkeley parks can be sent to her at cdbydesign@earthlink.net. 

Steven Finacom 

• 

STAGNATING  

BUSINESS CLIMATE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have worked and managed several businesses in downtown Berkeley since 1978.  

Occasionally there have been complaints about panhandlers and street people, and naturally I’ve had positive and negative experiences with many of them myself over the years. These complaints have been few and far between, and more often than not come from folks who already have a bee in their bonnet about how “unruly” Berkeley is anyway.  

But in the last few years the resounding complaint from our patrons, which we hear over and over and over, is how unpleasant downtown Berkeley has become because of the lack, and high cost, of parking. 

The notion of moving to greater reliance on mass transit is appealing to all of us and a necessary goal. However, forcing people to drive all the way to places like Emeryville and El Cerrito to do their shopping and moviegoing will do nothing to save the environment—nor freshen the “stagnating business climate” of downtown Berkeley. 

Instead, the city could try making it much easier to come to downtown, by lowering—not raising—parking rates, by adding longer hours and more routes to mass transit schedules, and by offering vibrant local businesses that provide necessary goods and services. That might just do the trick. 

Dale Sophiea 

• 

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S DEPTHS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve been queried about my reference to the “Queen Elizabeth’s depths” in the Nov. 27 edition of the Planet. Regarding friends who had enlisted, I wrote: “Another was shipped overseas in the Queen Elizabeth’s depths and stationed outside London…”  

During her World War II career, the RMS Queen Elizabeth carried service women and men across the Atlantic—without convoy, zigzagging every seven minutes, with no air-conditioning and very little ventilation. Figures vary, but on most voyages as a converted troop ship, she carried between 13,000 and 15,000 persons, with lifeboat accommodations for 8,000. A Canadian veteran recalls a four-day voyage in 1943 between Halifax and Scotland with 17,000 aboard. On stormy days it was not possible to walk without being shifted from one side to the other; on good days, a few minutes’ exercise and fresh air were possible. 

Cunard’s QE liner had been launched in 1938 with luxury accommodations for 2,283 passengers; at 83,637 gross registered tons, she was the largest passenger ship afloat… and fast. But on her River Clyde wharf, the QE was a target for German Luftwaffe-pilots and saboteurs. She was painted gray, and on March 3, 1940 headed for open waters. False rumors were spread that the QE was going to Southampton; some guessed that she would head for Halifax. Once out at sea, Captain John Townley opened his sealed orders to head for New York at full speed with a crew of only 400. Four days later, the “gray ghost” arrived in New York. 

By 1942 the Admiralty planned to convert both Queens (Elizabeth and Mary) into aircraft carriers, but their troop-carrying role was deemed more important. Accommodations were altered to provide for 10,000 personnel. Installation of degaussing gear was completed. In August she began shuttle service between New York and Gourock, Scotland.  

The QE’s high speeds enabled her to outrun German U-boats. Troops aboard were told that her top speed was a military secret. Adolf Hitler offered the Iron Cross and $250,000 to any U-boat commander who could sink the Queen Elizabeth or Queen Mary. Winston Churchill declared that they shortened World War II by a year. They could transport almost an entire division to Europe, usually in four to six days. 

On one trip in 1944, 500 WAACs and 18,000 men were crammed onboard the QE as she sailed out of New York headed for Europe. Viola B. Smith had enlisted in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (later the Women’s Army Corps): “We were chased by German submarines, and we weren’t told where we were going. To conserve fresh water, we washed with salt water, and I bunked with the four other women officers in a former bathroom. I was on the bottom underneath four hammocks. … Without an escort, the ship relied on its speed and arrived about a week later in Scotland to the news that the European invasion had begun.” Thirty of these women, including Captain Smith, were assigned to the 5th Army Airways Communications System, providing air traffic control for the 8th Air Force. 

By the end of the war in Europe the Queens’ next duty was to redeploy troops for the war against Japan. Repatriation of American troops continued until October 1945, when the QE was released from U.S. service and allocated to the repatriation of Canadian troops. 

Helen Rippier Wheeler 

• 

CLEANING UP  

THE STREETS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

People blocking sidewalks and using public areas as toilets do make areas uninviting and difficult to navigate. But using language like “cleaning up the streets” in reference to individuals may be part of the problem. We read and hear often about “street sweeps,” but what is being “swept” are individuals. Street cleaning once meant literally cleaning the street—not disposing of humanity. Humans are not filth. This (mis)use of language cannot be ameliorated by prescribing treatment as a remedy. C. W. Nevius and Chronicle editors challenge the mayor to “Clean up the streets.” I assume that if the mayor and other elected officials accept this challenge (basing their acceptance on the dangers these particular people on the street pose), they will certainly include “sweeping the streets” of and forcefully medicating all individuals who, due to cell phone use and/or skateboarding, etc. pose a hazard to others. Sidewalk cell phone users, double parkers, and sidewalk skateboarders/cyclists are clearly not aware of their surroundings or the hazards their behaviors pose. Perhaps they are suffering from “selfish “disorder” and Medicare, MediCal and private insurance will pay for their treatment. 

Kathie Zatkin 

• 

KANDY’S CAR WASH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a neighbor of Kandy’s carwash, I believe I too need to voice my observations about this neighborhood business. There’s been a great deal of emotional energy shared, but there’s a few pieces of information that have rarely made it to print. Such as:  

1) The property owner, Craig Hertz, has offered current tenant Kandy Alford, who lives in Oakland and is six months behind on his rent, several other suitable locations to relocate to. Mr. Alford has turned those down. 

2) Because of some sort of “grandfather” loophole, the Kandy’s business has been allowed to dump their toxic chemicals directly into our Berkeley sewage system. It’s doubtful that many other businesses are permitted to do this. 

3) Both walking or driving past Kandy’s, I’m surprised that this business has been allowed to exist as long as it has. The music is often distracting to motorists, and the area looks and feels dangerous because of the continued blight. 

4) Finally, I’ve used Kandy’s cleaning service once (and only once). I wanted to support a local business, and have my car cleaned and detailed. Well, their promise of a cleaned vehicle wasn’t fulfilled. After assuring me of both removal of bumper stickers and my satisfaction, the stickers remained and I was left feeling cheated. After that, I had no intention of ever supporting that business again. 

When our neighborhood meeting heard about the biofuel station moving in, everyone cheered. Of the 30 or so people in attendance there were plenty of questions, but we knew that it would be a vast improvement over the current eyesore that exists on that corner. This is not a black/white issue, this is a quality of life issue. 

Name withheld 

(A neighbor of ROC) 

• 

UNWARRANTED ALLEGATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Dick Bagwell, in his recent letter entitled “Allegation of Anti-Semitism,” characterizes former Congresswoman Cynthia Mckinney and Venezuelan President Chavez as anti-Semites. 

Cynthia McKinney and Sr. Chavez are hardly anti-Semitic. Mr. Bagwell is conflating their criticism of the Israeli governments’ disastrous occupation of the West Bank over the last 40 years with criticism of the Israeli people. 

It is same as conflating the criticism of Bush and Cheney administration’s disastrous policies in Iraq and elsewhere with criticism of the American people. 

Scoundrels everywhere wrap themselves in their respective flags, and unfortunately even well-meaning people, like I am sure Mr. Bagwell is, fall for it. 

Akio Tanaka  

Oakland 

• 

HOLIDAY LIGHTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve been pondering my feelings about the holiday lights around the area and the range of what they may mean to those who of us who are displaying them. For me, the holiday lights express the brightness of what Jesus introduced to the world through his devotion to God and mankind. The lights point to the joy and gratitude, comfort and peace which this season evokes. These qualities of thought and expression are the epitome of a Christian’s hope and purpose, but they belong not exclusively to one religion, philosophy, or another. They stand as way marks by which to measure the good we do, the practical application of our ideals. In the Bible, God said “Let there be light” and Jesus said to let our light shine. I look to the lights of the season as reminders of how high the human spirit can reach when inspired by good works and good will towards all. 

Marilyn McPherson 

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mary Oram thinks I’m dismissing honest objections to BRT. Here’s what I think are some honest objections to Berkeley’s BRT plan: 

• The bus-only lane on Telegraph between Parker and Bancroft will indeed increase congestion. What slows down traffic on this part of Telegraph is the numerous unsynchronized traffic lights. 

• Removal of street parking at BRT stations is unavoidable unless we have stops instead of stations, but it’s possible to provide nearby replacement parking. Eugene appears to have dealt successfully with this issue. 

• Motorists who decide not to commute by car are supposed to make a major contribution to GHG reduction. This is unlikely to happen unless BRT travel really becomes more attractive than car driving—which probably requires bus-only lanes. 

• All-day parking should be eliminated and converted to short-term parking for Berkeley visitors and shoppers (ref: the 2000 TDM Study). All-day parkers should get bus/BRT passes from their employer . 

• Stores, restaurants and theaters should be planning to provide day-passes to encourage patrons to come by BRT, instead of adding to our parking problem. 

• Local bus service should be improved to complete the transportation network and serve the BRT stations. 

• The BRT should be planned to extend down University Avenue, ready to connect with the Ferry at the Marina. 

One objection that I do not regard as honest is the claim made by Doug Buckwald and a few others, that BRT will destroy retail business along its route. This sure doesn’t need to happen, and to my knowledge there are no BRT deployments where this has happened. I repeat my challenge to Doug to cite even one example of BRT becoming the bane of business. It sure didn’t happen in Eugene. 

BRT should provide faster and more frequent bus service, which will motivate a major mode-shift among motorists. My vision includes fewer vehicle miles traveled, reduced consumption of oil, less traffic on our streets, more people doing business in our stores and less bad gas in our air. Should this vision be dismissed? 

Steve Geller 

• 

HELPING THE HOMELESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Never let it be said that churches and religious organizations in the Bay Area are indifferent to the sad plight of the homeless and low income citizens in our community. Quite the contrary. Many churches in Berkeley and Oakland provide hot meals and a warm atmosphere of camaraderie—some daily, others weekly, or monthly. To mention just a few, there’s St. Vincent de Paul, the College Avenue Presbyterian Church, and my own parish, Newman Hall/Holy Spirit. 

Newman Hall has, over the years, sponsored a very active program called, appropriately, “Loaves and Fishes,” held the first Saturday of the month. Last Saturday, Dec. 1, was the occasion of a festive Christmas party, attended by 120 guests. Feeding that many people is no easy task, but thanks to wonderful organization by the many volunteers, directed by Debbie Tatto, the event was a huge success. I might add, in all candor, that the mood was somewhat somber at the beginning, not exactly an animated party atmosphere. When the doors opened promptly at 12, there was a rush for seats, but little conversation. Guests were mainly men, though there were a few women and children. The men were carrying with them bulky bedrolls, knapsacks, even a couple of shopping carts (perhaps containing the owners’ worldly possessions). Children were seated in the lounge, with volunteers offering them toys and games. 

Since I’m a total klutz in any kitchen, I was assigned the role of host at one of the l7 long tables. My job was to make guests feel welcome and to start a dialogue. Once everyone was seated, servers rushed in with large plates of cheese and crackers and bottles of Martinelli Sparkling Cider, followed by bowls of green salad. Little by little, conversation developed and diners engaged in small talk, jokes and sports. Then came the entree—generous slices of ham, mounds of creamy mashed potatoes and green beans, with rolls and butter, of course. Though portions were exceedingly generous, servers came around with seconds which were eagerly accepted. The meal was topped off with gigantic pieces of cake and ice cream. 

Next came the entertainment and awarding of gifts. All those born in December had their own special birthday cake and presents. Then came the Christmas carols with nearly everyone singing lustily. There were some excellent voices; “Go Tell it to the Mountain” was clearly a favorite. The party came to a happy conclusion with the always eagerly awaited raffle, everyone having received a ticket during the course of the meal. On a long table at one end of the room were 18 very large holiday shopping bags filled to the top with attractive and useful gifts—warm scarves and gloves, gift certificates from Ross, BART tickets, etc. It appeared that everyone went home with a gift. And where the mood had been somber at the beginning of the event, there was now the sound of laughter and high spirits. 

But even more than the warm meal and gifts they received, the 120 people attending the Loaves and Fishes Christmas party took with them the warm memory of having been treated with respect and affection, not as objects of pity. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

HUCKABEE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A demographic of white conservative Christians has vaulted Mike Huckabee into the lead in Iowa caucus polls. This is not representative of America. 

Mike Huckabee is a social conservative, anti-abortion, pro-war and anti-immigration; did someone say a George Bush carbon copy. But wait, Republican presidential hopeful Huckabee doesn’t believe in evolution. Is this who we want 60 million American school children to look up to; a president who is an anti-evolutionary? That America would be the laughingstock of the rest of the world with Huckabee as president is an understatement. 

Be clear about the upcoming presidential election and its field of candidates. We don’t need a repeat of the 2000 election when George Bush misled the electorate. 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley  

Our experience in public education couldn’t be more different than the cynical and gloomy picture painted by Jonathan Stephens in his recent editorial. (The State of Education, Nov. 23.) As longtime Berkeley teachers (Malcolm X and Willard), as parents of students who have nearly completed their education in Berkeley public schools and as leaders of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, we have a good perspective from which to view public education in our community.  

When we look at public education in Berkeley, we see a caring, committed community of teachers and families working as hard as they possibly can to make sure every student learns and thrives.  

In preschool and elementary school, teachers create lessons and activities to meet state standards in developmentally appropriate ways. They work with families, seek out social services for children, and collaborate with each other to improve their teaching practice. In middle and high school, teachers find ways to cut through the distractions of adolescence to prepare students to think critically and have access to the skills and information they need to function in our community. They work long into the evening preparing lessons, grading papers and leading the extracurricular activities that teens value so much. At Berkeley Adult School, teachers provide literacy, language and job skills classes so that students can improve their economic status through lifelong learning. At every level, teachers are striving to eliminate the achievement gap between racial groups and socioeconomic classes. 

There are indeed obstacles to success in this endeavor. Excessive standardized testing, underfunded and contradictory mandates from the government and a shortage of qualified and experienced teachers frustrate our best intentions, but we have found that Berkeley teachers struggle against these obstacles and find amazing and creative ways to succeed despite the odds. Step into any school in Berkeley to see the fruits of our labor.  

While it is true that many teachers enter the profession as idealists, hoping to change their community for the better, it does not follow that adequate resources for education, fair salaries and good working conditions are not necessary. All of us know of talented teachers who have left the district or the profession to make a more livable salary. All of us know of teachers who can’t afford to live in the community where they teach, who have no chance to buy a home in Berkeley or who struggle to raise their own families in this high priced area.  

None of us believe that simply throwing money in the general direction of education will solve these problems, but a targeted use of increased resources is crucial to improvement. To find and keep the best possible teachers, our communities need to offer excellent salaries and working conditions. We need to keep class sizes small, compensate teachers for the extra duties they take on outside the classroom, and provide teachers and parents with authentic involvement in school governance and reform. Luckily in Berkeley our citizens are very generous and supportive of public education and they have voted to tax themselves more to provide some of these things. Not all communities are so lucky, and some of these items can only come through sharply focused and disciplined priorities on the part of School Boards. To say that money is irrelevant to providing the best possible education for children is just flat out wrong. 

Despite the well-publicized challenges, public education is alive and well in Berkeley. Great things are happening every day. Don’t just take our word for it—get involved in a Berkeley public school, and come and see for yourself!

We received a letter from Stand Up for Berkeley requesting donations to support litigation against the university’s plans for Memorial Stadium and the Student-Athlete High Performance Center. As longtime Berkeley residents, we are equally concerned about maintaining our quality of life. But we do not believe these projects will adversely affect our neighborhoods and feel it is time to move on. 

With so much public information available on these projects, it is difficult to understand why there continues to be such gross misrepresentation of the facts. We can understand and accept that reasonable, well-informed people can wind up on different sides of these issues. But we cannot accept an effort to solicit additional support based on falsehoods and distortions. For example: 

• The description of the stadium project in the “fact sheet” is profoundly misleading. On the east side, there will be permanent lighting to replace the temporary lighting that is currently brought in for late afternoon games, but the university has worked closely with consultants to ensure these are slim vertical elements, not “huge prominent” towers such as are seen at the Oakland Coliseum. On the west side, a new low, press box would replace the existing temporary press box–is this what the “fact sheet” refers to incorrectly as “two additional stories above the current rim”? The stadium plan does not include VIP luxury boxes. The stadium already has a “subterranean concourse” that would, in a final phase of the project (depending upon funding availability), be extended to the entire perimeter of the stadium to provide improved disabled access, add bathrooms, and remove the dozens of “porta potties” lined up along Rim Way and Centennial Roads for every game. In each instance, the “fact sheet” misleads and fails to explain the real “fact”—that existing facilities at the stadium are substandard and need to be upgraded. 

• These projects will not change the character of use at the stadium or “commercialize” its use. For nearly 20 years university chancellors have agreed to limit the use of the stadium in consideration of the community. The university has already stated flatly that the stadium will not be used for rock concerts and the university will not be installing a sound system that would support such use. The new system would direct sound down and towards the field and away from surrounding areas, an improvement over the current system. While the university has limited the number of “capacity” events to no more than seven events beyond football games, the definition of “capacity” is any event that would draw more than 10,000 attendees. In addition, the campus has offered to discuss with the city parameters and protocols concerning future use of the stadium. 

• There will be some disruption and truck traffic due to construction, but we will get through it. This is unfortunate but unavoidable if the stadium is to be retrofit for the safety of athletes, staff, and fans, which we feel must be done. The City of Berkeley has undertaken many large-scale projects to retrofit historic public buildings or to build new ones—the main library, Berkeley High School, City Hall, and the Brower Center, to cite a few. These have disrupted traffic flow for a period of time, but the results are well worth the temporary inconvenience. The alternative to renovating an historic structure like the stadium is to let it deteriorate or tear it down—Is that really what we want? 

• The project will not make the area more dangerous; in fact, it will provide better emergency access and reduce the capacity of the stadium by 10,000 seats. As part of the project, a portion of campus property at the southeast corner of the stadium would be dedicated to the city to widen the roadway and improve pedestrian safety and emergency access. Removing the portable bathrooms along the roadway will also improve access and open Rimway and Centennial during stadium events. 

• The trees that are removed will be replaced three to one, with one substantial tree for every specimen tree removed. Although the city passed a moratorium on the removal of coast live oaks in 2006, the ordinance does not apply to state agencies. On the other hand, most individual property owners do not have the resources or opportunity to replace oaks as the university has pledged to do. An interesting fact: There are more oak trees on campus property today than there were 100 years ago. 

• The stadium and student-athlete center will be built with private funds. Why should the community care how the university raises these private funds? 

• There will not be additional demands for police or emergency services due to the stadium/high performance center projects. The university pays the city for any damage to city infrastructure caused by its construction projects. The university pays the city for police services associated with stadium events and pays the city annually for fire services and equipment. In the event of a major earthquake we will all depend on our fellow Californians and the federal government for assistance. The university will be working alongside local, state, and federal agencies to provide emergency response and shelter. 

Whatever the court’s decision on the current lawsuit, it does not benefit the city, the university, or the community to continue this adversarial relationship. It’s time to move on and work together, as one community. We would rather spend our dollars on projects to help the poor, support our schools, or protect the environment than to waste them on more lawyers. We ask our neighbors to join us. 

Sandy and Dick Bails, Hilde and Robert Clark, Fred Conrad, David Drubin, Karin Cooke, David Schlessinger, John Gage , Linda Schacht, Edward and Alexis Kleinhans, Martin and JoAnn Lorber, Bruce and Judy Moorad, Fred Nachtwey, Jenny Wenk, Jeff Williams, Michael Wilson, and Jacqueline Peters Hammond.

