A key piece of pre-World War II Japanese history will be lost amid rubble and concrete next week to make way for the development of condos and retail in West Berkeley. 

For many of the Berkeley residents who frequented the Auto California showroom at 1806 San Pablo Ave. until it closed recently, the building meant just one thing—a car wash run by an amicable Middle Eastern family. 

When local historian Donna Graves embarked on a project to document California’s hidden Japantowns last December, she stumbled upon Auto California’s buried past. 

Run by the Iwahashi family in the early 1930s, the quaint single-story building was used to grow and sell flowers. 

“It was called the San Pablo Florist & Nursery,” Graves told the city’s landmarks commission while doing a presentation on Preserving California’s Japan-towns in October. 

After the Iwahashis moved back to Japan in the mid-30s, the business was bought by Hisako and Shigeharu Nabeta, who came from two of the earliest flower-growing families in Richmond. 

Forced into WWII internment camps in 1942, the couple leased their business to Mr. Yee—a local Chinese florist—until they returned to Berkeley in 1946. In 1949, the Nabetas built a house next door where they raised three sons and lived until Shigeharu’s death in 1994. The following year, Hisako sold the business and moved on. 

Graves’ efforts to put the nursery on a list of 60 pre-WWII-era buildings to either landmark or preserve proved fruitless. She discovered the building was scheduled for demolition this month. 

The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, Zoning Adjustments Board and the City Council approved a use permit to demolish the building and construct a four-story, 51-unit apartment complex with retail space and 67 parking spaces back in 2004. 

At that point, no one in the city was aware of its Japanese connection. 

“There is very little we can do about it now,” Dan Marks, the city’s planning director, told the Planet Friday. “There was opportunity for public review ... It was sent before landmarks but there was no information to indicate that it was a former Japanese nursery. If the owner applies for a building permit to demolish the structure now, then I would have to go ahead and issue it.” 

Syed Adeli—who owns Auto California—told the Planet last week that he didn’t plan to demolish the building for the next two or three months. However, ZCON Builders—the contractors hired for the project—began demolition work Tuesday. The building is currently being prepared for asbestos abatement and will be torn down Monday. 

“The time was right,” Adeli told the Planet Wednesday. “We got all the permits from the city and we wanted to start demolishing as soon as possible.” 

Adeli is awaiting a $315,588 building permit fee deferral, which would allow him to start construction. His building permit application will expire on December 21 if the fee is not paid or deferred. 

Councilmembers Linda Maio and Laurie Capitelli will ask the City Council to grant the deferral at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. 

Since fee deferrals are not common for projects of similar size in Berkeley, Marks had expressed concern at a public meeting that it would set a precedent for future projects. 

“I did not support the project in the beginning, but I have changed my mind since then. If this project is not approved then we could get a bulkier and boxier project. Adeli has included extra parking spots for the neighborhood and addressed a lot of their concerns,” Maio said. “The building is fairly well designed and does not evoke the state density bonus law. I know about Donna’s concern, but we are so far down the road now that we can’t start from square one.” 

Both Maio and Capitelli expressed concern in their request to the council that Adeli could be in danger of being caught in the sub-prime lending fiasco. 

“If he were to back away and lose the property it would be a disaster for him financially,” Maio said. “The permit application has been extended three times and currently expires on Dec. 21.” 

Adeli told the Planet that he would not be able to save the nursery but was open to recording its history. “We respect the community’s concern but there is nothing in the building that resembles Japanese culture in any way,” he said. “My project will be a great contribution to San Pablo Avenue ... It will improve the neighborhood tremendously.” 

Paul Osaka, executive director of the Japanese Community and Cultural Center and representative of the California Japanese Leadership Council, said most Nisei-owned buildings did not resemble Japanese architecture because the 1913 Alien Land Law prevented Japanese immigrants from buying property. 

“It’s not a matter of one building, it’s a matter of collective history,” he said. “The Japanese-American nursery business was a big part of California’s economy. Once historical resources are gone, they are gone.” 

He added that cities and developers should extensively research a building before demolishing it or try to retain it in the new development. 

“If all else fails, then it’s important to document and photograph it before it’s gone,” he said. 

For the city’s planning department, it’s a lesson learned. 

“Thanks to Donna, we do have a list we can look at now,” said project planner Aaron Sage. “There’s no way we can know about a past event or person living in a building by just looking at it. We don’t do the level of research that historians do ... We make a determination about its importance by looking at the architecture, age and the 1970 Berkeley Architecture Heritage survey of historically significant buildings.” 

Terry Blount, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission secretary, told the Planet that it might be possible to apply for a grant from the State Historic Preservation Office to record historical buildings in the future. 

“Every time we lose an irreplaceable historic structure we lose a chance to connect to the community’s diverse past,” Graves said. “If we really need more housing then there must be a way to build around what is important. The purpose of our project is to discover the sites and share the information with the community so that they can make the best planning decisions.”

Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Miller handed UC Berkeley a legal setback Monday evening, denying its claimed exemption from state law governing buildings on earthquake faults. 

Her nine-page order was faxed to lawyers in the legal battle over the university’s plan to build a four-story high-tech gym next to Memorial Stadium—the site of the ongoing tree-sit in the grove of oaks that would be axed to make way for the gym. 

John M. Sanger, one of two San Francisco lawyers hired to represent the UC Board of Regents in the case, had told the judge that the Alquist-Priolo Act doesn’t apply to the university. 

Passed by the California Legislature in 1972, that statute bars new construction within 50 feet of existing faults and limits the cost of additions or renovations to 50 percent of an existing building’s value. 

In Monday’s order, Miller wrote that she “has concluded that the Act does apply to the University as a state agency with the responsibility to prohibit the location and development of structures for human occupancy across the trace of active faults.” 

The judge said that nothing in the evidence before her indicates the university ever considered: 

• whether the Student Athlete High Performance Center (SAHPC) was an addition to California Memorial Stadium (CMS) under the terms of the act; 

• “whether the cost to construct the SAHPC might violate the Act’s valuation limitations,” or 

• performing a valuation analysis on the gym in relation to the stadium. 

The ruling is critical because the stadium itself is split from end zone to end zone by the Hayward Fault, the seismic fissure federal geologists say is the most likely source of the Bay Area’s next disastrous earthquake. 

University-hired experts say the gym site is outside the Alquist-Priolo Act’s 50-foot zone, exempting the structure from the law’s provisions. 

“We’re quite gratified that the court has rejected the university’s contention that the Alquist-Priolo Act doesn’t apply to them,” said Stephan Volker, one of the attorneys who brought the litigation against the university. 

He said he is also pleased that the court agreed with the plaintiffs in the action that the university had failed to prove their contention that the gym and stadium were two separate and distinct buildings. 

“The university is backed into a corner,” he said. 

Dan Mogulof, executive director of UC Berkeley’s Office of Public Affairs, said, “While it’s going to engender further delay, we welcome the opportunity to provide the court with additional evidence from architects and engineering experts who we believe will support what we have said all along—that the Student Athlete High Performance Center and Memorial Stadium are separate buildings.” 

Mogulof said the university had from the beginning directed its engineers and architects to design the gym as a separate structure, following the provisions of the state building code, “and we are confident that the experts will confirm that for the judge.” 

Volker represents the California Oak Foundation and City Councilmember Dona Spring, two of several plaintiffs who have challenged the university in arguments in Judge Miller’s Hayward courtroom. 

The other lawyers are Michael Lozeau, whose clients in the case include the Panoramic Hill Association, and Harriet Steiner, representing the City of Berkeley. 

Sanger’s partner and the lead attorney for the university in the case is Charles Olson. 

Expert opinions 

Judge Miller’s order requires the lawyers to submit written opinions from experts about whether or not the gym and stadium are separate structures, or if the gym and stadium constitute a single building under terms of the California Building Code. 

If she finds that they form a single building, the outcome could have profound effects on the university’s development plans by limiting the total amount that can be spent on the gym and the planned retrofit and refurbishing of the landmarked stadium itself. 

The judge ordered all evidence to be submitted by Dec. 31, with a deadline for objections to any of the submissions of Jan. 7. Her final Notice of Decision, barring any additional extension, will come by Feb. 6. 

Mogulof said the university has been continuing with “the huge amount of preparatory work needed before construction begins, so if we get the go-ahead from the court, construction can begin almost immediately.” 

One key issue, not addressed in the judge’s order, is the value of the stadium itself, by all accounts a structure in need of repairs and a seismic retrofit. The stadium bears obvious signs of neglect, with unrepaired breeches in the concrete and its wooden flagpoles and fixtures shedding layers of peeling paint. 

The university claims that the Alquist-Priolo Act’s 50 percent limitation applies to the cost of replacing the existing building, while the challengers claim the limitation is based on the structure’s current sales value—potentially a nine-figure difference that could starkly limit the university’s options. 

The challenge to the stadium/gym project is encompassed in the larger legal question of whether or not the regents met all the legal steps required to adopt the gym’s budget and approve the environment impact report (EIR) for the full suite of projects included in what UC Berkeley has called the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects. 

Those projects, in addition to the gym and stadium retrofit, include an underground parking lot at the site of Maxwell Family Field northwest of the stadium, a new “connector building” housing offices and meeting space for the university’s law and business schools, repairs to the law and business school buildings, work on the Piedmont Avenue/Gayley Road street scape, repair of some historic buildings, and demolition of some historic residences and Calvin Hall.

Berkeley City Councilmem-bers acted illegally a year ago when they handed developer Patrick Kennedy a victory in the ongoing battle over the cultural uses of the Gaia Building. 

That decision by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch, filed exactly one year after the council’s Dec. 12, 2006 vote, ends the latest round in the ongoing battle over the city’s controversial “cultural density bonus.” 

It was “inescapable,” the judge declared, that the council’s action setting forth rules for applying the bonus “was an abuse of discretion and must be struck down.” 

Roesch cited three specific discretionary abuses he said the council made in their decision, which was portrayed as implementation of a council resolution of the previous April 25 that tackled an ongoing sore point in Berkeley politics. 

But just what his decision means remained a matter of dispute Thursday.  

“This is a victory for the cultural use the community was promised long ago,” said Anna de Leon, the Gaia tenant who waged a long battle backed by Councilmember Dona Spring and others—to reopen the question of cultural use at the Gaia Building. 

“Simply put, the court overruled the lawless act of the council majority that favored the profit of one developer over the rights of the community.” 

But Zach Cowan, Berkeley’s acting City Attorney and the lawyer who represented the city in Roesch’s court, said the judge’s decision effectively restores provisions that are less favorable for the cause championed by de Leon. 

“It seems like the decision leaves them worse off than where they started,” he said. 

Dona Spring also hailed the judge’s decision as a victory, overturning what she called “a blatant violation of the city’s own laws” and the actions of former City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque, who she charged had “always sided with Patrick Kennedy against the interests of the city zoning board and the community.” 

“I am delighted but not surprised that we won,” said Patti Dacey, a private investigator and city planning commissioner who served on the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee and was one of three plaintiffs in the action. 

The others were musician Ellen Hoffman and sculptor Fredric Fierstein. 

“I’m not exactly sure what it means,” said city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks. “You’ll have to talk to Zach Cowan.” 

One of the three reasons Roesch declared the council’s December vote illegal was because city ordinance doesn’t allow the council to change a building’s use permit except when acting on an appeal from a decision by the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB). 

The council had pre-empted ZAB action, and this “was simply without the statutory authority to modify the use permit.” 

Even if the council did have authority to modify the permit without a ZAB appeal, the action couldn’t be made without a public hearing. The council’s action without a hearing was yet another abuse of discretion. 

Finally, the council abused its discretion because it hadn’t reserved the power to alter or revoke a permit it had already approved and which gave ZAB broad discretion for modification or revocation.  

Kennedy, who did not return a reporter’s call, isn’t de Leon’s landlord anymore. In April, the developer’s Panoramic Interests sold his seven major Berkeley apartment projects with their 368 units to Equity Residential, one of the nation’s largest landlords and the source of the fortune which investor and corporate chief Sam Zell is now using to buy the Los Angeles Times.  

Kennedy remains a Gaia leaseholder. 

Battle of numbers 

The council’s action in April 2006 came a month after a March 23 vote by the Zoning Adjustments Board—triggered in part by complaints from de Leon. 

That action was followed by letters from an attorney for Gaia developer Patrick Kennedy threatening legal action. 

After the April vote, Kennedy said the council had reaffirmed what he understood was his original June 6, 2003 agreement with former city Planning Director Carol Barrett. 

The crucial paragraph of that agreement states: “We commit to the following performance standard: in the performance (theater) area, we will program performance use on 30 percent of the days of each month on average. In the reminder of the ground floor and mezzanine we will program arts related activities 15 days per month on average.” 

The council added language that the 30 percent figure applied to actual performance, “but must be expanded to include preparation time,” with performances given priority scheduling. 

Roesch’s decision voids the council’s Dec. 12, 2006, vote on a measure cited as action needed to implement the council’s action of eight months earlier. 

At issue is just how the building’s cultural space is to be used, with one critical question being the division of time devoted to public performances, including preparation and rehearsal time, and private, for-profit activities.  

With the help of city bonuses, Kennedy and partners—who include UC Berkeley business professor and entrepreneur David Teece—built the nine-story structure in a part of downtown Berkeley zoned for five floors. 

One of the extra floors of apartments was added explicitly because Kennedy had applied for the city’s cultural density bonus, which gives additional height and mass in exchange for providing community cultural space. 

Additional space was allotted under the city’s inclusionary ordinance, which at the time required housing projects of five or more units to add dwellings for low-income tenants. (Developers can now pay in-lieu fees, which fund units in affordable housing projects.) 

But the cultural space that won the bonus—the first floor and mezzanine—in the 2116-2120 Allston Way building was specifically created for the Gaia Bookstore, a local business that also hosted readings and seminars, rather than for a performance group or gallery. 

The bookstore closed before the building was completed, and the space was vacant and unfinished for several years until the Gaia Building LLC leased space to Anna’s Jazz Island and the owners of Glass Onion Catering. 

As a provision of the building’s use permit, profit-making businesses were allowed in the cultural space.  

Both de Leon’s business and the catering company are for-profit businesses, though the jazz club is specifically a performance venue. 

While a theatrical troupe offered shows in the theater space within the spaced leased by a partnership between Kennedy and Glass Onion, the group gave up because they couldn’t schedule enough performances to break even. 

Instead, the larger volume of space has been leased for private events served by the catering company and, for a time, church services. 

De Leon and other critics charged that use of the bonus space for private parties breached the intent of the cultural bonus statute. 

Troubled history 

The building has a troubled legal history, first from lawsuits over alleged construction defects that infested the building with mold and twice forced a resurfacing of the stucco-clad structure. 

Total costs of repairs reportedly topped the original construction costs. 

The city’s fire inspectors also found significant problems with the ground and mezzanine floors, including inadequate sprinkler systems, improperly installed and uninspected fixtures, and illegally posted signs which created greater occupancy levels that allowed by code. 

But the source of the current controversy, the cultural bonus, was created in the city’s current Downtown Area Plan, adopted in 1990. 

City planning staff didn’t adopt specific language for implementing the bonus laying out the requirements and limitations needed to qualify for the additional space, and when Kennedy applied to use it for the Gaia Building, city planning staff was left to figure out how it would apply to his project. 

One additional project won the bonus, the proposed Arpeggio Building, which would rise to nine stories across Center Street from Berkeley City College. Though approved more than a year ago, developers have yet to begin construction, with one source close to the project reporting that more funds needed to be raised. 

Specific language drafted for that project detailed precisely how the space was to be used, with Berkeley Repertory Theatre being the main beneficiary. 

The committee which prepared the proposed draft of the new downtown plan now making its way through the city planning staff before it moves on to the Planning Commission and City Council specifically declined to include the cultural bonus in their proposal. 

The fate of the Gaia’s Building’s cultural space remains in question, with a final decision still to be signed.

If you’re going to “dress for less,” you’ll need to spend your money in Emeryville or El Cerrito. The downtown Berkeley Ross for Less store will be shutting its doors in mid-January, according to Ross spokesperson Katie Loughnot. 

“We always review sites when the lease is up,” Loughnot told the Planet Thursday, refusing to compare the Berkeley store, located for about 13 years at 2190 Shattuck Ave., to neighboring Ross outlets. 

With The Spot, at 2175 Shattuck, and the Shoe Pavilion, at 2210 Shattuck, also planning to exit Berkeley, “we look at Ross leaving as an opportunity to upgrade” the tenant mix downtown, Economic Development Director Michael Caplan told the Planet Wednesday.  

“There will be no job loss,” Caplan added. Employees will go to other Ross stores.  

Loughnot said the closing is not a reflection on the health of the chain. “We close stores every year,” she said.  

Downtown Berkeley Associ-ation Executive Director Deborah Badhia said she was disappointed at the losses. “Ross fits a niche,” she said, whether it’s nannies out shopping or people running into the store on their lunch break for a tee shirt they’ve forgotten for their workout.  

“It will be missed,” she said, adding, “It’s a huge hit if The Spot and Shoe Pavilion leave at the same time.” 

What will replace the 40,000 square-foot store, originally a JC Penny’s, is an open question, Badhia said.  

Badhia said, because of the size of the store, the new tenant wouldn’t be an independent retailer. She pointed to the site’s advantages, noting in particular that half the population lives within one mile of the downtown. 

San Francisco-based Retail West, Inc. is the broker responsible for finding a new tenant. Retail West did not return calls before deadline. 

In a Dec. 6 report to its shareholders, Senior Vice President/Chief Financial Officer Jon Call said Ross is performing well. For the 10 months ending Dec. 1, 2007, Ross sales were almost $4.9 billion, a 9 percent increase over the $4.5 billion in sales reported for the 10 months ending Dec. 2, 2006.  

Call elaborated, saying the Mid-Atlantic was the strongest region “in the low double digits,” whereas the growth in California sales was 1 percent.  

Ross is a Fortune 500 publicly traded store headquartered in Pleasanton and is the nation’s second-largest “off-price” company, according to a Dec. 6 company news release. As of Dec. 1, the company operated 841 Ross stores and 52 dd’s DISCOUNTS, compared to 773 Ross and 26 DISCOUNTS the previous year. 

Economic Development Manager Dave Fogarty underscored, in speaking to the Planet Thursday, that there is some good economic news, with the opening of Green Motors in the old Cadillac dealership at San Pablo Avenue at Jones Street. The company’s website highlights the all-electric ZENN and iT cars, which they call “the perfect zero-emission solutions for around-town driving.” 

In an effort to stop liquor stores, bars and restaurants from selling alcohol to minors—and to make sure these establishments meet specific standards set by the city—the City Council voted 8-0 Tuesday to give the city new tools to regulate businesses that sell alcohol. 

In other matters, the council approved electromagnetic field testing near new telecommunication antenna sites, discussed condominium conversion in a two-hour workshop, hired a non-union security company to guard the corporation yard and promised a workshop in March on the question of undergrounding telephone wires. 

Alcohol-serving establishments regulated 

The council voted unanimously, with Councilmember Laurie Capitelli absent, to set standards for vendors of alcohol that include keeping the establishment free of graffiti and litter and well-lighted, keeping records of employees including hours worked, logging calls to law enforcement, refusing to serve persons who are drunk and who drink nearby in public, reporting people who make excessive noise in public, impair the free use of the sidewalk outside the establishment, engage in intimidating conduct and more to police. 

The law provides for new code enforcement staff who will inspect restaurants and bars once each year and outlets that sell alcohol to take off-site four times each year.  

“The operating standards in this ordinance are exemplary,” said Berkeley Alcohol Policy Advocacy Coalition Secretary Lori Lott, thanking city staff for including all alcohol venders—those that serve alcohol on-site and those that sell it for off-site use—in the inspection program. 

While councilmembers agreed that standards should be set and inspections done, they disagreed on how fees should be charged.  

Councilmembers Linda Maio and Kriss Worthington argued for a tiered rate, where restaurants would be charged less, but could not get a majority vote.  

“Liquor stores create a greater problem. If we’re putting more resources into liquor stores, they have to pay more,” Maio argued. 

“People are leaving our restaurants drunk and people [in restaurants] are serving underaged youth,” Moore said, pushing for the flat rate of $476, which won unanimously after the tiered rate lost 4-2-3, with Maio, Worthington, Gordon Wozniak and Mayor Tom Bates in support, Councilmembers Darryl Moore and Betty Olds in opposition and Councilmembers Max Anderson and Dona Spring abstaining. 

Testing cell antenna sites 

At Tuesday’s meeting, the City Council unanimously approved a plan to test electromagnetic field levels, including radiation levels, around UC Storage at Shattuck Avenue and Ward Street and close to the French Hotel on Shattuck near Vine Street.  

Cell-phone antennas are slated to go up at both sites in the near future. “It is necessary to have measurements quickly as the installations are imminent,” says the report, authored by the four sponsors of the measure: Spring, Maio, Anderson and Bates.  

Addressing the council, Michie McCon-nell said that in allowing the antennas to go up, the city compromised the health of residents and permitted “corporate control of cities.”  

She added that the city needs a stronger telecommunications ordinance: “We should have done that long ago.” 

The resolution also asks staff to begin work revising the ordinance. 

The council also: 

• Adopted the second reading of the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative ordinances that expand the area in which people lying on the sidewalks can be cited and increase restrictions on smoking in public places. The laws go into effect in 30 days. 

• Held a two-hour workshop on making changes in the condominium conversion law including eventual modifications to make the process quicker and easier to understand. They also discussed the possibility of bringing work up to code only when health and safety issues are in question and lowering fees. 

• Gave Securitas Security Services a contract to guard the corporation yard, with Councilmember Kriss Worthington objecting because Securitas is non-union. 

• Called for a workshop on undergrounding utilities to see exactly where utilities have been undergrounded and to talk about future undergrounding along main arteries for use during emergencies.

In a couple of years, the automobile shopper may not have to slog through Berkeley streets to find a new car. There’s likely to be a Volvo/Nissan dealer just a hop off the freeway—and perhaps a Honda dealer will follow. 

The ability to locate near Interstate 80 is something car dealers have been asking the city for, saying they’re pressured by their companies to increase visibility and heighten their competitive advantage. Three of the city’s four new-car dealers are now located on Shattuck Avenue, 5-10 minutes east of the freeway. 

For car dealers to move closer to the freeway and into the city’s manufacturing zone—from the Albany border south to Virginia Street and the Eastshore Highway east for two to three blocks—the City Council must modify zoning, amending the General Plan, the West Berkeley Plan and the Zoning Ordinance. 

A unanimous council (with Councilmember Laurie Capitelli absent) voted Tuesday in favor of the zoning changes but, at the urging of recyclers, removed the city’s nine-acre solid waste transfer station at Gilman and Second streets from the area subject to zoning changes.  

The council approved the new zoning in concept and will vote to make the zoning changes law at its meeting next week. 

Addressing the council before its vote on zonimg changes, recyclers said they feared the proposed zoning would allow the city to turn over all or part of the transfer station to auto sales, which would interfere with the city’s stated goal of eventually recycling or reusing everything brought to the transfer station.  

Early in the deliberative process, which took place at some 10 meetings of the Planning Commission, the planning department staff proposed rezoning for auto sales to include parts of the city now zoned as a multiple-use light industry (MULI) district, where Urban Ore, Ashby Lumber and MacBeath Hardwood are located in southwest Berkeley. The Planning Commission, however, voted to remove this part of town from the proposed rezoning. 

The primary concern expressed by councilmembers and speakers about allowing auto sales in the manufacturing district was the inclusion of the city’s nine-acre solid waste transfer center in the rezoning. 

Berkeley’s transfer station is unique, Dan Knapp, owner of Urban Ore, which resells recycled goods, told the council, calling for the lawmakers to remove the transfer station from the proposed zoning changes. 

The transfer station “houses a collection of enterprises that have gotten 59 percent diversion [of recyclable goods]” without burning or burying as some other facilities do, he said. 

“Protect those lands for future zero- waste businesses,” said Mary Lou Van Deventer, also of Urban Ore, speaking to the council on behalf of the Northern California Recycling Association. 

Knapp also raised the specter of possible rent hikes for property near where auto sales might be allowed, but Acting Land Use Planning Manager Debra Sanderson later told the council: “There’s not an expectation that [the zoning changes] would drive land prices up.”  

Shane Lavery, son of the owner of McKevitt Volvo/Nissan, now renting its property on Shattuck Avenue near Ward Street in South Berkeley, made the case for the new zoning. 

Requirements of manufacturers are changing, he told the council. “We need better access to the highways and we need to be in a part of the city where our customers can see us. Highway visibility is very important,” he said, adding, “We provide good jobs to the community; we are a union shop.” 

He also said that the owner of the property where McKevitt is located may want the land for condominium development.  

Van Deventer played down the need for the rezoning, telling council: “This entire rezoning is to keep two businesses in town.”  

The city staff report, however, pointed out that Berkeley’s four auto dealerships provide $1.2 million in sales tax revenue, just under 10 percent of the city’s total sales tax income.

The Berkeley City Council is getting involved in the case of a Berkeley man who has been screaming at children playing in the Becky Temko Tot Lot on Roosevelt Street for the past six months. 

Councilmembers will meet in executive session at City Hall Monday to discuss the disturbance. A public comment session will precede the closed-door meeting. The meeting will be held at 5 p.m. in the Redwood Conference Room at 2180 Milvia St. 

The Berkeley Police Department forwarded a citizen’s complaint to District Attorney Tom Orloff to prosecute Art Maxwell, the man who has been seen frequenting the tot lot, repeatedly screaming at the children and making them cry, for disturbing the peace at the park. 

Councilmember Dona Spring, who represents the neighborhood, said Maxwell’s behavior was psychologically abusive to the children and called for his arrest. 

Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, spokesperson for the Berkeley Police Department, told the Planet Thursday that Marty Brown, the D.A. handling Berkeley cases, had reviewed the crime report and had decided not to charge Mr. Maxwell. 

“He felt that the actual elements of the complaint did not meet the threshold of the violation he was cited under,” she said. “However, he has not ruled out the possibility of a future charge that better fits Maxwell’s actions.” 