Accusations have been flung far and wide against project opponents. Innuendo, bordering on slander, has substituted for argument and debate which references the legal documents under review. A partial project description summarized in response to the most recent vitriol can be referenced in this newspaper in the prepared table and throughout the text of this commentary. Meanwhile, reflections on this state of affairs are offered as follows:  

What is the stadium area development and who says so?  

A public process was held, as required by a state law, in which the University of California presented a project planned for the Berkeley campus, studied the environmental impacts of the proposed project, and provided opportunity for the public to comment on the project.  

www.cp.berkeley.edu/SCIP/DEIR/SCIP_DEIR.html 

www.cp.berkeley.edu/SCIP/FEIR/SCIP_FEIR.html 

Separate and apart from this legally mandated public process, extralegal dialogue has occurred throughout Berkeley and the region, led by the university, athletic support groups, environmental groups, neighborhood groups, civil rights groups, academicians and scholars, and individual activist of all stripes. In this dynamic environment of casual and impassioned communications on all sides, the “project,” legally known as the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects, informally known as the stadium area development, inaccurately minimized as a mere retrofit and remodel, has been reduced in people’s minds to ever smaller bits of digestible information. Meanwhile, the project in all its complexity has been aired before the Alameda County Superior Court over a nine day period of oral argument.  

On one occasion I was privileged to sit in an auditorium at a private event with 100 other people and hear the Athletic Director tell the group that the stadium area development would be “good for neighbors.” Having studied the Draft Environmental Impact Report, I was incredulous but as Director Barbour was giving a speech as an honored guest, there was no opportunity for comment.  

In other venues as well, various private events have been held in which the university’s planning department representatives are noticeably absent yet various high ranking representatives of the university have described the project to a selective audience. Other sources of information with uneven access include television, radio, newspapers, magazines (including alumnae publications), websites, and e-mails all of which have informed people for better or worse.  

Hired to deliver a project, some university administrators have become self-invested cheerleaders for development. Aside from the confidence of their speech or how much we might like or respect them, their opinions lack the weight we would wish. What matters is the project that’s been reviewed pursuant to all applicable laws – and that would be the project as laid out in the EIR for the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects (SCIP).  

How would the project affect the environment?  

“Substantial adverse Impacts” are anticipated in the following seven areas and cannot be mitigated to below significance: Aesthetics, Cultural Resources, Geology, Seismicity and Soils, Hydrology and Water Quality, Noise, Transportation and Traffic, and Utilities–Wastewater and Steam/Chilled Water.  

When reviewing the DEIR, many people are surprised to find, for example, that “construction of the first phase of seismic retrofit and program improvements to the CMS, including the SAHPC, would cause a significant adverse change in the historical significance of the CMS.” (DEIR p. 4.2-32)  

A city-wide perspective on project impacts can be found by reading the City of Berkeley’s Comment Letter on the SCIP DEIR. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/manager/lrdp/COBCommentsSCIPDEIR1-070706.pdf 

Among the observations are the following:  

• “The DEIR … fails to recognize that hydrologic impacts extend downstream from the project site.” p. 27  

• “This DEIR underestimates the responsibilities of the City of Berkeley Police and Fire Departments in regard to addressing emergency needs on campus, and then continues to underestimate the impacts of the project on that responsibility.” p. 28. 

• “Memorial Stadium will continue to have a capacity over 60,000 people and is located in a highly constrained area, on an earthquake fault in a high fire risk area. It would be very hard to find a more vulnerable site with worse access for a stadium anywhere in the Bay Area.” p. 29  

Could the project be scaled back so as to reduce the impacts and the effect on the environment?  

In fact, the university greatly expanded the proposed project at the 11th hour. As described in Petitioner Panoramic Hill Association’s Opening Trial Brief 9/19/07,www.panoramichill.org/SCIP/PHA_opening_brief.pdf. 

“(b)eginning in 1999 and continuing through the Design Guidelines prepared in March 2005 for the Stadium Project, the University proceeded to plan on a seismic and program improvement project for the Stadium that respected the historical importance of the Stadium and its immediate surroundings by designing the improvements to fit within the Stadium’s existing walls. In 2005, the University suddenly not only needed a seismically safe Stadium with modernized program facilities comparable to other PAC-10 schools, but in addition it sought to build a much larger facility, outbuilding and apparently outshining its PAC-10 rivals. Beginning in late 2005, the Design Guidelines and previous planning were set aside in favor of the planned facility extending outside of the Stadium walls and into the adjacent oak grove.” (p. 6, 7) 

The athletic training center would not only serve football players but would also be the primary hub of operations for 13 teams. Eight of these teams – men and women’s golf, men and women’s crew, men and women’s gymnastics, and men and women’s soccer —would not even play or practice in the southeast quadrant of campus. By expanding the facility, the university reduced its options for locating the facility.  

How would the project be financed?  

Not under the purview of the California Environmental Quality Act or the Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zoning Act and noticeably absent until recently in public dialogue is the question of financing the stadium and all its program improvements including the Student Athlete High Performance Center (SAHPC). Although some people would suggest that privately-funded stadium financing is not a legitimate public concern and is outside the scope of Berkeleyans’ self-interest, this is hardly the case.  

There is devil in the details of what private financing means. It is not the same as charitable gifts but instead, as explained by Vice-Chancellor of Administration Nathan Brostrom, while speaking before the Berkeley City Council, much of the stadium retrofit and renovation would be financed with a privately funded bond.  

Berkeleyans might well ask from where the money will come to pay back the non-charitable investors. And who would these investors be? And would there be legally bound constraints on stadium use that cannot be changed by issuing a new EIR?  

As the Athletic Department has already increased their TV broadcasting opportunities to include night time games yet still struggles financially, (http://ope.ed.gov/athletics/Search.asp), a financing scheme based on a privately financed bond might affect revenue-generating pressures on stadium use. In short, private investors will expect a return on their investment, and the return might well be paid for with revenue-generating events at the stadium.  

In closing, the project as described in the environmental review documents is antithetical to lovers of Berkeley, the environment, public safety and common sense. The environmental impacts are significant and substantially adverse. The financing scheme adds to the potential detriment from this project. In short, no one likes an adversarial relationship, but when one exists, it does not help matters to pretend otherwise.  

The Stadium Renovation and its Use 

Comparative illustrations to show the added height above the rim 

Comparison of existing view looking west from Centenial Drive at Stadium Rim Way and visual simulation of proposed project. (DEIR Fig. 4.1-19A)  

“Visual simulation of proposed project (press box and east stadium improvements)” (sic) DEIR Fig. 4.1-19B 

Also see Historic Structure Report by Siegel & Strain Architects, commissioned by the university, titled “University of California Berkeley California Memorial Stadium,” in which recommendations include the following: “No additions or alterations should project above the historic rim of the stadium.” (p. 60)  

Definition of capacity events 

“The project proposes up to seven night- or day-time events annually at CMS apart from football games, scheduled for evenings or weekends, that might fill the CMS to capacity, defined as attendance anticipated to be in excess of 30,000 people. The events would potentially bring large numbers of people to the project area on any day of the week, not just the weekends when football games normally take place. These events would occur throughout the year, whereas the football season is limited to a few months out of the year and home football games limited to up to eight times a year within the football season.” (FEIR, p. 9-1-24).  

Thus, does the SCIP EIR establish a baseline of eight home games, seven additional capacity events (>30,000), and unlimited number of less than capacity events (<30,000).  

VIP luxury boxes 

“At a mezzanine level located above the main concourse, an interior club with adjacent club seating in the seating bowl, with new wider treads and seats, is proposed. The new seating would be provided with 2 feet 6 inch spacing between the benches. Located on a new elevated section, the seating would allow for a larger club space with views of the San Francisco Bay to the 

Southwest and into the seating bowl in the other direction.” (DEIR p. 3-53) 

The cultural and historic significance of the oak grove west of the stadium 

Although a 3 for 1 planting scheme is proposed to “limit the loss” (DEIR p. 4.2-33), even with this mitigation there would be a “significant change in the historical significance of the CMS.” (DEIR p. 4.2-32). “This portion of the existing site retains a relatively high level of historical integrity, including trees paths, and stairs which contribute to the historical significance of the site…This zone of the site is significant and plays a substantial role in conveying the historical significance of the CMS, the landscape, and their relation to the main campus to the west.” (DEIR p. 4.2-32) “The project would eliminate much of the existing character of this site and likely reduce the number of “rustic” landscapes on campus to two—Founders’ Rock and Observatory Hill, with the latter also likely to change in character as the CV Starr East Asian Library and eventually the Tien Center for East Asian Studies…is completed.” (DEIR 4.2-33). 

Prominent light towers of undetermined size  

“Currently the CMS is lit only by practice lighting and temporary lighting for night games. Permanent practice lighting is mounted on four arrays on the east rim, and four arrays in the west bowl…. On the east rim, four new vertical profile structures would be installed and would be approximately 43 feet above the phase II new elevated deck (+485’-9”) or 58’-3” above the east 

rim promenade…The four new vertical profile structures may eventually be reinstalled atop the proposed east seating structure.” (FEIR 9.1-13 (emphasis added) 

Information about the expanded subterranean concourse 

There will be a “new Lower Concourse on the east side of the seating bowl…” (DEIR p. 3-50) (emphasis added).  

“The grade under the east side of the CMS would be excavated to allow construction of new programmatic spaces…” (DEIR, p. 2-29). (emphasis added) 

Janice Thomas is a Berkeley resident.

AC TRANSIT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last Monday at 3 p.m. I stood at the bus stop on the corner of Durant and Dana along with four others. A route 51 bus approached and did not stop to pick up those of us waiting at the stop. It went by, crossed Dana and then stopped briefly on the corner opposite the bus stop, but did not wait long enough for me to reach the bus. The bus did not appear to be too full to pick up passengers. I waited 15 minutes for the next bus, although buses on the 51 route are supposed to run 10 minutes apart at that time of day on weekdays. I waited a total of 20 minutes for the bus. I told the driver on the next bus what had happened, and that I was really ticked off. She agreed that she would be, too. I live near Ashby and College, and I could have walked to that destination in less time than it took to wait and ride to there by bus. If the use of public transportation rather than private cars is to be encouraged, AC transit will have to improve its performance. 

Malcolm Zaretsky 

• 

CIVIL RIGHTS LEGACY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a nutshell, here’s the obliterating insight about racism in America: It caused the South to go Republican when threatened by civil rights; plus, it caused white evangelists, in turn, to go Republican, when threatened by civil rights. And this then led to Bush who is bringing on a different kind of Armageddon; not the religious kind, but, more frighteningly, economic.  

Robert Blau 

• 

IN PRAISE OF NEW STREETLIGHTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Reader Rita Maran gingerly wrote a recent letter praising our new green garbage bins, so I’d like to follow her lead to praise another Berkeley winner. I’m referring to our new countdown sigsignals at intersections. Not only do they tell pedestrians how quickly they can relieve their impatience, but more importantly I think they make me a safer driver. I no longer have to guess whether the green light will disappear at the last minute, leaving me in a twilight zone of an instant decision to slam on the brakes (a bit dangerous, that) or go-for-broke. I trust they will result in fewer traffic accidents (and fewer photo-tickets) at intersections. Whoever in city hall proposed their installation deserves a nice letter to Santa. I’ll be glad to sign it. 

Victor Herbert 

• 

DOWNTOWN SERVICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Well, I guess La Editora has now killed one of the last supposed attractions to downtown Berkeley by sending all the voyeurs instead down to Parker Street (“where she averted her eyes,”and thereafter concluded that they do it in cars in Berkeley as everywhere else, not on sidewalks). 

I haven’t experienced any streetside problems at Berkeley’s center lately, having only ventured there to go to its City Hall during my Marin Avenue lawsuit and a few times more recently to get my bicycle back from two bike shops—unfixed, successfully getting a refund from one of them, along with a claim that mountain bikes should not be shifted at speeds less than 9 mph. But hey, Albany and Oakland did no better; so I had to go all the way to Lafayette to get the job done right. The problems downtown are off the street—the usual commercial ones, not ones that are off the wall. 

No bookstore there anymore; not even any competition to Safeway, in the form of other ordinary grocery supermarkets, in the whole of Berkeley. Safeway thinks people should be club members just to buy food. I shop mostly from El Cerrito north, an area of practical reality, where Lucky finally junked the club-signup nonsense. 

I’ve heard that when the sidewalks downtown are found to actually not provide any free eye-averting entertainment, there are ways to spend money there if you want to pay for formal entertainment. Not me. 

Perhaps they should daylight Strawberry Creek....and then hire a beaver family to compete with Martinez’s show. I might go down there once to look at that, but I’d rather walk amongst the trees just outside Berkeley—you know, the non-people-bearing species of oaks and other trees that grow in neighboring regions. 

Raymond A. Chamberlin 

• 

COMMONS FOR NONE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The passage last week of the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative was an Orwellian assault by the city administration aimed at the down and out in Berkeley. For the city bureaucracy, in the very same week, to have announced with contemptuously short notice the closing of the last public swimming pool for the midwinter holiday season puts them even deeper in Orwell’s debt.  

It is dispiriting to have to re-open the campaign to save Berkeley’s public pools for everyone so soon after the outrageous treatment of Yassir Chadly, the gracious Master of the Pools, and the recent round of closures. This is an unprecedented dereliction by Berkeley’s managers, looking for line items to axe, of the responsibility owed to the health and well-being of its residents, and to the livelihoods and dignity of its employees. Ironically, if the city management was honest about the “bottom line”—an obscene calculus, to be sure—they would be forced to acknowledge the net benefits of swimming for the city accounts, owing to the alleviated burden on emergency rooms, the fire brigade, social services and so forth. 

If we lived in a community that truly honored the waters, sweet and salt, in city and bay, on which our lives and life together depend, and that obligation is now surely upon us, the closing of the last public pool—a cinderblock apology though it may be for the glory of the hammans of North Africa that were Yassir Chadly’s birthright—would be recognized as a grave moment for our city, in the midst of extravagant private waste. Just as the closing of the last public library would mark, and would be recognized by all to mark, the death of Berkeley as a home for those still committed to an ample life in common. 

Iain A. Boal 

• 

SALARY DISCLOSURES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I certainly hope that the Daily Planet will take advantage of the recent California Supreme Court ruling that salaries paid to city employees are public information to obtain and publish this information for the city of Berkeley. 

Marilyn S. Talcott 

• 

HOMELESS VETERANS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“Support our troops.” How often have we heard this Bush administration mantra whenever Congress or the public demands Iraq funding accountability or an Iraq withdrawal timeline? Yet, once the troops become veterans, too often they are woefully neglected. In a 2006 survey, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) estimated that 26 percent of homeless people are veterans. VA further estimated that at least 195,827 veterans are homeless in the United States and 49,724 in California. This is a conservative estimate. This VA survey estimated the number of homeless veterans at 7,800 in Northern California (Martinez, Oakland and Sacramento), and 2,626 of these classified as “chronically homeless.” The VA defines “chronically homeless” as an individual with a disabling condition who has been continually homeless for a year or more or has had four or more episodes of homelessness over the past three years. 

The National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates that 89,553 to 467,877 veterans were at risk of homelessness, meaning that they were below the poverty level and paying more than 50 percent of household income on rent. 

Homelessness is rising among veterans because of high living costs, the lack of adequate funds, and many are struggling with the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse, exacerbated by a lack of support systems. 

The VA has been severely criticized for diagnosing wounded veterans with a personality disorder, instead of PTSD, thus denying them disability pay and medical benefits. In the past six years, more than 22,500 soldiers have been suspiciously dismissed with personality disorders, rather than PTSD. By doing so, the military is saving an estimated $8 billion in disability pay and an estimated $4.5 billion in medical care over their lifetimes. (These figures are from “How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits” by Joshua Kors, citing Harvard professor Linda Bilmes’ study, in April 9 The Nation). How many homeless veterans, discharged for personality disorders rather than PTSD, would be off the homeless roles if they had disability pay and VA medical care? While not every homeless veteran was misdiagnosed with with a personality disorder rather than PTSD, it seems obvious that the VA could do more to reach its stated “goal to provide excellence in patient care, veterans’ benefits and customer satisfaction.” 

Passage of the HUD appropriations bill would be a modest start. It includes $75 million for nearly 7,500 HUD-VA Supported Housing vouchers for homeless and disabled veterans. Unfortunately, President Bush has threatened to veto this bill because it exceeds his spending request. It is shameful that we can spend $473.4-plus billion conducting the Iraq war, but not an additional $75 million for war casualties. 

Ralph E. Stone 

San Francisco 

• 

EDUCATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Leaders in our educational system draw their salaries from public taxes. I am sure they would like to give back to the community the best possible education for their children. Therefore, we need leaders who can motivate students from every economic level, hire dedicated instructors, include parents as partners in the education of their children, get direct information on teachers and students by unannounced visits and open hearings, prevent favoritism and nepotism. Such inspired and responsive leaders will secure the future of our great country. 

Romila Khanna 

Albany 

• 

THE SURGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Carolyn Lockheed’s page one Sunday Chronicle analysis on the Iraq occupation—despite its broader concerns about long-term problems—suggests that the U.S. military surge is succeeding on some level. Ms. Lockheed may not even be aware that she is the latest victim of the spin doctors who got us into Iraq. With a different perspective, Damien Cave reports in Sunday’s New York Times that there is a growing sense that Iraq has slipped to new depths of lawlessness as “some American officials estimate that as much as a third of what they spend on Iraqi contracts and grants ends up unaccounted for or stolen, with a portion going to Shiite or Sunni militias.” How? Corruption is what is driving this political-military machine, even beyond the bad and murderous policy. Our government’s policy is to feed it to create ruthless surrogates—as in Iraq so in Pakistan, so in Egypt, so in Israel, so in Palestine. Talk of success really means acceptance of this ever deeper erosion of our values and democracy here and elsewhere. That is even worse than “failure.”  

Marc Sapir 

• 

SUPERSTITION ANYONE? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Strange coincidence indeed: Ever since UC’s coach Tedford had been quoted as saying, in reference the oak trees at the stadium, “that’s what we have chainsaws for,” Cal football team’s fortunes went down. Coincidence or not, be careful what you say—arrogance bestows its own “rewards.” 

Jurgen Aust 

• 

ALLEGATION OF ANTI-SEMITISM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Cynthia McKinney for president (broached in a recent letter)? Would the Green Party be comfortable running an anti-Semitic candidate? The letter writer should remember that the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. E.g. Sr. Chavez of Venezuela, another outspoken anti-Semite. 

Dick Bagwell 

• 

DELLUMS’ POLICING POLICIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor makes Mayor Dellums’ new police policies appear to be a strong reaction to a crime situation that has Oakland rated the fourth most dangerous city in the nation. 

How sad. The city is sinking in violence and the mayor rearranges the deck chairs of Police Department command. Oakland needs bold new initiatives. One would be to declare that, irrespective of federal law, marijuana will be legalized and regulated in the city, and proper dispensation will be administered by the young men now living as outlaws. But to even talk of that would be “radical” and Dellums and others of our “liberal” political establishment can barely be “progressive,” much less respond to problems with what is needed, i.e. radical and even revolutionary measures. 

Ted Vincent 

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The problem with the current Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) proposal is that it is a square peg that the transportation professionals continue to try to force into a round hole. There is the possibility of getting millions of dollars for a transportation project in the East Bay. AC Transit has latched onto BRT as the perfect way to spend this money. This is top-down planning. The Telegraph to International Blvd. route appears on paper to be a great idea. So the steamroller starts rolling.  

Once the people who live, work, and own businesses in the path of the project learned of it, they tried to express their concerns to the transportation professionals. So far their concerns have been ignored, downplayed, and stifled one way or another. The most recent example is Steve Geller’s dismissal of Doug Buckwald’s information about the Emerald Express in Eugene, Ore. It turns out that the Emerald Express implementation is not comparable to what is proposed for BRT. But Mr. Geller sweeps away all the points Mr. Buckwald raised, concluding that “…perhaps Berkeley could work on fixing the flaws in our BRT plan and go on to have Eugene’s BRT success.” (See letter printed Nov. 27.) In other words, regardless of the concerns raised, we should proceed with BRT in the hope that it will succeed, even though the facts that suggest that it will not. 