According to Kusmiss, Maxwell was placed under citizen’s arrest and issued a misdemeanor citation under Section 415 of the Penal Code—which stands for disturbing the peace and using offensive words—after he started calling a neighbor and another man words such as “motherfucker” and “turd.” 

The neighbor said that Maxwell started throwing items at a fence separating Maxwell’s house from the park and continued yelling at him. 

Roosevelt Street residents have complained about Maxwell for months through community meetings, e-mails and public forums. 

When the complaints first surfaced, Lt. Wes Hester, another spokesperson for the Berkeley Police Department, said that Maxwell was within his free speech rights to yell as much as he wanted to. 

Calls to Lt. Hester or the neighborhood area coordinator Officer Casimero Pierantoni for comment were not returned by press time Thursday. 

“Although it was inappropriate behavior, it did not meet the criteria for violating the law,” Kusmiss said. “We recognize that people were frustrated but we have to operate within a strict framework of law. Berkeley doesn’t have any anti-profanity laws ... It just turned out to be more of a conflict than we had hoped for.” 

Although the city’s mental health services met with Maxwell, who lives next to the tot lot, no action was taken. He also declined mediation services from the city. Sound recordings taken at the tot lot did not show any evidence of violation of the noise ordinance. 

In a letter to the D.A.’s office on Dec. 4, Spring has asked the courts to prosecute as well as to issue a restraining order against Maxwell. 

“The district attorney will decide whether to prosecute him,” Spring told the Planet Monday. “This has been going on for a long time now. The Berkeley police could not arrest him or find a violation against him because of free speech. But he has used his free speech in such a way that it has psychologically affected children and their parents. He says that the children make too much noise but it is no more noise than any other tot lot in the city. He has either to live with the noise or go away.” 

Dozens of parents have e-mailed or called Spring to protest about Maxwell’s threats of getting children arrested, photographing them and blaring obscene rap music while they play or use the swing at the tot lot. “My direct experience with Mr. Maxwell in the last six months is through angry messages he left on my home office answering machine,” Spring wrote in her letter to the D.A.  

“These messages were loud and angry harangues regarding a litany of impositions of the tot lot’s impact on his life. He said his anger was justified because of failure of the city or myself to shut the park down. The messages would end with threats such as, “I’m about to lose it,” “I am sick of it” or “I’ll step up the fever pitch.” 

Spring said that she declined to meet with Maxwell to sort out his grievances because of his abusive phone messages. 

According to neighbors, Maxwell’s latest attempts at terrorizing visitors to the tot lot included screaming profanities and hurling glass bottles against a plywood board on the fence of the tot lot. 

“He is being totally unrealistic,” Spring said. “He basically wants to shut the tot lot down. But the city has no intention of doing that.”

In a special closed session Monday, the Berkeley City Council will consider removing Rent Board Member Chris Kavanagh from office.  

Kavanagh faces seven felony counts stemming from allegations that his real home is in Oakland, but that he falsely claimed residence in Berkeley in order to sit on the rent board.  

He pleaded innocent to the charges in September and stepped down from the board for three months, which ends at the end of this month.  

The item that appears on the closed session calendar came as a surprise to both Rent Board Executive Director Jay Kelekian and Rent Board Chair Jesse Arreguin. Both told the Planet they did not know who placed the item on the council agenda.  

The Planet learned of the item after business hours on Thursday and was unable to reach the city attorney or city clerk for further clarification. 

Arreguin said he was disappointed that the council would address the question before Kavanagh had his day in court—his next hearing is to be in January.  

“I am personally concerned that this will compromise the legal proceedings,” Arreguin said. Arreguin said such an action was necessary in the San Francisco case of Ed Jew, who refused to step down, but was unnecessary in Kavanagh’s case. 

The closed-door session begins at 5 p.m. with a public comment period. It is in the sixth-floor conference room at the city administrative building, 2180 Milvia St.  

Leftover furniture scraps will be hand-crafted into dolls, trains and trucks at the annual Waterside Workshop’s Holiday Sustainability Event this Sunday. 

What started off as an offshoot of Tinker’s Workshop at Berkeley’s historic Aquatic Park in July has now grown into a full fledged boat-building, bike-repairing and sewing organization, thanks to the tireless efforts of Helder Parreira and Amber Rich. 

“We are growing,” Parreira said excitedly. “The place has become a constant hub of activity. The word is out that there’s a place in West Berkeley where kids can come and spend time when they are not at school.” 

The workshop is set to become a part of the Berkeley Unified School District’s after-school program in January where kids will learn to make sustainable toys and build boats from scratch. 

Parents attending Sunday’s event will get an idea about what their children can expect out of the program. 

“We just like to give people a chance to make toys by hand,” Rich said. “Most toys are mass-produced and we often forget their roots. It means a lot if you can give someone a gift you have made with your own hands. People will also learn to sew fleece hats.” 

According to Rich, leftover materials from furniture and boat building will make up the principle components of the toy-making session. 

“End pieces such as the leg of a chair are too big to throw away and too little to use for anything else,” she said. 

“But it’s perfect for toys ... We have bucketsful of that stuff our instructor will sort from and cut out patterns and drill holes so that it’s easy for kids to put it together. It will be like a puzzle. No one will need to use any power tools.” 

The workshop has also gone through significant electrical renovations in the last few months which has brought bright lights and hot water to the building. 

Rich said the programs mainly attracted teenagers from West and North Berkeley. 

“Kids often have nothing to do after school so they come to our workshop to check it out,” she said. “They get hooked immediately ... It helps them to stay out of trouble.” 

Waterside Workshops Holiday  

Sustainability Event 

All ages welcome. Dec. 16, 12-5 p.m. 84 Bolivar Drive in Berkeley’s Aquatic Park (between Addison and Bancroft streets). 

Sliding scale donation requested, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. 

644-2755. www.watersideworkshops.org.

Current and former members of Berkeley’s Sea Scout Ship Farallon and their parents will meet Monday night to discuss resumption of group activities. 

The term “ship” as used by sea scouts refers to the group rather than the boat itself. 

Troop members were stunned by the arrest last week of former Scoutmaster Gene Evans on charges that he molested four troop members—allegations supporters strongly deny. 

Evans was released on $190,000 bail last Friday after a troop parent pledged the family home as collateral. 

The scoutmaster has been banned from the movement. He is owner of the ship which the scouts have used and which was at the center of a lawsuit that challenged a City Council denial of a long-time rent-free slip at the city marina on the grounds that scouts discriminate against homosexuals. 

James Novosel, an architect who has two sons who have been members of the troop, is one of the organizers of the meeting, which is being held in a private home. 

According to a notice for the meeting provided to the Daily Planet by a member, scouts and their parents will discuss the resumption of the group’s activities, listen to statements from troop members and air questions from parents.

A city employee, crossing Solano Avenue at Fresno Avenue Wednesday afternoon was struck and seriously injured by an automobile going east, according to Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, Berkeley Police Department spokesperson. 

The victim, a woman whose name has not been released, was in a crosswalk walking south on Fresno Avenue at about 4:25 p.m. The car that hit her was going about 20 miles per hour, Kusmiss said. 

The victim sustained severe head and face trauma, along with a number of possible broken bones, Kusmiss said. She was transported by ambulance to a local trauma center. “She is considered in critical condition,” Kusmiss said. 

The motorist, an Oakland resident, was determined not to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol. An investigation will determine whether there will be charges against her.  

There was a fatality at the same intersection June 3, when the driver, a retired Berkeley Police Department officer, was found to be under the influence of alcohol. There have been 13 automobile accidents at Solano and Fresno between 2002 and 2007—this is the third auto-pedestrian accident among them, Kusmiss said. 

The first-of-its-kind poll on race relations between blacks, Latinos and Asians, released yesterday in Washington, D.C., revealed that while ugly stereotypes still hold strong between groups, a majority of those in each group said they should put aside their differences to work toward building better communities. 

All groups polled said overwhelmingly that racial tensions in the nation are a very important problem. 

The poll shows that high levels of segregation still exist which underlie and support negative stereotypes. More than 75 percent of blacks and Latinos attend religious services with their own kind. More than 65 percent of blacks and Latinos went to school with those of the same ethnicity or race. More than 50 percent of all three groups say most of their friends are of the same race. 

Latinos (44 percent) and Asians (47 percent) said they are generally “afraid of blacks because they are responsible for most of the crime.” Blacks (51 percent) and Asians (34 percent) said Latino immigrants are taking away jobs, housing and political power from the black community. Latinos (46 percent) and blacks (53 percent) said Asian business owners do not treat them with respect. 

“The sponsors of the poll strongly believe the best way to move forward is by identifying the problems and initiating a dialogue that can bring ethnic groups together in their fight for equality and against discrimination,” explained New America Media Executive Director Sandy Close. 

Pollster Sergio Bendixen, who conducted the nationwide survey of over 1,100 blacks, Asians and Latinos in seven different languages, said the poll highlights the need for ethnic media to play a bigger role in facilitating this dialogue. “The study indicates that a majority of the African Americans and a significant percentage of Hispanics and Asian Americans consider the coverage of problems related to race in the ethnic media to be irresponsible,” Bendixen noted. “At the same time, overwhelming majorities of the three groups think that the ethnic media have a responsibility to do everything in their power to improve race relations.” 

Mainstream media coverage of race relations was not much better, according to those interviewed. Sixty-six percent of blacks surveyed said the coverage of problems related to racial tensions by mainstream media was irresponsible, followed by Latinos at 43 percent and Asians at 30 percent. 

Other findings showed that groups with a higher immigrant population expressed a far greater optimism about achieving the American dream. A majority of Latinos (74 percent) and Asians (64 percent) believes that if you work hard, you will succeed in the United States. In contrast, more than 60 percent of blacks said they do not believe the American dream works for them. 

These findings show that the immigrant brings optimism to the mix while blacks bring a hard-won realism, Bendixen said. 

Yet the poll also found important commonalities between the three groups: All of the poll respondents shared values of patriotism, spirituality, and spending time with family over making money. 

And despite racial tensions, the poll revealed a strong sense of optimism among all three groups. Respondents overwhelmingly shared the belief that they should put aside their differences to work together on issues that affect their communities, that racial tensions will get better in the next 10 years and that the United States would be better off if their were more ethnic groups in positions of authority. 

Author Richard Rodriguez pointed out that other ethnic groups see blacks as the pathfinders of civil rights issues; their battles have benefited all ethnic groups. Asian parents, meanwhile, are admired for their strong participation in their children’s education. “In a time when womanizing politicians are talking about family values,” Rodriguez said, “the immigrant brings real family values to the mix.” 

“This leaves some possibility for groups to learn something from one another,” he added. 

The younger generation, meanwhile, presents even more reason for this optimism. Young people increasingly identify themselves as “Blaxicans” and “Negropanese,” for example, said Rodriguez, reflecting a constantly evolving notion of race. Unlike in earlier generations, a majority of young people today (65 percent) have dated outside of their race. 

Megan Malabunga, 16, is one example. A Pacific Islander from Los Angeles, Malabunga says she has Filipino friends and black friends, and her boyfriend is Latino. She says race or ethnicity aren’t factors in choosing her friends; she hangs out with most of her friends because they dress the same way as she does. 

Chris Wailoo, a 44-year-old black professional and an immigrant who lives in Washington, D.C., says he thinks working together with other ethnic groups is a great thing but he does not believe it is going to be easy. Generally speaking, he said, blacks do not agree with Lou Dobbs’ immigration rhetoric, and yet he did not see many blacks at the immigration marches. 

New America Media’s poll was co-sponsored by nine founding ethnic media partners: Asian Journal, Asian Week, Korea Times, Philippine News, La Opinion / Impremedia, Nguoi Viet News, Sing Tao Daily, Sun Reporter, and World Journal. 

The sample was designed to be representative of the adult population of the three major racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. Hispanic respondents were interviewed in English or Spanish, and Asian American respondents were interviewed in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese or Tagalog. 

For the second time in two months, some 5,000 nurses are gathered today outside 13 Sutter Health hospitals in the Bay Area, including Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley and Oakland, to advocate issues they say haven’t been adequately addressed since the October strike. 

The nurses want better healthcare and retirement plans, according to Liz Jacobs, a California Nurses Association spokeswoman. 

They also want “adequate meal and rest breaks so they can perform safely,” and they would like trained hospital personnel to be hired who can lift obese patients to prevent nurses from straining their backs, Jacobs said. 

In addition, Jacobs said Sutter is asking nurses “to accept ... health care that has higher premiums and less choice of where they can go.”  

The nurses also want “good health care when they retire and a decent pension,” Jacobs added. 

Dori Stevens, chief executive nurse at Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch, said they are willing to meet with union leaders to reach an  

agreement. 

“We have offered a very comprehensive package to the nurses,” Stevens said.  

The union wants one master contract for all Sutter hospitals and “to change the language of the contract to make it easier for nurses to join the union,” said Kevin McCormack, a spokesman for California Pacific Medical Center, one of the hospitals where nurses went on strike. 

The two-day strike began at about 7 a.m. Thursday. 

“Nurses don’t want to strike,” Jacobs emphasized. “The fact that they took the second strike was a message to Sutter that whatever Sutter puts across the table between the strikes is unacceptable.” 

The hospitals affected by the strike are: San Francisco’s St. Luke’s Hospital and California Pacific Medical Center, San Leandro Hospital, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley and Oakland, Mills-Peninsula Health Services in Burlingame and San Mateo, Castro Valley’s Eden Medical Center, Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch, Sutter Solano Medical Center in Vallejo, Sutter Medical Center in Santa Rosa, Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae and Novato Community Hospital. They have hired replacement nurses to temporarily fill in for those on strike, Jacobs said. 

Although the strike is expected to last two days, nurses at all Bay Area Sutter hospitals, excluding St. Luke’s Hospital, California Pacific Medical Center and Sutter Medical Center in Santa Rosa, may not be able to return to work until Monday or Tuesday because the hospitals hired replacement nurses under contracts that last three to five days, according to Jacobs. 

Nurses at St. Luke’s Hospital, California Pacific Medical Center and Sutter Medical Center are expected to return to work Saturday, Jacobs said. 

The nurses are ready to jump in to help if an emergent situation presents itself, Jacobs said. 

“We always have provisions and are willing to not compromise care,” Jacobs said. “We’re not going to make the patients suffer.” 

Photograph by Richard Brenneman  

Smiling strikers and sympathetic colleagues drew friendly beeps from passing motorists as members of the California Nurses Association staged a second two-day walkout at Berkeley’s Alta Bates Summit Hospital on Ashby Avenue. Nurses also struck other hospitals owned by the Sacramento-based HMO chain Sutter Health. 

With little fanfare and no dissent, the Oakland Unified School District agreed this week to move forward with the building of a $75.5 million, four-school education complex on 6.5 acres of the district’s East Lake properties. 

“I believe this project is long overdue,” interim state administrator Vince Matthews said Wednesday night in approving the proposed operating budget for the complex.  

Matthews’ decision came shortly after a unanimous advisory vote by the OUSD Board of Education. The one board member who had earlier expressed reservations about the complex—Kerry Hamill—did not speak on the matter at Wednesday night’s joint administrator-board meeting and voted in favor with the rest of her colleagues. 

Under the state takeover of the OUSD, the state administrator has sole authority to approve the project, but Matthews had said earlier that he would not do so until he had heard from the board on the matter. 

Under the proposal, four of the five schools currently housed adjacent to the district’s Paul Robeson administrative headquarters—La Escuelita Elementary, MetWest High School, and Centro Infantíl and Yuk Yau child development centers—will be completely rebuilt. A fifth school on the East Lake property, Dewey, was recently rebuilt and will be considered as part of the 2nd Avenue Education Complex. 

The district’s next step will be to develop a more detailed proposal to be sent out to developers for bids. 

Money for the complex is expected to come from a variety of sources, including $30 million from district facilities bond measures A and C, $33 million from facilities bond measure B, $8 million from the county school facilities fund (Fund 35), and $4 million in developers’ fees. 

OUSD Facilities Director Tim White said Wednesday night that $260 million of the $439 million Measure B bond money has not been appropriated, so taking money for the 2nd Avenue Complex will not delay any currently approved Measure B construction projects. Inclusion of the 2nd Avenue Complex in Measure B expenditures was unanimously approved by the Measure B Oversight Committee earlier this week. 

The developers’ fees are projected to come from the proposed Oak-to-Ninth housing and commercial development along the estuary waterfront south of Jack London Square, whose students will be in the La Escuelita attendance area. The Oak-to-Ninth development must go back through the Oakland Planning Commission and Oakland City Council approval process after a Superior Court judge threw out portions of the project’s environmental impact report. OUSD failed to request developer fees from the project when it first went through the city approval process, but OUSD Facilities Director Tim White says that the district will request those fees during this round of approvals. 

The proposal for the complex does not deal with the fate of the district’s aging administrative headquarters, which has been ruled seismically unsafe, nor with the remaining three acres of land on the district’s East Lake properties. 

Following the making of his motion for approval of the complex, board member Noel Gallo said that he was “requesting that the staff take a look at the property in its entirety. This is probably one of the most valuable pieces of property owned by the district. I want the administration to develop a master plan for the entire property, to include a site for teacher housing.”  

Gallo said following the board vote that he wanted a master plan for the East Lake property to include a replacement plan for the administrative headquarters as well.

“He likes hot chocolate,” she said. Feeling cold myself, I approached the local barista and asked her for a large cup of coffee for the seemingly homeless man sitting outside on the cold bench. I say “seemingly” without knowing, but based on the tattered clothes, the unpleasant odor and the worn shoes. “God bless you,” he shyly replied when I offered him the hot drink. It was almost as if he preferred to remain anonymous. 

I walk around the lake every morning and often see the same people who are out in the early morning hours. Again, without being presumptuous, I will venture to say that most of these folks have no place to call home. What strikes me today as I remember my hot chocolate connoisseur, is that we are not that different, me and the early morning lake dwellers. We enjoy the quiet morning hours, the beauty of the lake, making contact with each other and the simple pleasures of life such as a hot drink first thing in the morning. 

Another thing I realized is that while I have been walking my same path every morning, seeing the same people every day…I have yet to ask this homeless man whom I shared a cup of hot chocolate with his name. He must have one; his life story would be one to share. And so today I vowed to ask; I vowed to embrace his story, whatever it is as one of value. Today, I did not find him, so instead I approached another woman whom I encounter on my daily treks; one who often appears to be responding to some unknown entity. She scares me at times, not in a physical sense, but because of her anger and what she might do with it. Over the years, I have listened to her talk to herself about her past as a violinist. Today I told her that some day I would like to hear her play. She just smiled.  

America has an overwhelming homeless population. This is a fact that cannot be disputed nor easily remedied Not only do we not have enough services to care for these people but the underlying issues that cause and perpetuate homelessness are varied and complicated. According to the Associated Press in 2005, there were 744,000 homeless people in the United States. California was the state with most homeless people in that year, about 170,000, followed by New York, Florida, Texas and Georgia, according to the report.  

How and why do people become homeless? There are a myriad of reasons: mental health issues, drug and alcohol use/abuse, medical problems, unprepared for emergencies, natural disasters, lack of affordable housing and the list goes on. No two stories are identical when it comes to our family of homeless. Usually there is a combination of factors that lead to being homeless, but the truth remains the same for all of them. I imagine many of them feel, and are in reality, alienated and abandoned … invisible. 

I do not want to pretend or hope that sharing a cup of hot chocolate or validating someone’s true or perceived identity will change the world, but I will venture to say that making contact and breathing life into those whom we might rather avoid can bring hope.  

Oftentimes, we are at a loss as to how to break through this crisis and make progress. On a grassroots level, there are many ways to offer support to homeless people. Here are some things we can think about when we engage with our homeless brothers and sisters: Talk to each person with respect, understand who the homeless people are through education and personal experience, be kind, offer clothing or blankets, volunteer at a shelter or a soup kitchen, offer food, educate your children about the homeless people in your neighborhood, contact your local government representatives about the issue and whenever you can, stand up for the civil rights of the homeless. 

At this time in our world history, things move so quickly: people are plugged in and tuned out. It takes extra effort to look outside of ourselves. Next time you see a homeless man or woman who may repel you or pique your curiosity, consider engaging with them. Whether or not one has housing, or a firm grip on what we see as reality, should not be a reason to ostracize them from the human family. It is up to us. A cup of hot chocolate may be much more than a cup of hot chocolate to that homeless person, or a passing hello at night to someone who has experienced that feeling of being invisible may be the best thing that has happened to that person in weeks.  

Today, almost one full week since my encounter with the nameless hot chocolate lover, I learned his name. Unfortunately, this was not because I was finally able to more fully engage him, but instead, to hear of his death. The barista who helped me know his favorite drink asked me this morning, “Hey, did you hear about John?” I asked, “Who is John?” She remarked that he was the man I bought the hot chocolate for the week before. “He died from a massive heart attack on Sunday night,” she said. “He was 48.” 

To think how I was able to offer a gesture of kindness so close to this man’s last moments on earth touched me. It also saddened me. Now I will never have the chance to hear his story. Nor will I ever share another hot drink with him. I bet he would have liked that. I would have too.  

To quote Ralph Ellison, “I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” Let us start to see our homeless neighbors and, if nothing more, smile or say hello to them. They will probably say, “God bless you.” And you might make a new friend. 

Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Miller handed UC Berkeley a legal setback Monday evening, denying its claimed exemption from state law governing buildings on earthquake faults. 

Her nine-page order was faxed to lawyers in the legal battle over the university’s plan to build a four-story high-tech gym next to Memorial Stadium—the site of the ongoing tree-sit in the grove of oaks that would be axed to make way for the gym. 

John M. Sanger, one of two San Francisco lawyers hired to represent the UC Board of Regents in the case, had told the judge that the Alquist-Priolo Act doesn’t apply to the university. 

Passed by the California Legislature in 1972, that statute bars new construction within 50 feet of existing faults and limits additions or renovations to half of an existing building’s value. 

In Monday’s order, Miller wrote that she “has concluded that the Act does apply to the University as a state agency with the responsibility to prohibit the location and development of structures for human occupancy across the trace of active faults.” 

The judge said that nothing in the evidence before her indicates the university ever considered: 

• whether the Student Athlete High Performance Center (SAHPC) was an addition to California Memorial Stadium (CMS) under the terms of the act; 

• “whether the cost to construct the SAHPC might violate the Act’s valuation limitations,” or 

• performing a valuation analysis on the gym in relation to the stadium. 

The ruling is critical because the stadium itself is split from end zone to end zone by the Hayward Fault, the seismic fissure federal geologists say is the most likely source of the Bay Area’s next disastrous earthquake. 

University-hired experts say the gym site is outside the Alquist-Priolo Act’s 50-foot zone, exempting the structure from the law’s provisions. 

“We’re quite gratified that the court has rejected the university’s contention that the Alquist-Priolo Act doesn’t apply to them,” said Stephan Volker, one of the attorneys who brought the litigation against the university. 

He said he is also pleased that the court agreed with plaintiffs in the action that the university had failed to prove their contention that the gym and stadium were two separate and distinct buildings. 

“The university is backed into a corner,” he said. 

Dan Mogulof, Executive Director, of UC Berkeley’s Office of Public Affairs said, “While it’s going to engender further delay, we welcome the opportunity to provide the court with additional evidence from architects and engineering experts who we believe will support what we have said all along—that the Student Athlete High Performance Center and Memorial Stadium are separate buildings."  

Volker represents the California Oak Foundation, one of several plaintiffs who have challenged the university in argument’s in Judge Miller’s Hayward courtroom. 

The other lawyers are Michael Lozeau, whose client is the Panoramic Hill Association, and Harriet Steiner, representing the City of Berkeley. 

Sanger’s partner and the lead attorney for the university in the case is Charles Olson. 

Expert opinions 

Judge Miller’s order requires the lawyers to submit written opinions from experts about whether or not the gym and stadium are separate structures, or if the gym and stadium constitute a single building under terms of the California Building Code. 

If she finds the they form a single building, the outcome could have profound limitations for the university’s development plans by limiting the total amount of funds that can be spent on the gym and the planned retrofit and refurbishing the landmarked stadium itself. 

The judge ordered all evidence to be submitted by Dec. 31, with a deadline for objections to any of the submissions of Jan. 7. Her final Notice of Decision, barring any additional extension, will come by Feb. 6. 

Mogulof said the university has been continuing with “the huge amount of preparatory work needed before construction begins, so if we get the go-ahead from the court, construction can begin almost immediately.” 

One key issue, not addressed in the judge’s order, is the value of the stadium itself, by all accounts a structure in needed of repairs and a seismic retrofit. The stadium bears obvious signs of neglect, with unrepaired breeches in the concrete and its wooden flagpoles and fixtures shedding layers of peeling paint. 

The university claims that the Alquist-Priolo Act’s 50 percent limitation applies to the cost of replacing the existing building, while the challengers claim the limitation is based on the structure’s current sales value—potentially a nine-figure difference that could starkly limit the university’s options. 

The challenge to the stadium/gym project is encompassed in the larger legal question of whether or not the regents met all the legal steps required to adopt the gym’s budget and approve the environment impact report (EIR) for the full suite of projects included in what UC Berkeley has called the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects. 

Those projects, in addition to the gym and stadium retrofit, include an underground parking lot at the site of Maxwell Family Field northwest of the stadium, a new “connector building” housing offices and meeting space for the university’s law and business schools, repairs to the law and business school buildings, work on the Piedmont Avenue/Gayley Road streetscape, repair of some historic buildings, and demolition of some other historic residences and Calvin Hall. 

Once again, changes are afoot for Cody’s Books, with president and three-decade former owner Andy Ross announcing his retirement as president last week and Hiroshi Kagawa, former CEO of the corporation that bought Cody’s, stepping in as interim president and head of a new ownership group.  

In September 2006, Ross—after shuttering Cody’s Books on Telegraph in July—met with reporters in the airy Fourth Street store to announce the sale of the business that included both Fourth Street and the San Francisco stores to Yohan, Inc., a Tokyo-based foreign publications dealer, publisher and retailer.  

Introduced to reporters at the same time, Kagawa expressed an affinity for the store. “I’ve loved Cody’s ever since I visited the store in 1983,” he said. 