The Berkeley and AC Transit professionals continue to tell us that we need BRT if we are to have a chance of meeting Berkeley’s goal of a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gases. But the non-professionals—locals who live near, work along and use Telegraph Ave. and are familiar with its traffic patterns—are convinced that if any of the “build” BRT alternatives is approved and Telegraph Ave. is reduced to one lane in each direction for all traffic except for the BRT express buses and emergency vehicles, the resulting gridlock will generate far more greenhouse gases than is saved by the small reduction in auto traffic promised in the EIR. Two experts, one an AC Transit bus driver (letters printed Nov. 2 and Nov. 16) and a former Research Engineer from the UCB Institute of Transportation Studies (commentary published Sept. 28) agree with the neighbors. But so far none of the Berkeley and AC Transit professionals appear to be listening and the steamroller keeps rolling.  

What we need is an open forum where the BRT proposal can be evaluated in an evenhanded way. The answer to this problem is not all or nothing. We need to find the best elements of the BRT proposal, implement them, and drop those parts of the proposal that will make traffic worse. I continue to be reminded that we are told to “Share the road.” This goes for buses as well as bicycles and cars. 

Mary Oram 

I like Judith Scherr. She puts in long hours trying to get the story right and it’s not too easy in a town that has become as shady as our Berkeley has become of late. So I will forgive her if she has failed to see what the true purpose behind what is known to us as Options Recovery Services. When I went public a few months ago with my opposition to the mayor and City Council giving Options $200,000 at a time when food and housing to the poor was being cut by precisely the same amount, Judith asked me a good question. “How successful does a program have to be before you would support it?” It was busy and loud in the council chambers that night and I didn’t get to answer her. 

But I sure have thought about it a lot since then. 

I guess if a program helped just one person and turned his or her life around that would be enough for me. But I could not ever support a program that led to someone’s death or that regularly uses and supports the brutalization of the poor by jailing them for doing things that are legal for others that are more fortunate. I am sure that a few people that weren’t killed outright or beat too senseless by real criminals, have found a way to get their lives back to a semblance of normalcy. But there are many (myself included) that still feel a tremendous amount of anger at the beatings they (and I) endured because Options Director Dr. Davida Coady (and this is a God’s honest direct quote) felt that I “need to feel the pain of my addiction.” The pain of having my leg ripped off, my pelvis and back shattered, my arm and ribs broken, just to name a few of the injuries that put me on the streets, wasn’t enough. 

But what hurt most of all was being labeled a criminal because of my newfound poverty. Take a quick look at the Options website and you will see it all right there in a nut shell. Wherever homelessness is mentioned it is coupled with “crime” and “drug abuse.” The website talks about homeless “offenders” while throwing in words like “dignity” to really confuse folks. A quick look at their board of directors shows what this “recovery” program is really all about. Their president is a police captain while their vice president is a probation officer. George Beier, who shaped his entire campaign for City Council on whipping up fear and hatred for the poor and homeless, is in there as well. 

They’re a scary group with a big job to do. Make sure that anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in the Options web is made to “feel the pain.” 

Now it might be possible that city officials and others are really bamboozled by the smoke and mirror act that is put on by Options with their graduation ceremonies and their loading of council meetings with paid staff that gush about how jail changed their lives for the better. But it’s really hard to believe. Has none of them checked out their website? And are their memories so short that while Davida Coady raves about how much the state has saved with the passing of Prop. 36, Options actually lobbied against Prop. 36? 

The only recovery program in the state to do so. 

And now they are the only program that supposedly works for the homeless to support the punitive measures of the Public Commons Initiative. 

This all from a program that is working out of the Oakland courts serving mostly Oakland people and leaving them at our door step. It’s time for us to open our eyes and see or at least acknowledge what is we are buying at the expense of our most vulnerable people.  

We might not be able to do very much about those around the world being brutalized for being poor. But we can stop it here. Ask the mayor and City Council to let Oakland and the courts pay for their program and to restore all funds taken from food and housing programs in Berkeley. 

Dan McMullan is a member of the Disabled People Outside Project.

It is devastatingly ironic that the world’s poorest countries are, to some degree, subsidizing the healthcare of the wealthiest nations. For years, rich nations encouraged African countries to invest in infrastructure (education, hospitals, medicine); much aid was given to strengthen these very systems. Although it was unintentional, the donations proved to be quite self-serving. As wealthy countries give aid to struggling nations to improve healthcare outcomes with one hand, they siphon off graduates of medical schools with the other. The developed world benefits from the skills and knowledge of newly arrived doctors and nurses while the countries that produced these professionals suffer from staffing shortages. 

The reasons behind the migration of health care workers are fairly obvious. Most hospitals in Sub-Saharan Africa are dismal places: over-crowded, grossly understaffed and under-equipped. Medical personnel are often frustrated. Salaries are very low and rarely enough to entice doctors, nurses, and clinical officers to stay in rural areas or even capitol cities. Trained in the treatment of patients, they are unable provide these services due to a lack of essential equipment and supplies. It may be difficult to imagine a hospital wanting in stethoscopes, hospital beds, gloves, and syringes yet these are the issues countless providers face every day.  

Of course the West did not intend to decimate Africa’s medical force but this is what is happening. Countries like the United States, England, and Australia have nursing shortages they are unable to meet. The United States alone needs 129,000 additional nurses to meet today’s health requirements. There are not enough American nurses to fill the demand and the US and other developed countries in similar positions eagerly hire doctors and nurses trained in other parts of the world. This is especially true for former commonwealth nations as English-speaking staff from poor countries are quickly absorbed by hospitals in London and New York. The United States employs half the world’s English speaking physicians. Developed countries need staff to maintain high medical standards and to care for aging populations. Cataclysmically, underdeveloped countries face a double burden of disease; chronic non-communicable diseases as well as HIV/AIDS and many diseases that no longer affect rich countries.  

Market forces and a bleak future at home have led many health workers to emigrate. The more that leave, the worse the situation becomes and the more difficult it is to keep floundering health systems afloat. As poor governments struggle to run schools of medicine, pharmacology, nursing, dentistry, etc students graduate and leave to look after patients in richer parts of the world. Poor countries cannot compete with the salaries offered in industrialized nations. International aid organizations who hire national staff exacerbate the problem as well. By paying medical personnel up to ten times their public sector jobs they draw them away from district and rural facilities and provide no one to fill the gap.  

In Malawi, which has one of the lowest physician/patient ratios, there are about 250 doctors for a country of 13 million. With one physician per 52,000 people, and serious problem with HIV and AIDS, the situation is grim. The irony is that the areas with the highest disease burdens have the lowest numbers of professionals to provide essential care. Medical staff are not immune to the diseases that affect their patients; particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, systems are wracked by loss of staff to AIDS.  

What is to be done about this brain drain on the developing world? The reality is that more medical staff, particularly nurses, are needed worldwide. Developed countries should commit to training enough medical personnel to meet their own health needs. Expanded and new nursing schools are crucial to producing the necessary cadre of providers. Professors of nursing need to be adequately compensated and retained to teach future generations of nurses. Exchange programs between facilities in rich and resource-poor settings would allow for a wider clinical experiences and collaboration between colleagues. Wealthy nations could encourage their nurses to gain work experience in less developed settings. The Peace Corps, or a similar agency, could place American nurses in under-developed settings for a couple years in exchange for some student loan forgiveness. The situation requires new and innovative solutions. At the end of the day, it is vitally essential that developing countries are able to retain the staff in whose training they invest. Literally, the health of millions depends upon it.  

Former Berkeley resident Lucy Anderson is currently working toward a masters degree in public health at Columbia University. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: This commentary was submitted to the San Francisco Chronicle but was not published. 

The taxpayer money spent on fighting against the community opposition to UC Berkeley’s proposed 142,000-square-foot, four-story Student Athlete High Performance Center (SAHP) to be located next to the west side of land marked California Memorial Stadium could have been spent on relocating the project away from Piedmont Avenue. Indeed, the SAHP that will be shared by 13 of the 27 Cal intercollegiate sports is needed and should be built, but on one of the two identified alternative sites and centered within an established transportation corridor that is more central to campus and not at the expense of destroying the Memorial Stadium oak grove that runs along Piedmont Avenue. This avenue between Gayley Road and Dwight Way was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark in 1990 and was also designated as California Historic Landmark No. 986 in 1989. 

UC is not only discounting its ever increasing sprawl impact upon the City of Berkeley’s historic landmarked neighborhoods, it seeks to continue its build-out plans on the hillside impacting Strawberry Canyon’s ecological integrity and the well-being of existing neighborhoods. Piedmont Avenue is not built to handle the current traffic congestion and it will not be able to absorb the increased traffic that this project will bring. 

UC Berkeley was a key partner on the drafting of the Urban Environmental Accords signed by mayors from around the globe who took the historic step of signing the Urban Environmental Accords in San Francisco on June 5, 2005 in recognition of United Nations World Environment Day 2005. 

The Urban Environmental Accords were a result of year-long partnership of cities, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), the United Nations Environment Program, the University of California at Berkeley, environmental nonprofits, and businesses. 

The Accords focus on seven environmental areas common to all cities: water, energy, waste, urban design, transportation, urban nature, and environmental health. 

How can UC Berkeley claim to become a leader in the effort to increase energy production and reduce the impact of energy consumption on the environment while its own ecological footprint keeps increasing and encroaching on neighborhoods as well as adding to greenhouse gas emissions? Let’s not forget that their deal with BP is suspect when citizen stakeholder’s participation and academic oversight are eliminated. 

Un-sustainability is based on the idea that when resources are consumed faster than they are produced or renewed, the resource is impacted or depleted. When sustainability is practiced, the demand on nature is in balance with nature’s capacity to meet that demand. When demand on ecological resource or impacts exceed what nature can continually supply or adapt to we then have “ecological overshoot.” This Student Athlete High Performance Center is clearly an example of ecological overshoot, especially when placing the new additional athlete center at the edge of campus increases traffic, increases storm water and sewer services and maintenance of traffic infrastructure, as well as road wear due to the large scale construction. Then we have ongoing air-quality impacts by increased traffic and the destruction of an intact established oak grove ecosystem, tree canopy and wildlife corridor. This wildlife corridor can be seen from Google’s satellite map. This is all about adding sprawl impacts to the area. 

This project also undermines the City’s of Berkeley’s Measure G’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gasses and is compounding already existing impacts by the University’s ongoing expansion and placing more demand on our local city and ecosystem services. The University of California’s non-profit status exempts UC from paying toward a large portion of city services it uses—all at expense of local resident taxpayers who have no say on the impacts generated by UC’s new building projects.  

The Urban Environmental Accords included the goal of, “passing legislation that protects critical habitat corridors and other key habitat characteristics (e.g. water features food-bearing plants, shelter for wildlife, use of native species, etc.) from unsustainable development.” The City of Berkeley passed such a law in this category back in 1998.  

The City of Berkeley’s Oak Tree Removal Ordinance NO. 6462-N.S. declares a moratorium on the removal of any single stem Coast Live Oak tree or a circumference of 18 inches or more, and any multi-stemmed coast live oak tree with an aggregate circumference of 26 inches or more at a distance of four feet up from the ground within the City of Berkeley. The California Native Plant Society (CNPS) has stated that the Memorial Stadium oak grove is “an important gene bank for the coast live oak.” This grove, from the sub soil ecosystems to the canopy of its trees, harbors species that will not survive once disturbed. 

Every one of the 38 healthy threatened oaks (along with redwoods and other native California trees in the grove) should and could be protected from destruction under the Berkeley moratorium, but the university has indicated that because UC is part of state government, they are “not obliged to obey local environmental laws.” 

Memorial Stadium was designed with its grounds, including the oak grove, as a memorial to those Californians who lost their lives in World War I. The university should preserve not destroy the grove to honor the ultimate sacrifice made by those soldiers who died in WWI as was intended from the inception of the stadium and its surrounding grounds. 

The gulag style double fence topped with barbed wire erected by UC Berkeley and UC’s utilization of its heavy handed round the clock police instigation and agitation is an effort to undermine a First Amendment free speech protest. Now residents who visit the Grove or talk to the tree sitters are subject to arrest. 

This is something that happens in rigid and repressive police states where such controls are used to control the social, economic and political life of the population. These repressive measures are out of line and against a community stance to protect their historic and environmental resources especially with the backing of existing local law to protect these trees. 

UC Berkeley needs to do the right thing as in bring down the fences, honor the oak grove as a permanent historic and memorial site and build the Student Athlete High Performance Center in an alternative area and start honoring the fact that the citizens of Berkeley have a right to protect what they deem precious. And while they are at it spend the money not on police and fences and fighting the City of Berkeley and locals in court—get those 300-plus staff and faculty immediately out of the seismically unsafe Memorial Stadium offices and into safe portable structures until the separate Memorial Stadium issues are resolved. 

Redwood Mary is the founder and executive director of Circle The Earth — Grassroots Women Taking Action for a Sustainable Future (a project of the Agape Foundation, www.circletheearth.netfirms.com), and co-chair of the California Women’s Agenda Environmental Task Force. She holds a degree in public policy from Mills College and is a supporter of the Save the Oaks Campaign. She has spent time tree-sitting at the Memorial Stadium oak grove.

In 1805, the French Army out-maneuvered, outsmarted and out-fought the combined armies of Russia and Austria at Austerlitz. Three years later it would founder against a rag-tag collection of Spanish guerrillas. 

In 1967 it took six days for the Israeli Army to smash Egypt, Jordan and Syria and seize the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. In 2006, a Shiite militia fought the mightiest army in the Middle East to a bloody standstill in Lebanon. 

In 1991 it took four days of ground combat for the United States to crush Saddam Hussein’s army in the Gulf War. U.S. losses were 148 dead and 647 wounded. After more than five years of war in Iraq, U.S. losses are approaching 4,000, with over 50,000 wounded; 2007 is already the deadliest year of the war for the United States.  

In each case, a great army won a decisive victory, only to see that victory cancelled out by what T.E. Lawrence once called the algebra of occupation. Writing about the British occupation of Iraq following the Ottoman Empire’s collapse in World War I, Lawrence put his finger on the formula that has doomed virtually every military force that has tried to quell a restive population. 

“Rebellion must have an unassailable base … it must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form of a disciplined army of occupation too small to dominate the whole area. It must have a friendly population … sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Rebellions can be made by a 2 percent active striking force, and 98 percent passive sympathy. Granted mobility, security … time and doctrine … victory will rest the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive.”  

There is an inexorable trajectory to this process: an army vanquishes another army, only to find that wars don’t always end when generals surrender and capitals fall. When a few locals take up arms because they object to being occupied by “aliens,” the occupiers act like armies, which are designed to kill people, not to win their hearts and minds.  

So the occupiers break down doors and search for weapons, terrorizing and humiliating people in the process. They call in air strikes, which kill innocent bystanders. They choke off commerce and impose curfews to teach the locals a lesson, lessons that are never learned. For over 800 years the English beat, imprisoned, transported, shot, and hung hundreds of thousands of Irish, and it made the natives not the slightest bit quieter or more respectful. Indeed it made them quite the opposite. 

In this process of trying to get the occupied to accept defeat, a certain corruption of spirit begins to seep into the soul of an army, transforming it from a war-fighting machine into a kind of monster.  

Listen to some of these voices: 

Reporter Chris Hedges, who talked with solders, officers, and medical personnel in Iraq, said his interviews “revealed a disturbing pattern of behavior by American troops: innocents terrorized during midnight raids, civilian cars fired upon when they got too close to supply columns. The campaign against a mostly invisible enemy, many veterans said, has given rise to a culture of fear and even hatred among U.S. forces, many of whom … have, in effect, declared war on all Iraqis.” 

Sgt. Camilo Mejia told Hedges that, as far as the deaths of Iraqis at checkpoints, “This sort of killing of civilians has long ceased to arouse much interest or even comment.” 

Except among the survivors and relatives, of course, who now know who their enemy is. 

“Our children are being killed. Our homes are being destroyed. We are bombed. What should we do?” asks Abdul Qader, who lost seven family members in a June 29 U.S. air strike that killed 60 people in southern Helmand province, Afghanistan. 

“The Americans are killing and destroying a village just in pursuit of one person [Osama bin Ladin],” one man told the New York Times. “So now we have understood that the Americans are a curse on us, and they are here just to destroy Afghanistan.” 

Israeli psychologist Nofer Ishsai-Karen and psychology professor Joel Elitzur interviewed 21 Israeli soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories. They found that the soldiers routinely engaged in murder, assault, threats and humiliation, and many of them enjoyed it. 

“The truth is I love this mess—I enjoy it. It is like being on drugs,” one soldier told them. Another said, “What is great is that you don’t have to follow any law or rule. You feel you are the law, you decide. Once you go into the Occupied Territories, you are God.” 

One soldier told a story about seeing a four-year old boy playing in the sand in his front yard during a curfew in Rafah. The soldier says his officer “grabbed the boy. He broke his hand here at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left. We are all there, jaws dropping, looking at him in shock … the next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing.” 

A few hours with the works of Goya will give one an idea of how the French Army behaved in Spain. 

An occupation is not a war against an army, it is a war against all. There are no front lines and no distinguishing uniforms, only an ambush or a roadside bomb that strikes without warning.  

And when one does, a veteran told Hedges, “people just open up.” A roadside bomb in 2005 set off a massacre by U.S. Marines in Haditha that killed 24 civilians. On Mar. 4, 2007, following a suicide bomb, Marines in Afghanistan went on a rampage that killed 12 civilians. 

Occupation is only possible if the occupied are reduced to a category that places them outside the boundaries of a shared humanity So the Iraqis becomes “Hajji,” just as two generations ago the Vietnamese became “slopes.” The Israeli right routinely refers to the Palestinians as “cockroaches.”  

Soon, everyone becomes an enemy. 

When U.S. helicopter gun ships killed 16 people Oct. 23 in a small northern Iraqi village near Tikrit, military officials said the dead were insurgents, because many of them were “military-age males,” a category that embraces about one-third of the population. 

Not many “hearts and minds” were won this past October near Tikrit. 

But “winning over the population” continues to be the illusion of every occupier. Testifying before Congress, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “Army soldiers can expect to be tasked with reviving public services, rebuilding infrastructure, and promoting good government.” 

And then there is the real world. 

A Pentagon survey found that only 38 percent of Marines and 47 percent of Army soldiers thought civilians should be treated with dignity. Some 45 percent of the Army solders and 60 percent of the Marines said they would report the killing of innocent civilians. 

A recent ABC/BBC poll found that 78 percent of Iraqis say things are getting worse, almost 80 percent want U.S. troops out, and 57 percent of them support violence against Coalition forces. 

Those are the “algebraical factors” of occupation, and as Lawrence concludes, “against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain.”

For some months there has been intense, local speculation asking “what is Dellums doing?” Which is a good thing, all things considered. We ought to be attentive to the people we place in public office, keeping their activities under a constant monitor. It’s how the gears and inner workings of democracy are greased. 

Those who have been paying the closest attention will have noticed—despite all the constant hallooing that Mr. Dellums has been doing nothing in response to Oakland’s crime and violence problems (one local blogger has nicknamed him “Mayor McNothing”)—he has in fact, been doing something, the outlines of which are just beginning to become manifest.  