Yohan closed down the San Francisco store in April, the same month that Tokyo-based Polaris Principal Finance, an investment bank, acquired 60 percent of InterCultural Group, the holding company that has controlled Yohan since December 2006. 

“By accepting this investment from Polaris, ICG hopes to strengthen its financial standing and improve profit power. By concentrating resources on selected operations, Polaris will restructure ICG's operations portfolio and improve the company's growth with the goal of going public within three years,” according to the Yohan website. 

Kagawa resigned the positions of Yohan CEO, president of IGC and president of Yohan Book Service, Inc. on Sept. 30. 

The new umbrella group which he heads, whose name has not yet been made public, will own Cody’s, Stonebridge Press, located in Albany, which specializes in English-language books about Japan and Asia, and IBC Publishing, which publishes books that support English learners and books that introduce Japan to foreigners. 

“Polaris wasn’t interested in keeping Cody’s,” Mindy Galoob, Cody’s business manager, told the Daily Planet in an interview Saturday. 

Galoob said there may be changes at Cody’s, but first, she said, she wants to know more about what customers want—she may use surveys and/or focus groups to do this.  

“We want to be sure Cody’s stays a Berkeley institution,” Galoob said. “We want to remain a local bookstore.” 

Galoob, 30, came to Berkeley in September—from Oklahoma via Washington D.C.—to accompany her husband who is a doctoral program at Boalt Law School. She said she is pleased to be where people are community-oriented.  

She said that llike Amazon, Cody’s has a presence on the internet. The difference, however, she says, is that customers can interact by phone with a real person at Cody’s who knows about the books, while they can’t at Amazon. 

Cody’s was founded in 1956 by Fred and Pat Cody.

Like spinning straw into gold, turning apartment buildings into individually owned condominiums could be a dream come true. But the law, intended to benefit property owners, renters-turned homeowners and the city’s affordable housing fund, has yet to turn into anything but a headache, people on various sides of the issue say.  

The City Council is holding a workshop tonight (Tuesday), 5-7 p.m. before the regular council meeting, to look at proposed changes in the conversion law. 

At the regular meeting, which begins at 7 p.m., the council will hold a public hearing on changes to the West Berkeley Plan that would permit automobile sales in parts of West Berkeley now zoned for manufacturing, inspections for alcohol outlets, measuring electromagnetic fields and more. 

Condo conversion 

To date, the Condominium Conversion Ordinance has not met any of its goals. It was supposed to allow home ownership for those who might otherwise not be able to afford it, fill the city’s low-income housing coffers with conversion fees, and give property owners a hefty profit. 

Tonight’s workshop panelists, in addition to city staff, will include Michael St. John representing the Berkeley Property Owners Association—property owners complained they had been left out of the discussion during an October council workshop—and former Housing Director Stephen Barton who helped write the 2005 ordinance revision.  

No Housing Advisory Commission members or elected Rent Board Members were asked to sit on tonight’s panel. “We have some pretty good ideas—I think we should be given more than three minutes [for public comment],” said Jesse Arreguin, who serves both on the HAC and the Rent Board. 

Both the HAC and property owners say they would like to modify the part of the law that says the units to be converted must be completely up to code. 

The HAC voted Dec. 6 to ask the council to consider a two-tiered approach. First, there would be a pre-application inspection in which all code violations and health and safety issues would be identified in the unit. And there would be “full disclosure of all problems in the entire building,” Arreguin said.  

Prior to conversion, applicants would have to correct all health and safety violations. Other code violations would be disclosed but not necessarily corrected.  

HAC is also proposing a 15 percent rather than 20 percent administrative fee—funds that would be diverted from the Housing Trust Fund—as proposed by city staff. 

Attorney David Wilson, who helped author the failed Condominium Conversion Ordinance on the 2006 ballot, said that property owners want a better-written law that clearly defines code compliance issues. “People can’t understand it,” Wilson said. 

Wilson said that the lack of clarity can result in high costs and wasted time: one inspector may ask for certain changes to comply with codes; when the property owner completes construction, a different inspector may ask for additional changes, Wilson said. 

Another problem in the law is that the 12.5 percent fee, based on sales price, is too high, Wilson said, noting that the property owner is required to pay that fee, the transfer tax and code compliance costs. 

West Berkeley auto zone 

Fearing that automobile dealers will flee the city—along with the $1.2 million sales tax they provide—city staff is proposing changes in West Berkeley zoning to allow automobile sales where only manufacturing is now permitted. 

“If [the dealers] are unable to relocate in Berkeley, it is possible they could eventually close or locate in another city,” the staff report says. 

If the new zoning is approved, the city’s solid waste transfer station at Second and Gilman streets could be impacted. The Planning Commission did not remove the transfer station property from the draft zoning changes, as a number of people—including those from the Ecology Center and West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies—had requested. 

When the Planning Commission voted in favor of the new zoning, however, it added a caution that any project there should not materially interfere with the activities of the city-owned solid waste center. 

While earlier iterations of the proposal threatened to impact the Urban Ore and Ashby Lumber sites in southwest Berkeley, these properties are no longer part of the proposed zoning changes.  

The council will also consider: 

• The second reading of the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative. 

• Inspections for alcohol outlets. 

• Reclassifications of an assistant traffic engineer whose salary would be $6,600–$8,000 per month and a watershed resources specialist at about $5,300–$6,500 per month. 

• Policies to address foreclosures and subprime lending. 

• Measuring electromagnetic field levels. 

• A first quarter budget update. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part one of a two-part series. 

Has Tom Bates—surprising us all—suddenly become an advocate of industrial West Berkeley? You certainly could have gotten that impression if you glanced at the Dec. 3 announcement: The mayor and his counterparts in Richmond, Emeryville and Oakland have teamed up with each other, UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to create an “East Bay Green Corridor” that will, in Bates’ words, make the region “the Silicon Valley of the green economy.” 

The East Bay Green Corridor Statement of Principles, posted on the mayor’s website, declares the partners’ commitment to helping “green industries, defined by both the production methods they employ and the types of goods and services they produce ... find fertile ground here to grow and expand.”  

But in the land of the BP—formerly British Petroleum—Energy Biosciences Institute, “green” and “industry” are highly elastic terms. A closer look reveals that Bates is using the Green Corridor to legitimate his plans to turn much of West Berkeley into an office park catering to BP associates and their ilk. The controversy swirling around the BP venture, as documented in the Planet, would be enough to raise major doubts about the mayor’s scheme. (For another good overview of that controversy, as well as UC Berkeley Chancellor Birgeneau’s little-known relevant history at the University of Toronto, see Jamail Yogis’ reports in the December issue of San Francisco magazine.) Add the fact that a host of Bay Area planning professionals say that production, distribution and repair enterprise, which includes recyling, are essential to the region’s prosperity, social equity and environmental health, and the mayor’s plans look more dubious yet. 

Bates previewed those plans last February in his 2007 State of the City address. There he equated “building the green economy” in Berkeley with “mak[ing] it easier” for environmental research companies “to open and expand” here. Putting out the welcome mat to such firms, he said, would require “more flexible land use rules…because our current zoning does not permit them.” Last week he echoed those remarks, telling KCBS that the Green Corridor Partnership “will mean” among other things “relaxed zoning.”  

If you wanted to drive industry out of West Berkeley, the first thing you’d do would be to loosen the area’s land use regulations. Here as elsewhere in California, most businesses doing production, distribution and repair (PDR) are small and medium-sized firms that rent their space. Because PDR is less dense than office, retail and housing, it yields lower rents. Predictably, landlords who have a choice prefer the more lucrative tenants. In theory, landlords whose property is zoned for industry have no choice and accordingly keep their rents at levels that industrial tenants can afford. But if owners of industrially zoned land think that a city is reluctant to enforce its zoning laws or is about to change those laws to permit non-industrial uses, they are likely to raise their rents and/or to hold their property off the market until the zoning has been revised.  

Consider, then, that this Wednesday, at the direction of the council and above all the mayor, the Berkeley Planning Commission will begin considering potential amendments to West Berkeley zoning with the express aim of increasing flexibility—that is, permitting more non-industrial uses. “Limited” means that they’re not going to throw out the industrial zoning all at once. But as the recent history of the nation’s credit and housing markets indicate, investors’ expectations are crucial. In the case of West Berkeley, even a little “flexibility” will have a ripple effect that’s likely to squeeze production, distribution and repair out of town.  

In his February speech, Bates tried to finesse the issue. “For the most part,” he said, “the heart of West Berkeley is not appropriate for major new office parks and housing development.” But in the same speech, the mayor alluded to Doug Herst’s plans to put a biotech corporate headquarters, a seven-story condominium building, space appropriate for software companies—which is to say, office space—and, to sugar the pill, an art gallery on the 5.5 acre site of the former Peerless Lighting factory at 2246 Fifth St., a location arguably in the heart of West Berkeley.  

The biggest elephant in the room, however, is the BP Energy Biosciences Institute. The mayor’s press release touting the Green Corridor noted that Berkeley was “recently ranked as one of the top five cities best situated to lead the ‘Clean Tech’ economy.” What the press release didn’t say is that the ranking, made by Sustainlane, was based on British Petroleum’s decision to give UC $500 million to create the Energy Biosciences Institute. The Institute itself will be on campus, but a BP spokesman told Sustainlane that the giant multinational’s “technical scouting members will be making relationships with start-ups and small companies in the field.”  

Sustainlane acknowledged that “the city of Berkeley’s participation in the institute is in the planning process.” In other words, the city proper had little to do with the project on which its “Cleantech” ranking was based. But it’s easy to imagine how our local officials could greatly expedite the BP venture: The council could rezone West Berkeley to accommodate those off-campus “start-ups and small companies in the field.”  

Leaving aside the big questions being asked about the scientific feasibility, moral integrity and environmental effects of the BP biofuels project, there’s the issue of rational economic development. Year after year, quarter after quarter, West Berkeley manufacturing and warehouse space has had among the lowest vacancy rates and highest asking prices per square foot of any East Bay industrial market. To quote the slogan of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies: “West Berkeley Works!” So why destroy it? 

Three big industrially zoned West Berkeley properties are currently vacant or close to it: the Peerless Lighting site(Doug Herst still has an office there), the Macauley Foundry (811 Carleton) and the Flint Ink facility (Fourth and Gilman). How these parcels are developed will shape the future character of the district and, indeed, of the entire city. I’ve already noted Herst’s gentrifying proposal for the Peerless Lighting property. Bates, proceeding as a virtual one-man planning department, has very different plans for Fourth and Gilman: He wants an auto dealership there, as a first step to commercializing all of Gilman west of Ashby.  

I invite Mayor Bates to explain how replacing the dozens of production, distribution and repair businesses in the west Gilman neighborhood with freeway-oriented retail, including a huge car dealership (the Flint Ink parcel measures 4.78 acres), would contribute to a green economy? How would it help achieve Measure G’s goal of radically reducing greenhouse gas emissions in town, 47 percent of which come from vehicles driven within the city’s limits?  

The questions are not academic: The council agenda for today (Tuesday) includes the mind-boggling proposal, backed by the mayor, to permit auto sales at the Flint Ink site and at the property occupied by Berkeley’s major recycling facility, the city transfer station, located at Second and Gilman. From an environmental perspective, the idea is preposterous: If anything, the city should be working to expand Berkeley’s renowned recyling and reuse enterprises. That means preserving, indeed extending, the industrial zoning that keeps land values at levels those businesses can afford.  

In the second half of this column (to be printed in an upcoming issue), I’ll tell how heeding the latest expert advice and building on industrial Berkeley’s distinctive strengths could foster an economy that’s radically green, sustainably prosperous and far more democratic than what we have now or what we will have if the Bates version of the East Bay Green Corridor comes to pass.  

Berkeley planning commissioners Wednesday will tackle the controversial issue of what the city calls a new policy of “limited flexibility” in West Berkeley zoning. 

Also on the agenda is a proposal to convert a five-unit tenancy-in-common (TIC) property at 1552-1556 Milvia St. into five condos. 

While all parts of a TIC property are owned equally by all tenants, condominium units are individually held. Commissioners had no objections when the proposal for converting the two-building property was first brought before them last month. 

The West Berkeley rezoning was far more controversial, and two rival proposals both failed when each failed to obtain the needed five votes, due to the absence of commissioner Susan Wengraf. 

The immediate trigger was a City Council request made early this year after the council upheld a Zoning Adjustments Board vote denying a four-unit project at 2817 Eighth St. 

The denial was based on the current standards for mixed use-residential zoning, a unique-to-West-Berkeley district designed to create a transition zone between the area’s industrial and manufacturing zones and the inland residential districts. 

Developer Edward Adams, with the support of neighbors, wanted to build a four-unit housing project where zoning standards call for six—which could be increased to seven with the city’s inclusionary bonus for affordable housing. 

Some commissioners wanted to stick with the current requirements, citing the city’s need for more housing for lower-income residents, while others wanted to exclude Adams from the requirements so he could build the smaller project neighbors want. 

But Adams and some commissioners also want an exemption from the housing fee required of developers who want to exclude affordable units from their projects—hence the tension and the two failed votes. 

Commission Chair James Samuels backs the staff proposal, and typically prevails on commission votes that often divide on a five-four basis. 

But Susan Wengraf, who often votes with the majority, was one of the leading backers of the West Berkeley inclusionary policy, along with Gene Poschman, who is generally found among the dissenting minority on key development issues. 

Under the guidelines now being proposed by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), Berkeley would have a quota of 2,712 new housing units by 2014, up from a goal of 1,269 for the previous seven years, 1999-2006. 

ABAG doesn’t require the units to be built, leaving that to the market. But it does insist local government allow development to occur up to the quota levels to maintain eligibility for funding allocated through the regional government agency. 

Wednesday night’s meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave.

Suspended Sea Scoutmaster Eugene Austin Evans, charged with multiple counts of abusing youths under his care, was bailed out of jail Friday, pending his arraignment in January. 

Meanwhile, current and former Sea Scouts and their parents were scheduled to meet Monday night to organize a defense campaign for the 64-year-old scoutmaster, according to one parent who was invited to attend. 

Berkeley Police arrested Evans Dec. 4 at the same time they served multiple warrants to search for evidence to substantiate allegations by scouts. 

He is charged with abusing four youths, and police are seeking others they believe may have been abused during Evans’ 35 years at the helm of the SSS (for Sea Scout Ship) Farallon. 

But Scout Executive Al Westberg of the Mt. Diablo Silverado Council of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) said Evans’ membership in the organization has been terminated. 

Westberg said he is working with his counterpart at the Alameda Council to organize a meeting with parents, and the organization will offer counseling to any youths who need it. 

“We are working to set up the meeting, and we will attempt to have law enforcement there,” he said. 

Evans retains ownership of the Farallon, which is his personal property. “We don’t own any” of the boats, Westberg said, and the name “ship” as used by the scouts refers to the membership in the same way the word “troop” applies in other branches of scouting.  

Supporters have rallied to his cause, with one parent providing his family’s residence as collateral for the accused scoutmaster’s bail, which had been reduced to $190,000. 

Deputy District Attorney Mark McCannon said nothing in Evans’ bail conditions prevents him from meeting with the scouts and parents who are supporting him. 

“If that’s what the parents want to do, it’s within their right to do so,” said the prosecutor who represented the county in Friday’s Superior Court hearing in Oakland. 

The only conditions imposed on Evans Friday were the same two which all bail recipients must meet, McCannon said, “obey all laws and don’t commit any criminal offense.” 

Criminal charges 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. 

While the search warrants and the sworn statements from investigators used to obtain the warrants were sealed at the request of Berkeley Police, department spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said that evidence obtained from the computer in the Evans home confirms the charges. 

Department Public Information Officer Lt. Wesley Hester said Monday that detectives have been receiving calls from community members offering information and asking questions about the case. 

Investigators believe there may be additional victims, he said, asking anyone with information to call the departments Youth Services Detail at (510) 981-5715. 

“We want to hear from anyone who may have been a victim or who has knowledge about anyone who may have been a victim,” he said. “They may remain anonymous if they chose.” 

Evans is a retired teacher who taught in Alameda at the Alameda and Encinal high schools. He joined the Sea Scouts in Berkeley 50 years ago and has been active in the movement ever since. 

Prior to his arrest, he was best known in Berkeley for filing the ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit which changed the 1997 City Council decision to end the free lease the city had given the Farallon at the Berkeley Marina. 

The denial was based on the national scouting movement’s refusal to accept gays, a violation of the city’s policies of granting benefits only to groups which do not discriminate against homosexuals. 

Evans, joined by scoutmasters, took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to reconsider an unanimous California Supreme Court decision which upheld the city’s position. 

His next court appearance will be at 2 p.m. Thursday in Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland, said Lt. Hester. 

Westberg said that in addition to the 18 members of the Berkeley Sea Scouts program, Evans has also been a leader in a larger program based in Alameda, which has about 40 members. 

Parents of members of both groups will be invited to the meeting he is working to establish with his counterpart at the Alameda Council, Westberg said. 

Under BSA regulations, Westberg said, Evans has a right to appeal his dismissal, which was outlined in the letter that severed his relationship with the BSA.

Breaking with mentor and former boss Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Rep. Barbara Lee announced her endorsement for Sen. Barack Obama for president Monday. 

“For me this is a defining moment in the history of our country, a very powerful moment,” Lee said, in a late-morning press conference by phone, hosted by the Obama campaign.  

Calling Obama “a real agent of change” who would “set a course for our country in a new direction,” Lee promised to be active in the campaign.  

“I intend to work very hard to make sure he wins,” she said, announcing a visit to Obama’s Oakland campaign office that afternoon. 

Asked how Lee, a fierce opponent of the Iraq War who has called for the immediate return home of U.S. troops, could support a candidate who has said the troops won’t all come home until 2013, Lee responded that Obama would “bring this occupation of Iraq to a quick resolve. I believe because of his early position [in opposition to the war], he will be forceful in bringing the young people home.” 

Asked how she could call for universal health care, but support a candidate with a less comprehensive plan, Lee answered that she believes “he has the vision—he’ll be able to bring a coalition of people together.” 

As for the break with Dellums, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton, Lee said she’d discussed the issue with the mayor before his endorsement of Clinton and again before she announced her support for Obama. 

“We are individuals,” Lee said. “I’m responsible for my decision. We continue to be friends and work with each other. We don’t have to be in lock step.” 

If Obama fails to get the nomination, Lee said she would support the Democrat that does. “They all have what is necessary to be president,” she said.  

—Judith Scherr

The Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously Thursday to approve the rehabilitation and alteration of the exterior of the Shattuck Hotel. 

The hotel, at 2086 Allston Way, had allowed overnight guests to stay in one part of the hotel while renovating a different part of its interior, until it was shut down by the Berkeley fire marshal on Nov. 15 for multiple violations of the fire code. 

Two of the three long-term hotel tenants surrendered their possessions and reached settlement agreements with owner Perry Patel after the fire marshal ordered them to vacate the premises. Currently no long-term or overnight guests are being allowed to stay in the hotel. 

One of the tenants had filed a petition for a reduction in rent against former owner — Sanjiv Kakkar — which was resolved several months ago. 

According to the city’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance, if guests stay at the hotel for more than 14 days, they are entitled to rent control. The owners also have to register the tenancy. 

“The Patels had to pay $40,000 in registration fees since the Kakkars had not properly registered all the tenants,” Jay Kelekian, executive director for the Rent Stabilization Board, told the Planet. 

“The Kakkars told us that there were only three tenants whereas there were a lot more.” 

Kelekian added that the three long-term tenants were paying between $600 to $1,100 per month each for their rooms depending on how long they had lived there. 

“Mr. Patel was looking at the necessary permits to get the tenants relocated under the scenario that they could return once the construction was complete,” he said. 

“The rent stabilization ordinance requires landlords to obtain permits from the city for substantial repairs, and to give tenants a 30-day notice to leave. Prior to the fire marshal coming, Patel negotiated a settlement with one tenant. When the fire marshal red-tagged the building, two more settlements were reached ... The tenants got a lot less notice than they were entitled to but so did Mr. Patel and all the other guests at the hotel.” 

Patel, who bought the property recently with plans to develop it into a four-star hotel, refused to disclose the settlement amount to the Planet. 

“The tenants had a right to move back after the construction was complete but they reached a financial settlement instead,” said Kelekian, who did not want to disclose the amount. 

“It was a substantial sum ... More than any of them had ever paid in rent in their three years there.” 

Berkeley Deputy Fire Chief David Orth told the Planet that the fire marshal had gone to the hotel after being alerted about problems with the fire alarm system on Nov. 12. 

“The type of work that was going on had created significant fire hazards,” he said. 

“We wanted to evacuate the building right then, but we gave the tenants 36 hours to pack their bags and placed a fire watch for safety measures in the lobby and the floors. But the system did not work. Another fire alarm came in on the morning of Nov. 15 and we found out that people had not evacuated the building in the proper way. A lot of guests were unaccounted for. So I immediately closed it down.” 

According to Orth, the violations included a lack of fire alarms in some of the guest rooms and taped-up fire detectors. 

“This is one of the last hotels in the city to not have installed a sprinkler system,” he said. 

“The construction work has left openings between the floors that have created chimneys for smoke and fire to pass through the floor. Big holes have broken through the concrete floor which have deactivated the fire alarm system. These are not things that can be easily mitigated ... The owner was doing construction under a permit but I am not sure whether he exceeded the limits of the permit or not.” 

Orth added that although fire alarms had gone off at the hotel before, he had not been aware of such a high level of violation. 

“It was only when we went into the sleeping rooms that we found out how unsafe an environment it was for people to live in,” he said. 

Patel told the Planet that he had not been aware of the violations. 

“It was something that the fire marshal brought to my attention,” he said. “The goal was to relocate the tenants but we didn’t get around to it. We had a demolition permit so we started on the fifth floor and were working our way down. I didn’t know the renovations were creating an unsafe environment. I think the Permit Center was aware that we had people living in the building.”

The Oakland Unified School District interim state administrator and—with one notable exception—the members of Oakland’s Board of Education have agreed to take up consideration of a proposed $75.5 million education complex on the east lake site currently occupied by the district’s aging and earthquake-unsafe administrative headquarters and five district-run education institutions. 

District officials are scheduled to hear a final report on the proposed financing for the complex at the administrator-board meeting scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 12, beginning at approximately 6 p.m., at the district headquarters at 1025 2nd Ave. in Oakland. 

If approved, the proposed Second Avenue Educational Complex would completely rebuild four of the five educational institutions on the 8.25 acre site—La Escuelita Elementary, MetWest High School, Centro Infantil Child Development Center, and Yuk Yau Child Development Center—as well as the current administration complex.  

Dewey High School, the fifth school on the site, is housed in a relatively new building. The rebuilding of the new administrative complex is not included in the $75.5 million price tag of the complex.  

“No schools owned by the district are in as dilapidated condition as those four schools are,” Board President David Kakishiba said when the issue came before the board last month. “It’s an embarrassment to the district, and it’s less than a football field away from our administrative headquarters. It’s indicative of the worst images of OUSD.” 

A large group of parent and student supporters of the complex held signs and gave testimony in favor of the project during the meeting. 

Under the district’s state receivership, interim state administrator Vincent Matthews has sole and final approval of the project, but he has said that he will do so only after the board takes an advisory vote on the matter. 

Funding for the complex is expected to come from OUSD Measure A and Measure B facilities bond monies. In 2003, the district set aside $22 million for the rebuilding of La Escuelita from Measure A, and although Measure B monies are more restricted because the bond measure passed with a list of proposed projects, OUSD Facilities Manager Timothy White told board members last month that the district “has some latitude” in setting new Measure B projects. 

District staff members said that the district may qualify for approximately $50 million in state school modernization money which it had previously thought it was ineligible for, some of which could be used for the education complex. White also said that the additional money could come from developer fees from the proposed Oak To Ninth housing and commercial complex, which will be served by La Escuelita.  

OUSD’s state administration was criticized by board members and the public for failing to request developer fees from the Oak To Ninth project when the project was first considered and approved by the Oakland City Council. The district may get a second chance at requesting those fees, however, now that a Superior Court judge has ruled that Oak To Ninth must go back through the Oakland Planning Commission and Oakland City Council approval process due to deficiencies in the project’s Environmental Impact Report. 

Board members have been almost all universally supportive of the project, which was introduced by board member Noel Gallo last spring during the height of the controversy over State Superintendent Jack O’Connell’s decision to sell the east lake property to an east coast developer to help pay down the district’s debt to the state. O’Connell later broke off negotiations with the developer after intense opposition to the proposed sale throughout Oakland, and then state administrator Kimberly Statham agreed to move forward with Gallo’s proposal for developing the property. 

The sole exception to board support has been Board Member Kerry Hamill, who was skeptical of the project when it was first proposed last spring. Hamill said at the time that she thought the district should sell at least some of the east lake property to help the district get back on its financial feet. 

Criticizing the lack of specific funding sources when the proposal was presented to the interim administrator and board last week, Hamill said, “I’d feel more comfortable if we had a more detailed financing plan and breakdown. There is a very emotional and passionate group of parents here tonight concerned about the four schools on the proposed site. But we have to be concerned about the 90 additional schools in the district, and whether this project will jeopardize the financing of those.” 

Editors Note: In the months since the inauguration of Ron Dellums as mayor of Oakland, the Dellums administration has been the subject of criticism, most of it from the center and right. Dellums’ most notable criticism from the left—particularly on economic development issues—has come from former Oakland City Councilmember Wilson Riles, charging, for example, that Dellums has turned over his economic policy to the Oakland Chamber of Commerce.  

Riles ran unsuccessfully for mayor against incumbent Jerry Brown in 2002. He and his wife, Patricia St. Onge, operate a personnel management consultant company, Seven Generations Consulting.  

We interviewed Riles at his East Oakland home last month concerning his criticisms of the Dellums administration. Below is an excerpt from that interview. 

What’s your overall assessment of the administration a year into its administration? 

Riles: I’m still convinced that Oakland is better off with Dellums as mayor than it would have been with Ignacio De La Fuente. And that Nancy [Nadel] would not have been able to successfully defeat Ignacio. So that way, I think we’re in a better place. I think, though, that there were a lot of high expectations that are not being met. I think there’s a lot of disappointment and I’m actually surprised about the time that it’s taken for the administration to get on its feet. 

What were the high expectations other than in economic development that you think haven’t been met? 

Riles: I think he started out trying to bring everybody to the table. I think that’s what the task forces were about. And I think that’s his motivation for what eventually happened in terms of coming together in the Economic Summit and now working under the aegis of the Chamber of Commerce with PG&E money to bring everybody to the table to decide where the money should go. But, unfortunately, I think because of the nature of what’s now come into place and the nature of the people that he has around him, the process is failing. 

What process do you mean? The inclusionary process? 

Riles: The inclusionary process where we’re bringing people together and people are actually working on making the kind of fundamental changes in this community that have to happen. 

But it went to the point where the Task Forces met over the summer, they voted and came up with the conclusions, and the conclusions are now published. What’s happened since then? Do you think it was successful up to that point and then something happened? 

Riles: There’s two things. There was a lot of weakness in how the whole Task Force process was organized and facilitated. Because I don’t think people had a clear concept of what it takes and how to bring people together and how to move people towards a consensus. So people came together, a lot of ideas were thrown out. Very few of those ideas, as far as I can see, were actually worked through and an actual plan of action to bring those ideas about wasn’t ever followed. It’s just basically a list, a wish list, of what people wanted.  

How did the Task Force process evolve into the Economic Summit? Was that part a culmination of the Task Force process? 

Riles: From what I understand, it was a sidestream. The Chamber had already started looking at their own planning on economic development for the city from what was happening within the Task Forces. In January, they essentially came together with the mayor— 

They, meaning the Chamber? 

Riles: Yeah. I don’t know who initiated it, but they came together with the mayor and basically there was an agreement that the mayor would host the summit which originally was supposed to be a presentation of the work of the Chamber. They had actually hired a consultant and done some kind of analysis towards the writing of a report. And they wanted to incorporate—either the mayor wanted them to or on their own—they wanted to incorporate the work of the Task Forces into their own report. But a lot of the Task Force’s recommendations were put in the back of the report and, in a sense, were given lower status. And if you look at how the whole event was arranged, the Chamber’s report and Chamber’s recommendations were highlighted and given a lot of time and the Task Force’s report was shoved together, was not given the time to make the best presentation. This was in the midst of the Task Force process. They had not finalized anything. So it was unfair in terms of how it was projected and what happened. And then out of that, a decision was made to, essentially, invite some of the members of the Task Force to join the Chamber process, which was funded by PG&E to start these economic development clusters. Folks were asked whether they wanted to move over or wanted to do both, and, of course, nobody wanted to do both, so all of that planning work ended up in the cluster process that the Chamber was developing. 

And is that what you mean when you say that the mayor’s economic development program has been turned over to the Chamber of Commerce? 

Riles: That’s exactly what I meant about it. To some extent, the Chamber’s original thought was to be exclusive as to who could participate in that process. There were only going to be business people to participate in that process. Essentially, their work in that process was going to be massaged through a hired, paid group to do the analysis and to write the reports. I know that there was some pushback from the mayor’s office to include other folks. But you had a very limited number who were willing to go in there, and then you’re looking at a situation with very uneven representation and so-called power within those discussions areas within the Chamber. You’ve got some folks essentially being paid to be there— 

By their companies? 

Riles: By their companies. Their public relations people, whatever, whatever, who have a particular agenda that they’re pushing to benefit their company and a lot less looking at what’s beneficial for the overall community but looking at what’s beneficial for their companies and the agenda that their company’s are pushing. And, then, other folks who are unpaid, retired, or whatever, may have just as much expertise or knowledge but, essentially, are not given the same weight. And the broader perspective is more difficult to create in that environment. And the mayor’s office—I appreciate that he wanted to bring all those people to the table and I think that they legitimately ought to be at the table. But you would expect that there would be some recognition of the fact that just sitting at the table was not enough for people of the community. You’ve got to balance the uneven power relationships to have that be a process that is fair and just and that’s going to work for the voices that are at the table. And that’s just not going to happen. PG&E had a particular agenda, and so there was already a decision made as to how PG&E money to support this process was going to be used.  

For example, the Green Environment Task Force was already slated to look at some issues on just the questions about ship pollution at the port and was looking at spending some of that money to see how that might address the wider questions of trucking and other pollution as a result of what was going on at the port. They were also looking at broader issues of pollution in West Oakland and other parts of Oakland. These issues were not slated to be part of this analysis that was being done. And it's still an ongoing struggle as to how widespread that analysis is going to be. 

It’s competition vs. cooperation at People’s Park. 

A debate over whether UC Berkeley should sponsor an open competition to choose a new design for the historic site erupted after People’s Park Community Advisory Board member and architect Sam Davis suggested holding a competition last week. 

While some board members agreed that a competition would enhance plans to redevelop the park, others said the move was premature and called for more community involvement instead.  

The competition would be based on the People’s Park Assessment and Planning Study that was prepared by San Francisco-based consultants MKThink over a nine-month period. 

At an earlier meeting in November, park users and stakeholders had emphasized the need for open green space and had criticized plans in the consultant’s study that involved permanent structures.  

Almost everyone involved stressed the importance of fighting crime and homelessness in the park and keeping the spirit of social service alive.  

“There may be disagreements but the document is now finished,” co-chair Joe Halperin said. “It will be provided to anyone who wants to create a plan.” 

He also criticized community members and the university for neglecting the park’s homeless population. 

Davis, who designs homeless shelters and housing, added that recommendations to UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau for solving homeless problems had not received any feedback yet. 

He suggested that a university-appointed task force—separate from the community advisory board—including service providers, the city’s health department and UC faculty specializing in public policy, social welfare and public health, should outline a plan for providing social services to at-risk individuals frequenting the park.  

“We want the cooperation of the city instead of the health department who I am not really impressed with,” said board member Lydia Gans. 

The board also decided to add members from their group to the task force. 

“Coordinating efforts of the city, the university and the churches seems like a responsible thing to do,” said board member George Beier. “I just hope it’s not an opportunity to kick Food Not Bombs off the park.”  

Community members had complained at the November meeting that the report had undermined the importance of Food Not Bombs, which provides free meals in the park to more than 100 people every day. 

“The competition is a good idea,” Beier added. “I could see a landscape architect or a public health class getting involved in it.” 

UC student-member Ionas Porges-Kiriakou questioned whether an architecture competition would allow the public to voice its opinion.  

“It’s not the right time to have a competition,” board member Gianna Ranzzi, who voted against the idea, added. “We should work on the proposals in the report that are doable, such as drainage and solving crime … We have a lot of work to do before we set forth on something like a competition.” 

Community gardener Terri Compost emphasized the need for cooperation.  

“It’s really exciting to see riots once in a while, but I really don’t want to see that,” she said. “People’s Park was created in the spirit of cooperation, so the idea that we could find a design through a competition where one idea would win and others would lose is completely contrary to the spirit of the park … I think the park needs careful collective planning and if the university or the board is unable or unwilling to bring people together to find where we have common ground, then the process has to come from the grassroots.” 

“I think the time is good for the university to step forward, especially since the City of Berkeley is providing $1 million for homeless services,” said board member Mike Bishop. 

The board agreed that the instructions for the competition would emphasize board recommendations and community involvement and require a feature that celebrated the park’s historical significance. 

“The notion that if we hold a competition there will be a riot is absurd,” said Davis. “We need to get the ball rolling. A competition will allow people to see things we haven’t seen and to recommend things we haven’t recommended.” 

Co-chair John Selawsky told the Planet after the meeting that no parameters had been set for the competition yet. 

“People are bristling at the idea of a competition because they don’t want change and fear the unknown,” he said.  

“A lot of students have potential when it comes to contributing new ideas. The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. was designed by a student … We need to make the park more exciting and turn it into a destination point. Irrespective of whether people like it or not, the university holds the deed to the land. They will be footing the bill and they will have the final say.” 

Last week at Berkeley High School (BHS) two of the school’s 209 trees, those in front of the on-campus first-floor entrance to the divide between the G and H buildings, were trimmed to prevent growth that would block security cameras. 

“With smaller trees, we just routinely lop off the tops of them so that they don’t grow in the way of the motion cameras,” said Al Wilright, director of maintenance at BHS. “It takes up memory space when we have trees blocking the view of the cameras.” 

However, local arborist (and Planet columnist) Ron Sullivan thinks that lopping off the tops of trees can be detrimental to tree health. 

“Topping trees is sloppy practice and not good for the trees’ health,” said Sullivan. “A tree in bad health often becomes a dangerous tree, particularly when weakly attached branches that form after topping get big enough to hurt when they break off and fall on someone. Topping also leaves a tree more prone to disease and rot than better pruning does.” 

Furthermore, Sullivan argues that while you may not see any problems for a while, they will eventually arise. 

“If the ‘smaller’ trees are so young that the tops being cut off are finger-size or narrower, you can get away with it for years,” commented Sullivan. “But you’ll end up with just a weird tree with a bouquet of pencils on top. Get a real arborist in there to redirect the growth, or cut your losses and admit that the ‘memory space’ in the cameras is more important than the trees. Cheap tree work, like any cheap surgery, will cost more in the long run.” 

Security cameras were installed on campus after school started in 2000, when an April 5 arson fire had caused $2 million in damage. Due to advice from the police and fire departments and pressure from then-Superintendent Jack McLaughlin, a large number of security cameras were installed on campus to improve campus safety and to deter students from pulling fire alarms. 

“Before I got here, the School Board voted to install these cameras so that the administration can view them to protect student’s rights,” said BHS Principal Jim Slemp. “We don’t watch the cameras unless we need to use them to follow up on an incident. They have been very effective to determine honesty when there is a fight. It’s also very helpful to have recorded evidence in case somebody pulls a fire alarm in a non-emergency.” 

In general, students don’t find the cameras to be particularly helpful, but don’t oppose their presence. 

“It’s good to have them at our school,” said BHS senior Janet Kenmotsu, 17. “I don’t have a problem with them. However, I doubt how effective they actually are. A little while ago, a person stole my teacher’s camera and after they looked at the security cameras, the security staff wasn’t able to get any information from them. I suppose that in other cases, they would be useful.” 

In a small backroom of the UC Berkeley YWCA, Santa’s little helpers are hard at work.  

They are wrapping presents, checking wish lists and rushing to get presents delivered to those who are less fortunate this Christmas. 

The helpers are the center’s student volunteer board—a group of UC Berkeley students—who are taking part in the Giving Tree Project. 

Coordinated by the Alameda County Salvation Army, the project lets students and community members choose a tag from one of the Giving trees and purchase a new gift for a needy child. 

Volunteers from the YWCA then sort the gifts by age, gender and wish and wait for the Salvation Army to pick them up for distribution on Dec. 17. 

“We request approximately fifty students from Alameda County for the Giving Tree,” said Jenny De Runtz, who oversees the project at the center. 

“Our sponsors include individuals as well as organizations. No one gets to know the names of the children the gifts will be donated to. The Salvation Army gives us a report after the event is over.” 

Wishes can range from the simple to the extravagant. This year’s most expensive gift—an electric guitar—same with a $100 price tag. 

A 10-year-old wanted a science kit—by far the most popular gift on the list—while another aimed for a skateboard. 

So far, the center has been able to attract up to 19 sponsors for 36 children. 

“Some frats have sponsored ten kids,” De Runtz said. “The Cal Band has bought gifts for eight.” 

The volunteers also organize a food and toy drive which are then packed and distributed to needy families through the Salvation Army. 

“We do it because it’s a way to reach out to the community and to get involved in making their wishes come true,” said UC Berkeley Mass Communication and Sociology major Sharon Ma. 

“Even if we are not the primary organizations we are doing our part to connect the children to them. Our location is accessible for people and we try to make it easy for volunteers and sponsors to help out ... In the future we would like to see more people giving during the holidays.” 

For UC Berkeley junior Catherine Brittain, the Giving Tree Project provides an opportunity to de-stress right before the finals. 

“Shopping for gifts is exciting,” she told the Planet last week. “We end up touching so many lives in the process.” 

The Giving Tree Project and the Toy and Food Donation will continue until Dec. 14. 

For sponsorships and donations contact: The YWCA at UC Berkeley, 2600 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704, (510) 848-6370. 

Assault with a deadly weapon 

On Sunday at 5:11 p.m., a caller reported that three men had assaulted a 20-year old man with a knife near the Amtrak station on the 2000 block of Fourth Street. The victim was bleeding when police arrived on the scene and suffered severe head wounds. No suspects have been identified. 

Child abuse 

At 12:09 p.m. on Sunday, somebody called the police to report that a man was beating his 6-year-old daughter on the 1500 block of Prince Street. Police are investigating the matter. 

Connected series of burglaries 

A caller at 1:26 a.m. from an apartment complex on the 1900 block of Dwight Way reported that someone had broken into their apartment and stolen some cash. They thought that the burglary occurred between midnight and 1 a.m. 

In the following hour, three more people from the same apartment complex called in to report similar attempted burglaries. However, nothing was taken. 

Police believe that the same person robbed another house. At 2:16 a.m. on Sunday morning, a person who lives on the 1700 block of Parker Street, three blocks away, reported an attempted burglary. “We believe that there is a connection,” said Lt. Wes Hester, spokesman for the Berkeley Police Department.  

Shots fired 

At 12:16 a.m. on Sunday morning, somebody called police to report that shots were fired near the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Derby. There are no suspects in custody.

A prominent environmental attorney and a Berkeley neighborhood activist are asking UC Berkeley to extend the review period for two projects at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

Michael Lozeau made his plea in a letter Dec. 4 to UC President Robert Dynes, UC Board of Regents President Richard Blum, lab director Steven Chu and two other lab officials. 

He asked for additional hearings on the environmental reviews of the Helios Building—the site of the $500 million BP agrofuel program and the Computational Research and Theory Facility. 

The lab held one hearing—on the draft environmental impact report (DEIR) for CRT building—Monday night. The Helios DEIR hearing will be held on the 17th, in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave., starting at 6:30 p.m. 

As currently scheduled, the public comment periods end on Jan. 4 for the CRT building and Jan. 11 for the Helios building. 

Lozeau wrote that additional hearings should be held in January because many concerned Berkeley residents will be out of town during the holiday season. 

“The timing of the EIRs and respective comment periods does not serve the community well and breeds substantial distrust and wariness amongst the interested community,” he wrote. 

Lozeau asked the lab to extend the comment period by 30 days and to schedule two additional hearings, one on each project, in January. 

The attorney, who specializes in environmental law cases, represents the Panoramic Hill Association in their suit challenging the gym planned for a site along the western wall of Memorial Stadium as well as other building plans included in what the university calls the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects. 

A decision in that case, which also hinges on questions involving an EIR, is expected within the next few weeks. 

His letter to the land and UC officials was sent as a private citizen, said Janice Thomas, a PHA member who is also seeking an extension of the environmental review for the lab buildings. 

Thomas said the two projects represent 31 percent of a planned 980,000 square feet of new construction planned at the lab through 2025, and should be considered in the context of the cumulative impacts of the lab’s building plans. 

“To get a sense of the amount of construction proposed, consider a large resident development in the suburbs, on undeveloped land, that would be the equivalent of 150 houses, each of 2,000 square feet,” she said. 

Asked for the lab’s response, Chief Public Information Officer Ron Kolb e-mailed, “I don't believe Steve Chu has had a chance to respond yet, but when he does, we will share it with you.”

The State Historical Resources Commission unanimously voted to list the UC Berkeley Extension Laguna Street Campus as a historic district in the National Register of Historic Places at its meeting in Palm Springs last month. 

UC Berkeley’s plan to convert its historic six-acre extension campus in San Francisco into a private rental-housing development has met with opposition from preservationists and community groups who want to retain the site for public use. 

First used as a city orphanage from 1854 until the San Francisco State Normal School was established in the 1920s to accommodate public school teachers, the campus has also served as the original home of San Francisco State University (SFSU). 

According to Cynthia Servetnick of Save the UC Berkeley Extension, the former San Francisco State Teacher’s College campus merits recognition for its association with the normal school movement in California, as one of two remaining normal school building complexes in the state, and for its association with Frederick Burk, the school’s first president and a significant figure in California education. 

“Unfortunately, two of the buildings, Middle Hall Gymnasium and Richardson Hall Annex will still be demolished unless we win the CEQA lawsuit,” she said. 

Citing prohibitive maintenance costs to bring the campus up to current seismic and disability codes, the UC Regents closed the UC Extension building in 2004, and it has been sitting empty since then. 

Although the Planning Commission has scheduled a meeting to approve the final EIR and rezone the site from public to private on Dec. 20, San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi and State Senator Carole Migden have asked for a continuance because the project contains only 20 percent affordable housing. 

A public hearing on the final EIR and the campus rezoning has also been scheduled for Dec. 20 at 1:30 p.m., San Francisco City Hall, Room 400.

Neighbors of the Alta Bates Medical Center at 2450 Ashby Ave. are planning to complain about the hospital staff’s parking violations at the Zoning Adjustments Board meeting Thursday. 

The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at the Old City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

The board—which will adjourn for winter break after the meeting—will hear public comments and discuss violations by Alta Bates employees for exceeding the regulations for neighborhood parking specified in their use permit. 

Zoning staff has recommended that the board continue the issue until April to give staff and Alta Bates administration a time to review results of their annual traffic survey to be conducted in January. 

According to the staff report, Alta Bates has implemented new parking policies which might result in compliance with the use permit. 

Neighbors denounced what they said was an effort by the hospital to influence the results of the parking and traffic survey by lowering the number of employees parking in the neighborhood on the days of the survey. 

If too many employees park in the neighborhood, the hospital is required to take additional measures, such as moving some facilities and employees to other locations. 

1923 Ninth St. 

Justin Lee of San Francisco will ask the board for a use permit to demolish two residential buildings at 1923 Ninth St. to make way for two three-story buildings housing 15 condominium units. Although zoning staff recommends approving the project, neighbors have expressed concern about the size and potential impacts of the project. 

2516 Ellsworth St. 

William Coburn Architects of Oakland had asked the board for a use permit for a major expansion of an existing one-story building at 2516 Ellsworth St. to create a larger number of units for student housing. 

Neighbors said they will appeal the proposed project Thursday because they believe that it is out of scale and would increase parking and noise impacts. The building sits on the border of a higher-density and a lower-density residential zone. According to zoning staff, the proposed project is not detrimental and fits the scale of the neighborhood and 

3132 MLK Way  

James Peterson of Corporate Housing Group, Inc., will ask the board to modify the original use permit issued in 1995 for the Prince Hall Arms Senior Housing Project. 

The modified plans for the affordable housing project propose 42 residential units, a 2,492-square-foot community room and 10 parking spots within a four-story building totaling 32,262 square feet. The original approval was for 37 units, 1,200 square feet of retail and 13 parking spaces within four stories, totaling 33,921 square feet. 

Andrew Imbrie, distinguished composer and senior in the Bay Area’s community of composers and teachers of composition, died Wednesday at his home in Berkeley after a long illness. He was 86. 

He had composed a great corpus of music, works in all of the principal genres, including two operas. One of these, Angle of Repose, based on the late Wallace Stegner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, commissioned and performed in 1976 by the San Francisco Opera, received national acclaim. He wrote symphonies and concertos that were performed here by the San Francisco and Oakland symphonies. 

Composing was his life, occupying him almost exclusively. He never stopped, even in this year completing four works, though his health had been failing for some time. The last complete one, Sextet for Six Friends, introduced by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble in San Francisco, Mill Valley, and Sonoma last February, was remarkably direct and clear. It was one of the more immediately engaging of all his works. Early next year, a clarinet quintet’s first movement that he finished last month will be played in Boston by Richard Stoltzman and the Borromeo String Quartet. 

His music is unique and individual, independent of any trend, current, or school, recognized by its very personal, often passionate expressiveness and the underlying vocal nature of his melodic impulse. What controls and guides the forces of Imbrie’s music is first a dialectic process, the musical idea generating both its own continuity and its contrasting response, and second his grasp of the whole, a vision of the music’s destiny. At the highest level of integrity, it has always reflected masterful craftsmanship. 

Elliott Carter, America’s most eminent composer, recalls that Imbrie “was a wonderful composer, wrote beautiful, elegant, and sensitive music. I liked him very much personally. He was an absolutely most interesting, amusing, and profound man.” The composer Wayne Peterson describes him as “a completely honest and for many years, the leading composer in the Bay Area. His work has had a great influence on my own music and many people had been influenced by him. He had lived a great life.” Alan Rich, a prominent music critic in Los Angeles, writes, “Most of my awareness of new music and its struggles for existence I owe to Andrew in my Berkeley years: the strengths in his music—the quartets, the violin concerto, that spacious and glorious opera—and the strengths in the way he could argue music’s cause. It made me proud to know him, and it still does.” 

A rich life 

Imbrie was born in New York City in 1921 and raised in Princeton, N.J. He graduated from Princeton University. He developed great skill and fluency at the keyboard through early training as a pianist with noted teachers Pauline and Leo Ornstein, Olga Samaroff, Rosalyn Tureck, and Robert Casadesus. Composition supplanted piano as a career aspiration after a summer studying with Nadia Boulanger in Fontainebleau, France, while working with Roger Sessions, his major teacher and inspiration both during his Princeton years and later at UC Berkeley, where he earned his master’s degree. 

Before that he served in the U.S. Army as a cryptanalytic translator of Japanese and immediately after spent two years composing while a resident of the American Academy in Rome. His career had already been launched in 1947 when his senior thesis at Princeton, the first of five string quartets he was to compose, was awarded the New York Critics’ Award and recorded by the Juilliard Quartet. 

Imbrie joined the faculty of the UC Berkeley music department in 1949, teaching there until his retirement in 1991. He also taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, at Brandeis University and after 1991 at the universities of Chicago, Alabama, and British Columbia, at Harvard, New York, and Northwestern universities, the Sand Point Music Festival, and as composer-in-residence at the Tanglewood Music Center. He was given the Alice M. Ditson Award (1947), the National Institute of Arts and Letters Grant (1950), the Boston Symphony Merit Award and Brandeis Creative Arts Award (1957), two Guggenheim Fellowships (1953, 1959), the Walter Hinrichsen Award (1971), and UC Berkeley’s Berkeley Citation (1991). 

His commissions include those from the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and Opera, the Pro Arte Quartet, Francesco Trio, Ford and Naumburg Foundations, and the Halle Orchestra. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (from 1969) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 1980) and served on the board of the Koussevitzky Foundation. 

His compositions ranged widely in genre and included three symphonies, eight concertos, many songs, sonatas, chamber works for diverse instrumental combinations, and choral compositions that revealed his unerring and sensitive ear for the chorus as a complex and human instrument—five that were major works with orchestra. Notable were Drumtaps (to Whitman), Prometheus Bound (to Greene after Aeschylus), and Adam (to medieval and Civil War texts), commissioned and performed in 1994 by Boston’s Cantata Singers. It was praised by Boston Globe music critic Richard Dyer as a “fully achieved and masterly work” and in a musical language “infinitely resourceful and responsive.” The grandest and most moving of these choral works was the Requiem (1984), in memory of his youngest son, John, which set elements of traditional liturgy reflected in poems by Blake, George Herbert, and Donne. 

Imbrie is survived by his wife, Barbara, and his son Andrew Philip, of Santa Clara. The funeral services will be at St. Clement’s Church in Berkeley (2837 Claremont Blvd.) at 4 p.m on Dec. 12. 

Robert P. Commanday was the music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1965 to 1993, and before that a conductor and lecturer at UC Berkeley. He was the founding editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, where this first appeared. 

In a renewal of the growing political alliance between moderate Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and progressive Democratic Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Schwarzenegger came to Oakland last week to announce the launching of a pilot project to help Oakland homeowners hit hard by the nation's subprime lending and home foreclosure crisis. 

Under the project, founders Tom Steyer and Kat Taylor of the Oakland-based OneCalifornia Foundation are donating one million dollars for the creation of a “Community Homeownership Fund” to help selected distressed Oakland homeowners refinance their mortgages and reorganize their credit. Families admitted to the program will receive financial literacy counseling, free banking services at foundation-affiliated OneCalifornia Bank, and have access to a line of credit to cover the gap between their current payment and a negotiated new rate with their lenders. If the project is successful, it will be expanded to other parts of the state. 

Oakland has been one of the areas of the state hardest hit by the subprime crisis, ranking 10th in the nation in foreclosure filings against homeowners hit with rising interest payments. 

At a Fruitvale district press conference flanked by Dellums, Steyer and Taylor, and members of the Fruitvale Unity Council, Schwarzenegger said that “when people lose their homes, the neighborhood loses, the neighbors lose, the local businesses lose, the city and the state loses. There are no winners here.”  

While saying “there is no simple solution or silver bullet to the subprime mortgage crisis, this is a tremendous example of the private sector working to solve a community problem.” 

However, asked by a reporter if the state would intervene to provide tax relief for embattled homeowners by deferring payment on owed taxes, Schwarzenegger threw cold water on that idea, saying tersely, “we are going to be collecting.” Referring to the state's looming $10 billion budget deficit, the governor said that “as everyone is out there struggling, we are struggling too. We have to show fiscal responsibility.” 

The state will play no role in the pilot project, but by throwing his name and prestige behind the project, Schwarzenegger appeared to be encouraging Oakland's role as a state center of pilot project innovation, as well as using it, as he said, to “encourage foundations all over the state to follow this fantastic example.” With little or no state money available to help blunt the effects of the subprime lending and home mortgage foreclosure crisis, Schwarzenegger, like Dellums, is counting on privately funded programs to fill in the gaps. 

Steyer said that the program, which would initially enlist between 20 and 50 Oakland families, would work with lenders to keep the mortgage rates at the “initial teaser rates,” and would loan money to homeowners to help them restructure the debt on their houses “to get a first mortgage they can afford. It will cost the homeowner nothing on a current monthly basis, and it will allow them to stay in their houses.” While Steyer said this would only be a small step towards alleviating the crisis, “our goal is to jump in the water and start swimming, and then to figure out how to do more. 