Mr. Dellums has been saying that he believes adopting a “community policing” makeover is the major step needed to attack crime and violence in Oakland. It is understandable why this position should attract little excitement in Oakland these days. “Community policing” has been Oakland police policy since City Council approved its adoption in 1996 (Resolution No. 72727, you can look it up), a time when Natalie Bayton, John Russo, Nate Miley, and Dezzie Woods-Jones were still on council, and Elihu Harris was still mayor. Both Jerry Brown—when he was mayor of Oakland—and Robert Bobb—when he was City Manager—were described as community policing advocates. Yet during those times, what was officially described as “community policing” went through radical swings in Oakland in purpose and approach, while crime and violence remained virtually consistent. 

At one of Mr. Dellums’ first press conferences, when he was announcing his then-new police initiatives, I asked him when he was going to provide us with his definition of “community policing.” Looking a bit imperially peeved—as only Mr. Dellums can—he replied that he had just done so in his statement. I told him that this, however, had been simply a one-liner definition, and given that many Oakland officials before him had also defined their police programs as “community policing,” I wondered if Mr. Dellums would provide us with a more detailed evaluation of what he meant by the word. He looked at one of his staff members, and told me he’d get back to me. 

It’s been a long time, but I’ve grown patient with age. 

What has become clear in recent weeks is that “community policing” advocates both inside and outside the Dellums Administration have been working on a comprehensive community policing plan that will be layered over the existing public service delivery system (SDS) put in place by Mr. Bobb. In addition, we now know that Mr. Dellums’ “community policing” model is a rejection of the complete carving out of “community policing” as the sole responsibility of “problem solving officers” or “community policing officers,” and a step towards former Police Chief Joseph Samuels’ slogan that “every officer is a community policing officer.” While Mr. Samuels may—or may not, depending upon who you listen to—have intended this as a way of doing away with “community policing” altogether, Mr. Dellums’ concept appears to be to create a parallel definition of “community policing” as having police officers assigned to defined communities rather than to the city as a whole, while simultaneously keeping the defined corps of one-to-each-beat problem-solving officers intact. It was probably difficult—in the beginning—to conceive of such a dual-track “community policing” policy, much less to begin the administrative and bureaucratic mechanics to put such a dual policy into place, one reason, I imagine, why there has been something of a delay in the release of a Dellums administration comprehensive crime and violence policy. 

We know, from Chief Wayne Tucker, that one of the steps in implementation will be to divide the city into three police divisions—North and West Oakland, East Oakland from the lake to High Street, and High Street to the San Leandro border—with patrol officers assigned to one of those divisions, and one, only. The chief’s ability to effect such a change was made possible by the city’s victory over the Oakland Police Officers Association union in the recent 24 hour shift arbitration, and we understand that the changeover will be completed effective the 19th of next month. 

Once, Willie McCovey went to bat at Dodger stadium against Don Drysdale in a tight Giants-Dodgers game in the years when that rivalry meant something in the National League pennant race. The L.A. crowd was up and roaring at every one of Drysdale’s monster pitches, the announcer booming encouragement and the scoreboard exploding with messages, until McCovey sent a fastball far out over the right field wall into the Southern California night, putting the Giants ahead late in the game. A dead silence went over the stadium. Over in the left-field stands, a lone Giants fan stood up, an SF cap on his head, looked around the crowd, put a finger to his lips, and said, “Shhhhhh.” 

We seem to be having one of those “shhhhhh” moments now, with something of a silence from Dellums critics following the arbitration ruling. One should not expect that to last long, but it is nice to get a break from the clamor, however short-lived it may be. We need to be having serious, community conversations over how to address the problem of crime and violence in Oakland, conversations that include all elements of the community. The constant shouts that Mr. Dellums is doing “nothing” on the crime and violence issue might stir up the Dellums critics, but it has also drowned out those who want to sit in the city’s common spaces and work out our differences. 

One of those policy discussions ought to be on what we might call—for want of a better term—former mayor Brown’s “youth crime and violence” policies. 

It is one of the more interesting aspects of current Oakland life, how little we talk of the legacies of Mr. Brown’s recently-passed administration. A product, one imagines, of the American worship of instantaneity. During the California Attorney General’s race as well as in the few weeks after Mr. Brown left Oakland City Hall, there was a lot of stabbing at the issue of the Brown Oakland Legacy, but this was more in the way of a laundry list of things done and not done than it was a real analysis. Little wonder. Mr. Brown was elected mayor of Oakland on a downtown development platform. The three major projects coming out of that platform—Forest City Uptown, Oak To Ninth, and the redevelopment of Jack London Square—have yet to be completed, a major portion not even started. It’s difficult to determine, in advance, the legacy of things that are yet unseen, a task made infinitely more difficult by the fact that a good portion of the records of the Brown administration were destroyed—by the Brown administration—on their way out the door. 

Still, there are some important areas of Mr. Brown’s work that are available for examination, particularly as it is the crops the former mayor left in our fields that we will have to eat off of for many years to come. One of those areas, as we have said, involves “youth crime and violence.” 

Consider, for example, Mr. Brown’s sideshow policy (please don’t wince and ask “Why is he still writing about sideshows? Hasn’t that long been over?”—actually, as I will show, in brief, Mr. Brown’s sideshow policy never went away, and continues to affect the city’s ongoing crime and violence policy as well as its social policy.) 

It’s instructive to remember—as so many fail to—that sideshows began as peaceful, non-intrusive, late-night auto gatherings in parking lots—not the streets and intersections—by young people of color seeking alternatives to violence-plagued “official” entertainment events. Oakland police chased the events out of the parking lots and into the streets—a policy no city official has ever publicly explained, to my knowledge, and which former Police Chief Richard Word later publicly admitted was a “mistake”—and the events gradually, over a period of a couple of years, changed into the more violent, thrill-seeking venues of recent years. 

It took years for Oakland to create an official definition of “sideshows”—that came, finally, with Mr. Brown’s arrest-the-sideshow-spectators ordinance—and that ambiguity allowed city and police officials to apply “sideshow crackdowns” to large sections of East Oakland. Oakland eventually adopted a special set of traffic enforcement policies which were supposed to be aimed at sideshows but, in fact, were enforced in what police officially called “sideshow zones.” These were broad areas of the flatlands and foothills stretching from High Street, roughly, to the San Leandro border. Within these “sideshow zones”—which police told us were areas where sideshows had happened in the past—police operated stepped-up scrutiny of vehicles driven by people deemed “likely” to participate in sideshows. In practice, that meant cars driven by young African-Americans and Latinos within the “sideshow zones” were subject to intense lookover for any possible violation of the Vehicle Code, moving or non-moving, not because those vehicles had been observed breaking the code, but because police—according to their own admission—wanted to alert the youngsters of the police presence and discourage them from breaking those codes (more specifically, creating a sideshow). There are some amongst us who characterize Oakland’s “sideshow zone” enforcement policies as unconstitutional in the most basic sense, textbook discrimination, as they target people not for what they have done, but because they look like other people who may have done something in the past. Still, the “sideshow zone” enforcement policy continues in Oakland, to this day. 

What is Oakland’s “sideshow zone” enforcement policy? How does it work, is it working to reduce crime and violence, as claimed, and, even if it has, is the price of our loss of constitutional rights too high? How does it help—or hinder—the administration’s new crime and violence policies? This is a public discussion—not a shouting match or a trading of accusations—but a public discussion that we have long needed to have, and that we cannot long continue to put aside. 

More, as we move forward.

Stately older houses can be at their best when festively decorated for the winter holidays.  

Up and down the East Bay shore this holiday season there are several historic homes—particularly Victorians—decked out for special tours and events, starting today and tomorrow. 

One of the most impressive is the Patterson House, a wedding cake white Victorian in the midst of the historic Ardenwood Farm in Fremont, a property that embodies Alameda County’s agricultural roots. 

The Patterson House itself was built as a big country farmhouse in the 1850s. In the late 1880s Samuel Newsom, of the Newsom Brothers of San Francisco, redesigned it as an expansive Queen Anne style country manse of some 7,000 square feet, with a main façade embellished with carved wooden scrollwork, balcony, corner tower and turret. 

Inside, there’s an ornate entry hall flanked by two massive sliding doors to formal parlor (left) and family parlor (right). A spindled wooden arch frames a switchback main staircase to an ample second floor with master, guest, and children’s bedrooms and baths. 

The twisty back stair descends to a well-stocked rear kitchen with a working iron stove. A pantry connects to a long formal dining room with elaborate place settings laid, adjoined by a smoking room, which was the original dining room. 

Most of the furnishings are family pieces original to the house. There’s even a side library with generations of books collected by the residents. 

As a “Forty Niner”, George Washington Patterson was an informant for, and early subscriber to, the seminal series of western histories produced by Hubert Howe Bancroft. 

His wife Clara later traveled extensively, and son Henry went to the University of California, while son William attended Stanford. See if you can spot the Cal yearbooks. 

The staff and volunteers who keep the Patterson House open are outgoing, friendly, enthusiastic, and know everything about the house. Dressed in period wear, they invite visitors to examine the household objects and talk about the family and earlier eras. 

In one room during our visit, a staff member cranked up a working Victorola next to copies of postcards sent from around the world by the well-traveled Clara Patterson. The kitchen smelled of fresh baking. In the guest bedroom a costumed volunteer did embroidery and explained her technique to curious children. 

An early Cal songbook sat on the piano in the family parlor, while logs crackled in the fireplace. Stained glass windows sparkled across the hall in the formal parlor, starting point for tours, where a guide invited children to count the number of Christmas trees throughout the house. 

Christmas decorations are up, and the house is open for tours this weekend as well as Dec. 15 and 16. Saturday and Sunday tours are on the hour from 11:00 a.m. to 3 p.m. Today, December 7, and next Friday, Dec. 14, there are also tours at 1, 2, and 3 p.m. 

Today, there’s also a 5-8:45 p.m. “Christmas Evening at the Patterson House” event with holiday music. 

For all events there’s a small admission charge, $5 or less. 

It’s wonderful this house and property have survived. George Washington Patterson, the builder, grew up in Ohio and Indiana. In 1849, age 26, he headed to California as a gold seeker, joining a company that made an arduous trip down the Mississippi, then by sea and land to San Francisco. 

He prospected awhile, then relocated to the Bay Area and turned to farming. He leased, later purchased, land of his own in what was then called Washington Township. 

Patterson gradually developed a vast holding of nearly 6,500 acres, making him one of the largest property owners in Alameda County. The fertile alluvial plain produced abundant harvests, and a nearby creek inlet provided convenient access to ship the output of the farm across the Bay. 

The property typified the extensive and productive farms that spread across southern Alameda County in the second half of the 19th century, and have now almost entirely vanished beneath housing tracts, office parks, and highways. 

Ardenwood almost suffered that fate. It remained in the Patterson family until a sale to a developer in 1971. Seven years later a complex arrangement resulted in the acquisition of 205 acres, including the house, by the City of Fremont. The East Bay Regional Park District was enlisted to operate the historic farm, which formally opened in 1985. 

The surviving land tract is large enough to retain the open character of an early California farm, including views to the distant hills. It includes fields and orchards, a deer park, stands of eucalyptus where monarch butterflies overwinter, a horse-drawn railroad, and a complex of outbuildings—from blacksmith shop to water tower—forming a demonstration farm with numerous activities and programs throughout the year. 

Free range peacocks, an aviary of white doves and brilliant pheasants, and penned goats, sheep, draft horses, cows and calves lend diversion to the grounds. 

Highway 880 provides a direct route to Ardenwood, about 30 miles from Berkeley. Take the exit west towards the Dumbarton Bridge. The road hugs the Ardenwood grounds on the right. Keep to the right, and watch for the entrance signs to the farm. 

Coming or going, an alternative to part of the freeway is a drive or bus ride down Hesperian Boulevard. Although the street sprouts several decades of housing tracts, a few miles north of Ardenwood on Hesperian you’ll find the McConaghy House, built in 1886, and now operated by the Hayward Area Historical Society.  

I wrote about this historic home exactly three years ago in the Dec. 7, 2004, issue, which you can find in the Planet online archives at www.berkeleydailyplanet.com. 

The Christmas decorations are up again this year, and you can tour the house on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through Dec. 30. The house is open 1-4 p.m., with the last tour at 3:30 p.m. There’s a small admission charge. 

Further north, and closer to Berkeley, there are also holiday decorations and events at Dunsmuir House in Oakland, also discussed in more detail in the 2004 Planet article. 

This year, Dunsmuir is open for tours of the opulently decorated house on December weekends through the 23rd. There’s a Holiday Breakfast on Dec. 16, and Holiday Teas on various days.  

Dining tickets should be purchased in advance and entry to the house is strictly timed, so plan accordingly. 

In Oakland, the Cohen-Bray House is a remarkably pristine 1884 Victorian that, like Ardenwood, preserves the décor, furnishings, and traditions of the family that built it. 

It’s open on the fourth Sunday of the month for tours (call to confirm) and has two special holiday events. On Dec. 29 there’s a $25 per person Christmas Tea and Tour (repeated at 1, 2, and 3 p.m. in the afternoon), and on Twelfth Night—Jan. 5, 2008—a gala celebration with a five course meal for $125 per person.  

Space is limited, and reservations are needed, for these events. 

Tomorrow—-Saturday, Dec. 8--there’s a 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Holiday Home 

Tour in Alameda, a community that’s both close by and rich with period houses, particularly Victorians. The event is sponsored by the Alameda Family Services League. 

Tickets to visit the holiday decorated private homes are $30 on the day of the tour. There’s also a separately priced lunch at the Encinal Yacht Club, a Holiday Dessert Tea, and a Boutique and Gourmet Shoppe. 

Tonight, Dec. 7, a 6-9 p.m. “Candlelight Preview” visits the houses after dark and includes a “post tour party (with) champagne a light supper, and dancing” for $75. 

IF YOU GO: 

Ardenwood Historic Farm is at 34600 Ardenwood Boulevard in Fremont. 

General information can be found at www.ebparks.org/parks/ardenwood. Call 791-4196 for Patterson House information. 

The McConaghy House is at 18701 Hesperian Blvd., Hayward, next to Kennedy Park. Check www.haywardareahistory.org or call 276-3010. 

Dunsmuir House information including hours and ticket prices and purchase details can be found at www.dunsmuir.org 

The Cohen-Bray House is at 1440 29th Ave. in Oakland. www.cohen-brayhouse.info Call 843-2906 for availability of event tickets and to make reservations. 

Alameda Holiday Home Tour details are at 222.alamedaholidayhometour.info/ or call 510-522-8363 x 165 for tour information. 

IMAGE D: “Costumed staff and volunteers greet visitors in the fully stocked Patterson House kitchen.” 

IMAGE E: “The elaborate Patterson dining room is arranged for a festive, Victorian era, family meal.” 

You don’t need an official occasion, you know. If you know a gardener, go ahead and give her a gift just ‘cuz. Call it an Unbirthday Present; I do a certain amount of that with my rellies because after 58 years of living in it I still don’t track time very well.  

So here’s a second short list of things I and others have found useful, messing around in dirt. 

Body Time, which we old farts remember as the original Body Shop, sells a little round hand-care bar with a string on it like a shower-soap’s. It’s beeswax and other handy ingredients like mineral oil, a bare touch of scent, and stays solid even when I leave it in the car. (In serious heat it greases up the paper it’s wrapped in, and doesn’t ooze any farther than that.) It’s good for fast treatment of dry hands and does not leave them too slippery to grasp the steering wheel, which is why it’s in my car. It’s also good to drag one’s fingernails through before digging in the mud because it’s easier to get the dirt-wax mix out of them afterward than plain dirt.  

Comes in two sizes for around $9 and $15; get one for yourself too. Long-lasting enough to be worth the price. Oh—being a solid, not a liquid, it’s also ideal for Homelandishly Secure air travel. Accessorize it with one of Body Time’s funny and effective fish-scale nailfiles for a manicure kit that’s above reproach. 

My favorite gardening hat is one that, like the Felco pruners I mentioned last week, needs to be tried on, which tends to spoil the surprise element. It’s washable stiff canvas, in off-white and a few darker shades, has an interior adjustable band to secure it when the wind’s blowing, and a decently broad brim all ‘round, like a cowboy hat but flexy enough to take other shapes. It’s sturdy enough to protect my head from the odd branch I’ve managed to drop on it while pruning.  

The fun part is finding it. Parker-Dahl Enterprises (a.k.a Shapeskins, for its line of sheepskin slippers) of Davis sells it; you might have seen them at craft or other fairs, or the March Garden Show in SF. They show up at the Davis Farmers’ Market, and that’s worth a trip in itself. Or call the number below; the Web site’s still under construction. 

There’s a gift I can’t have but would be any gardener’s envy. A friend just bought a house in El Sobrante with a perfect-sized yard, and her fox terrier showed me a talent not just for digging, but for digging on command, and in the place pointed out to him. He digs narrow holes, too—a more precise partner than most of the humans I’ve worked with, and easier to please.  

Other than a gift-wrapped ton of well-aged horse manure, he’d be the Number One holiday gift. I swear I’d suborn him if I weren’t allergic to him. 

I was out with a young contractor at the home of a client he wanted me to talk with the other day. The homeowner had a wet basement and garage that never seemed to dry out. We walked around and I looked up the hill to find a line of extraordinarily healthy and prolific trees and shrubs marching to the crest of the hill. They ran in a line from north to south, roughly. “Creek”, I cried, “Well, maybe an aquifer.” 

Well actually, that’s the easy part (diagnosis). The hard part is draining the site effectively, but, indeed, the first things is to see if you can figure out where the water is coming from and it helps to understand the kind of source you’re dealing with. I knew that there was a lot of water and it came all year long, although, obviously more in the rainy season. The homeowner readily agreed with this assessment. That’s the way our creeks, streams, springs and aquifers work. They can run all year long, although more so in the winter. Some springs run copiously all year round, and this can change the way we think about moisture issues. 

Why do we want dry properties? Does it really matter? What is the downside to inaction? 

The answer to these questions is not consistent from one house to the next. It’s site and owner specific. Like many things in life, the answer requires some personal inquiry and the acknowledgement that most of us live within a range of imperfect conditions. We’d all go nuts if we tried to fix everything and it seems to me, at times, that the folks who actually do fix absolutely everything are a little nuts. 

Here are some guidelines: Does your house show signs of current settlement? Is the foundation rotated or cracked? Does it appear to be drifting this way AND that at the same time? It’s best to involve an engineer or inspector to help make a determination about this but some cases are really obvious. If your floors make for great fun with marbles or topple small children, you might have a settlement problem. If these things are true for you, you might want to invest in drainage because it can almost always slow this process, although there are surely soils which will move despite our best efforts. In some cases it can make a huge difference, however the time scales are such that it may not be apparent for some years. 

If you have water or damp soils under your house for part or all of the year, this may contribute to fungi growing in the crawlspace, basement or the house proper.  

This varies a lot, but if you have windows that are perennially coated with condensation, this is one likely cause (don’t ignore this because there are other possible causes including faulty gas appliance venting which might prove quite serious).  

When drainage is installed properly, it can help damp houses dry out, lessening the effects of these various microscopic organisms.  

Fungi (which includes molds and most mildews) and Protists (which include at least one mildew) nearly all require elevated humidities to propagate and when things are dry, most of them simply will not grow, throw spores or otherwise annoy.  

If you’re ready to really attack this problem, the type of drainage system that seems to be most effective and popular is the “French” (or, more properly, subsurface) drain. This is essentially a moat. The notion is this. If you can give the water that is heading toward your house a faster and easier path around the house via gravity to a point beyond harm’s way, you’ve won the battle. This usually takes the form of a trench around the entire perimeter of the structure, though a horshoe shape often works well on a hillside since the water on the downhill side tends to be moving away from the house anyway. Usually. 