Sherry Powers, who manages the homeowner center for the Unity Council, said that in connection with the OneCalifornia pilot project, the council would provide foreclosure prevention workshops for homeowners. “Many of these homeowners did not have any financial counseling prior to buying their homes,” Powers said, saying this was one of the reasons homeowners were lured into mortgages that they could not afford. 

Meanwhile, Dellums called the OneCalifornia Foundation project “an extraordinary pilot program.” He said that the program will “deal with only one aspect of the subrime mortgage crisis,” and that he and his staff are working on setting up a meeting with lenders and bankers in Oakland “to come together to address the entire panorama of issues” surrounding the crisis. 

The Oakland mayor has been counting heavily on building a relationship with Schwarzenegger to help fund his proposed “model city” programs for Oakland. Under Dellums' proposals, Oakland would become “the model city,” for the state of California, with the city funneling in an array of state and private foundation-funded pilot urban development projects that can be tested in Oakland and then farmed out to other areas. 

We were talking recently to our new friend, the professor visiting from Spain. We asked what her husband’s job is. He’s a sociologist, she said. And does he teach at your university? Well, he does teach some classes at night, but his day job is working for the government of a small city, about the size of Berkeley, outside of Madrid.  

How interesting, a city that employs a sociologist! Not just one sociologist either, it turns out, but a whole flock of them, perhaps five or six in all. And what do they do? They constantly survey the citizenry to find out what they want, and then the city, most of the time, gives it to them. She gave an example: You’d like the buses to run until 1 a.m.? Well sure, that’s reasonable, if enough people want it, they’ll get it.  

What about the cost? That’s what taxes are for, she says, and people don’t mind paying them if they can see the results in the services they get. The city government (Socialists, are you surprised?) has been in office for a number of years now, and seems likely to stay. 

What a concept! Actually trying to find out what the citizens want, and acting on it. Democracy is fairly new in Spain. She says it’s just taken hold in her lifetime—she was 10 years old when Franco died, and she’s 42 years old now. Perhaps the reason such responsive government seems like the Land of Oz to us Berkeleyans is that our democracy is a few hundred years old and we’ve lost the touch.  

A couple of feisty Boalt Hall School of Law alumnae did manage to get the attention of the Berkeley city government this week, the hard way of course. Elsewhere in this issue you’ll find the report of the court decision in Alameda County Superior Court holding that the Berkeley City Council’s attempt to modify developer Patrick Kennedy’s use permit for his Gaia building “was an abuse of discretion and must be struck down.”  

The council majority tried a year ago to let Kennedy off the hook for the never-delivered cultural uses that bought him two extra floors of apartments when the building went up many years ago. On Wednesday, Judge Frank Roesch said they couldn’t get away with it.  

The plaintiff on behalf of the public was Planning Commissioner Patti Dacey, and her attorney was fellow alumna Anna de Leon, who just happens to be the Gaia’s lone current cultural tenant with her Anna’s Jazz Island bistro. They’d made lengthy and varied attempts to persuade the City of Berkeley to enforce the conditions on the original use permit, but were rebuffed at every turn, which is why they finally had to resort to a lawsuit to get the city’s attention. 

Is it revolutionary to suggest that This Should Not Be Necessary? The City of Berkeley’s planning department and the city attorney’s office have been playing fast and loose with public policy for years now, and most of the recent city councilmembers, regardless of faction, have been more than happy to rubber-stamp staff schemes. The free pass for the Gaia building is just one of many questionable giveaways. The difference is that this time the wrong people were outraged, two well-educated citizens who were capable of taking their grievance to court. 

Another satisfying victory for the public was last week’s court decision that the University of California, despite its protestations to the contrary, is indeed subject to the state’s Alquist-Priolo law, which governs buildings on known earthquake faults. The exact application of the regulations has yet to be decided, but at least the UC Regents haven’t gotten away with claiming that they’re above the law. Citizens were plaintiffs in this suit too. One more time, however, This Should Not Be Necessary. 

Without a team of dedicated sociologists at their disposal, for Berkeleyans the courts have become the only real way to make their wishes known to public officials. Oh, we do have elections, of course, though not as often as we used to. In a slippery move, not noticed much at the time, councilmembers extended their terms from two years to four.  

Four years is time enough to do considerable mischief. Is it any wonder that there’s now a plan afoot to recall some or all of them, especially the mayor?  

Someone copied the Planet on the e-mail invitation to the organizing meeting for recall supporters, and it was fascinating reading. It’s almost impossible to imagine all of the people on that list in a room together, but the meeting seems to have happened on schedule. Those I’m acquainted with have had many different problems, but most of their complaints against the city officials can be boiled down to one central problem: favoritism, to the point of bending or breaking the zoning laws, toward rich and powerful developers. The richest and most powerful developer of all is the University of California, of course, so many on the list are united by their outrage at the city’s settlement with UC over its Long Range Development Plan.  

Another solution being talked about in civic circles is the necessity of reforming the Berkeley City Attorney’s Office. The former head of that office promoted or at least permitted a culture of contempt for citizen action, and though she’s now gone, those she hired (including Zach Cowen, Esq., defense lawyer in Dacey et al. vs. the Berkeley City Council) are still in place. If a thorough housecleaning doesn’t take place, Berkeley should perhaps join Oakland and San Francisco in electing its city attorney.  

Or we (the people) could ask the council to hire a team of sociologists to ask us what we want, and then make sure that it happens. Oh sure. Lawsuits seem more likely to succeed. 

Attorney de Leon, a former School Board president, has in the last few years been retired from the practice of law, putting her considerable energy into running her jazz club. She switched her California Bar membership from inactive to active to take this case, and she seems to have enjoyed the experience. She’s been heard to say that if the only way to regain citizen control of public policy is by filing “abuse of discretion” lawsuits when flagrantly illegal actions take place, she might be up for taking some more cases. If she means it, watch out.  

Possibly a weekend front page editor with a sense of irony laid out the big metro daily I saw on Sunday. At the top of the page was an all-to-familiar story about young black men destroyed by absentee parenting and the allure of street life. It featured the obligatory map of Oakland. “OAKLAND: A PLAGUE OF KILLING” was the overline. And the subhead: “Trapped in a bleak world where drugs and violence offer a chance for money and respect, many young black men quickly resort to murder.” 

Below the fold, right below the picture of the barbed wire fence of a state prison, but in pointed contrast to it, was a soft feature about yet another perk for the lactation, latte and laptop set: “While their children play and learn, parents can visit cafe, business center or fitness facility at Ghirardelli Square—Kids [sic] club hopes to double as a parental playground.” Deliberate or not, the juxtaposition of the two stories couldn’t have made a clearer statement about what’s wrong with what’s happening to many young people today. 

San Francisco papers enjoy using Oakland as the poster site for urban horror stories, but the story could just as well have been written about Hunter’s Point, or Richmond, or Vallejo, or Antioch, or even about Berkeley. The young men tracked into their prison cells by the reporter were black, but they could have been Latino, or even, as we learned from last week’s headlines, white boys in Nebraska or Colorado. There are neglected throwaway children everywhere these days.  

It is a familiar story, and its many causes are also familiar to any thinking reader. If the reporter had chosen to, she could have listed them on the back of an envelope. It’s a problem well-described by a medical term: multifactorial. The ready availability of guns, of course. The war on drugs, which has turned possibly unhealthy recreation into a billion-dollar illegal industry. Racially-tinged sentencing disparities, which send black crack cocaine dealers to jail for long terms while white powder cocaine dealers walk.  

But most of all, the cause of what is sometimes called the violence epidemic is the cental organizing principle of American life in the last thirty years, pointed up by the stories juxtaposed on Sunday’s front page: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The parents of a few kids have jobs that pay very well, enough so that they can afford the kind of deluxe child care offered by the Ghirardelli Square club. But other parents work most of their hours at hard jobs that don’t pay much, and their kids are raised on the street with predictable consequences. Mothers of the three convicts featured in the Sunday spread were a nurse, a hairdresser and a night clerk in a liquor store—all jobs requiring long hours and hard work just to pay a few bills. Fathers were mostly unemployed and unemployable, absent, incarcerated or dead.  

It’s easy to blame George W. Bush for this situation, and it wouldn’t be completely wrong to do so. But it was William Jefferson Clinton, lovable old Bill, whose welfare-to-work program kicked parents off Aid to Families with Dependent Children and into dead-end low-paying jobs which left them no time to take proper care of their kids. The welfare moms I knew in the sixties when my own kids were little, though they could never have competed in the job market, loved their kids and knew where they were most of the time, but most low-income parents today can’t manage that.  

The AFDC check made it possible in those days for some family member to be home after school—that’s now an unaffordable luxury for a growing number of families. Most of these families are not white, though some of them, like the mother of the unfortunate young man in Omaha, are. The parents of today’s kids of all races and in all income brackets would benefit from the program at the San Francisco “family club”, but few can afford it (fees start with a $2000 annual membership.)  

Even proven government programs like HeadStart have never come close to being fully funded and available to everyone. My oldest daughter was in one of the first HeadStart classes during Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, since we were living on a graduate student’s stipend in a low-income minority neighborhood. It was spectacularly good, as good as the private nursery schools my younger children and grandchildren attended. If every child in Oakland could be in a program like that from age 2, and if every parent in Oakland made enough money in few enough hours on the job to have some energy left for parenting, fewer boys would end up on the streets and ultimately in jail. But we’ve chosen instead as a nation to give ever-bigger tax cuts to people who are already too rich. 

The Sunday story had a Monday follow-up using the standard formula: first document a disaster, and then offer a feel-good tale of big-hearted individuals making a difference. Here the feel-good factor was supplied by the Big Brothers, one-on-one mentoring for boys in the troubled teen years. The featured encounters were heart-warming indeed, but no panacea for the bigger social problem. (There’s a theory that all boys need to keep them on the straight-and-narrow is a male role model, but Berkeley news in the last week provided some cause to question that idea as a universal solution.) Much more is actually needed—we need to do a huge number of things to create and empower a complete social support network for our young. That means some subsidized downtime for harried mothers and grandmothers of little kids. It means comprehensive school-based programs to make sure that every child has adequate nutrition and competent supervision all day every day, not just over-crowded classes from 8 to 2 and the occasional poor quality slice of free pizza for lunch.  

And it’s not just minority kids, though many African-American children at the bottom of the class structure are still suffering disproportionately from the social consequences of slavery, and many Latino and Asian-American kids are carrying the stress of their parents’ migration struggles. Any child whose family members work too many hours for too little pay is an at-risk child. And as these kids grow up and become over-stressed parents themselves, problems are compounded in each successive generation.  

Families need genuine support for their child-rearing efforts, and where they aren’t succeeding they need efficient and compassionate substitutes to take over some of their responsibilities. What’s needed now is nothing less than a New-Deal-scale program to take care of all our kids, paid for by realistic taxes on the obscene wealth now being amassed by a few favored clients of the current administration. Are any of the Democratic (or even Republican) candidates in the next election ready to get behind this kind of effort? Ask them when they solicit your vote and your dollars. 

—Becky O’Malley 

BIOFUEL / KANDY’S 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In reference to the Nov. 30 article, “Biofuel Project Clashes with Kandy’s Carwash at Corner,” there are some corrections we would like to make. 

First of all, the BioFuel Oasis has no control over whether Kandy’s Car Wash stays or not. The pending eviction is between the landlord and Kandy’s Car Wash—we have not been part of those eviction discussions. 

Secondly, since June we have been in ongoing discussions with Kandy Alford, the car wash owner, about how we can help him in concrete ways. We will continue talking to him both independently and through City of Berkeley mediation. 

Finally, we did not receive preferential treatment from the City of Berkeley in getting some of our permit fees waived: any business can apply to have those fees waived. 

In general, we will be listening to people’s concerns and needs, and try to bring people together to figure out a solution that works for everyone. This is what we’ve been doing in the biodiesel movement and will continue to do wherever we go and whatever we do. For now, we will wait for what happens between the landlord and Kandy’s Car Wash. 

Ace Anderson 

Novella Carpenter 

Melissa Hardy 

Margaret Farrow 

Jennifer Radtke 

Worker-Owners,  

BioFuel Oasis Cooperative 

• 

THE CAL CURSE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to put to rest this nonsense about the Cal football team having been under a curse as a result of the whole Save the Oaks controversy. Those of us who have been following the Bears fortunes for many years can tell you that they are already under curse almost 50 years extant (no Rose Bowl appearance since the 1958 season). Recent examples are the 2004 Rose Bowl snub, the collapse of the 1996 team, a seven-year Big Game losing streak, and several painful fourth quarter disasters against the University of Washington. Trust me, I could go on. The Bears are cursed all right, but it is a condition that long precedes the tree sitters. On the other hand I can tell you with great certainty that next year.... 

Richard Hourula 

• 

BRT AND PARKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is hard to believe that, after all this time, Doug Buckwald still hasn’t heard that AC Transit plans to replace parking that is removed because of In his latest letter, Buckwald writes: “In our case, the lost parking would not be replaced.” 

In fact, AC Transit has said that, where parking is more than 85 percent occupied, it will replace parking and will actually provide more replacement spaces than the number of spaces lost. In other words, any place where there is now a shortage of parking, there will be more parking after BRT is built. 

Since Buckwald’s letter calls for a discussion based on facts, I urge him to contact the planners of this project at AC Transit to confirm this fact. 

Incidentally, in this letter, Buckwald also repeats his call for a debate about BRT. Anyone who has seen him at public hearings, where he tends to read “poetry” and call for shows of hands, knows why no one believes he is capable of having a debate based on the facts. 

Charles Siegel 

• 

THE SURGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In reference to Kenneth Thiesen’s Dec. 11 commentary about whether the surge is working, it is obvious that Theisen has not been to Iraq recently or heard how much safer it is for the Iraqi people now that the insurgents are being beaten down and that at last the Iraq people feel free and eager to help our troops to get rid of these thugs.  

I find it very sad that those such as Mr. Theisen and Nancy Pelosi have such a hatred for Bush, that they would stoop so low as to put their own selfish and political ambitions before the security and peace of a middle East effort which is finally working. I imagine that if Mr. Theisen were to pay a visit to Baghdad he would see for himself that the surge is working and the Iraqi people are yes, believe or not, happy to have American soldiers giving their lives to save them from the horrible tortures of the likes of Saddam, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other Muslim radicals who are trying to corrupt their own religion and spread terrorism throughout the world.  

If anyone thinks we can “speak nice” to these people, they don’t know these terrorists very well. I feel sorry for such misguided people who fail to get the true story, because they are so eager to turn President Bush into a laughing stock. Who do you think will have the last laugh? 

Sue Pflederer  

Williamsburg, Virginia 

• 

LEE ENDORSES OBAMA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Barbara Lee is an incredible woman and I support her decision to endorse senator Barack Obama. He has been a phenomenal presidential candidate who has the vision to bring our troops home. Obama represents dignity and loyalty to his fellow Americans. His intention is to restore the trust of the American people in which was lost during the Bush administration. He is relatively young compared to other candidates but who is to say that change isn’t good? The demographics of this country are transforming because minorities are becoming the majority. It would be nice to have a new president that doesn’t fit the stereotypical image of America.  

Sanovia Jackson 

Oakland 

• 

ANOTHER PARTY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Having just gone into excruciating detail about the Loaves and Fishes Christmas Party a week ago Saturday at Newman Hall, I shall now regale you with an account of the Tele-Care Christmas Party on Sunday, Dec. 9 at Alta Bates Hospital, an equally lively affair. 

In case you’re not familiar with this organization, Tele-Care, is a free telephone service—an Alta Bates Summit Medical Center Program—providing daily calls to people who are homebound, isolated or at risk. Located at the Herrick Hospital Campus at 2001 Dwight Way, volunteers call people every day of the year, holidays included, to check on clients. I, myself, call about 70 people every Monday to check on their well-being. For some, this may be their only contact with the outside world. In addition to this very worthwhile service, social events are also offered, thanks to funding through grants, direct donations as well as matching funds from Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. Thanks to this generous funding, today’s party was a festive occasion clearly delighting the 200 people who attended. There was food enough to feed the city of Berkeley, live music (with line dancing guaranteed to free guests of any inhibitions they might have), table decorations, gifts—the whole works. 

Guests came dressed in their best finery. You should have seen the splendid hats and three-inch high heels on ladies in their ’80s and ’90’s, all of whom look forward to this annual event with great anticipation. I might add, the men looked pretty sharp, too. Granted there were a number of canes, walkers, and wheelchairs, the energy level was so high no one needed help loading their plates at the sumptuous buffet. As with the party at Newman Hall, there was much joy and camaraderie the entire afternoon. We, the volunteer callers, welcomed the chance to see the people we call each week—and they were happy to meet us. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

DELLUMS’ LEADERSHIP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Jeffrey G. Jensen’s Nov. 9-12 column claming that Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums lacks leadership on the issue of crime shows some hypocrisy on the parts of the mayor’s critics. Crime, especially homicide, had been skyrocketing in Oakland during the eight-year reign of former mayor Jerry Brown. 

The murder rates had been going out of control under Brown’s watch. Did Mr. Jensen and others demand that former Mayor Brown show some leadership on combating crime as they are demanding current Mayor Ron Dellums? Did Mr. Jensen and others ask for former Mayor Brown to step aside and let Ignacio De La Fuente run this city as they are doing now to Mayor Dellums? 

Jerry Brown didn’t give a damn about Oakland contrary to what the San Francisco Chronicle columnist Chip Johnson says. While I too hope that Mayor Dellums would show some leadership on some issues such as housing, he is trying his best to repair the damage done by Brown in Oakland in terms of crimes, the environment and diversity. 

Billy Trice, Jr. 

Oakland 

• 

CHEVRON PIPELINE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“Here is what democracy looks and sounds like,” chanted 300 of us—black, Hispanic, Laotian, Caucasian, and Burmese people of all ages, walking a mile and a half in the rain from Richmond to Chevron the day after to Bay Area oil spill, to protest Chevron’s expansion. How timely and exhilarating! 

We must stop Chevron’s proposed 22-mile highly explosive hydrogen pipeline from Richmond through Pinole, Hercules, Martinez, and East Bay Regional Park District’s open space. Chevron proposes using cheaper, more contaminated crude oil in its refinery. Attorney General Jerry Brown’s report of July 9 says: “the plant would emit up to 898,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year” ... “potential greenhouse gas emissions appear to be up to 1,961,592 metric tons.” 

Demand Chevron clean up its current eight polluting sources: Waste water pond contaminants, leaking pressure relief devices, toxic flaring, leaking tankers and barges, trucks, unsealed storage tanks, smoke stacks, and dysfunctional control valves (noted by Community for Better Environment). Chevron increased toxic emissions by 80 percent, while Martinez Shell refinery reduced by 75 percent. 

Bhopal, Mexico, Texas and the Chevron fire of January 2007 were caused by mishandled pipes. We assume human error with the Nov. 7 oil spill of 58,000 gallons that fouled our beaches, air and ocean, killing thousands of wildlife and fish. A United Nations panel of 2,500 scientists says a quarter of earth’s species are in danger unless we eventually end carbon emitting technology. Protect our health, require green alternatives. Contact City Council, Planning Board and representatives. 

Ruth Gilmore 

Richmond 

• 

OPTIONS RECOVERY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have just finished reading a commentary piece by Dan McMullan, entitled “Options Recovery and the Public Commons.” 

The only, and I repeat, only, portion of the piece with which I fully agree is that which answers the questions of “successful programs.” 

“I guess if a program helped just one person and turned his or her life around that would be enough for me.” 

If Mr. McMullan sincerely believed the foregoing statement, that would make the remainder of his tirade completely meaningless. 

Speaking only for myself, I can testify that I was, through no fault of my own (save alcohol abuse), homeless in Berkeley when I applied to the Options Recovery Program. 

I am not now, nor have I ever been imprisoned, 

The “need to feel the pain of my addiction” did not result from “beatings” and broken bones but from physical illness which very nearly cost me my life, and I can flatly state that were it not for Dr. Davida Coady and the Options Recovery Program, I almost certainly would not have survived the extended stay in Alta Bates Hospital with pneumonia. 

Contrary to the statement “... that anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in the Options web is made to ‘feel the pain’” it is fortunate indeed for me to be accepted into the Options Recovery Program and I personally will be forever grateful to Dr. Davida Coady and her staff. 

For me personally, I believe in “Don’t question the methods, observe the results.” 

For Mr. McMullan to pen such a mean-spirited and unconscionable article is, in itself, unfortunate, and borders on unforgivable. 

Mr. McMullan strikes me as a person who would bitch if he was hung with a new rope. 

James M. Malone 

• 

RIGHT ON RED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A man and I were waiting for the walk sign at Central and Carlson in El Cerrito, on Nov. 20 at 8:30 a.m. The light turned green for us to walk and I saw the man who was waiting with me go up in the air. He got hit by a large car. I was devastated. I feel obligated to at least try to prevent this from happening again. 

Turning right on red for vehicles should be prohibited in intersections where pedestrians cross. Also, pedestrians should always be aware of cars turning even if they have the walk light. 

The Department of Transportation has widened roads at the expense of pedestrian safety. The elderly, frail and physically disabled are at an alarming risk whenever they attempt to cross the street. The streets and highways are a war zone. After seeing someone get hit by a car I plan on severely limiting my own car use and getting involved in pedestrian and bicycle safety issues. 

Diane Zappulla 

Richmond 

• 

BERKELEY MINICAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A while back I read a letter in the Daily Planet highly complimenting Berkeley Minicar and I am writing to second everything your reader wrote. 

I am sitting in the Berkeley Minicar Garage at 2498 San Pablo Ave. and Dwight Way while my car is being serviced. For years this group has kept my Honda running beautifully and I have no desire to go elsewhere. In addition to being skilled mechanics who are always willing to take the time to answer my questions and reassure me that my car is going to be OK, they are always cheerful, pleasant, and courteous. I go in and feel I am among friends.  

Thank you Nancy and all you gentlemen at Berkeley Minicar. 

Carolyn Adams 

• 

HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I don’t know whether it was good timing, a good editorial eye, divine intervention or just plain serendipity, but the juxtaposition of Ms. O’Malley’s editorial, “Why Some Kids Go Bad” directly across from Michael Miller’s and Santiago Casal’s commentary “A 2020 Vision for Berkeley Education” could not have been more powerful. 

Ms. O’Malley, your editorial clearly, succinctly and with a much greater degree of compassion and empathy than I was ever willing to give you credit for, outlined the growing divide between the haves and the have-nots and the tremendous cost to our society of that divide. You don’t offer vacuous platitudes or vague sound bites as solutions, nor do you viciously finger-point and lay blame. Rather, you point out what should be obvious to any rational, compassionate human being, and certainly to those of us who self-identify as “progressive,” “liberal,” or even “humane”—that we need to “…create and empower a complete social network for our young.” 

Thank you for recognizing that it is only due to decades of either poorly conceived or deliberately divisive and destructive public policy that so many African-American, Latino and recent immigrant families face such a lack of resources, structures and support that so many take for granted, and that family structures suffer as a result of parents having to find ways just to survive, and have little time, money or energy left to find ways to proactively and creatively parent. 

The point of your editorial, that as a society we need to provide “…genuine support for [families’] child-rearing efforts, and where they aren’t succeeding they need efficient and compassionate substitutes…to take care of all of our kids (italics mine), paid for by realistic taxes on the obscene wealth now being amassed by a few favored clients of the current administration,” becomes much clearer when we read the commentary by Michael and Santiago of United In Action. 

Their commentary clearly lays out for us what we can do about this issue on a very local level. Their clear-sighted 2020 vision for our Berkeley public schools is an idea whose time has come. Clearly, with the 80 percent vote from generous Berkeley voters that passed Measure A for our schools, there is a mandate from our citizens that our public schools are a top priority and a worthwhile investment of our resources. As Michael and Santiago so effectively point out, however, that investment is not working for far too many of our kids. I urge your readers who are concerned about the issues you outlined in your editorial, and shocked about the reality of the failure of our schools when it comes to outcomes for children of color, to join with the efforts of UIA’s Equity Task Force. We cannot afford to wait. 

David Manson 

• 

TEMPTING THE  

TECTONIC TIME BOMB 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On page three of Nov. 16 Planet, under the headline “DAPAC upholds lower skyline, etc.,” we read that the DAPAC subcommittee also is “allowing four (buildings) at 100 feet, four more at 120 feet, and two high-rise hotels which could rise 100 feet or higher.” 

Further down, on page 23, as Quake Tip of the Week and under the heading “Tectonic Time Bomb” we read in the first paragraph: “Big news in the papers recently: USGS seismic scientists have discovered that the Hayward Fault has had a major rupture every 140 years, on average, sine the year 1315. In case you wonder: We’re in the 140th year since the last one.” 

For a connection between these two passages, I urge readers to re-read Harold Gilliam’s critique of San Francisco’s proposed new Transit Terminal (San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 2). It is replete with examples of collapsed structures that all had been confidently built as “state-of-the-art” and “OK” achievements. 

Who in Berkeley will want to be caught on those high top floors or in one of those exceedingly shaded streets or parks below when “the Big One” strikes? How much will this high-rise development do for “re-vitalizing the downtown,” one of the prime purposes stated for all the planning? 

This is the time for us all to ask the City Council for the most informed, scrupulous and deliberate prudence when the downtown proposals come before it. 

No one may forget the ominous USGS warning lest Berkeley find itself tempting what is arguably predictable fate. 

Senta Pugh Chamberlain 

• 

NOBEL PRIZE FOR PETE  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A response to Art Goldberg’s review of the film Pete Seeger: The Power of Song: Pete Seeger may come across as a Paul Bunyan or John Henry prototype, but he is not legendary, by any means—he is profoundly human! I would not deny that he is unusually talented, determined, principled and disciplined, all of which are desirous but hard to achieve human characteristics. That Pete Seeger is a model of integrity to the extent that he is an example for thousands of people is indisputable. But let’s not freeze his humanity with another Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech stereotype. 

Pete Seeger has been proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize from a grassroots petition movement. Nomination from the people upwards has never been done before; it has always been secret and elitist. That is what got us Henry Kissinger’s award! Should he win this is an opportunity to make a groundbreaking effort in behalf of Pete and for the acknowledgment of artists and cultural workers in our society. The singers and songwriters, the poster makers, the muralists, the writers and dancers need to be acknowledged for their contribution to culture, and culture’s contribution to civilization and the necessity of peace for civilization. The petition can be signed at www.nobelprize4pete.org. The petition, put up on the Internet in March, has just passed the 10,000-signature mark. 

We are petitioning the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to nominate Pete on the basis of his lifelong contribution to peace and social justice. The testaments put up by the signers credit Pete with a major influence of changing their lives toward peaceful alternatives. One of Pete’s sayings is: You can’t understand everybody talking at the same time, but you can understand people singing together at the same time.” 

Non-violence ran through the Civil Rights Movement like a mantra; Pete Seeger was a voice of peace, but never of surrender. One of the people who signed the petition said, “on a NYC demonstration, I witnessed Pete turn a potentially explosive situation into a sing-a-long in Central Park after the power was cut and he (with me holding a megaphone as we stood on the barricades) got the first row singing which then reverberated like ripples in water till thousands were singing ‘All we are saying is give Peace a chance’, calming a potentially disastrous situation.” 

We must not pigeonhole Pete Seeger. He is only a man who took himself seriously, yet with a great deal of humor, who seldom deviated from his objectives, who had a wife who helped him be all he could be, even at the expense of her own career. Pete Seeger would honor the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Eleanor Walden 

Committee to Nominate Pete Seeger for the Nobel Peace Prize 

Why the Med Matters 

By Ted Friedman 

The Med on Tely sort of turned 50 Dec. 9 (like a vain movie star, it may be 51), celebrating with folk singers, a giant cake, free coffee, and open mike. 

Some recalled when the Med opened as the Piccolo in 1956 with book lined walls: “You could read those books and get a better education than at the University,” said one. 

The venerable hot-spot is one of only a handful of surviving Tely businesses. But times have changed since ‘56 when the Med had a monopoly on expresso. The craze to be beat and sit for hours in a second-hand smog philosophizing was irresistable. Who knew espresso would be the real “San Francisco Treat,” with espresso chasing you all over town. 

The Beat connection is hardly exaggerated. The short-lived Piccolo (’56-’57) was the logical (and real) extension of North Beach. A year later, the Piccolo was sold to new owners who presided over a charmed period which lasted until the ’90s, when changes in the neighborhood began to take their toll. 

The business was sold again, but by this time was in free-fall. Once ideally located amidst cinemas and bookstores (Moe’s and Shakespeare’s survive, but the last neighborhood cinema, George Pauly’s Tely Rep, closed in ’86). Filthy and troubled (more police calls than a crime wave), the palace of protest was gasping for breath. 

Enter Craig Becker, who saved the Med from becoming just another restaurant (he had promised the family which owned the building to keep it a coffee house). It’s been a tough year and a half, but the tide is turning. 

Now, instead of complaining about being mugged (order has been restored) complainers have noticed the floor (clean it!) and the beloved Med mural (don’t hang coffee house art on it!) 

Perhaps some of the critics have been spoiled by pampering treatment from the new owner, who has gone from being a coffee guzzling conversationalist to the man behind the counter, but, no matter what happens to the mural (Craig has promised to remove the paintings and restore the mural), The Med, which recently hosted the George Pauly memorial (past decedents have had their ashes scattered there) and housed Pauly’s oxygen tank, is emerging as a vibrant community center, perhaps the last hurrah from aging southside hippies. And yes, you can still walk in on a protest planning session (a throwback for the Med’s role in the Free Speech Movement). Talk to Reholio, who has been a barista since before anyone had ever heard of one, twenty-eight years ago. If you talk to Craig, be sure to complain about the floor; tell him to lay off the mural. You’ll feel like you made the scene. 

Ted Friedman is a Berkeley resident. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: One commentary from each side of the current KPFA controversy will run in an upcoming issue. We will refrain from running letters on the topic until then.

Did you know that by shifting just 10 percent of your purchases to locally owned businesses, you can start a cycle that creates more jobs in Berkeley, lightens the city’s environmental impact, expands your own shopping options, builds a stronger community, and helps keep our city a national innovator? 

Just over 40 years ago, Alfred Peet opened a coffee store on Vine Street that revolutionized how Americans drink coffee. The “specialty coffee” industry and Starbucks grew directly out of Peet’s. Some even credit Peet’s with sharpening Americans’ taste buds to appreciate California wines. 

Around the corner on Shattuck Avenue, Alice Waters opened a restaurant that began changing how America eats. Her Chez Panisse demonstrated the delicious meals that could be prepared from fresh, seasonal, local farm products. A growing circle of cooks nationwide embraced her simple principles as “California Cuisine.” 

At about the same time, Berkeley retail innovators like Moe’s Books and Rasputin Records gave the East Bay new ways to shop for familiar cultural products—plus a broadened selection of the unfamiliar. And in a converted automotive workshop further down Telegraph, The Body Shop (now Body Time) began growing from a small, quirky vendor of healthful cosmetics into an international trademark. 

We now take these businesses, and expanded options, for granted. But without their pioneers’ originality, Berkeley (and the whole country) would be a blander place. 

By supporting their successors—today’s locally owned businesses that offer us something just a bit different—we can help nurture Berkeley’s trendsetting businesses of tomorrow. We can keep the revolution turning for ourselves, and for friends and family in places less likely to incubate the offbeat. 

What do we get by shopping at Berkeley’s locally owned businesses? 

• More flexibility, better service. Local owners tend to create a more intimate dialogue that co-creates community tastes. Just as importantly, when you need to request products or services that aren’t already available, there’s no substitute for being able to talk directly to a small business’ owner or longtime staffer. 

Suzan Steinberg’s Stonemountain and Daughter fabric store has served Berkeley and beyond since 1981. “One of the reasons we are still here,” she says, “is that we listen carefully to the community...the whole sewing community. We are now a national and even international destination. Because there are so few unusual, independent, unique fabric stores left, we are now one of the top 10 to 20 fabric stores nationwide.” 

Further up Shattuck Avenue, at Games of Berkeley, Janet Winter says her specialty store’s advantage is that “we offer product knowledge, wide variety, and the knowledge that you’re supporting a local business.” She continues, “Most small businesses are family businesses, too, so you’re supporting not just one person but a whole family.” 

• Less stress on the planet. Locally owned businesses tend to be small businesses, which can readily fit into existing storefronts and buildings. Keeping old buildings in use, and keeping historic commercial districts thriving, fights sprawl. (“Adaptive reuse” may be the ultimate recycling project.) 

For more than 30 years, Berkeley’s Subway Guitars has been building and rebuilding unusual instruments for famous rock stars and anonymous local pickers. “We’re trying to reuse older instruments, which are probably better made,” says owner Fatdog, “and to manufacture instruments that are price-competitive with imports. We have a collaborative industry that creates these instruments, and that helps provide employment for a lot of musicians.” 

Locally owned businesses also tend to purchase more of their goods nearby than nonlocal businesses do. So, when customers shop locally, it translates into less long-distance transportation, less pollution, and a smaller carbon footprint. 

Amy Thomas, who owns the local Pegasus and Pendragon bookstores, adds: “By shopping in the neighborhood, not driving to the mall—and not buying on the Internet and having [delivery services] involved—people walk more. It’s good for you!” 

• A more creative, more compassionate community. Smaller businesses donate, on average, 250 percent more support to nonprofit organizations than do large businesses. Berkeley businesses are primarily small with some 85 percent which employ fewer than five people. And, all of Berkeley is enriched by our unusually high concentration of arts and other non-profit organizations which have made Berkeley a regional destination and deepened our sense of place. 

From social services to disability rights, Berkeley’s nonprofits have made us a regional and national leader in compassionate and innovative problem-solving. 

• A more stable city. Local businesses have local owners, who are invested in Berkeley’s future. They’re more likely to stay put, and less likely to leave empty storefronts on what should be thriving streets.  

• A stronger local economy and tax base. Locally owned businesses are especially likely to recirculate your purchases into payments to local and nearby suppliers. Economists call this a “multiplier effect,” because it steers more jobs and sales-tax revenue into our own community. And several recent studies have found local businesses’ multiplier benefits to be up to four times those of nonlocal businesses: 

A “retail diversity study” of San Francisco and three Peninsula cities found that purchasing from locally owned stores created about 70 percent more local jobs, and 67 percent more overall local income, per dollar spent. In all, the authors concluded that by shifting 10 percent of purchases to local businesses, consumers would add nearly 1,300 new jobs and $200 million in economic activity to the cities studied. (www.civiceconomics.com/SF) 

In Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood, researchers found that locally owned businesses recirculated 58 percent more of consumers’ spending into the Chicago economy than did nonlocal businesses. Per retail square foot, the local businesses’ local multiplier effect was more than 70 percent higher. (www.andersonvillestudy.com) 

• Stronger local identity. In an increasingly homogenized world, how does Berkeley maintain an edge in attracting innovative, good employers and world-class scholars? We benefit by nurturing one-of-a-kind businesses, a distinctive character, and a strong sense of self. How Berkeley can YOU be? 

Deborah Badhia is executive director of the Downtown Berkeley Association. 

Need help finding local sources for what you want? Check these Berkeley neighborhoods’ online business directories: 

www.downtownberkeley.org 

http://telegraphlive.com 

www.gourmetghetto.org 

www.solanoavenueassn.org/saa_directory/directory 

www.elmwoodshop.com 

EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’re looking for locally owned businesses to patronize, besides trying the websites listed above you can also find some (though not all) local businesses through their advertising in the Berkeley Daily Planet and on our website, www.berkeleydailyplanet.com. We thank them for supporting our local, family-owned business with their advertising dollars.

In a special meeting on Wednesday Dec. 5, the Berkeley Zero Waste Commission approved a controversial bid from a Stockton company to sort all rubbish (dry discards) that now comes through the city’s transfer station at Second and Gilman streets. It would cover about 200 tons a day of the 340 or so now landfilled. After sorting, about half the rubbish would go to landfill, some would be recycled, and some would be burned.  

The commission’s final recommendation contained compromises intended to calm recyclers, but whether they will do so is a question. Materials to be trucked include some recyclables existing recyclers could use. Recyclers would, however, have a chance to help rework the facility to intercept more materials before the dumping floor, and to pursue the large redesign and rebuild to achieve zero-waste recovery.  

If approved, the contract would begin at the end of this month and continue through June 2010. It would cost $2 million a year. Public Works Director Claudette Ford assured meeting attendees the contract could be cancelled with 30 days’ notice. Now the proposal goes to City Council for a vote on Dec. 18.  

Several groups, including Urban Ore, the Sierra Club, and the Northern California Recycling Association, have raised concerns. At issue are what problem this solution is intended to solve; the procurement process; burning discards; the environmental impacts of trucking recyclables 90 miles and dead-heading back; and the economic and environmental impacts of developing resources in the Central Valley rather than locally.  

The first question is what problem this proposal solves. The transfer station was built to handle a throughput of 400 tons a day. Currently it receives about 340 tons. City staff say they want to achieve the city’s goal of diverting 75 percent of now-wasted resources from landfill before the goal’s deadline of 2010. The followup question is why hurry without doing fuller analysis of impacts? Staff’s answers vary but fall back to not wanting to redo the RFP.  

The second issue is that the procurement process was done in a way that generated upset. Staff are now walking over hot coals as a result. Materials and tonnages were the first concern. For months staff told the commission they were working on a request for proposals (RFP) to recycle construction and demolition materials. The commission expected to see the RFP before it went out. Instead, at the September meeting, staff reported that the RFP had already been out for three weeks. It covered all rubbish, several times more material than just the construction component.  

Notification and processing vision were another issue. Urban Ore, expected to bid on construction materials recycling, wasn’t notified the RFP was available until it had only a week to respond. But no matter—the RFP envisioned a long-distance haul and bulk mechanical processing of mixed materials, judging by the requirement that any contractor must provide four highway trailers for the city to rent at $2,000 per month.  

Only one bidder responded. It is the Stockton company that bailed Berkeley out of a tough spot by taking materials when Waste Management’s San Leandro facility was closed, Berkeley’s facility was overwhelmed, and nobody closer could help.  

The Stockton facility is 90 miles away, though, and the current dump is 45 miles closer.  

So far there is no public information to answer several environmental and resource questions. What added greenhouse gases and costs will the added trucking generate? How much of a landfill’s greenhouse gases will this processing prevent (landfills’ gases are generated more by rotting materials than by dry ones). How much greenhouse gas will be generated by burning recovered wood instead of composting it? How much could be averted by composting it aerobically. Why not salvage to recover recyclables existing onsite recyclers could use? For example, Community Conservation Centers could use more cardboard, which instead will be sent to Stockton.  

The Northern California Recycling Association has called for analysis of the proposal’s environmental impact, but none has been done.  

The Zero Waste Commissioners tried to make compromises that would calm recyclers’ nerves. But they also wanted to help staff. Staff don’t want to rebid the contract because other bidders now know the Stockton rate and processing system and would shape their bids to out-compete. Stockton might raise its rates, too. So the commission recommended that City Council accept this contract, warts and all. The council will discuss it Dec. 18.  

Due to a copyediting error, a figure was misquoted in George Beier’s Dec. 11 commentary, “Option Recovery Services — Fighting the Good Fight.” The article should have stated that eighty percent of Options clients come from Berkeley.

IRAQ OCCUPATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Conn Hallinan’s Dec. 7 column “The Algebra of Occupation” is a succinct popularization of Guerrilla Warfare I. It is what every military historian and analyst—not to mention counterinsurgency specialists like U.S. Army Special Forces and General Petraeus—know, and are largely helpless to overcome. 

The military solution should be withdrawal, but the geo-political strategy of imperialism is ascendant. Hence victims and victimizers do the suffering. 

Al Sargis 

Oakland 

• 

HYPOCRITES MULTIPLY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read in the Planet and elsewhere that Sea Scout master Eugene Evans was just arrested for molesting some of his young charges after being the chief plaintiff before the Supreme Court against Berkeley denying cheap berthing rights to his group due to the Boy Scouts of America barring gay youths from joining. 

So another self-righteous moralizer joins the homophobic parade of hypocrites, which include the likes of evangelist honcho Ted Haggard, Senator Larry Craig (R), the airport men’s room prowler, and Rep. Mark Foley (R), the would-be hassler of Congressional pages. 

What Richard Brenneman neglected to mention in his story was that atheists are also barred from joining the BSA and thus its Berkeley-affiliated Sea Scouts. This means that the following nonbelievers would have been stiffed had they had been our contemporaries as youngsters: Mark Twain, Bertrand Russell, Thomas Edison, Noam Chomsky, Woody Allen, George Carlin, Percy Bryce Shelley, Albert Einstein and computer tycoons Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. 

Harry Siitonen 

• 

METRO LIGHTING  

EXONERATED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Metro Lighting Exonerated 

Metro Lighting recently received a letter from the acting regional director of Region 32 (Oakland) of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) containing the following findings: 

The Region (Oakland NLRB) has carefully investigated and considered the (unfair labor) charges against Metro Lighting and Crafts... Based on that investigation, I have concluded that further proceedings are not warranted and I am dismissing the charges.” 

The charges dismissed were that Metro Lighting: 

1. Locked out pro-union workers. 

2. Disciplined workers differently after they picketed. 

3. Fired a worker for union organizing. 

The investigation concluded that: 

1. Workers walked out, they were not locked out. 

2. The discipline was in response to the workers’ refusal to obey direct orders and unrelated to the picketing activity. 

3. The worker was terminated for non-union related reasons involving his job performance. 

Therefore the NLRB has determined that these claims were not substantiated.  

Of course we knew that, but it is great to have it in writing from the government! 

Lawrence Grown 

METRO Lighting & Crafts 

• 

OAKLAND POLICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This is following up on J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s Undercurrents column two weeks ago of “Who Will Manage: The Police 12-Hour Shift Decision” Allen-Taylor does mentions the problems associated with trying to fit three ten hour police shift schedules into a 24-hour day, resulting in six hours of unintended overlap time. He does not mention the potentially bigger problem arising from half the patrol department works Sunday to Wednesday, and the other half works Thursday to Sunday, which results in a double overlap all day Sunday and partial quadruple overlap for six hours on Sunday. I have been told that these double and quadruple overlaps results in a 24 percent loss of effectiveness of OPD (Oakland Police Department.) 

The 12-hour shifts proposed by the Oakland mayor and police chief will result in one officer per patrol beat at all times with the total elimination of all the double and quadruple overlaps, which should be an improvement. After some online research, I am not as concerned about the 12-hour days as I initially was. There seem to be about as many different officer schedules as there are police departments. In many police departments the officers intentionally chose 12-hour shifts, and even see it as a positive recruitment factor. In the 19th century, officers often worked much longer hours six days a week, and often bunked at the station house like firemen do today. Yes, fatigue can be a factor. But officers on 12-hour shifts tend to get full days off every second or third day. Research shows that many officers with eight- or 10-hour shifts and less frequent breaks are equally likely to have some fatigue even before their shift begins. Also, many officers with shorter shifts are much more often mandated to extend their shifts, the worst of both worlds. My biggest current concern for Oakland is the morale issue where the Oakland police officers union is dead set against the twelve-hour schedule which they feel is being forced down their throats. 

However, I think Oakland could do even better by following Berkeley’s model which has four day 10-hour staggered shifts which Oakland officers want. Oakland does not seem to be taking advantage of the quieter times to have more officers available during the more active times of the day with much higher calls for service. 

A patrol officer is normally supposed to handle all the calls for service that arise in his beat during his patrol time. Beats in the Oakland flats on the Berkeley-Oakland Border are about 50 blocks in size. Just over the border in Berkeley, beats are a much more manageable 30 blocks in size. However, during the quieter hours of the night and early morning, Berkeley assigns one officer to cover two beats, a total area just slightly larger than one of Oakland’s adjacent beats. This much more closely follows the pattern of calls for service with smaller areas during the busy times and bigger areas during the quiet time. Berkeley does this with just small intentional 15 and 30 minute overlaps for roll call. 

Two subsequent letters by Charles Pine and Phil McArdle responding to Allen-Taylor’s feature article by make the arguments that Oakland should have either 1,100 or 2,000 officers. Many cities, especially on the east coast, would have 1,600 or more officers for a city the size of Oakland. Oakland has approximately 720 officers for 395,000 population, Berkeley has approximate 182 officers for 104,000 population, almost an exact four to one ratio in both officers and population. However, if Berkeley had the same murder rate as Oakland, there would be 20-25 deaths each year in Berkeley rather than the middle single digits. Yes, the demographics are different, but do the demographics account for the entire four or five to one difference in the murder rate? 

Osman Vincent 

• 

IRAN WAR IS NOT  

ABOUT TERRORISM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Bush and his co-conspirators have known since 2003 that Iran is not producing and does not intend to produce nuclear weapons. Why then are they still insistent that war be perpetrated upon the nation and people of Iran? 

The answer is the I.O.C.: the Iran Oil Bourse, which is also called the International Oil Bourse. Although Iran has delayed opening its own new market for oil transactions three times since Spring of 2006 it has begun using the Euro in as many oil transactions as it can. 

When the dollar is no longer used in the majority of oil transactions world-wide the United States will no longer be in a controlling position in world oil markets. This is why ex and not-so-ex kingpins of the oil cartel in D.C. are pushing for war. 

Glen Kohler 

• 

PLANET COVERAGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is with great pleasure that I read Ron Lowe’s weekly editorials...I mean letters. Becky, I can’t imagine what he’s done to gain such favor with you. Johanna Graham is another who seems to share your special editorial slant and enjoys a regular space for her misinformed rants. I so enjoy theirs and others’ perspectives on the world that find their way into this silly paper. It’s so dang entertaining! 

Anyway, I look forward to reading your fair and balanced coverage from outside the annual AIPAC dinner coming up. 

May I pass along any message on your behalf to all the elected officials inside the event? Remember, they’re ALL committed supporters of the Jewish state 

Jonathan Wornick 

• 

CANYON OAKS II 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Canyon Oaks II, as is, paves the way for destructive over-development in Richmond/El Sobrante Hills. The Hillside Ordinance calls for minimal grading and tree removal. The Tentative Tract Map imposes a typical suburban subdivision layout on steep hills and riparian corridors. The result is excessive grading and tree removal, contradicting the intent of the Hillside Ordinance. 200 to 400 significant trees are proposed to be removed where the Ordinance calls for careful consideration of tree-by-tree removal when “reasonably” necessary; implying only when other options are unavailable. 

Tree removal or grading should be allowed only after the CLB is formally established and irreversible. A prior, widely accepted working model should be presented for all to see, and then followed. 

Parts of the unusually large 32 lower lots could be left in their natural state (ungraded, with no trees removed). Homes could be placed flexibly. This could preserve significant wildlife habitat and make the project more appealing to both residents and neighbors. 

The upper lot pads for the custom home should be carefully conditioned. The upper lots are extraordinary habitats, laterally steep and tremendously scenic. These homes should not be towering mansions.. 

We want to condition Canyon Oaks II so that it adequately conforms to the Hillside Ordinance and General Plan; a win-win solution. This appeal will be heard at 7 p.m. Dec. 11, Richmond City Council Chambers, 1401 Marina Way South. 

Herk Schusteff 

El Sobrante 

• 

MORE ON CANYON OAKS II 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

At the Canyon Oaks II planned development site, a grove of at least 200 healthy, mature California Live Oak trees are slated for removal along the northern steep slope. This fails to weigh the ecological impacts on the larger community. Hillside stability will be compromised. Tree dwelling mammals, birds and insects lose their homes, food sources and nesting areas. Ground mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects lose damp, shady areas that protect them from hot sun. 

Trees are nature’s most energy efficient air-cooling, filtering, and oxygen enriching systems. Loss of shade on this expanse of hillside creates a hotter microclimate. In addition to compromised air quality, this means increased water needs (for artificially imposed landscaping) and more electricity for home cooling. It seems contradictory for Richmond to allow this, while committing to “go green". While environmentally friendly industry should be applauded, could they also commit to “stay green"?  

The words “minimizing impacts, preserving and integrating natural features” appear repeatedly throughout the Richmond Hillside Ordinance, yet the Canyon Oaks II development is moving through, as is, in spite of failure to comply with these regulations. Please attend the Dec. 11 Richmond City Council meeting. There is a better solution. 

Mary De Benedictis 

El Sobrante 

• 

BRT’S IMPACT ON BUSINESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Steve Geller keeps implying that I have avoided addressing the likely impact on local businesses if Bus Rapid Transit were implemented in Berkeley. That’s simply untrue. I have consistently stated that the removal of on-street parking spaces on Telegraph Avenue and in downtown would hurt small businesses.  

AC Transit’s current BRT proposal calls for the elimination of many parking spaces -- without replacement. Anyone who doubts that this would affect business revenue should talk with the merchants on Telegraph whose businesses suffered significant drops in income after the city removed parking spaces in front of their stores earlier this year. (The spaces have since been restored). 

Comparisons between Eugene, Oregon’s BRT system and AC Transit’s proposal are of limited value because conditions are different here. For example, their BRT route is not lined with businesses that rely upon on-street parking, while our route would pass businesses that need this parking along virtually the entire route. In addition, when parking was removed in Oregon, the planners made sure that ample alternate parking was available nearby, while in our case, the lost parking would not be replaced. 

I would be happy to discuss BRT with Steve Geller or anybody else at any time. I am 

hardly guilty of trying to duck this issue. As your readers know, I called for a public debate on this topic months ago, and I am still waiting for any BRT proponent to take me up on this offer. 

I think the public would benefit from a fuller discussion of the facts surrounding 

the BRT controversy. That’s our best hope to avoid making a disruptive $400 million mistake that would cost even more millions of dollars to correct later. 

Doug Buckwald 

• 

DECISIONS, DECISIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

So which candidate am I rooting for as our next president? I vacillate on this decision almost daily. One day I’m high on Hillary, the next day it’s Obama. But this is what I know. In light of the horrendous Omaha and Colorado killings, whichever candidate demonstrates the courage to risk the wrath of the National Rifle Association by demanding tighter gun control laws will win my vote. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

CITY POOLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Several years ago I remained in “good faith” as I watched and worked with the city, particularly the Parks and Recreation Department, to find a way to keep our city pools open for use by the citizens of Berkeley. 

In 2001, the first year I was involved with P&R, COB, and citizen pool users in the effort to keep pools open, we experienced the same tactics and lack of good faith communication expressed in the Dec. 7 Daily Planet article, “Swimmers Irate after City Decides to Close the Last Open Pool.” It all sounds sadly and, unfortunately, totally familiar! 

Five and a half years ago, in that year’s attempt to close our pools, we found that apparently at least several thousands of dollars collected for city swim programs had been deposited in a private account and not turned over to the City of Berkeley. 

After we discovered and exposed the person responsible for these city swim programs and the money involved, said person was placed on administrative- leave with full pay pending investigation. I was told I would probably be called for testimony before the police department in regard to what I knew. But I was never called. 

The better part of a year transpired until the city again decided to close the pools in 2002. Citizens, now naming themselves the “United Pools Council,” attempted once again to work with the COB/P&R Dept. to find a way to keep pools open. During this time, he “United Pools Council” (UPC) raised over $30K in a fund raising marathon. Evidently, however, none of our efforts were sufficient. The COB/P&R had decided to close pools, and close pools they would—regardless, regardless, regardless! The decision had been made. 

But the most astonishing revelation of this period was when we found out that the person, “alleged” to have fraudulently collected several thousands of dollars in pool revenues which were never turned over to the city, was still on administrative leave, at full salary, pending investigation. This was 10 months after his initial removal. His annual pay was equal to the amount stated by P&R needed to keep a pool open for the entire year. 

Since then, it has become impossible to get any additional information about this case. When I/we call City of Berkeley Parks and Recreation Department to inquire of the status of the investigation, I/we are told, it is city policy that they are not allowed to discuss personnel matters. 

However, I don’t see this as a personnel matter. I see it as an investigation into a possible criminal matter. 

To this day, I have no idea what has happened in this matter. For all I know, the person in question may still never have been investigated, may still be on administrative leave, receiving full pay, pending investigation. 

What does this say to you about City of Berkeley? I know what it says to me. 