Given that water travels toward your basement or crawlspace from below ground as well as from the surface, you want to be able to catch it as it approaches your basement and so must cut this moat deeper than any portion that might be wetted within the bounds of your home. Since water is generally traveling through the soil in roughly the incline of the hillside, it is not typically necessary to make a trench at the uphill end as deep as one might think. If your basement is 6 feet below ground and near the lower end of the building, you do not necessarily have to make a 12 foot deep trench at the back. A 6 to 8 foot trench might do just fine. This is tricky stuff though, since we just don’t know exactly how the plates of clay, silt and rock are layered below your house and we also don’t know how waterways have crafted themselves over the eons (especialy springs, eek). But, all that said, if it looks like a wet, slimy frog, it’s probably a wet, slimy frog. 

Nonetheless, the smart money tends to be on making the trench a little deeper than everyone thinks is enough and when you’re already digging, the cost usually isn’t much more to trench another foot or two. 

A moat will still work just fine if it’s filled with something that leaves big voids for water to flow, so rather than having a trench around the house (to go with the pikemen and the drawbridge), we fill it in with gravel. To be sure that there is an extra big void, most systems include a large perforated pipe that works simply by providing a space where water can flow. Water flows in the entire body of gravel and pipe as it chooses. A fabric encasement is wrapped around the pipe and gravel to keep soil from slowly nullifying this diaphanous mechanism. 

The trench must be sloped to direct water to one or more safe end points. On a hill, this might be down to the street-gutter, but on a flatter lot, it may be necessary to end the slope in a sump (or well) where it can be pumped out to the gutter. Sometimes there are other safe places to dump the water but not usually and please don’t dump it anywhere near your neighbor if you want to get invited back to the annual BBQ. 

There’s too much to say about pumps to get started in this forum but let it be enough to say that these require many carefully considered details and the oversight of an electrician. 

Clearly, these are heady, complex issues and when funguses and wet basements are involved, this is not the time to try and go it alone. So if this sounds like your home, get some professional help and put the fungi on the dinner table where they belong. 

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. 

A recent study by Joel McGlothin at the University of Virginia and Ellen Ketterson at Indiana University Bloomington examined the relationship between testosterone levels and parental investment in male dark-eyed juncos. These are the birds my folks used to call “snowbirds,” because of the timing of their arrival in central Arkansas. There’s an old Appalachian, I guess, fiddle tune with the cryptic title “Snowbird in the Ash Heap.”  

Our local variety, with dark gray heads and reddish backs, used to be considered a distinct species, the Oregon junco. But it, along with the eastern slate-colored junco, the white-winged junco of the Black Hills, and the pink-sided junco of the Rockies, have all been lumped together as dark-eyed. I wouldn’t count on that lasting, though, the way things go in bird taxonomy. Juncos are common Berkeley yard and UC campus birds, and year-round residents. 

McGlothin and Ketterson studied an eastern subspecies. Their working hypothesis was that a male’s total testosterone level would influence both his aggressive tendencies and his monogamous behavior, or lack thereof. The expectation was that high-testosterone males would be more likely to abandon their families and move on to new partners rather than sticking around to tend the nestlings. 

It didn’t quite work out that way. What they found was that all males were willing to help with childcare, to a degree. “If they have higher testosterone they help less,” says Ketterson. “If they have lower testosterone they help more.” But the best predictor of a male’s involvement with the kids was the stability of his testosterone level. Males whose levels rose and fell quickly investing less time in parenting. 

So who is the more fit parent, in evolutionary terms? Do the juncos with less stable testosterone, who are also more aggressive, sire as many successful offspring through extra-pair liaisons as the monogamous fathers do? That’s apparently where the research will go next. 

From birds to snakes: I recently wrote about the rise and fall of the diamondback water snake colony at Lafayette Reservoir (and managed to omit the horror story of the brown tree snake, a New Guinea native that hitchhiked to Guam and ate its way through the island’s bird population, wiping out several endemic species), mentioning how irascible and prone to bite these critters are. This drew a snake-handling anecdote from reader Richard Hodges: 

Back in 1970, I was on faculty at UT Austin. Besides being a computer scientist, I was an inveterate explorer of nature, and part-time snake fancier. One day, walking along Shoal Creek I spotted a water snake. Though I had never seen one before, I had read about it and was familiar enough with the poisonous snakes to be certain it was not a water moccasin. I approached it very cautiously and managed to “collect” it, without stimulating its defensive reactions. I installed it in a cage in my office on campus and over a period of weeks, by sensitive handling I induced it to a state of toleration approaching tameness. 

One day a top researcher in my field, Artificial Intelligence, was visiting the department. I think she was interviewing for a position. I attended the interesting lecture she gave. She was a fairly young and attractive brunette. Hearing about my snake, she approached me and asked to see it. I gladly showed it to her. She asked if she could handle it, saying she was a snake fancier also. I said that while it was tame to my touch, the species was known to be aggressive. She acknowledged the warning. 

Imagine my shock when at her apparently careful approach, the snake struck with a quickness I had never seen in it and bit her viciously. Water snakes have long teeth, useful for capturing slippery frogs, and blood was streaming from her hand! I was quite concerned, not for her health since such wounds usually heal quickly, but for my reputation, perhaps my career. But she just smiled and said “Don't worry, this often happens to me.” She wrapped her hand in a towel somebody found. We talked about it later over a beer and it developed that she was one of those people whom snakes often bite. I was the opposite—I often had handled otherwise aggressive snakes without problems. 

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

Photograph by Joe Eaton. 

The bird formerly known as Oregon junco, in Tilden Regional Park. 

FRIDAY, DEC. 7 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “The Man Who Saved Christmas” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Dec. 16. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553.  

Aurora Theatre Company “Sex” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Dec. 23. Tickets are $28-$50. 843-4822.  

BHS Drama and Shift Theatre “Noises Off” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Florence Schwimley Little Theater, Berkeley High Campus. Tickets are $6-$12. 332-1931.  

Berkeley Rep “After the Quake” at the Trust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through Dec. 21. Tickets are $33-$69. 647-2949. 

Black Repertory Group “A Rasin in the Sun” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St., through Dec. 14. Tickets are $10-$20. 652-2120. 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. at 2 p.m. at Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona Ave., (at Moeser), El Cerrito, through Dec. 9. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132.  

Impact Theatre “A Very Special Money & Run Winter Season Holiday Special” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Dec. 22. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468.  

Masquers Playhouse “Little Mary Sunshine” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through Dec. 15. Tickets are $18. 232-4031.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Tree of Life” Works by Berkeley High School students opens at Addison Street Windows Gallery, 2018 Addison St. 981-7533. 

“Duopolis” contemporary art from New York and San Francisco. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, 25 Grand Ave., upper level, Oakland. www.chandracerrito.com 

“Made In Equilibrium” works by Michele Elizabeth Lee, Brady Nadell and Ross Drago. Reception at 6 p.m. at ABCo Artspace, 3135 Oakland, Oakland. www.abcoartspace.com 

“12X12X12” Thirty-six works by three artists for the holidays. Reception at 7 pm. at Front Gallery, 35 Grand Ave, Oakland. 444-1900. 

Radical Graphics of Taller Tupac Amaru Reception at 6 p.m. at 550 Second St., Jack London Square. www.proartsgallery.org  

Touchable Stories “Richmond: The Story Continues” Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 6 p.m. at Old Kaiser Cafeteria, Shipyard #3, 1303 Canal Blvd., Richmond. Cost is $6-$12. Reservations required. 619-3675.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Best of Actors Reading Writers “The Tender Trap” at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214.  

MUSIC AND DANCE  

Berkeley Ballet Theater “Nutcracker” Fri. at 7 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 7 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through Dec. 16. Tickets are $16-$22. 843-4689. 

“Amahl and the Night Visitors” at 8 p.m. at St Augustine’s Catholic Church, 400 Alcatraz, between Telegraph and College, Oakland. Free. 653-8631. 

Sacred & Profane Annual Holiday Concert with traditional and contemporary music for Swedish Lucia, Channukah and Christmas at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $12-$15. www.sacredprofane.org  

Piedmont Choirs “Silver Bells” at 7:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd. Kensington, Cost is $10-$15. http://piedmontchoirs.org 

Bay Area Classical Harmonies “Messiah” at 7:30 p.m. at the Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Tickets at the door are $12-$15.  

University Symphony Orchestra, 19th century masterpieces and and new works at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-4864.  

The Christmas Revels at 7:30 p.m., Sat. and Sun. at 1 and 5 p.m. at Scottish Rite Theater, 1547 Lakeside Dr., Oakland. Tickets are $15-$50. 452-8800. www.calrevels.org 

Bobi Cespedes’ Grupo Bayano at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$15.. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Darryl Rowe & His Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Sambada, Omo Aiya, Afro-Brazilian-funk at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Oaktown Jazz Workshops at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

The Cowlicks at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

An Irish Christmas at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761.  

Star Ledbetter and Theresa Perez at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The Go Girls Animal Rights Benefit Concert with Phonofly, Vanessa Van Spall, Aoede and Jenn Grinels at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

Jennifer Johns & Doria Roberts perform for lesbian and bi-sexual women and their allies at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7-$15. 548-1159.  

The Brothers Goldman at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 8 

CHILDREN  

Young People’s Chamber Orchestra Concert for school age children and up at 3 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Gary Lapow at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568.  

“Children’s Theater Holiday Program” Sat. and Sun. at 12:30 and 3:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., off Grand Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 452-2259. 

“Peter Pan” the movie at 10 a.m. and noon, Sun. at noon at Elmwood Theater, 2966 College Ave. at Ashby. Benefit for local PTAs. 433-9730. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Plein-air Landscape Paintings of Bodega Bay” by Adam Wolpert. Reception for the artist at 2 p.m. at the Environmental Education Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

NIAD’s “Art from the Heart” Annual Holiday Festival from 2 to 5 p.m. at the National Institute of Art and Disibilities, 551 23rd St., Richmond. 620-0290. 

“The Great Outdoors” Group show of landscapes. Opening reception at 3 p.m. at A Different Day Gallery, 1233 Solano Ave., Albany. 868-4904. www.ADifferentDaygallery.com  

Albany Community Art Show from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany. 524-9283. 

ActivSpace Open House Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 2703 7th St. 508-8943. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

PEN Oakland, Josephine Miles 17th Annual National Literary Awards from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Rockridge Branch Library, 5366 College Ave., Oakland. Winners read from their works. www.penoakland.org 

Chad Sweeney and Kaya Oakes read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

The Best of Actors Reading Writers “The Tender Trap” at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. ricaisabella@yahoo.com 

Michelle Bautista, author of “Kali’s Blade,” Eileen Tabios, author of “The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes,” Jean Vengua, author of “Prau” at 3 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350.  

Prosody Castle 4: Dont Rhine in Conversation at 7 p.m. at The Gallery of Urban Art, 1746 13th St., West Oakland. Cost is $5. 706-1697. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Ballet Theater “Nutcracker” Sat. at 2 and 7 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through Dec. 16. Tickets are $16-$22. 843-4689. 

Bella Musica Chorus at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Great Commission, Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. Donation $12-$15.525-5393. www.bellamusica.org 

Voci “Voices in Peace: VII: Winter Stillness” at 8 p.m. at St. Mary Magdalen Parish, 2005 Berryman St. Tickets are $15-$20, free for children under 12. www.vocisings.com 

University Symphony Orchestra, 19th century masterpieces and and new works at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Oakland Youth Chorus “In the Arms of Winter” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland 2501 Harrison St. Tickets are $5-$20. 287-9700. www.oaklandyouthchorus.org  

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “The Majesty of Christmas” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $30-$72. 415-252-1288. 

“Chimes Winter Starscape” with John Muir Holiday Choir at 3 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Other events from noon on. 228-3207. 

Musica Viva, violin, cello and harpsichord at 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave. Tickets are $10-$15. www.stpauloakland.org 

Mahealani Uchiyama “A Walk By the Sea” at 8 p.m. at Regents Theater, Holy Names University, Oakland. Tickets are $30-$55. For reservations call 925-798-1300. 

North Country at 1 p.m. at Down Home Music on Fourth St. 525-2129. 

Bomberas de la Bahia at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Eric Swinderman’s “In Pursuit of the Sound” at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Motordude Zydeco at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Zoyres with Sandor Elix Katz at 7:30 p.m. at 1236 23rd Ave. at International Blvd., Oakland, Admission by donation; no one turned away for lack of funds. Bring jars to fill, some veggies to chop, a cutting board, knife, and grater. RVSP to Zoyres@gmail.com 

Mike Eckstein and Marc DiGiacomo Trio at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Chris Williamson, Teresa Trull & Barbara Higbie at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Snake Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Matt Lucas and Cotillion at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

CV Dub at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 9 

EXHIBITIONS 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bella Musica Chorus at 4 p.m. at St. Mary Magdalen Church, 2005 Berryman St. at Milvia. Donation $12-$15. 525-5393.  

Berkeley Ballet Theater “Nutcracker” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through Dec. 16. Tickets are $16-$22. 843-4689. 

“Sounds of the Season” at 7 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St., Point Richmond. Donation $10. 236-0527. 

“Amahl and the Night Visitors” at 3 p.m. at St Augustine’s Catholic Church, 400 Alcatraz, between Telegraph and College, Oakland. Free. 653-8631. 

Organ Recital by Christopher Putnam at 6 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Donations accepted. 845-0888. 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “The Majesty of Christmas” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $30-$72. 415-252-1288. 

Lucy Kinchen Choir Holiday Concert at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave. www.stpauloakland.org 

Michael Jones, violin and John Burke, piano, perform sonatas by Bach and Mozart at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 644-6893.  

Soli Deo Gloria “Time Enough for Joy” at 3:30 p.m. at St. Philip Neri, 3108 Van Buren St., Alameda. Tickets are $20-$25, childen K-8 free. www.sdgloria.org 

Caffe Mediterraneum 50th Anniversary Party with music at 2, 7:30 and 8:30 p.m., poetry and anecdotes at 4 p.m. at 2475 Telegraph Ave. 549-1128. 

Chris Williamson, Teresa Trull & Barbara Higbie at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761.  

Mariusz Kwiecien, baritone, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $42. 642-9988.  

Jonathan Kreisberg Trio, CD release party, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ.  

Tito y Su Son de Cuba at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373.  

MONDAY, DEC. 10 

CHILDREN 

“Snow Scene from the Nutcracker” by Kathryn Roszak’s Childrens’ Dance at 4:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave., Free, but RSVP requested 233-5550. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Civic Center Art Exhibition 2007-2008 from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Building, 6th flr., 2180 Milvia St. 981-7533. 

“Visions of Berkeley’s Past” Acrylic mural on canvas by Nilda Ovalles Bello. Reception at 4 p.m. at 2991 College Ave. 883-7004. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Debbie Stoller on “Son of Stitch ‘N Bitch: 45 Projects to Knit and Crochet for Men” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Poetry Express with Donna M. Lane for United Nations Human Rights Day at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chanticleer at 8 p.m. at Firdst Congregational Churhc, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $22-$44. 415-392-4400.  

Jazz Mime at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100.  

Parlor Tango with Baguette quartette at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Refugees: Cindy Bullens, Deborah Holland & Wendy Waldman at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. 

TUESDAY, DEC. 11 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Finding Women of Valor: The Daily Lives of Women in Ancient Israel” An archeology exhibit at the Badé Museum, Holbrook Building, Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. Open Tues. and Thurs. from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. to Jan. 31. 849-8272. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dave Weinstein, author of “Signature Architects of the San Francisco Bay Area,” will give a slide talk about notable architects and homes in El Cerrito and Kensington at 7 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. 526-7512.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Piedmont Choirs at 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave. www.stpauloakland.org 

CZ & the Bon Vivants at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Keyy Park at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Take the Stage Band workshop performances at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761.  

Trombonga at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 12 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Hans Peeters in conversation with Doris Kretschmer on “Field Guide to Owls of California and the West” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

“Ferruccio Busoni, Italian Piano Prodigy” A lecture by pianist Daniell Revenaugh, with latest Busoni Recording, at 5 p.m. at The Musical Offering Café, 2430 Bancroft Way. 849-0211. www.themusicaloffering.com 

Daniel Marlin and Janell Moon at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave. 644-3977. 

Berkeley City College Digital Arts Club and Milvia Street Art and Literary Journal host a benefit poetry reading and printmaking exhibition at 6 p.m. at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. Cost is $5.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland City Center Holiday Concert with Mariachi Tradicion Mexicana at noon at 12th and Broadway, Oakland.  

SFSU Jazz Choir & Afro Cuban Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

La Peña’s Latin Jazz Orchestra Recital at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $8. 849-2568.  

Za’atar at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Rachel Efron at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Peace Nick with Roy Zimmerman at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

THURSDAY, DEC. 13 

EXHIBITIONS 

Kala Artist Annual Exhibition New works in a variety of media. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Kala Art Institute, 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“The Living New Deal Project: Excavating a Lost Civilization Around Us” with Gray Brechin on a statewide collaborative effort to document and map the physical legacy of the New Deal in California, at 7:30 p.m. at the Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $8-$10. Sponsored by Oakland Heritage Alliance. 763-9218. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Darol Anger & Mike Marshall at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761.  

Josh Nelson Quartet, with guest Natasha Miller, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Jenny Ferris and Laura Klein, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Willow Willow, Mushroom, Emily Jane White at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. 

AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS 

A modern Christmas tradition will be observed this weekend when Giancarlo Menotti’s opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, a charming retelling of the story of the Three Wise Men and Epiphany, will be performed at 8 p.m. tonight (Friday) and 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon at St. Augustine’s Church, 400 Alcatraz. Menotti was Italian-born, but his very successful career was mostly in America. He has been too easily dismissed as “facile,” as other worthy successes have often been, musical tastes having changed since his heyday. But the founder of the Spoleto Festival and composer of The Consul, that unsentimental opera about the wife of a resistance figure seeking asylum from a police state, deserves a sympathetic ear and eye. His productions, including the much-loved Amahl, were that modern rarity: both popular and intelligent, never talking or playing down to an audience, or oversentimentalizing themes that often get kitschy treatment. 

GEORGE CABLES  

BENEFIT AT YOSHI’S  

Eminent jazz pianist George Cables, long-time Bay Area favorite and collaborator with many great players here and in New York, recently received liver and kidney transplants. This Saturday afternoon, 1-3:30 p.m., there’ll be a benefit at Yoshi’s, to help defray medical and recuperation costs, featuring such notables as Bobby Hutcher-son, Gary Bartz, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Mel Martin, Ray Drummond, Eddie Marshall, Mary Stallings, Denise Perrier, Babatunde Lea, Calvin Keys and over a dozen other well-known players and singers, plus special surprise guests. $30 donation. Tickets available through www.yoshis.com or 238-9200.

In Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge, directed by Berkeley favorite Joy Carlin at the San Francisco Playhouse off Union Square, what at first flush seems to be a loopy burlesque of that seasonal chestnut, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, proves postmodern. 

As an unrepentant Ebenezer Scrooge (Victor Talmadge) is led up a few blind alleys by a genial but confused all-purpose ghost guide in UPS browns (Cathleen Riddley), the familiar tale jumps the storyline tracks, muddling vignettes from other Dickens morality tales with a morphed slab of O. Henry thrown in, eventually fusing with a handoff riff from cinema—to wit, It’s a Wonderful Life, as fumbled by an even more mixed-up downy winged angel (Brian Degan Scott)—and finally crash lands in the NYC tabloids of the Reagan Era, “when Being Filthy Rich became acceptable, and a ‘virtue.’”  

What playwright Christopher Durang came up with in this ’80s take (now in its San Francisco premiere) is less an antidote to the heartwarming tale of redemption through memory awakening compassion that’s cranked up every year than a kind of dramatic version of Jeb Stuart’s Ride around the hymn-singing Army of the Potomac (or maybe it’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride), skirting the edges of a whole slew of the kind of holiday routines and antics that either warm the cockles of kind hearts—or drive the rest of us up the wall. 