Sydney Vilen 

• 

OUR PLACE IN  

HISTORY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The United States used to be a symbol of justice, fairness, democracy, and human rights. We cannot say that we have a perfect history. However, we have never gone down as low as we stand today. The first decade of this millennium will put the United States side by side with dictatorial governments that committed atrocities and behaved with blatant disregard for international law. As a U.S. citizen and Army veteran, I would love to see justice and true democracy restored in my country. We owe it to ourselves, our children, and our place in history. 

Gustav Davila 

• 

STEM CELL RESEARCH  

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last month, independent research teams from Japan and the University of Wisconsin announced that they had successfully reprogrammed adult skin cells to function as embryonic stem cells (ESCs.) This means that researchers need not engage in cloning for the purpose of deriving ESCs; and, importantly, there’s even less good reason to subject women to the health risks of ovarian hyperstimulation to extract the eggs needed to do the cloning. Further, one of the Wisconsin researchers, James Thompson, who also happens to be one of the pioneers who first derived ESCs, confesses now that he had always been uncomfortable doing ESC research. According to a bioethicist he consulted, the “technological power” of the research was disturbing. What would happen, for example, if someone were to place human stem cells into a rat’s brain? For Thompson, then, reprogramming adult cells came as a relief. Similarly, Ian Wilmut, one of the researchers responsible for cloning the sheep, Dolly, is so taken with cell reprogramming that he intends to give up cloning. “It seems we should all focus our efforts on reprogramming,” said Wilmut. So why does the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) insist that cloning research must continue? 

The justification for continuing ESC cloning seems to be that the new technology of cell reprogramming is too new and untried. Reprogrammed cells must prove themselves to be “pluripotent” (i.e. capable of maturing into other cell types) and safe. But truth be told, ESC cloning research is itself new and highly speculative. And its safety is far from certain—ESCs cause tumors. So why should ESC research—relatively new, highly speculative and of questionable safety—be held as standard bearer? Could it be that the potentially lucrative link between cloning and human genetic engineering accounts for the reluctance to drop cloning? The fact is that CIRM already has dedicated funds to conduct cloning research and millions of dollars in patenting opportunities are at stake. If CIRM wanted to avoid human genetic engineering and cared more about women’s health it would stop funding cloning research and invest solely in the less socially fraught enterprise of cell reprogramming. 

M. L. Tina Stevens 

Diane Beeson 

Alliance for Humane Biotechnology 

• 

EDUCATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Without a doubt, I can honestly say, I am overjoyed by the three commentaries the Daily Planet printed as a response to my Nov. 23 commentary, “The State of Education.” Given the fact that my motivation to write this article derived from a sense of duty to our young people, it is extremely rewarding to see my hope for a dialogue realized. I am also pleased that several individuals found cause enough in my words to defend the education system as an institutional success. Obviously, this is not a stance I find very compelling, as my experiences as an educator substantially differ from those individuals who wrote responses to my article. 

I believe these individuals fail to understand, however, that I wrote my article in deference to a personal inclination to protect the status-quo of my profession. In his respect, my article robbed from me, the ability to insulate myself against the spiritual atrophy of personal failure. The phenomenon of personal failure is something that haunts teachers as they assess their life’s work in the shadow of the systemic failure that defines their trade over the last quarter century. 

This is not to say that everyday is a failure in our public schools. In regard to this point, I would be forever in the debt of any person who could point out where exactly in my previous article, as the three respondents claim, I stated that nothing positive ever happens in our schools. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to find that particular passage. At this point I would be doing my self-esteem a huge service by finding this passage, removing it and imploring the Daily Planet to reprint the revised version. 

All kidding aside, in my life I have found that people attack a person’s credibility to win an argument only if they feel that facts don’t back up their claims. Therefore, it would be arrogant of me to sit here and deconstruct every article that was written in response to mine, given that the crux of these argument were, like mine, anecdotal. If these individuals view the quality of our schools as adequate, I cannot argue against their contention, by virtue of the fact that I was never in the classroom with any of these individuals. The only thing I can do is report the world as I see it. From where I am standing, our schools do not present as rosy a picture as these teachers implore upon the readers of this newspaper to believe. Hopefully, the greater percentage of people who consider my article carefully, would realize that I made no pretense to undermine the individual educator or student, only the system as a whole. Frankly, I am confused by the fact that trained educators (assuming they are formally trained), as the authors of these articles, can not distinguish between conjectural and anecdotal writing. 

Another thing that confounds me is that no letters were printed in this newspaper which hinted at anything positive I wrote in my article. If no letters were forthcoming in this respect, I would be very surprised. I make this claim, because I can attest to the fact that there are many educators who agree with my assessment of our educational system. Anyone who has had the chance to spend a day in a teacher’s lounge in the bay area would not argue this claim. I am aware that I cannot speak for every educator, and there are certainly those eternally optimistic few who scoff at my views. In fact, I have had a several discussions when a teacher disagreed with me outright. Although I didn’t agree with them on many of the issues we discussed, at least they had the forethought to utilize proper grammatical structure when addressing me. 

Jonathan Stephens 

• 

HUCKABEE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mike Huckabee’s rise in polling numbers, voter approval, is coming from one source only—white evangelicals and fundamentalists —and is not in anyway a representative picture of the overall voting electorate. Huckabee’s support comes from the religious right, from a group intent on tearing down the wall between church and state and having prayer in school. Huckabee represents a segment of society that is anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-immigration pro-war and out of touch with reality. 

Has United States become the bully pulpit of religious politics and does America need another Republican in the White House expanding his ministry? 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

• 

KPFA ELECTIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It is no surprise that KPFA ( 94.1 FM) listeners elected five Bay Area notables in the recent Local Station Board election (Sherry Gendelman, Warren Mar, Matthew Hallinan, Susan McDonough and Dianne Enriquez, all Concerned Listeners) who ran positive campaigns focussed on the strength of their experience and their vision for KPFA. Four candidates from other slates were also elected. Perhaps it also should not be a surprise that candidates who have lost, such as Steve Zeltzer, are now contesting the election. What is alarming is that Pacifica Election Supervisor Casey Peters has indulged in partisan behavior throughout the election process and is now threatening not to certify the election on grounds that can only be described as politically motivated. 

We would be the first to point out the problems with this election. The most egregious violation of Pacifica’s Fair Campaign rules was the serial defammation by one slate, personally attacking Concerned Listener candidates as well as KPFA staff and board members, which was published with Pacifica resources and sent to the tens of thousands of KPFA subscribers with their ballots. Despite the fact that Peters allowed this to happen, we feel that it is in KPFA’s best interest for the election to be certified rather than going to the expense of another election, which has cost the station $70,000 of the listeners’ money, although we are confident if it were done over, our slate would win again. 

Zeltzer is challenging the election based on specious grounds, claiming that commentaries written by KPFA staff in the Planet violated the Fair Campaign rules. Those rules state that no station resources may be used to advocate in favor or against any candidate, but staff clearly have First Amendment rights and are allowed to state their opinions in non-Pacifica public fora. Zeltzer even argues that an email written in 2005 by radical journalist Doug Henwood about Bob English, who ran for the board this fall, was a violation of this election’s Fair Campaign rules! 

Zeltzer also argues that the elections should be overturned because of an email Larry Bensky sent endorsing Concerned Listeners. Bensky, who is no longer a KPFA employee, emailed listeners who had asked to stay in touch with him following his retirement. He contacted the Local Elections Supervisor beforehand to see if it was okay for him to do this and was never told he should not send it. Pacifica Election Supervisor Peters now refuses to certify the elections until Larry Bensky makes a public statement in favor of listener-elected boards and vows to never endorse candidates in any future election -- which Pacifica does not ask of any staff or listener and which is a violation of his free speech rights. Peters has already punished Bensky by banning him from Pacifica’s airwaves until Peters’ term is over, extended into 2008. 

It is time for Peters to move beyond partisanship and act in KPFA’s best interest by certifying this election, which had record listener turnout, so that the Local Station Board can get to work to improving that wonderful and priceless resource. 

Mary and Jon Fromer, Warren Mar, Susan McDonough, PhoeBe Sorgen, John VanEyck, Sherry Gendelman, Conn Hallinan

Who “owns” the commons is, indeed, the right question but we must ask it clearly. There are two, relevant meanings of “own” in modern English: Ownership in rights, and ownership in disposition. Children use the latter sense when, for example, one might say “A-ha—I owned you in that videogame,” meaning that the speaker’s skills were so fabulous the competitor couldn’t do much. 

You can see the difference in meaning in a statement like: “Cal owns the grove but the protesters have owned the trees.” 

O’Malley ponders the difference between Telegraph and another, posher neighborhood. In both she finds boisterous, potentially quite dangerous behavior, offenses against the public health, infringements on the enjoyment and mobility of others through the space—in short, she uncritically finds in both places nothing but “city life.” 

Finding no serious difference in the sharing of public space between the two places, she then makes a very serious insinuation: that those of us who want new rules must be acting out of prejudice against poverty, tattoos, general scruffiness, and age. In short, she finds us to be, at best, uptight, snobbish squares. Sells papers, I guess. 

But, who “owns” the commons is the right question. By definition, all of us collectively own the commons “by right.” It should follow that no one or group of us owns it by disposition. 

So, what is the difference between Telegraph and some of the posher neighborhoods? Why is a dog pooping on a school yard less of an issue than a desperate homeless person, for want of a restroom, pooping in some comparable place? Why is a sprawl of strapping bikers less of an issue then a resting, itinerant, scruffy youth? 

The difference is in what, on the basis of history, we expect the effectiveness of policing to be. 

If the bikers in the posh neighborhood start to get too out of hand, the police (more likely the zoning commission) will be called. Owners of stores, bikers, neighbors, and other people from town will all participate. Complainers, the accused, and the town will all submit to an orderly, civil, conflict resolution process. Those people are accountable. We live by rule of law in those neighborhoods, even if compliance with the law is perpetually imperfect.  

In contrast, the problems on Telegraph have been illusive and troubling for as long as I’ve known the place (about 20 years). It ebbs and flows but, on average, you’ve got: (a) a small set of poor, some homeless, arguably pretty darn nuts people that everyone around has known and loved for years; (b) a larger set of adventure-seeking itinerant youth who have long found some of the free floating socialist spirit of Berkeley a great place to regain one’s feet, or at least energy to resume seeking; (c) a set of truly criminal youth who prey on group (b) and become both cover and retail front for petty drug trade, fencing trade, etc. (d) a longer-lived, multi-generational set of loose criminal organizations who compete to gain the benefits of group (c). 

In good times, group (d) is extremely benign, thus group (c) is well policed, group (b) is helped rather than exploited, and group (a) gets well fed and a lot of work helping group (b). In bad times, this soft, friendly atmosphere becomes a hot potato because competition for the economic niche of group (d) increases: people come to Berkeley hoping to gain “territory". With that increased stakes, things do start to get nasty and aggression by members of groups (c) and (d), especially, comes to be rewarded by group (d). It’s all quite Shakespearean when you see it up close. 

In short, the reason that some people feel unsafe going to Telegraph Avenue is because of a criminal conspiracy to make them feel that way. Our police, by virtue of our carefully restrained laws, are hampered in their right to directly address this conspiracy. 

Well, “conspiracy” is too strong a word. It isn’t that organized. There is no evil mastermind, just lots of people trying to survive in the moment. The pattern whereby people who might put a foot down about the criminal trade are chased away before they can form a complaint is just a natural side-effect of how the economics work out. 

This is bad news for O’Malley, in my view. When she says we should not crack down on the reports that places like downtown and Telegraph are out of hand, she is basically helping “group (d)” during a period of time when the criminality and aggression are on the rise. 

People in the posh neighborhoods, when they behave badly, are a problem, certainly. I’m all in favor of reminders to clean up your dog poop, leave room on the side walk, control your animals, etc. It’s good to have conversations about those hypocrisies. But—it’s entirely folly to glibbly equivocate between those issues and the smoldering brush fire we see in less fortunate neighborhoods. 

Thomas Lord is a Berkeley resident.

Dan McMullan’s charges against Options Recovery (see last Tuesday’s Commentary) are simply baseless and cannot go unchallenged. 

Let’s take a quick look at the facts.  

Our Facilities: Options operates a free-of-charge drug and alcohol recovery center out of its offices at 1931 Center St. (the old, once-glamorous Veterans Building near City Hall). The building, which requires an extensive earthquake retrofit, also houses facilities for BOSS and the Berkeley Food and Housing Project. Most of Options’ classes take place on the old ballroom floor, and the staff is crowded onto the stage. In addition to this building, Options operates a mental health clinic and has four clean-and-sober group living homes housing 55 clients. We also operate a car wash to supplement our shoestring budget. (Might I suggest that car wash gift certificates are the perfect holiday gift!) 

Our Clients: Eighty percent of our clients are from Berkeley—not “mostly Oakland” as claimed by Mr. McMullan. Sixty-two percent of our clients are homeless when they enter the program. 99 percent of Options clients are classified has having extremely low or poverty-level income. About 60 percent of our clients are African American, about 30 percent are white, and the rest are Hispanic, Native American, or Asian.  

Our Program: The program is a year long, and consists of detox referral, denial management, a three-phase recovery program, and aftercare. We have about 250 men and women in the program at any given time and see about 800 clients a year. If necessary, we also offer housing in our group homes, coordinated mental health services, and acupuncture. Our recidivism rates are consistently significantly better than state and national averages. Yet Mr. McMullan calls our graduations ceremonies “smoke and mirrors.” Such an insult to the clients who’ve made the tough passage from addiction to recovery! Please come and see for yourself. The tears of pride and determination, the joyful reunification of families—some things just can’t be faked.  

Our Funding: Almost all of our funding comes from foundations, state reimbursements, and private contributions. In addition to free use of the Veterans Building, Options receives about $50,000 annually from the City of Berkeley, which ranks it in the lower-tier of Berkeley-sponsored non-profits. We have recently been budgeted for receiving up to $200,000, though this depends on the actual availability of those funds in the future. 

Our Board: Options is committed to using the system that we have. We believe that all of us—from service providers to the criminal justice system—are partners in the fight against substance abuse. Reforming the system—rather than fighting it—is the most pragmatic way to help our clients get back on their feet. For this reason, our board and donors consist of service providers, police officers, retired judges, probation officers and committed citizens.  

My Role: I joined the board because I wanted to be part of the solution for Telegraph Avenue and People’s Park. (It’s also categorically untrue—and just plain mean—to suggest that I “whipped up fear and hatred for the poor and homeless” in my campaign for the City Council. Really, Dan.) Over the last six months, I’ve spent hundreds of hours getting the database on-line so that we can be more efficient and see more clients each year. 

As for Dr. Davida Coady, the executive director, there’s no doubt that she’s a passionate advocate for the program and is working hard to shake up the status quo. She’s got a quick smile and a quick tongue. But there’s also no doubt that she gives selflessly of her time, money, and heart. And as the bumper sticker says, “well behaved women rarely make history.” Rock on, DC! 

Finally, on a personal note, I hope that all of Options’ volunteers and staff realize that for every Dan McMullan there are thousands of Options supporters. To paraphrase the Serenity Prayer, we’ve got to accept the things we cannot change—there will always be a few detractors. But there are many things we can change. We can work hard every day to help our clients get off drugs and on their feet (many of you know first-hand how difficult this struggle is). We can help our clients get into housing and get their kids back. We can try to rectify the injustices of an often unfair world—one client at a time, one day at a time. 

You are all doing good work and fighting the good fight. Keep the faith. 

George Beier is a board member and volunteer for Options Recovery Services. 

Ever since the Bush regime began its escalation of the war in Iraq by sending tens of thousands of more troops this year, media pundits and politicians have been debating whether the “surge” is working. In the last couple months, the administration and it apologists are claiming that the escalation has been working and that more time should be allowed to give the Bush regime the chance to prove that the “new strategy” will be successful. But the debate has been waged entirely on the wrong terms.  

The real question that needs to be asked is who benefits from a “successful surge.” 

Bush administration supporters claim that violence is down. They cherry pick the statistics and announce that Iraq is now “more secure” than some other arbitrarily picked date. Others, including many Democrats pick other statistics and argue the opposite. But neither side discusses what the real purpose of the escalation is and why it is not in the interests of the Iraqi people or the people of the world for the Bush regime to be “successful” in Iraq. 

The initial invasion of Iraq in 2003 had nothing to do with making the Iraqi people more secure, but everything to do with ensuring U.S. control of the Middle East in order for U.S. imperialism to dominate the world. So why do people think that when the Bush regime escalated the war this year that suddenly their motives have somehow changed. Despite all the rhetoric, “success” for the Bush regime still is the control of Iraq and the region in order achieve and maintain hegemony over the world. 

Bush and his henchmen are responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the displacement of over four million, and the daily horrors for millions of others. So when we hear Bush or his generals cite some stats about fewer deaths this month, does anyone think they really care how many Iraqis were killed in the latest reporting period, how many returned to their homes, or how many now do or do not have electricity, jobs, potable water, or other daily necessities to survive. 

“Security” in Iraq is only a concern for the Bush administration to the extent that the U.S. Empire is secure. And if the Bush regime achieves security for the empire that will only make the rest of the world and its population less secure. Let us assume for the sake of argument that the escalation will achieve relative success for the Bush regime and that they are not just cooking the books. This will only allow it to launch further attacks, most likely against Iran. The most recent National Intelligent Estimate report stating that Iran is not seeking nukes at this time will not deter the administration from launching a new war. 

When the regime launched the war against Afghanistan and quickly achieved “success” by overthrowing the Taliban regime it did not rest on it laurels. It immediately began preparations for invading Iraq. Top regime people, such as Cheney, have openly declared that the war they launched is a multi-generational or lifetime war. Every “success” achieved will only mean more death and destruction for the people of the country attacked and ultimately for people throughout the world. Was Hitler satisfied when he took over Austria, then Czechoslovakia, and then country after country? Hitler’s modern- day counterparts are no different. 

The people of Iraq have no interest in seeing the “surge succeed.” And as people who reside in the belly of the beast we must do everything possible to not only expose what our rulers are doing but to bring an end to their imperialist dreams as soon as possible. Doing so will be the only real success for the people of Iraq, the people of the world and the people here at home. Failure to halt the “success” of the Bush regime will only mean more of the same and worse for generations to come. 

Kenneth J. Theisen is an organizer with the World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime! 

We are blessed to live in a community with international renown for having one of the most prestigious universities in the world. We are also blessed in that we nurture some students in our own K-12 schools who are sought after by some of the most elite universities in the country.  

Berkeley is also known for being at the forefront of meaningful change. We pat ourselves on the back for being the third most sustainable community in the country, the first school system to desegregate, the birthplace of the disability civil rights movement, or for our progressive stands against war, capital punishment, and the exploitation of others. Such distinction is part of what makes us proud to live here. 

Yet, underlying this activist and progressive image of ourselves is a serious misperception, a disconnect really, between how we think our school system is perfoming and what actually goes on in our K through 12 schools. We are miles away from having the kind of educational system that many, if not most, of us mistakenly believe we already have. 

75 percent score at Basic or Below 

In September 2007, a new generation of our beautiful children began kindergarten in the Berkeley school system. They will graduate in the year 2020. They and their parents entered the system full of hope and excitement that they were beginning a journey toward a much-improved life. They entrust that hope to their wonderful teachers, to the district and to this community.  

Unfortunately, if we do not change things dramatically, so many of those who began kindergarten this year in Berkeley will end up by the time they reach grade twelve in the year 2020 at the same or at a worse level of “achievement” than when they started. When an African American or Latino child starts in our elementary schools and is tested in grade 2, only 25 percent score at “Proficient or Advanced.” That means that 75 percent score at “Basic or Far Below Basic.” Compare that to 75 percent of white children who score at “Proficient or Advanced” (25 percent scoring at basic or far below). Move that along to high school and 75 to 85 percent of African American and Latino children still score at “Basic or Far Below Basic,” and about 20 percent of White children score at that level.  

Lost potential 

These scores are not just numbers, these are real children and families failing in our community, and it is profoundly hurtful. How does a young person or a parent internalize the stigma of the message—a message that represents the daily loss of potential, slipping away across ground that cannot be easily made up, like trying to catch a train pulling out of the station? That slippage, that distance, is like a wound aggravated by the regular comparison to those who excel through their advantage – those on the train. To the parents and children left behind, it creates resentment, division and a profound loss of hope. One ugly outcome of the disparity, which is not so uncommon among those who set the style standards for youth culture today, is to wrap it all up into a self-fulfilling rationalization to not only stop trying, but to even ridicule effort and intelligence. As the rapper Saafir tells us, it gets to the point that “showing your brains implies that you are weak.” Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. 

An urgent 2020 Vision 

Because school failure is a Whole Community problem not just a school problem, we will ultimately need to challenge and systematically mobilize all sectors of Berkeley into the effort—the city, our local colleges, the teachers union, our profit and non-profit organizations and businesses, and the parents. We do not need to look backward for blame, but rather forward at solutions to the real culprit. That culprit is failure and we need to urgently prioritize the issue, see it for the crisis that it is, and mobilize the entire community to invent or import the proven programs and leaders that can convert failure to success.  

Our 2020 Vision is the blueprint that guides us in developing the structure, support, resources and relationships to help our children attain educational success at all levels. The Vision makes this the first year of our partnering effort with all sectors of Berkeley to educate all of our children in a total community approach.  

The most immediate and urgent step we can do to accomplish the 2020 Vision is to make absolutely sure that the new Superintendent (still not finalized) is a demonstrated leader in making achievement the Number One educational priority.  

Beyond that, the effort to change the course of education will require (1) a bold new educational framework and model, (2) a refocusing & integration of city, school, university, and business and private resources (3) an extensive expansion of parental engagement, (4) an aggressive recruitment of innovators and professionals at all levels, and (5) the development of more culturally sensitive and student centered measures of educational success that do not stigmatize a whole class of people.  

Our schools, particularly the elementary level, are the central institution through which we can preventively address an entire range of community issues before they become resistant, if not impossible, to turn around. At the same time we can deliver what the “public” in public education is all about—the primary instrument of making outcomes humanly enriching and equitable. That is the promise we need to make to the 2020 generation. 

There are solutions 

Jeffrey Sachs, the author of “The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time,” argues that “There are two overwhelming barriers in this country: People think there are no solutions other than what we are doing, and that we are doing enough.”  

There ARE solutions and we are NOT doing enough! For too long we have been asked to be patient. We cannot be patient any longer. Let’s address educational equity with the urgency that it merits and make success for all of our children a central benchmark of what Berkeley is all about?  

Please join us in supporting the formation of a city-wide partnership, spearheaded by an Equity Task Force made up of local and national experts, who will help us jump start our children’s world class educational journey to 2020 and beyond. 

Santiago Casal and Michael Miller are members of United In Action, a multi-ethnic organization devoted to making the case for urgent change in our schools. Combined they sent four children through 52 years of BUSD education. 

Nothing seems quite so odd as the contention made by advocates on both sides of the “waterboarding” issue that the use of torture is against American tradition. 

Which American tradition, one wonders. 

We could review the tradition of torture inherent in the American system of plantation slavery, for example, or the later Deep South lynchings of African-Americans who were forced to confess to various crimes—rape and murder—by the application of lighted torches to various parts of their bodies, or the use of such instruments as the “jack” in American prisons in the 1920s as described, from first-hand observation, in the 1932 book I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! by journalist and former prisoner Robert E. Burns: “The ‘jack’ is a relic of the ancient Spanish Inquisition—a medieval instrument of human torture. The three convicts sat on bench … [and] placed both hands and feet through holes specially arranged to receive them. … The Warden worked a long lever which locked the convicts’ hands and feet in the holes by means of the boards coming together on their ankles and wrists… The bench on which the convicts were sitting was pulled from under them. This left [them] hanging in midair by their ankles and wrists … Soon their bodies became taut and strained to the point of excruciating torture. There they hung in agony for one solid hour.” 

But we don’t have to go all the way to Georgia in the 20s for such examples. Witness the following testimony, recently published: 

“He put some handcuffs on my ankles, then he took one wire and put it on my ankles, he took the other wire and put it behind my back, on the handcuffs behind my back. Then after that, when he—then he went and got a plastic bag, put it over my head, and he told me, don’t bite through it. I thought, man, you ain’t fixing to put this on my head, so I bit through it. So he went and got another bag and put it on my head and he twisted it. When he twisted it, it cut my air off and I started shaking, but I’m still breathing because I’m still trying to suck it in where I could bite this one, but I couldn’t because the other bag was there and kept me from biting through it. So then he hit me with the voltage. When he hit me with the voltage, that’s when I started gritting, crying, hollering … It feel like a thousand needles going through my body. And then after that, it just feel like, you know—it feel like something just burning me from the inside, and, um, I shook, I gritted, I hollered, then I passed out.” 

The testimony is not from an international terrorist suspect imprisoned at the now-abandoned dungeons at Abu Ghraib, or from the Guantanamo Bay “interrogation” rooms, or from one of the various torture chambers supposedly maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency in various “friendly” nations around the world and outside the U.S. borders. 

The statement comes from Anthony Holmes, a former inmate of the Illinois Death Row, describing to Illinois Special State’s Attorneys how he was coerced and tortured into a 1974 murder confession by then Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge.  

In one of the many hearings surrounding the Chicago police torture scandal, police officials stipulated that another former police detainee would testify to the following: 

“Melvin Jones will testify that on Feb. 5, 1982 … he was taken to an Area II interrogation room where he was handcuffed and questioned by Area II detectives concerning his knowledge and participation in a murder. When he failed to give information implicating himself in the murder, respondent Burge entered the room and told Jones that he was going to talk … Burge had Jones cuffed to a second ring and then produced and plugged into the wall socket a wooden box measuring approximately 10’’ x 6” x 6”, with tweezers and a long nail type device. … Burge pulled down Jones’ pants and shorts and, using the electrical device, shocked Jones three times, on the foot, thigh, and penis. While he was shocking Jones, Burge demanded that Jones talk. He told Jones that he had also shocked “Satan” (Anthony Holmes) and “Cochise,” forcing them to crawl all over the floor … Burge also tied a sock in Jones’ mouth. … Later, Burge also struck Jones with a stapler. When Jones continued to deny knowing anything about the murder, Burge again entered the interrogation room. He pointed a gun at Jones’ head, cocked it and told Jones he was going to ‘blow his black head off.’” 