At the dark heart of the matter is that accomplished comic performer Joan Mankin playing the title role, a no-nonsense realist trapped in a cheerfully downtrodden family—with a crippled and grinning Tiny Tim (Lizzie Calogero), sweatshop toiling L’il Nell (Jean Forsman), dozens more squalling kids in the root cellar, and a happily masochistic Mr. Cratchit (Keith Burkland) bringing home yet another foundling to swell the squalid menagerie.  

All poor Mrs. Cratchit wants to do is adjourn to a pub for a tequila and then jump off London Bridge. In the meantime, she’s tormented by the treacliest of holiday cheer, including an agonizingly slow rendition of “Silent Night,” constant one-upmanship in gleeful poor-mouthing, and a painful table-side sawing of a Christmas swan, captured at a pond with burlap bag by Child #2, Berkeley’s Gideon Lazarus. 

Mrs. C. also hears voices—those of the UPS-uniformed ghost and an admiring Scrooge, who senses a kindred spirit, as the manic festivities of the Victorian gutter swirl around her. 

Clearly, its anachronism runneth over. Even at the start, the Ghost (who really just wants to croon a Billie Holiday standard) exclaims she’s glad to be a childless phantom, shouting at young Ebenezer (Gideon Lazarus again) that she’d like to take a strap to him—then turning to the audience with, “but you politically correct types wouldn’t like that.”  

It’s a good escape for those who blanch at canned carols in shopping malls and the digital jingle of all those bells. There’s enough crutch-kicking to please any Grinch, though the hilarious audience of concierges yelped when a present in giftwrap got stomped. 

Terry Rucker’s musical direction moves the show along with a goofy repertoire at a good clip. Carlin, who teamed up well with Mankin in the Aurora’s recent production of a more “serious” NYC dark comedy of the ’70s, BOSOMS AND NEGLECT, has put her quick-change cast of a dozen through the hoops perfectly, skimming the schmaltz off the milk of human error in this silly burlesque turn that cries out, Ho Ho Ho Humbug!

The California Revels opens tonight (Friday) at the Oakland Scottish Rite Auditorium on Lake Merritt, celebrating its 22nd season in two weekends of music, dance and pageantry. 

It’s a festive visit to the 19th-century English countryside, where a Songcatcher, collecting traditional folktunes and the tales around them, encounters various rustic characters, each with a story, and more than one of them played by popular Bay Area clown and comic actor Geoff Hoyle, himself hailing from Yorkshire. 

The figure of the Songcatcher “is central to the show,” said Revels director David Parr. “Perhaps the best known was Cecil Sharpe, who, along with others, also combed the Appalachians in search of material preserved by immigrant communities. His transcription of the Ritchie Family singing ‘Nottamun Town’ provided Bob Dylan with the tune for ‘Masters of War’ so many years later. The Songcatchers took an interest in the folk customs they saw vanishing and tried to preserve them in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and the homogenization of culture—like standardized children’s stories, where over 100 known versions of Cinderella went through a kind of Disney-fication.  

“The Revels this year is a kind of salute to the Songcatchers,” Parr went on, “but also shows how sometimes those academic teams missed the forest for the trees, with expectations of finding druids in everything. It shows the power of folklore isn’t in its historicity, but in what it does for people, to move and delight them, and bring them together for celebration.” 

Parr touched on the panoply of Revels entertainments: “There’s a lot of dancing—two English country dances, one a parlor dance and a women’s clog dance; the RapperSword dance by Swords of Gridlock, a border short-stick dance, and of course Morris dancing. An unusual version of ‘John Barleycorn’ will be sung with a melody different than what people are used to hearing. Our music director, Shira Kammen, has arranged ‘Nottingham Town’ and ‘The Wexford Lullaby,’ and there’s the Yorkshire ‘Ilka Moor Baht Tat’—‘on the moor without a hat,’ a phonetic transcription of dialect. Storyteller Jan Herlington will tell ‘The Buried Moon,’ from Lincolnshire, one of the rare English children’s tales with elemental features, which will be acted out by the children’s chorus. And we’ll have a town band of our choristers playing West Gallery music. That was another type of cooptation of folk culture: the Church of England installing pump organs and insisting on standard arrangements, banishing the old vernacular bands, where a clarinetist would sit next to someone playing serpent!” 

On Geoff Hoyle’s shape-shifting appearances, playing five different characters during the course of the show, Parr would only say that “Geoff channels his Yorkshire aunt” and something about being a pig story and performing in drag—”Geoff, of course, not the pig. And you know he plays fiddle, sings and dances.” 

This Revels, partly inspired by Thomas Hardy’s UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE, will feature its traditional close, when the audience is invited to join hands and line-dance through the hall, singing “Lord of the Dance,” the old Shaker tune “Simple Gifts” with modern lyrics by Sydney Carter. On Oct. 28 this year, Discovery astronauts were awakened with the Revels Records version of John Langstaff singing “Lord of the Dance”—which fittingly declares, “I danced in the morning, when the world was begun; I danced in the moon, and the stars, and the sun.” 

When art dabbles in politics it runs the risk of its politics subsuming its art. No matter how great the artistic achievement, there is always the danger that critical and popular reception may be held hostage to considerations that go far beyond artistic merit.  

Such was the case with I Am Cuba, an extraordinary 1964 Cuban-Soviet production that deserves a place alongside Triumph of the Will (1935) and Battleship Potemkin (1925) as a landmark of political filmmaking. The movie’s vast ambitions, which it largely fulfills, ultimately fell victim to the very politics it espoused. After just a few screenings it languished in a vault for 30 years before finally receiving its due recognition in the 1990s. And now it finally gets a DVD release worthy of its grandeur in the form of a three-disc set from Milestone Films. 

The project began just after the Cuban Revolution, as Castro’s government was settling in after the overthrow of dictator Fulgencio Batista. The Soviet Union, eager to show support for the budding socialist nation, sent writers and artists and intellectuals to help foster Cuba’s burgeoning cultural movement.  

Included among these cultural ambassadors were film director Mikhail Kalatozov and his cinematographer Serguey Urusevsky, who had collaborated on several films already, and poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. They set out to make a sort of cinematic epic poem about contemporary Cuba and about the revolution itself. Yevtushenko and Cuban writer Enrique Pineda Barnet were put to work on a script, but with strict instructions from Urusevsky to keep the words to a minimum—this would be a visual film, not a verbal one. 

The result is one of the most stunning and inventive visual feasts ever put on film. It relates four separate stories of the suffering and rising political consciousness of the Cuban people, the episodes united by a narrator, “the Voice of Cuba,” who reiterates the themes and provides the transitions between the tales.  

Kalatozov and Urusevsky took a bold visual approach that expanded on their previous work. The film consists of stirring, swirling camera movements that flow effortlessly from one indelible image to another. Long, unbroken shots lure us further into this highly stylized world, into the reality of its unreality. The camera moves relentlessly, following characters around corners, up staircases, through open fields and crowded nightclubs; it views them from extreme angles, high and low; it floats up the sides of buildings, through windows, over streets and even into swimming pools.  

When asked why his sentences were so long and at times convoluted, novelist William Faulkner replied that he was trying to fit everything into one sentence, to fit the entire sweep of history on the head of a pin. I Am Cuba’s sustained shots and graceful, engrossing camera movements serve a similar purpose, taking us on a journey through a political and social landscape where history itself is unfolding, where a revolution is igniting, where a certain political consciousness is enveloping the land and its people.  

Some of the shots seem to defy logic. Even an experienced filmmaker like Martin Scorsese was dumbfounded after his first viewing of the film, unable to figure out how several shots were achieved. An accompanying documentary reveals a few secrets, but not all. But although the film’s style is bold and intoxicating, it is never gratuitous, for its distinctive form is wedded perfectly to its content.  

One facet that goes unexplained on the DVD’s extra features is Kalatozov and Urusevsky’s use of the wide-angle lens throughout the film. Its distortions call to mind the expressive shots from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, in which the wide-angle lens seems to represent the distorted visions of grandiosity of the film’s title character—reality seen through a fragmented snow globe. Perhaps Kalatozov and Urusevsky saw it as another method by which to establish the film’s heightened poetic tone. Or perhaps they simply liked the aesthetics of it, for it allowed them to take in as much of the landscape as possible. But in retrospect, four decades after the revolution, the imagery takes on an entirely different quality, that of the distorted lens through which participants and idealists saw the revolution at the time, before the utopian dream settled into disillusionment, before the hopes and dreams of a nation faded into day-to-day subsistence and struggle. Cuba, vast and glorious in black and white, bends at the edges of the frame, curling inward like facts bending to fit the beholder’s vision. 

There were great hopes for the project—as a symbol of the revolution, as a plea for international support, and as a sign of collaboration between the Soviet Union and the nascent socialist island state. But when the film opened, after two years in production, Cubans and Russians alike were disappointed. The Russians saw it as naive and tepid; the Cubans felt the filmmakers had misunderstood and stereotyped their people, infusing characters with a distinctly Russian brand of slow deliberation. As actor Sergio Corrieri put it, the film was “Cuban reality seen through a slavic prism.”  

The film showed for a week, then disappeared for three decades, never screening outside the nations that produced it. 

I Am Cuba finally got its first screenings in the West in the early 1990s. It was soon brought to the attention of New York’s Milestone Films, who secured the rights, and, with the help of Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, gave the film a theatrical release in 1995, whereupon the film was hailed as a masterpiece. Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman said the film’s rediscovery was “like finding a preserved Siberian mammoth in the sands of a tropical island.” 

Now Milestone has released the film in a lavish DVD set (packaged in a cigar box) that includes a beautiful new transfer of the film and extra features which delve into the production and its legacy, including a documentary about the film itself (called I Am Cuba: Siberian Mammoth), another about the distinguished career of director Mikhail Kalatozov, and interviews with Scorsese and poet Yevtushenko. 

This is one long-forgotten classic that is more than deserving of the praise heaped upon it—a truly revolutionary film that might have radically altered the cinematic landscape had it been distributed in its time. As Scorsese says in his introduction to the film, if I Am Cuba had been widely seen when it was originally released, “movies would have looked a lot different a lot sooner.”

Stately older houses can be at their best when festively decorated for the winter holidays.  

Up and down the East Bay shore this holiday season there are several historic homes—particularly Victorians—decked out for special tours and events, starting today and tomorrow. 

One of the most impressive is the Patterson House, a wedding cake white Victorian in the midst of the historic Ardenwood Farm in Fremont, a property that embodies Alameda County’s agricultural roots. 

The Patterson House itself was built as a big country farmhouse in the 1850s. In the late 1880s Samuel Newsom, of the Newsom Brothers of San Francisco, redesigned it as an expansive Queen Anne style country manse of some 7,000 square feet, with a main façade embellished with carved wooden scrollwork, balcony, corner tower and turret. 

Inside, there’s an ornate entry hall flanked by two massive sliding doors to formal parlor (left) and family parlor (right). A spindled wooden arch frames a switchback main staircase to an ample second floor with master, guest, and children’s bedrooms and baths. 

The twisty back stair descends to a well-stocked rear kitchen with a working iron stove. A pantry connects to a long formal dining room with elaborate place settings laid, adjoined by a smoking room, which was the original dining room. 

Most of the furnishings are family pieces original to the house. There’s even a side library with generations of books collected by the residents. 

As a “Forty Niner”, George Washington Patterson was an informant for, and early subscriber to, the seminal series of western histories produced by Hubert Howe Bancroft. 

His wife Clara later traveled extensively, and son Henry went to the University of California, while son William attended Stanford. See if you can spot the Cal yearbooks. 

The staff and volunteers who keep the Patterson House open are outgoing, friendly, enthusiastic, and know everything about the house. Dressed in period wear, they invite visitors to examine the household objects and talk about the family and earlier eras. 

In one room during our visit, a staff member cranked up a working Victorola next to copies of postcards sent from around the world by the well-traveled Clara Patterson. The kitchen smelled of fresh baking. In the guest bedroom a costumed volunteer did embroidery and explained her technique to curious children. 

An early Cal songbook sat on the piano in the family parlor, while logs crackled in the fireplace. Stained glass windows sparkled across the hall in the formal parlor, starting point for tours, where a guide invited children to count the number of Christmas trees throughout the house. 

Christmas decorations are up, and the house is open for tours this weekend as well as Dec. 15 and 16. Saturday and Sunday tours are on the hour from 11:00 a.m. to 3 p.m. Today, December 7, and next Friday, Dec. 14, there are also tours at 1, 2, and 3 p.m. 

Today, there’s also a 5-8:45 p.m. “Christmas Evening at the Patterson House” event with holiday music. 

For all events there’s a small admission charge, $5 or less. 

It’s wonderful this house and property have survived. George Washington Patterson, the builder, grew up in Ohio and Indiana. In 1849, age 26, he headed to California as a gold seeker, joining a company that made an arduous trip down the Mississippi, then by sea and land to San Francisco. 

He prospected awhile, then relocated to the Bay Area and turned to farming. He leased, later purchased, land of his own in what was then called Washington Township. 

Patterson gradually developed a vast holding of nearly 6,500 acres, making him one of the largest property owners in Alameda County. The fertile alluvial plain produced abundant harvests, and a nearby creek inlet provided convenient access to ship the output of the farm across the Bay. 

The property typified the extensive and productive farms that spread across southern Alameda County in the second half of the 19th century, and have now almost entirely vanished beneath housing tracts, office parks, and highways. 

Ardenwood almost suffered that fate. It remained in the Patterson family until a sale to a developer in 1971. Seven years later a complex arrangement resulted in the acquisition of 205 acres, including the house, by the City of Fremont. The East Bay Regional Park District was enlisted to operate the historic farm, which formally opened in 1985. 

The surviving land tract is large enough to retain the open character of an early California farm, including views to the distant hills. It includes fields and orchards, a deer park, stands of eucalyptus where monarch butterflies overwinter, a horse-drawn railroad, and a complex of outbuildings—from blacksmith shop to water tower—forming a demonstration farm with numerous activities and programs throughout the year. 

Free range peacocks, an aviary of white doves and brilliant pheasants, and penned goats, sheep, draft horses, cows and calves lend diversion to the grounds. 

Highway 880 provides a direct route to Ardenwood, about 30 miles from Berkeley. Take the exit west towards the Dumbarton Bridge. The road hugs the Ardenwood grounds on the right. Keep to the right, and watch for the entrance signs to the farm. 

Coming or going, an alternative to part of the freeway is a drive or bus ride down Hesperian Boulevard. Although the street sprouts several decades of housing tracts, a few miles north of Ardenwood on Hesperian you’ll find the McConaghy House, built in 1886, and now operated by the Hayward Area Historical Society.  

I wrote about this historic home exactly three years ago in the Dec. 7, 2004, issue, which you can find in the Planet online archives at www.berkeleydailyplanet.com. 

The Christmas decorations are up again this year, and you can tour the house on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through Dec. 30. The house is open 1-4 p.m., with the last tour at 3:30 p.m. There’s a small admission charge. 

Further north, and closer to Berkeley, there are also holiday decorations and events at Dunsmuir House in Oakland, also discussed in more detail in the 2004 Planet article. 

This year, Dunsmuir is open for tours of the opulently decorated house on December weekends through the 23rd. There’s a Holiday Breakfast on Dec. 16, and Holiday Teas on various days.  

Dining tickets should be purchased in advance and entry to the house is strictly timed, so plan accordingly. 

In Oakland, the Cohen-Bray House is a remarkably pristine 1884 Victorian that, like Ardenwood, preserves the décor, furnishings, and traditions of the family that built it. 

It’s open on the fourth Sunday of the month for tours (call to confirm) and has two special holiday events. On Dec. 29 there’s a $25 per person Christmas Tea and Tour (repeated at 1, 2, and 3 p.m. in the afternoon), and on Twelfth Night—Jan. 5, 2008—a gala celebration with a five course meal for $125 per person.  

Space is limited, and reservations are needed, for these events. 

Tomorrow—-Saturday, Dec. 8--there’s a 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Holiday Home 

Tour in Alameda, a community that’s both close by and rich with period houses, particularly Victorians. The event is sponsored by the Alameda Family Services League. 

Tickets to visit the holiday decorated private homes are $30 on the day of the tour. There’s also a separately priced lunch at the Encinal Yacht Club, a Holiday Dessert Tea, and a Boutique and Gourmet Shoppe. 

Tonight, Dec. 7, a 6-9 p.m. “Candlelight Preview” visits the houses after dark and includes a “post tour party (with) champagne a light supper, and dancing” for $75. 

IF YOU GO: 

Ardenwood Historic Farm is at 34600 Ardenwood Boulevard in Fremont. 

General information can be found at www.ebparks.org/parks/ardenwood. Call 791-4196 for Patterson House information. 

The McConaghy House is at 18701 Hesperian Blvd., Hayward, next to Kennedy Park. Check www.haywardareahistory.org or call 276-3010. 

Dunsmuir House information including hours and ticket prices and purchase details can be found at www.dunsmuir.org 

The Cohen-Bray House is at 1440 29th Ave. in Oakland. www.cohen-brayhouse.info Call 843-2906 for availability of event tickets and to make reservations. 

Alameda Holiday Home Tour details are at 222.alamedaholidayhometour.info/ or call 510-522-8363 x 165 for tour information. 

IMAGE D: “Costumed staff and volunteers greet visitors in the fully stocked Patterson House kitchen.” 

IMAGE E: “The elaborate Patterson dining room is arranged for a festive, Victorian era, family meal.” 

You don’t need an official occasion, you know. If you know a gardener, go ahead and give her a gift just ‘cuz. Call it an Unbirthday Present; I do a certain amount of that with my rellies because after 58 years of living in it I still don’t track time very well.  

So here’s a second short list of things I and others have found useful, messing around in dirt. 

Body Time, which we old farts remember as the original Body Shop, sells a little round hand-care bar with a string on it like a shower-soap’s. It’s beeswax and other handy ingredients like mineral oil, a bare touch of scent, and stays solid even when I leave it in the car. (In serious heat it greases up the paper it’s wrapped in, and doesn’t ooze any farther than that.) It’s good for fast treatment of dry hands and does not leave them too slippery to grasp the steering wheel, which is why it’s in my car. It’s also good to drag one’s fingernails through before digging in the mud because it’s easier to get the dirt-wax mix out of them afterward than plain dirt.  

Comes in two sizes for around $9 and $15; get one for yourself too. Long-lasting enough to be worth the price. Oh—being a solid, not a liquid, it’s also ideal for Homelandishly Secure air travel. Accessorize it with one of Body Time’s funny and effective fish-scale nailfiles for a manicure kit that’s above reproach. 

My favorite gardening hat is one that, like the Felco pruners I mentioned last week, needs to be tried on, which tends to spoil the surprise element. It’s washable stiff canvas, in off-white and a few darker shades, has an interior adjustable band to secure it when the wind’s blowing, and a decently broad brim all ‘round, like a cowboy hat but flexy enough to take other shapes. It’s sturdy enough to protect my head from the odd branch I’ve managed to drop on it while pruning.  

The fun part is finding it. Parker-Dahl Enterprises (a.k.a Shapeskins, for its line of sheepskin slippers) of Davis sells it; you might have seen them at craft or other fairs, or the March Garden Show in SF. They show up at the Davis Farmers’ Market, and that’s worth a trip in itself. Or call the number below; the Web site’s still under construction. 

There’s a gift I can’t have but would be any gardener’s envy. A friend just bought a house in El Sobrante with a perfect-sized yard, and her fox terrier showed me a talent not just for digging, but for digging on command, and in the place pointed out to him. He digs narrow holes, too—a more precise partner than most of the humans I’ve worked with, and easier to please.  

Other than a gift-wrapped ton of well-aged horse manure, he’d be the Number One holiday gift. I swear I’d suborn him if I weren’t allergic to him. 

I was out with a young contractor at the home of a client he wanted me to talk with the other day. The homeowner had a wet basement and garage that never seemed to dry out. We walked around and I looked up the hill to find a line of extraordinarily healthy and prolific trees and shrubs marching to the crest of the hill. They ran in a line from north to south, roughly. “Creek”, I cried, “Well, maybe an aquifer.” 

Well actually, that’s the easy part (diagnosis). The hard part is draining the site effectively, but, indeed, the first things is to see if you can figure out where the water is coming from and it helps to understand the kind of source you’re dealing with. I knew that there was a lot of water and it came all year long, although, obviously more in the rainy season. The homeowner readily agreed with this assessment. That’s the way our creeks, streams, springs and aquifers work. They can run all year long, although more so in the winter. Some springs run copiously all year round, and this can change the way we think about moisture issues. 

Why do we want dry properties? Does it really matter? What is the downside to inaction? 

The answer to these questions is not consistent from one house to the next. It’s site and owner specific. Like many things in life, the answer requires some personal inquiry and the acknowledgement that most of us live within a range of imperfect conditions. We’d all go nuts if we tried to fix everything and it seems to me, at times, that the folks who actually do fix absolutely everything are a little nuts. 

Here are some guidelines: Does your house show signs of current settlement? Is the foundation rotated or cracked? Does it appear to be drifting this way AND that at the same time? It’s best to involve an engineer or inspector to help make a determination about this but some cases are really obvious. If your floors make for great fun with marbles or topple small children, you might have a settlement problem. If these things are true for you, you might want to invest in drainage because it can almost always slow this process, although there are surely soils which will move despite our best efforts. In some cases it can make a huge difference, however the time scales are such that it may not be apparent for some years. 

If you have water or damp soils under your house for part or all of the year, this may contribute to fungi growing in the crawlspace, basement or the house proper.  

This varies a lot, but if you have windows that are perennially coated with condensation, this is one likely cause (don’t ignore this because there are other possible causes including faulty gas appliance venting which might prove quite serious).  

When drainage is installed properly, it can help damp houses dry out, lessening the effects of these various microscopic organisms.  

Fungi (which includes molds and most mildews) and Protists (which include at least one mildew) nearly all require elevated humidities to propagate and when things are dry, most of them simply will not grow, throw spores or otherwise annoy.  

If you’re ready to really attack this problem, the type of drainage system that seems to be most effective and popular is the “French” (or, more properly, subsurface) drain. This is essentially a moat. The notion is this. If you can give the water that is heading toward your house a faster and easier path around the house via gravity to a point beyond harm’s way, you’ve won the battle. This usually takes the form of a trench around the entire perimeter of the structure, though a horshoe shape often works well on a hillside since the water on the downhill side tends to be moving away from the house anyway. Usually. 

Given that water travels toward your basement or crawlspace from below ground as well as from the surface, you want to be able to catch it as it approaches your basement and so must cut this moat deeper than any portion that might be wetted within the bounds of your home. Since water is generally traveling through the soil in roughly the incline of the hillside, it is not typically necessary to make a trench at the uphill end as deep as one might think. If your basement is 6 feet below ground and near the lower end of the building, you do not necessarily have to make a 12 foot deep trench at the back. A 6 to 8 foot trench might do just fine. This is tricky stuff though, since we just don’t know exactly how the plates of clay, silt and rock are layered below your house and we also don’t know how waterways have crafted themselves over the eons (especialy springs, eek). But, all that said, if it looks like a wet, slimy frog, it’s probably a wet, slimy frog. 

Nonetheless, the smart money tends to be on making the trench a little deeper than everyone thinks is enough and when you’re already digging, the cost usually isn’t much more to trench another foot or two. 

A moat will still work just fine if it’s filled with something that leaves big voids for water to flow, so rather than having a trench around the house (to go with the pikemen and the drawbridge), we fill it in with gravel. To be sure that there is an extra big void, most systems include a large perforated pipe that works simply by providing a space where water can flow. Water flows in the entire body of gravel and pipe as it chooses. A fabric encasement is wrapped around the pipe and gravel to keep soil from slowly nullifying this diaphanous mechanism. 

The trench must be sloped to direct water to one or more safe end points. On a hill, this might be down to the street-gutter, but on a flatter lot, it may be necessary to end the slope in a sump (or well) where it can be pumped out to the gutter. Sometimes there are other safe places to dump the water but not usually and please don’t dump it anywhere near your neighbor if you want to get invited back to the annual BBQ. 

There’s too much to say about pumps to get started in this forum but let it be enough to say that these require many carefully considered details and the oversight of an electrician. 

Clearly, these are heady, complex issues and when funguses and wet basements are involved, this is not the time to try and go it alone. So if this sounds like your home, get some professional help and put the fungi on the dinner table where they belong. 

FRIDAY, DEC. 7 

Golden Gate Audubon Society Walk at Jewel Lake in Tilden Park. Meet at 8:30 a.m. at the parking lot at the north end of Central Park Drive. be prepared for muddy paths. Heavy rains cancels. 848-9156. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Jim Wilson on “Education Finance in California” 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.  

“Fair Trade Fair” Learn about fair trade porducts with Laurie Lyser of TransFair at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, 2125 Jefferson St., 2nd flr (not wheelchair accessible). Fair trade items will be available for purchase. 482-1062. 

“China’s Environment: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?” A forum on the scientific as well as social, political, economic, public health and cultural aspects, Fri. and Sat. Free and open to the public. http://ieas.berkeley.edu/events/2007.12.07w.html 

Teen Playreaders meets to read “Hamlet” and other plays based on the classic, at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue at Ashby. 981-6121. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 8 

PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles 17th Annual National Literary Awards & 11th Annual PEN Oakland Censorship Award from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Rockridge Branch Library, 5366 College Ave. Free and open to the public. 228-6775. 

Golden Gate Audubon Society Bike Trip in Coyote Hills via Alameda Creek and Quarry Lakes. Meet at 9 a.m. on the east side of the Fremont BART for an all-day trip, returning to BART at 3 p.m. Total distance is about 24 miles. Bicycle helmet required. Bring lunch and dress in layers. 547-1233. 

Dramatically Speaking Toastmasters with Victor Bogart on “Explore the Undiscovered You” at 9 a.m. at 1950 Franklin St., Oakland. RSVP required. ID required to get into building. 581-8675. 

The East Bay Chapter of The Great War Society meets to discuss “The Military Career of George Patton” by A. Melomet at 10:30 a.m. at the West Berkeley Library, 1125 University Ave. 527-7118. 

“The Care Crisis: How Women Are Bearing the Burden of a National Emergency” with Ruth Rosen, visiting professor of History and Public Policy at UCB at 7 p.m. at Alameda Free Library, Conference Rooms A, 1550 Oak St. at Lincoln, Alameda www.alamedaforum.org  

Oakland Public Conservatory of Music Annual Open House with food, fun and music for the whole family, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sun. from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at 1616 Franklin Ave Oakland. 836-4649. 

Palestinian Bazaar with embroidery, glassware, wood, ceramics, textiles and more, from noon to 6 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 548-0542. 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Holiday Crafts Fair from 10 a.m. on with local crafts and live music. 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios Sat and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Dec. 16. 845-2612. www.berkeleyartisans.com 

Oakland Museum of California Community Celebration for differently-abled community members from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10th and Oak St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022. 

Berkeley Rent Board Housing Counselling available at 11 a.m. in the Berkeley History Room, second flr, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 644-6128, ext. 116. 

Winter Fest Learn about snowshoeing, skiing, snowboarding and more from noon to 4 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Program for Adults on Children’s Financial Literacy with Lu Vazquez, Edward Jones Financial Advisor, and John Abrate, Wells Fargo Bank Business Banking Specialist from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library Community Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge. 548-1240. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Vegetarian Cooking Class “Healthful and Humane Cooking and Baking” featuring savory tofu spread, corn-meal-crusted tempeh, brussel sprouts, chocolate bread pudding, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $55 plus $5 material fee. to register call 531-COOK. www.compassionatecooks.com 

Family Workshop: Candleholder using wood, tin and paints, Sat and Sun. from 1 to 4 p.m. at Mocha, Museum of Children’s Art, 528 9th St., Oakland. Cost is $7. 465-8770.  

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

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

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755.  

SUNDAY, DEC. 9 

Progressive Democrats of the East Bay Annual Holiday Gathering, from 6 pm on, at Albatross Pub, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 601-6456. 

Make Natural Holiday Wreaths Learn about fir, bay and other flora and how to use them, from noon to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Please bring a pair of small hand-clippers, a large flat box and a bag lunch. Not appropriate for children under 8. Cost of $25-$34. Registration Required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Caffe Mediterraneum 50th Anniversary Party with music at 2, 7:30 and 8:30 p.m., poetry and anecdotes at 4 p.m. at 2475 Telegraph Ave. 549-1128. 

“Building Commons and Community” A book launch party for the late Karl Linn's book at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarion Universalists Hall, Cedar at Bonita. www.KarlLinn.org 

Grow Edible Mushrooms at Home A worksop from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at EcoHouse, 1305 Hopkins St. Enter via garden entrance on Peralta. Bring extra newspaper, cardboard, sawdust, wax, cordless drills, drill bits, and leave with some mushrooms of your own. Cost is $15, sliding scale. 548-2220 ext. 242. 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Dec. 16. 845-2612. www.berkeleyartisans.com 

Oakland Museum of California Community Celebration for differently-abled community members from noon to 5 p.m. at 10th and Oak St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022.  

Archecture Tour of the Oakland Museum of California at 1 p.m. at 10th and Oak St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

“The Cross-Walk Walk” for war resistance, every Sun. at noon at the corner of Solano and San Pablo. Bring signs, ideas, young people. 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Sylvia Gretchen on “The Path of Liberation” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000.  

MONDAY, DEC. 10  

Public Hearing for the Computational Research & Theory Facility, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at 6:30 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst St. 486-5183. 

Berkeley Green Mondays with a presentation on “What Progressives Can Learn from the Disability Movement” with Paul Longmore and Anne Finger, at 7:30 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 848-4681. 

Human Rights Day 2007 “Update on Burma” with Nyunt Than, head of the Burmese American Democratic Alliance, and Ruth Mauricio, educator at 7:30 p.m. at Home Room in International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. www.unausaeastbay.org 

TUESDAY, DEC. 11 

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 Redwood, Canyon Meadow. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Tai Chi for Peace at 1:30 p.m. in front of the Marine Recruiting Station, Shattuck Square. Open Sidewalk Studios at 3 p.m. 524-2776. 

Snowcamping 101 with Karen Hoffman of the Sierra Club’s Snowcamping Section at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

American Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation in Oakland, from 6 to 8 p.m. Various East Bay opportunities available. Advanced sign-up is required; please call 594-5165.  

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

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 

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 12 

Richmond Main Street Initiative Community Holiday Celebration from 10 a.m. to noon for preschool and kindergartners and 5 to 7 p.m. for the entire community at the corner of Marina Way and Macdonald Ave. www.richmondmainstreet.org 

Civilian War Victim Series “The Pathology of Survivors” with Dr. Brian Gluss with the film “Survivor Guilt” by psychoanalyst William Niederland, at 1 p.m. at Emeryville Senior Center, 4321 Salem, Emeryville. 596-3730. 

“Field Guide to Owls of California and the West” with author Hans Peeters in conversation with Doris Kretschmer at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

Poetry Writing Workshop with Alison Seevak at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, Edith Stone Room, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720. 

Cancer Prevention and Survival Cooking Class on Antioxidants and Phytochemicals at 8:30 a.m. at Manzanita, 2409 E. 27th St., Oakland. To register call 595-6445. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Berkeley Copwatch: Know Your Rights Training and Copwatching Workshop at 7 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

THURSDAY, DEC. 13 

“The Living New Deal Project: Excavating a Lost Civilization Around Us” with Gray Brechin on a statewide collaborative effort to document and map the physical legacy of the New Deal in California and to honor the surviving veterans, at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Aven., Oakland. Tickets are $8-$10. Sponsored by Oakland Heritage Alliance. 763-9218. 

“Pete Seeger: Power of Song” a documentary at 2 and 7:15 p.m. at the California Theater, 2119 Kittredge St. Cost is $10. Benefits Berkeley Gray Panthers. 486-8010. 

“And Let There Be Light” A Holiday Procession for Immigrant Justice at 4:15 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza, 14th St. and Broadway in downtown Oakland. Sponsored by East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy. 893-7106, ext. 27. 

Evening of Remembrance Ceremony Remember Victims of Violence In Oakland at 5:30 p.m. at 1st Christian Church, 111 Fairmount Ave., OaklandSponsored by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Silence the Violence Campaign and others. 428-3939. 

Oakland Workers Center’s Annual Holiday Party with Cruz Reynoso, guest speaker, and dinner, music and dancing from 6 to 10 p.m. at 2501 International Blvd., Oakland. Cosat is $50-$125. RSVP to 437-1554, ext. 112. 

Juggling for Peace Learn juggling and plate spinning at 11:30 a.m. in front of the Marine Recruiting Station, Shattuck Square. 524-2776. 

Teen Book Club meets to discuss light reading at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue at Ashby. 981-6121. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Youth Commission meets Mon., Dec. 10, at 6:30 p.m., at City Council Chambers, Old City Hall. 981-6670.  

City Council meets Tues., Dec. 11, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., Dec. 12, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6601.  

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Dec. 12, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6346. TDD: 981-6345.  

Energy Commission meets Wed., Dec. 12, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5434.  

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Dec. 12, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5426.  

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed., Dec. 12, at 7 p.m. at the South Branch Library. 981-6195.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Dec. 12, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Dec. 12, at 7 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950.  

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., Dec. 13, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.  

Mental Health Commission meets Thurs., Dec. 13, at 6:30 p.m. at 2640 MLK Jr. Way, at Derby. 981-5213.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Dec. 13, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7410.

TUESDAY, DEC. 4 

CHILDREN 

The Mountain Mushers and Their Sled Dogs at 6:30 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

FILM 

“Xperimental Eros” with a panel discussion at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

A Reading for “The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen” with Michael McClure, David Meltzer and Clark Coolidge at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jeffery Broussard & The Circle Cowboys at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

BirdHead at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 5 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Strictly Speaking with Azar Nafisi, author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books” at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $18-$30. 642-9988.  

Christopher Felver on his historical record of tbe Beat Generation, “Beat” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Thomas Lynch reads Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland City Center Holiday Concert with Klezmania at noon at 12th and Broadway, Oakland.  

Helene Attia Octet, CD release party, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Zoyres, Smyrna Time Machine at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Rovira Orquestra at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Larry Gallagher at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

THURSDAY, DEC. 6 

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. Free. 642-0808. 

FILM 

“Chaplin at the Mutual: Four Short Comedies” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Free. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lunch Poems with Monica de la Torre at 12:10 p.m. at the Morrison Library, inside the Doe Library, UC Campus. 642-0137. 

Peter Dale Scott reads his poems at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, Edith Stone Room, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720. 

“Jews, Chocolate and Tourism in the Diaspora” with Rabbi Deborah Prinz at 6:30 p.m. at the Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. 549-6950. 

Monica de la Torre and Garrett Caples read at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Corey Brooks reads from “Their Patriotic Duty: The Civil War Letters of the Evans Family of Brown County, Ohio” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jazz Night and Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School with the MLK, Jr. Middle School Jazz Band, the Equanimous Jones Quartet and the Jazz School Middle School Jazz Project at 7:30 p.m. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, 1781 Rose St. at Grant. Admission is free, but donations accepted to support the Jazz Band.  

The Claire Lynch Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Pete Madsen Quartet, CD release party, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Lindsay Tomasic at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Singer Songwriter Expose with Rodney Brillante, Rick Hardin and Audrey Howard at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. 

Mucho Axé at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568.  

FRIDAY, DEC. 7 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “The Man Who Saved Christmas” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Dec. 16. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre Company “Sex” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Dec. 23. Tickets are $28-$50. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

BHS Drama and Shift Theatre “Noises Off” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Florence Schwimley Little Theater, Berkeley High Campus. Tickets are $6-$12. 332-1931.  

Berkeley Rep “After the Quake” at the Trust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through Dec. 21. Tickets are $33-$69. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Black Repertory Group “A Rasin in the Sun” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St., through Dec. 14. Tickets are $10-$20. 652-2120. 

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. at 2 p.m. at Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona Ave., (at Moeser), El Cerrito, through Dec. 9. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132. ccct.org  

Impact Theatre “A Very Special Money & Run Winter Season Holiday Special” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Dec. 22. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. http://impacttheatre.com 

Masquers Playhouse “Little Mary Sunshine” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., selected Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through Dec. 15. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Duopolis” contemporary art from New York and San Francisco. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, 25 Grand Ave., upper level, Oakland. www.chandracerrito.com 

“Made In Equilibrium” works by Michele Elizabeth Lee, Brady Nadell and Ross Drago. Reception at 6 p.m. at ABCo Artspace, 3135 Oakland, Oakland. www.abcoartspace.com 

Radical Graphics of Taller Tupac Amaru Reception at 6 p.m. at 550 Second St., Jack London Square. www.proartsgallery.org  

Touchable Stories “Richmond: The Story Continues” Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 6 p.m. at Old Kaiser Cafeteria, Shipyard #3, 1303 Canal Blvd., Richmond. Cost is $6-$12. Reservations required. 619-3675. www.touchablestories.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Best of Actors Reading Writers “The Tender Trap” at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. ricaisabella@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE  

Berkeley Ballet Theater “Nutcracker” Fri. at 7 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 7 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through Dec. 16. Tickets are $16-$22. 843-4689. 

“Amahl and the Night Visitors” at 8 p.m. at St Augustine’s Catholic Church, 400 Alcatraz, between Telegraph and College, Oakland. Free. 653-8631. 

Sacred & Profane Annual Holiday Concert with traditional and contemporary music for Swedish Lucia, Channukah and Christmas at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $12-$15. www.sacredprofane.org  

Piedmont Choirs “Silver Bells” at 7:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd. Kensington, Cost is $10-$15. http://piedmontchoirs.org 

Bay Area Classical Harmonies “Messiah” at 7:30 p.m. at the Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Tickets at the door are $12-$15.  

University Symphony Orchestra, 19th century masterpieces and and new works at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

The Christmas Revels at 7:30 p.m., Sat. and Sun. at 1 and 5 p.m. at Scottish Rite Theater, 1547 Lakeside Dr., Oakland. Tickets are $15-$50. 452-8800. www.calrevels.org 

Bobi Cespedes’ Grupo Bayano at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$15.. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Darryl Rowe & His Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Sambada, Omo Aiya, Afro-Brazilian-funk at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Oaktown Jazz Workshops at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

The Cowlicks at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Teada with Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Star Ledbetter and Theresa Perez at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

The Go Girls Animal Rights Benefit Concert with Phonofly, Vanessa Van Spall, Aoede and Jenn Grinels at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Jennifer Johns & Doria Roberts perform for lesbian and bi-sexual women and their allies at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7-$15. 548-1159.  

The Brothers Goldman at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 8 

CHILDREN  

Young People’s Chamber Orchestra Concert for school age children and up at 3 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Gary Lapow at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Children’s Theater Holiday Program” Sat. and Sun. at 12:30 and 3:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., off Grand Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 452-2259. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Plein-air Landscape Paintings of Bodega Bay” by Adam Wolpert. Reception for the artist at 2 p.m. at the Environmental Education Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

ActivSpace Open House Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 2703 7th St. 508-8943. 

NIAD’s “Art from the Heart” Annual Holiday Festival from 2 to 5 p.m. at the National Institute of Art and Disibilities, 551 23rd St., Richmond. 620-0290. 

“The Great Outdoors” Group show of landscapes. Opening reception at 3 p.m. at A Different Day Gallery, 1233 Solano Ave., Albany. 868-4904. www.ADifferentDaygallery.com  

Albany Community Art Show from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany. 524-9283 . 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

PEN Oakland, Josephine Miles 17th Annual National Literary Awards from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Rockridge Branch Library, 5366 College Ave., Oakland. Winners read from their works. www.penoakland.org 

Chad Sweeney and Kaya Oakes read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

The Best of Actors Reading Writers “The Tender Trap” at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. ricaisabella@yahoo.com 

Michelle Bautista, author of “Kali’s Blade,” Eileen Tabios, author of “The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes,” Jean Vengua, author of “Prau” at 3 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350.  

Prosody Castle 4: Dont Rhine in Conversation at 7 p.m. at The Gallery of Urban Art, 1746 13th St., West Oakland. Cost is $5. 706-1697. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Ballet Theater “Nutcracker” Sat. at 2 and 7 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through Dec. 16. Tickets are $16-$22. 843-4689. 

Bella Musica Chorus at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Great Commission, Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. Donation $12-$15.525-5393. www.bellamusica.org 

Voci “Voices in Peace: VII: Winter Stillness” at 8 p.m. at St. Mary Magdalen Parish, 2005 Berryman St. Tickets are $15-$20, free for children under 12. www.vocisings.com 

University Symphony Orchestra, 19th century masterpieces and and new works at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Oakland Youth Chorus “In the Arms of Winter” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland 2501 Harrison St. Tickets are $5-$20. 287-9700. www.oaklandyouthchorus.org  

“Chimes Winter Starscape” with John Muir Holiday Choir at 3 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Other events from noon on. 228-3207. 

Musica Viva, violin, cello and harpsichord at 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave. Tickets are $10-$15. www.stpauloakland.org 

Mahealani Uchiyama “A Walk By the Sea” at 8 p.m. at Regents Theater, Holy Names University, Oakland. Tickets are $30-$55. For reservations call 925-798-1300. 

North Country at 1 p.m. at Down Home Music on Fourth St. 525-2129. 

Bomberas de la Bahia at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Eric Swinderman’s “In Pursuit of the Sound” at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Motordude Zydeco at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Zoyres with Sandor Elix Katz at 7:30 p.m. at 1236 23rd Ave. at International Blvd., Oakland, Admission by donation; no one turned away for lack of funds. Bring jars to fill, some veggies to chop, a cutting board, knife, and grater. RVSP to Zoyres@gmail.com 

Mike Eckstein and Marc DiGiacomo Trio at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Chris Williamson, Teresa Trull & Barbara Higbie at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Snake Trio at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Matt Lucas and Cotillion at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

CV Dub at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 9 

EXHIBITIONS 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Bella Musica Chorus at 4 p.m. at St. Mary Magdalen Church, 2005 Berryman St. at Milvia. Donation $12-$15. 525-5393.  

Berkeley Ballet Theater “Nutcracker” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave., through Dec. 16. Tickets are $16-$22. 843-4689. 

“Sounds of the Season” at 7 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 201 Martina St., Point Richmond. Donation $10. 236-0527. 

“Amahl and the Night Visitors” at 3 p.m. at St Augustine’s Catholic Church, 400 Alcatraz, between Telegraph and College, Oakland. Free. 653-8631. 

Organ Recital by Christopher Putnam at 6 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Donations accepted. 845-0888. 

Lucy Kinchen Choir Holiday Concert at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave. www.stpauloakland.org 

Michael Jones, violin and John Burke, piano, perform sonatas by Bach and Mozart at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 644-6893.  

Soli Deo Gloria “Time Enough for Joy” at 3:30 p.m. at St. Philip Neri, 3108 Van Buren St., Alameda. Tickets are $20-$25, childen K-8 free. www.sdgloria.org 

Caffe Mediterraneum 50th Anniversary Party with music at 2, 7:30 and 8:30 p.m., poetry and anecdotes at 4 p.m. at 2475 Telegraph Ave. 549-1128. 

Chris Williamson, Teresa Trull & Barbara Higbie at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761.  

Mariusz Kwiecien, baritone, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $42. 642-9988.  

Jonathan Kreisberg Trio, CD release party, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ.  

Tito y Su Son de Cuba at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373.  

MONDAY, DEC. 10 

CHILDREN 

“Snow Scene from the Nutcracker” by Kathryn Roszak’s Childrens’ Dance at 4:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave., Free, but RSVP requested 233-5550. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Debbie Stoller on “Son of Stitch ‘N Bitch: 45 Projects to Knit and Crochet for Men” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Poetry Express with Donna M. Lane for United Nations Human Rights Day at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chanticleer at 8 p.m. at Firdst Congregational Churhc, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $22-$44. 415-392-4400.  

Jazz Mime at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100.  

Parlor Tango with Baguette quartette at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Refugees: Cindy Bullens, Deborah Holland & Wendy Waldman at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. 

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. 

Up to the plate steps A.C. Gilbert, toymaker of New Haven (whose Erector and chemistry sets appeared beneath many a tree in childhood for those now of a certain age) vigorously defending the joys—and toys—of the season, exhorting the Scroogelike bureaucrats to relive their own childhood through making young ones happy, those who are waiting for their fathers to come home from “Over There.” 

That’s the unusual historical hook for Ron Lytle’s original holiday musical, The Man Who Saved Christmas, at Alameda’s Altarena Playhouse for its second holiday season, this year’s production even more brisk and upbeat than the last.  

Hook it is, with a love story more nostalgic than old-fashioned hanging from it, which exercises the song-and-dance skills of a mostly new, enthusiastic cast.  

Nephi Speer plays the part of Johnny Eli, a young newspaper reporter (but one without vocation, as he later confesses), who seems to be barking up the wrong tree for a story, as Miss Alice Finch (Lisa Otterstetter), Gilbert’s busy personal secretary, firmly tries to convince him. It seems that the toy magnate whom Johnny wishes to interview has it in for “the honorable gentlemen of the Fourth Estate.” But Alice’s words—and visage—only rekindle Johnny’s ardor, and through a chain of musical comedy circumstances, he finds himself invited to join the company by the dynamic, if sanguine, Gilbert (a Teddy Roosevelt-ish Scott Phillips)—much to the chagrin of Dixon (John Erreca), the comic villain plant manager, who’s also enamored of Alice. 

The home front wartime theme crops up too in the Gilberts’ home, where Mrs. Gilbert (Jenifer Tice) cares for her precocious niece (Zooey Brandt), whose father is in France—and, unbeknownst to the little girl who dreams he’ll be home for Yuletide—missing in action. 

Speer puts a charming spin on Johnny, who could easily be just a bland, hail-fellow-well-met type, and gracefully paired with Overstetter, the romantic angle of the musical is secured. The return of Scott Phillips as Gilbert is fortunate; he’s got the drive and eccentricity of his enthusiast toymaker down pat. “Poppycock and balderdash!” he says.  

Jenifer Tice also returns this year as Mrs. Mary Gilbert, gentle counterpart, even a little bittersweet, to Phillips’ bluster. Erreca’s Dixon is all pop-eyes and gesticulations, a little bit the operetta ogre, especially when tormented by the seemingly ever-present kids, who provide the solution to the conundrum the busy grownups get all balled up in. 

There’s an ensemble of nine, including three kids, who exuberantly trade off parts, from newsboys yelling “Extra!” to doughboys saying good-bye to their families, to the harried factory workers, as well as the council of cabinet officers Gilbert and Eli approach for a rescission of the edict for a toyless Christmas. 

Tom Shaw directs a lively mostly ragtime-flavored ensemble in the flies. Lytle himself stage-directs. His songs are more than serviceable, and some evoke the period reasonably well, as do Alice’s various dresses and gowns, though there are occasional anachronistic howlers in the dialogue, more fitting in postmodern corporate America than during the Wilson administration.  

The Man Who Saved Christmas runs over two hours but is briskly paced; the children in the audience at the matinee last Sunday were attentive throughout. It’s a tip of the homburg to the nostalgic musicals of 50 years ago, of Meredith Willson, minus the lingering traces of Shaw. There’s plenty of holiday spirit on Altarena’s set, enormous Christmas presents that unwrap into the toy factory and the Gilbert family parlor.  

THE MAN WHO SAVED CHRISTMAS 

8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays through Dec. 16 at the Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda.  

$17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org. 

Photograph by Patrick Tracy. 

Jenifer Tice as Mary Gilbert and Scott Phillips as toymaker A.C. Gilbert in Ron Lytle’s family musical The Man Who Saved Christmas currently playing at the Altarena Playhouse through Dec 16. 

TAJ MAHAL IN OAKLAND 

Legendary bluesman and Berkeley resident Taj Mahal will bring his electic music to Yoshi’s in Oakland Thurday through Sunday. 

www.yoshi’s.com.

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. 

A recent study by Joel McGlothin at the University of Virginia and Ellen Ketterson at Indiana University Bloomington examined the relationship between testosterone levels and parental investment in male dark-eyed juncos. These are the birds my folks used to call “snowbirds,” because of the timing of their arrival in central Arkansas. There’s an old Appalachian, I guess, fiddle tune with the cryptic title “Snowbird in the Ash Heap.”  

Our local variety, with dark gray heads and reddish backs, used to be considered a distinct species, the Oregon junco. But it, along with the eastern slate-colored junco, the white-winged junco of the Black Hills, and the pink-sided junco of the Rockies, have all been lumped together as dark-eyed. I wouldn’t count on that lasting, though, the way things go in bird taxonomy. Juncos are common Berkeley yard and UC campus birds, and year-round residents. 

McGlothin and Ketterson studied an eastern subspecies. Their working hypothesis was that a male’s total testosterone level would influence both his aggressive tendencies and his monogamous behavior, or lack thereof. The expectation was that high-testosterone males would be more likely to abandon their families and move on to new partners rather than sticking around to tend the nestlings. 

It didn’t quite work out that way. What they found was that all males were willing to help with childcare, to a degree. “If they have higher testosterone they help less,” says Ketterson. “If they have lower testosterone they help more.” But the best predictor of a male’s involvement with the kids was the stability of his testosterone level. Males whose levels rose and fell quickly investing less time in parenting. 

So who is the more fit parent, in evolutionary terms? Do the juncos with less stable testosterone, who are also more aggressive, sire as many successful offspring through extra-pair liaisons as the monogamous fathers do? That’s apparently where the research will go next. 

From birds to snakes: I recently wrote about the rise and fall of the diamondback water snake colony at Lafayette Reservoir (and managed to omit the horror story of the brown tree snake, a New Guinea native that hitchhiked to Guam and ate its way through the island’s bird population, wiping out several endemic species), mentioning how irascible and prone to bite these critters are. This drew a snake-handling anecdote from reader Richard Hodges: 

Back in 1970, I was on faculty at UT Austin. Besides being a computer scientist, I was an inveterate explorer of nature, and part-time snake fancier. One day, walking along Shoal Creek I spotted a water snake. Though I had never seen one before, I had read about it and was familiar enough with the poisonous snakes to be certain it was not a water moccasin. I approached it very cautiously and managed to “collect” it, without stimulating its defensive reactions. I installed it in a cage in my office on campus and over a period of weeks, by sensitive handling I induced it to a state of toleration approaching tameness. 

One day a top researcher in my field, Artificial Intelligence, was visiting the department. I think she was interviewing for a position. I attended the interesting lecture she gave. She was a fairly young and attractive brunette. Hearing about my snake, she approached me and asked to see it. I gladly showed it to her. She asked if she could handle it, saying she was a snake fancier also. I said that while it was tame to my touch, the species was known to be aggressive. She acknowledged the warning. 

Imagine my shock when at her apparently careful approach, the snake struck with a quickness I had never seen in it and bit her viciously. Water snakes have long teeth, useful for capturing slippery frogs, and blood was streaming from her hand! I was quite concerned, not for her health since such wounds usually heal quickly, but for my reputation, perhaps my career. But she just smiled and said “Don't worry, this often happens to me.” She wrapped her hand in a towel somebody found. We talked about it later over a beer and it developed that she was one of those people whom snakes often bite. I was the opposite—I often had handled otherwise aggressive snakes without problems. 

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

Photograph by Joe Eaton. 

The bird formerly known as Oregon junco, in Tilden Regional Park. 

TUESDAY, DEC. 4 

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 Point Pinole. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Tilden Mini-Rangers Hiking, conservation and nature-based activities for ages 8-12. Dress to ramble and get dirty. From 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

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. 

Tai Chi for Peace at 1:30 p.m. in front of the Marine Recruiting Station, Shattuck Square. Open Sidewalk Studios at 3 p.m. 524-2776. 

“Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita” A doumetary on the work of Dr. Jack Kessler at 6:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022. 

“Hiking the Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia” A slide presentation with Treve Johnson at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“A Japanese Religion in Brazilian Religious Milieu: How Brazilians have accepted the Church of World Messianity” with Prof. Hideaki Matsuoka, Shukutoku Univ., at 6:30 p.m. at Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave. 809-1444. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 10 to 11 a.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.  

Train Week at Habitot Children’s Museum with a mini-train exhibit and hands-on activities at 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

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. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 5 

Indigenous Autonomy and Resistance: A Report from Chiapas and the Indigenous Encuentro in Sonora at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Suggested donation $7-$10. Proceeds Benefit Zapatista Autonomous Health Care in San Manuel. 654-9587. 

Cancer Prevention and Survival Cooking Class on Favoring Fiber at 8:30 a.m. at Bella Vista, 1025 E. 28th St., Oakland. To register call 595-6445. 

“Avalanche Awareness” A lecture at 6:30 p.m. at Marmot Mountain Works, 3049 Adeline St. Cost is $15. 209-753-6556 ext. 1. www.mtadventure.com  

American Red Cross Blood Services is holding a volunteer orientation from 10 a.m. to noon. Various East Bay opportunities available. Advanced sign-up is required; call 594-5165.  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

THURSDAY, DEC. 6 

“It’s the Economy, Stupid: The Growing Anxiety of the Middle Class and the Future of American Politics” with Jacob Hacker, Yale University Political Science, professor and author of “The Great Risk Shift” at 6:30 p.m. at UC Berkeley Labor Center, 2521 Channing Way. 642-6371. andreabuffa@berkeley.edu  

The Homeschool Make-and-Take Craft Fair with handcrafted items, and opportunity to make some; food, entertainment and raffle, from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. Benefits the Women’s Daytime Drop-in Center in Berkeley. www.womensdropin.org 

America’s Current and Impending Wars: From Campus to the Middle East. A teach-in at UC Berkeley at 7 p.m. in 155 Dwinelle. www.btiaw.org 

Teen Book Club meets to discuss post-apocalyptic futures at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue at Ashby. 981-6121. 

Juggling for Peace Learn juggling and plate spinning at 11:30 a.m. in front of the Marine Recruiting Station, Shattuck Square. 524-2776. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

FRIDAY, DEC. 7 

Golden Gate Audubon Society Walk at Jewel Lake in Tilden Park. Meet at 8:30 a.m. at the parking lot at the north end of Central Park Drive. be prepared for muddy paths. Heavy rains cancels. 848-9156. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Jim Wilson on “Education Finance in California” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

“Fair Trade Fair” Learn about fair trade porducts with Laurie Lyser of TransFair at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, 2125 Jefferson St., 2nd flr (not wheelchair accessible). Fair trade items will be available for purchase. 482-1062. 

“China’s Environment: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?” A forum on the scientific as well as social, political, economic, public health and cultural aspects, Fri. and Sat. Free and open to the public. http://ieas.berkeley.edu/events/2007.12.07w.html 

Teen Playreaders meets to read “Hamlet” and other plays based on the classic, at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue at Ashby. 981-6121. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 8 

PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles 17th Annual National Literary Awards & 11th Annual PEN Oakland Censorship Award from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Rockridge Branch Library, 5366 College Ave. Free and open to the public. 228-6775. 

Golden Gate Audubon Society Bike Trip in Coyote Hills via Alameda Creek and Quarry Lakes. Meet at 9 a.m. on the east side of the Fremont BART for an all-day trip, returning to BART at 3 p.m. Total distance is about 24 miles. Bicycle helmet required. Bring lunch and dress in layers. 547-1233. 

Dramatically Speaking Toastmasters with Victor Bogart on “Explore the Undiscovered You” at 9 a.m. at 1950 Franklin St., Oakland. RSVP required. ID required to get into building. 581-8675. 

The East Bay Chapter of The Great War Society meets to discuss “The Military Career of George Patton” by A. Melomet at 10:30 a.m. at the West Berkeley Library, 1125 University Ave. 527-7118. 

“The Care Crisis: How Women Are Bearing the Burden of a National Emergency” with Ruth Rosen, visiting professor of History and Public Policy at UCB at 7 p.m. at Alameda Free Library, Conference Rooms A, 1550 Oak St. at Lincoln, Alameda www.alamedaforum.org  

Oakland Public Conservatory of Music Annual Open House with food, fun and music for the whole family, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sun. from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at 1616 Franklin Ave Oakland. 836-4649. 

Palestinian Bazaar with embroidery, glassware, wood, ceramics, textiles and more, from noon to 6 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 548-0542. 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Holiday Crafts Fair from 10 a.m. on with local crafts and live music. 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios Sat and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Dec. 16. 845-2612. www.berkeleyartisans.com 

Oakland Museum of California Community Celebration for differently-abled community members from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10th and Oak St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022. 

Berkeley Rent Board Housing Counselling available at 11 a.m. in the Berkeley History Room, second flr, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 644-6128, ext. 116. 

Winter Fest Learn about snowshoeing, skiing, snowboarding and more from noon to 4 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Program for Adults on Children’s Financial Literacy with Lu Vazquez, Edward Jones Financial Advisor, and John Abrate, Wells Fargo Bank Business Banking Specialist from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library Community Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge. 548-1240. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Vegetarian Cooking Class “Healthful and Humane Cooking and Baking” featuring savory tofu spread, corn-meal-crusted tempeh, brussel sprouts, chocolate bread pudding, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St. at Castro. Cost is $55 plus $5 material fee. to register call 531-COOK. www.compassionatecooks.com 

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

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

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755.  

SUNDAY, DEC. 9 

Progressive Democrats of the East Bay Annual Holiday Gathering, from 4 pm on, at Albatross Pub, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 601-6456. 

Make Natural Holiday Wreaths Learn about fir, bay and other flora and how to use them, from noon to 3:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Please bring a pair of small hand-clippers, a large flat box and a bag lunch. Not appropriate for children under 8. Cost of $25-$34. Registration Required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Caffe Mediterraneum 50th Anniversary Party with music at 2, 7:30 and 8:30 p.m., poetry and anecdotes at 4 p.m. at 2475 Telegraph Ave. 549-1128. 

“Building Commons and Community” A book launch party for the late Karl Linn's book at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarion Universalists Hall, Cedar at Bonita. www.KarlLinn.org 

Grow Edible Mushrooms at Home A worksop from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at EcoHouse, 1305 Hopkins St. Enter via garden entrance on Peralta. Bring extra newspaper, cardboard, sawdust, wax, cordless drills, drill bits, and leave with some mushrooms of your own. Cost is $15, sliding scale. 548-2220 ext. 242. 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Dec. 16. 845-2612. www.berkeleyartisans.com 

Oakland Museum of California Community Celebration for differently-abled community members from noon to 5 p.m. at 10th and Oak St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022.  

Archecture Tour of the Oakland Museum of California at 1 p.m. at 10th and Oak St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

“The Cross-Walk Walk” for war resistance, every Sun. at noon at the corner of Solano and San Pablo. Bring signs, ideas, young people. 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Sylvia Gretchen on “The Path of Liberation” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000.  

MONDAY, DEC. 10  

Berkeley Green Mondays with a presentation on “What Progressives Can Learn from the Disability Movement” with Paul Longmore and Anne Finger, at 7:30 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 848-4681. 

Human Rights Day 2007 “Update on Burma” with Nyunt Than, head of the Burmese American Democratic Alliance San Francisco, and Ruth Mauricio, educator at 7:30 p.m. at Home Room in International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. www.unausaeastbay.org 

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.

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.