In part because of the scandals surrounding the tortures under Burge’s command during the 1970s and 1980s at Burge’s Chicago Area II command center, then-Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of all 167 Illinois Death Row inmates in 2003, and the City of Chicago recently announced a $19.8 million settlement of the lawsuit of four alleged Chicago police torture victims. The Illinois special prosecutor’s report, issued in 2006, concluded that more than 200 African-American prisoners were tortured in Chicago police interrogation rooms in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Only in Chicago? Hardly. Try Oakland, California, friends. 

In 2000, Oakland attorney John Burris and several other law firms began filing a series of lawsuits against the Oakland Police Department alleging that four West Oakland-based OPD officers—who had come to be known as the “Oakland Riders”—had beaten suspects in an attempt to elicit confessions from them and, in some instances, planted evidence on them.  

The legal action took two tracks, with the Alameda County District Attorney’s office filing criminal charges against the four officers—Francisco Vazquez, Matt Hornung, Clarence Mabang, and Jude Siapno—and the civil lawsuits continuing in a separate action. Vazquez, the alleged ringleader of the Riders, allegedly fled the country and has never been brought to trial, but the other three were eventually acquitted. 

Meanwhile, however, the civil cases spread to involve more officers than the initial four Riders, eventually consolidated into the Delphine Allen v. City of Oakland federal lawsuit containing 119 plaintiffs. 

A December 2000 San Francisco Chronicle article reported that in the news article announcing one of the lawsuits, “Burris showed pictures of Delphine Allen, 21, who accused Vazquez and Siapno in the suit of kidnapping him on June 27 and beating him, while in handcuffs, in a remote location in Oakland after he objected to false drug charges. The picture showed Allen with a bloodied right eye.” 

A July 2002 East Bay Express article provided a more detailed account of that incident, based upon the recollections of Keith Batt, the 23-year-old former OPD rookie who blew the whistle on the Riders: “On his second week on the job,” the Express reported, “Batt said he and the Riders tangled with an African-American man named Delphine Allen while he was walking on 32nd Street. The four Riders—Mabanag, Jude Siapno, Matt Hornung, and Francisco “Choker” Vazquez—kicked, punched, and beat Allen while he was handcuffed and down on his knees, Batt later testified. Batt himself admitted to kicking Allen twice to impress the other cops, especially the field-training officer who would ultimately write his performance evaluation. But when it was all over, Batt later said, Mabanag seemed disappointed in his trainee; he wondered why the rookie only kicked Allen twice. “Why did you stop?” Batt recalled his supervisor asking him. Batt added that Mabanag lectured him “that he had never seen a trainee ... hold back as much as I had.” 

The City of Oakland took split positions on the Riders-Allen allegations. The City fired the four Riders officers over the charges of beating suspects, falsifying reports, planting evidence, and supported their criminal prosecution. According to the official settlement agreement report in the Allen v. Oakland civil litigation, however, “the City denied the allegations in the plaintiffs’ [civil] complaint”—the same allegations that formed the heart of the criminal complaint against the Riders—but at the same time “agreed to a negotiated settlement to avoid a potentially divisive and costly litigation and to promote and incorporate the best police policies and practices into the operations of the Police Department.” Oakland still operates under that court-monitored settlement agreement which includes, in part, reforms intended to prevent the type of excesses the Riders and their fellow officers were accused of. 

But the Riders excesses may not have gone away. The Burris law firm only this week filed another police brutality lawsuit for eleven plaintiffs and naming 16 individual defendant Oakland Police officers, alleging, among other things, that in the spring of this year, police searched a suspect’s rectum for crack cocaine with their fingers so hard in a North Oakland incident that the suspect began bleeding from his anus and passed out. According to the lawsuit, no crack was found. The city has not yet answered the new lawsuit, so this can still be considered only an accusation. 

The accusations in the Oakland cases do not amount to the level seen in the Chicago police cases—applying electrical shock to genitals—or the CIA’s water torture practices, but that’s hardly the point, is it? Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines torture as “the inflicting of severe pain to force information or confession.” It does not require that the infliction of that pain be by esoteric means, such as the rack or the corkscrew or wires connected to a hot electrical source. It can be as simple as a flashlight to the head, or a boot to the midsection. 

However it may be treated with shame like the odd cousin never let out of the closet while company is in the house, torture has been—and remains—an American tradition. To end that tradition, we must first stop pretending that it does not exist or feign shock and surprise when it resurfaces, as it does, periodically.

Among the original Northside residences that survived the Berkeley fire of 1923, the Bentley House at 2683 Le Conte Avenue is one of the least assuming. Built in 1900 by the prominent Berkeley contractor and amateur artist A.H. Broad, this modest Dutch Colonial Revival residence is the quintessential “simple home” advocated by Charles Keeler in his 1904 book of the same name. 

Clad in unpainted shingles and strategically positioned at the crest of the hill, the house is sited at the center of its lot, surrounded by a garden that has always been informal, a graceful reminder of the Hillside Club’s Living with Nature ideals. 

The modest house accorded well with the personality of its first owner, the Rev. Dr. Robert Bentley, a leader of the Methodist Episcopal Church on the West Coast. 

Dr. Bentley purchased the lot in 1898 with the intention of building a retirement home. At the time, the family was living at 2210 Chapel St., near the First Trinity Methodist Church, located at Allston Way and Fulton Street (current site of Edwards Stadium), of which Dr. Bentley had been the pastor from 1892 to 1897. 

Reminiscing about Dr. Bentley in the 1980s, his grandson, the well-known printer, poet, calligrapher, and liberal arts professor Wilder Bentley (1900–1989), recalled that after a busy and peripatetic life, the minister had looked forward to a home of his own where he and his wife, Frances, could settle down in restful retirement. That hope was not to be fulfilled, as he lived only a few months in his new home, passing away on Sept. 28, 1900 after a brief illness. 

All the local newspapers devoted substantial space to Dr. Bentley’s obituary and funeral services, with the San Francisco Call outdoing its rivals in the bombast of its headline, “EMINENT DIVINE CLAIMED BY DREAD DESTROYER AT HIS BERKELEY HOME.” 

Robert Bentley was born in Cambridge, England, on May 6, 1836 or 1838 (accounts vary). He was the eldest son of the family. His father died when he was 12, and a year later the family came to America. He studied at Northwestern University and the Garrett Biblical Institute (now Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary) in Evanston, Illinois, and was licensed as a preacher in the annual Rock River Conference of the M.E. Church. 

Beginning his ministry in Chicago, Bentley married Frances Harvey in 1863. Their eldest son, Robert Irving, was born there in 1865. Three years later, they came to California and Dr. Bentley took charge of the Central Methodist Episcopal Church in San Francisco. Later he was pastor in Portland, Santa Barbara, Sacramento, Oakland, Alameda, and Berkeley. 

The U.S. census recorded the Bentley as living in San Francisco in 1870 (their second son, Charles Harvey, was born there the previous year) and in Sacramento ten years later. By 1880, the family had grown to include a third son—Edward, born in 1871—and a daughter, Mary, born in 1878. 

From 1886 to 1892, Dr. Bentley served as presiding elder of the M.E. Church’s Oakland district. After five years as pastor of Berkeley’s Trinity Church, he became presiding elder of the Sacramento district, territorially the largest in California. 

In 1891, Dr. Bentley founded the Fred Finch Orphanage (now the Fred Finch Youth Center) in Dimond, Oakland. He continued as its president until the end of his life. 

In September 1900, Dr. Bentley attended the California Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Pacific Grove, where he was appointed presiding elder of the Oakland District for the second time. Eleven days later, he was dead of either heart disease (according to the S.F. Call) or malarial fever (per the Oakland Tribune). 

At his memorial service, held on Sept. 30 at the Trinity Methodist Church in Berkeley, “the church was not large enough to hold the many friends who came to pay their last tribute of respect to the deceased,” reported the Tribune. 

Following Dr. Bentley’s death, his widow continued living on Le Conte Avenue. In 1904, she shared her home with the first African-American co-ed at the University of California. On February 8 of that year, The Berkeley Daily Gazette reported on its front page, “The first colored co-ed to register at the University of California is Miss Regina Crawford, whose home is in far away Meridian, Mississippi. [...] Miss Crawford is now staying at the home of Mrs. Robert Bentley, widow of the late Rev. Robert Bentley of the Methodist Church. She is being given employment by Mrs. Bentley and is thus enabled to support herself while carrying on her University work.” 

The Bentley sons were thriving in San Francisco. Robert Irving Bentley founded a fruit canning company, which his brother Charles, a Beta Theta Pi at Cal, joined following his graduation in 1891. In 1899, their company merged with seventeen others to form the California Fruit Canners Association, which used the Del Monte name as one of its many brands. 

In 1905, Charles Bentley’s wife died, leaving him with two young children. His mother joined them in Pacific Heights, leasing the Berkeley house to renters. When Charles remarried in 1909, Frances returned to Berkeley, living at various addresses. 

In 1920, Frances and her unmarried daughter Mary were lodgers in the old Henry boarding house at 2401 Le Conte Avenue, then run by Emma Greet. (The boarding house, built in 1897 by George Frederick Estey, burned in 1923. The University Christian Church now stands on the site.) At the time, Mary Bentley was working as a secretary at the YWCA. Ten years later, mother and daughter were living in a house they had purchased at 758 Contra Costa Avenue, near John Hinkel Park. 

Frances Bentley died in 1934, at the age of 94. Following her death, Mary returned to 2683 Le Conte Avenue, residing there until her own death in 1940. 

Perhaps the most interesting figure in the Bentley family was Harvey Wilder Bentley, the eldest of Charles H. Bentley’s children. Wilder (after his mother’s maiden name) graduated from San Francisco’s Lowell High School in 1918. He attended Yale University and the University of Michigan, then spent several years in Europe providing relief work with French war orphans and later traveling. 

Wilder married Ellen Mayo in 1927. In the late 1920s, he was at the University of Oklahoma, where his book The art of Laurence Pickett Williams (1930) was published. From 1930 through 1933, Wilder worked at Porter Garnett’s Laboratory Press at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, honing his skills in the craft of fine printing. In 1932, he became an honorary associate member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. 

Having returned to Berkeley with their two young children, Wilder Jr. and Margaret (later Sevcenko), Wilder and Ellen settled at 1836 San Antonio Avenue. They found an old Acorn hand press that had been shipped around the Horn, bought it, and established a small publishing business, producing limited editions of finely printed books, portfolios, broadsides, scrolls, and cards. 

Their earliest publications were broadsides in the Acorn Series, beginning with Wilder’s own Excursion on the Bay and Unheroic couplets for the poets of New Albion (“Printed on the Acorn Press in the Thousand Oaks”). The following year, they began publishing under the Archetype Press imprint and opened a shop at Euclid Court, on the commercial block just north of the campus. Wilder taught Ellen how to set type, and it was she who did the typesetting and proofreading, in addition to sewing the books that Wilder designed. Their motto was “The fine printer begins where the careful printer leaves off.” 

One of the items Wilder “and his faithful spouse, Ellen” published at Euclid Court was N’en Parlons Plus!, Excerpts From Divers Papers & Chronicles of The Arts Club, 1937–1938. This 20-page folio was limited to 105 copies and issued for private distribution among members of The Arts Club and their friends. 

The Bentleys also printed William Saroyan’s A Native American (San Francisco: George Fields, 1938) in a limited edition of 450 copies, each signed by the author. By far the best-known book to emerge from the Archetype Press was Ansel Adams’ Sierra Nevada: the John Muir Trail (1938). In addition to being a photographic masterpiece, the book became a promotional tool on behalf of the Sierra Club’s campaign to establish a new national park on federally owned land in the Kings River Canyon region southeast of Yosemite: 

Ansel Adams sent a copy to Harold Ickes, secretary of the Interior. “The pictures are extraordinarily fine and impressive,” Ickes thanked him. He hoped that Congress would soon establish the park: “Then we can be sure that your descendants and mine will be able to take as beautiful pictures as you have taken—that is, provided they have your skill and artistry.” Ickes showed the book to his boss, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who kept it for himself. Kings Canyon National Park was established two years later. 

With the advent of World War II, the Bentleys closed the Archetype Press. The printing press was dismantled and stored in the basement of 2683 Le Conte Ave., which Wilder and Ellen had purchased from his aunt Mary’s estate. 

In addition to his printing activities, Wilder Bentley was a prolific poet, calligrapher, and brush artist. The Bancroft Library houses a large collection of his poetic output, practically all of it printed by the Archetype Press. In May 1943, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco exhibited his brush drawings. 

After the war, Wilder Bentley returned to teaching. Between 1946 and 1956, he was professor of English and Philosophy at the College of the Pacific and Stockton Junior College, both in Stockton. In 1957, he was appointed professor at San Francisco State College, where he taught until his retirement in 1971. A former student described him as “a white-haired, elderly, enthusiastic expositor of the beauties and significance of American writing” who “was well-known in the college, if not beyond it, as one of those professors who is an inspiring catalyst for receptive students.” 

Following his retirement from teaching, Wilder dedicated himself to the epic poem The Poetry of Learning (Archetype Press,1975–85). A collection of 26 scrolls (some rolling out to about 15 feet in length), it was printed on an 1870s-issue Palmer & Rey “Washington”-type hand press in the basement of 2683 Le Conte Ave. 

Wilder Bentley passed away in 1989. His widow Ellen continued living at 2683 Le Conte Avenue until 1996, nearly a century since the Rev. Dr. Robert Bentley purchased the lot for his retirement home. 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

Photograph: Daniella Thompson  

The Bentley House at 2683 Le Conte Ave. with a curved staircase leading to the street. 

Some of the best gifts I’ve ever received have been from people’s gardens.  

I got my first lemongrass from Beulah Stringer, when I lived just down the block from her. She was splitting her cluster, and handed me a nice hunk when I stopped to exclaim that Gee, that smelled and looked just like lemongrass. She used it for tea; I used it in Thai recipes. Over the years, we swapped seeds and starts and stories and I think the stories were the best things I got, along with her friendship.  

One thing she taught me was not to say “Thank you” for a plant. As she explained it, plants thrive better when they’re stolen, and by not quite acknowledging that you’ve received it as a gift you’re improving its chances. Beulah hails from Arkansas, on the other side of the state from my in-laws’ hometowns. When I checked her folk story out with my mother-in-law, she confirmed it, though I don’t remember her ever insisting on that bit of etiquette herself.  

I still have, if it hasn’t disappeared since the last time I looked, a walking onion left from the set that sweet innocent white-haired Auntie Ev smuggled here from Fostoria, Ohio. It’s also called “Egyptian onion,” and it “walks” because it bears a cluster of new bulbs on top of its stalk, which eventually bends with their weight so they come to rest and can take root on the ground at a strategic distance from the mother plant.  

Auntie Ev was someone else’s auntie officially, but we adopted her as ours too. Smuggling live plants rather shocked my sensibilities but I had to recognize the inherent heroism in the gift, as Auntie Ev had a serious allergy to onions, garlic, and their relatives. She couldn’t consume it herself and probably shouldn’t have been carrying it tucked into her bag, but she thought it was a plant of interesting habits. She was right, and it’s tasty too. 

I used to have a pine in a pot—not really a bonsai, because it was too tall. Too long. Too big in some dimension or other, maybe measured on the diagonal like a TV, anyway more than three feet from base to top and more like a bottle brush than a tree. I thought maybe I could make a bunjin bonsai out of it, as that form allows for eccentricities. 

Didn’t have the heart to part with it, even aside from the sentiment attached to it because I got it from a good friend and colleague. It was like that homely puppy in the litter who somehow just belongs in the household. I confess to keeping it more out of sight than on display, but that was mostly because it needed support on both ends. 

Time and happenstance have done for rather a lot of the living gifts I’ve received over the years. Still, though they’re mortal, a living gift grows and changes and develops and surprises long after the occasion’s over.  

I’m Bolted, I’m Ok? 

I’m hearing from way too many folks who have taken a peek in their crawl space, seen some bolts connecting their “mudsill” to their foundation, and are thinking “Oh, good, my foundation is bolted, I’ve got a retrofit.” 

A “bolted foundation” is NOT a retrofit. It is an essential ingredient of a retrofit, yes, but there is another ingredient (transfer ties) and very often a third (shear panels) which are also essential. If your foundation is bolted, it just means that the mudsill will probably stay put during a serious quake. The house, however, could very easily fall off the foundation. 

Be sure—have your retrofit checked.  

Make your home secure and your family safe. 

Larry Guillot is the owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing and kit supply service. Contact him at 558-3299 or see www.quakeprepare.com to receive semi-monthly e-mails and safety reports.

You’re in the last throws of the deal and it’s time for the home inspection. The inspector finds that the water heater is defective and needs replacement now. You’re a little upset, since you’ve just offered more money to buy this house than your parents have in their retirement fund. You expected the house to be perfect for that kind of money and you’re not about to shell out another dime.  

So, you ask the realtor to negotiate to have a new water heater installed prior to close of escrow. Being your diligent and obedient representative, he/she says fine, we’ll see if we can get them to put in a new water heater prior to closing of the escrow.  

Stop everything. Let’s run this scenario out to a likely conclusion before you choose this path. It is not unlikely that the seller will agree get this deal closed since it’s a relatively small item. But think about who they are likely to hire and what they are likely to buy … for you. Are they going to buy the best water heater on the market? Are they going to hire the top plumber in the field? Will they consider moving the water heater if that’s advised? Will they make sure it is placed on a stand, if this is advised or necessary?  

I can go on with at least another dozen considerations on this one kind of job, but you get the point. The seller, as fair and honest as they might be, is far more likely to get this job done fast and, well, let’s say economically. Of course, this is a broad generalization but I believe (with plenty of experience to stand upon) that this is, in fact, what happens the vast majority of the time.  

Any seller is likely to get the job done faster, cheaper, and with less consideration for long range consequences then you are as the new homeowner. The seller is not very likely to have a parental and deeply vested interest in the new owner’s well-being and that of the house beyond their ownership. With that in mind, who should be buying the water heater? Of course, it’s you the buyer.  

Now you can still seek additional funds from the seller. But you, the buyer will be using the money and getting the job done. This might mean adding some of your own money to the pot to get the best job done, but at least the seller’s money will be going to buy the better job, since you will be trying to get the best plumber you can afford as well as the best equipment. 

Another very good reason for you to be the buyer of any fixes that you feel are needed upon purchase of your new home relates to the nature of the contractual relationship between the client and the contractor.  

Let’s say that the sellers hire Joe the plumber and pay him to install the very finest water heater that mankind has yet to produce. He applies his greatest skill and makes a masterwork of installation that the city inspectors (three of them) come to see, bearing signatures, tags and words of great praise. The water heater works great. Everyone’s happy but surprise of surprises, the thing begins to leak from eight locations about 3 weeks after the sellers have moved to Malaysia. Not to worry, you have the name of the plumber and call him up.  

Joe (really a great guy) says how sorry he is but you are not his client and only his client can call in the warrantee. He’s right. You and Joe are not named in any contract as client and contractor and services on any piece of paper. Warrantees for roofs do transfer in the state of California but most workmanship does not transfer from one owner to another.  

If you attempted to take Joe to court to get him to come and repair his unconscionably bad workmanship, it is most likely that the judge would ask to see the contract for work and would find that you had not hired Joe at all and throw the case out.  

If, on the other hand, you asked for a cash sum or adjustment in the sale price of the house (or money held in escrow to pay for such a repair, which is a common tactic) you could hire your dear friend Joe and when the leaks began, you would be in a much better position to get him back to fix the repairs that you paid for. And if he turns out to be the scoundrel your cousin Vanessa said he was (they dated very briefly), you could take Joe to small claims and would likely find (remember to bring photos) that the Judge would like your case and force Joe to return some or all of your payment to him or force him to make good and fix the water heater properly.  

And here’s a word to the wise. If Joe is the one who screwed up you water heater in the first place, he might not be the best choice to come back and fix it. 

A final note regarding this whole issue of who gets the repairs done when houses change hands: Just a spoonful of money makes the escrow get done. When buyers request repairs as a requirement of closing, this sets the clock back as people start rushing about doing these repairs. Sometimes the repairs get done and get looked at and are disapproved and more time gets lost. Occasionally deals fall apart under theses circumstances. Mostly, it just leads to bad work and irritated buyers and sellers. So taking a sum of cash, or a cost adjustment or doing nothing at all may be preferable to receipt of this particular gift horse. 

Happy home hunting. 

During 2007, the major news item continued to be the war in Iraq. On Jan. 4, the 110th Congress convened—the first time during the Bush administration Democrats had controlled both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Many of us expected this changing of the guard would produce a shift in Iraq policy, a real plan for withdrawal of U.S. troops. Sadly, this didn’t happen; the war not only continued, but President Bush upped the number of troops with his “surge” initiative. At year’s end, many Berkeley residents wondered whether it was possible to change anything while Bush was still in office. 

A recent Pew Research Poll found that nearly half of the public (48 percent) believe the military effort in Iraq is now “going well or fairly well.” However, a majority of Americans (54 percent) continue to believe our troops should come home as soon as possible—a plurality that has remained remarkably constant throughout the year. As the war has dragged on, the United States has become deeply polarized—41 percent of the public wants our troops to stay in Iraq as long as it takes to achieve “victory.” 

Most Berkeley residents view President Bush as dogmatic and inflexible and his attitude about the war has reinforced this assessment. Even though his approval ratings have hovered in the thirties throughout the year, Bush has rebuffed all Congressional attempts to change course in Iraq. (As a result, the approval ratings for Congress are now lower than those of the president.) 

If you are a supporter of George W. Bush, then it’s likely you believe he’s doing the right thing by staying the course in Iraq. But if you’re not a Bush fan, then you became very frustrated this year: you thought the Democrats in Congress didn’t stand up to the president. Finally, at the end of the year, Democrats in the House of Representatives responded to Bush’s intransigence by postponing consideration of additional Iraq funding. There was increasing indication that Dems were ready to battle the President on this issue. 

If Democrats do confront the White House, they won’t get help from the Republican Presidential candidates. The GOP front-runners—Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, Romney, and Thompson—all want the United States to stay in Iraq until we “win.” The Republicans are running as mini-Dubyas even while they carefully avoid mentioning Bush’s name. (On the Democratic side, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama favor a withdrawal plan, but with caveats that could result in thousands of American troops remaining in Iraq at the end of 2011.) 

In 2008, two factors may force a change in Iraq policy. The first is the continuing deterioration of the U.S. economy. In November, a Newsweek poll reported that, for the first time all year, the public considered “the economy and jobs” to be a more important issue than Iraq.  

As America’s focus shifts to the mortgage crisis, the credit crunch, and the possibility of recession, Bush’s scare tactics about Iraq have had less traction. Since 9/11, the administration’s message to the American people has been, “You can have it all, tax cuts and a profligate war on terror, because the economy is robust.” Now, as U.S. financial systems tank, more and more Americans are asking if it’s reasonable to continue a war that is costing $2 billion per week and whose estimated total cost could exceed $2 trillion. (So far, the war in Iraq has cost Berkeley residents $171 million. That’s roughly $1,710 for each man, woman, and child in the city.) 

Mounting concern about the cost of the war has been accompanied by the refrain, “when are Iraqis going to be able to govern themselves?” Democrats have long taken the position that it is unreasonable for the U.S. military to be asked to serve in the role of the Iraqi police force in the middle of a civil war. The Iraqi government has yet to achieve any of the political objectives that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki delineated a year ago.  

Nonetheless, the White House downplays the lack of political progress. Now, key Republican Senators such as Lindsey Graham of South Carolina argue that if the Iraqi government doesn’t show progress by the end of the year, it’s time for a change in U.S. strategy. Recently, Washington Post military writer Thomas Ricks noted: “Senior military commanders here now portray the intransigence of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government as the key threat facing the U.S. effort in Iraq, rather than Al Qaeda terrorists, Sunni insurgents or Iranian-backed militias.” 

Early in 2008 there will be another showdown over Iraq: whether U.S. involvement is worth the price. It’s likely that when President Bush says it is, that America has to stumble on, regardless of the cost, he will find he has lost the support of a veto-proof majority in Congress. Then our troops will begin to come home. 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at boburnett@comcast.net.

One of the several “pagan” plants that appear all over in the midwinter holiday season is one that lives in trees: mistletoe. It’s Frazer’s eponymous Golden Bough.  

What’s it doing up there in the doorway? Amalgamating at least two pagan lineages: Kissing under the mistletoe is a Nordic peace gesture, and a Druidic fertility blessing. Both ideas spring from mistletoe’s odd lifestyle, as not quite a terrestrial plant.  

Balder, the Norse god not of comb-overs but of sun and joy, had a premonition of death. His mother Frigga, hearing this, was rattled enough to extract a promise from every creature of the air, water, and land never to harm her son. They agreed—after all, to harm the sun god would leave them freezing in the dark—except for mistletoe. As it isn’t of any realm, but suspended between sky and earth, Frigga forgot to ask. Now that Balder was invulnerable, the gods made a game of using him for target practice. Boy, the Aesir knew how to have fun.  

Loki, the god of mischief, wickedness, and general nasty doings, noticed Frigga’s lapse and made a spear with a mistletoe tip. (It’s reputedly tough as well as toxic.) He handed it to Balder’s blind brother, Hoder, who launched it and killed Balder. After much weeping and grief, Frigga managed to resurrect him. Her tears became mistletoe’s white berries, the plant was forgiven and made sacred to her, and warriors who met under it kept peace.  

The Druids noticed mistletoe’s aerial habits, too. It was gathered with a gold knife or sickle and caught on cloths before it could touch the ground and discharge its power. Some Europeans preferred knocking it down with a rock or arrow and catching it. This does limit one’s chance of breaking one’s neck falling out of a tree. There are various times for gathering mistletoe; one is the fifth (or sixth) night after the winter solstice’s new moon.  

It was used in cultures from northern Europe to Africa, North America to Southeast Asia, as a healing herb. (Don’t try it; leaf, branch, and berry, mistletoe is poisonous.) It was also a fertility charm: a sprig was fed to the first cow who calved after New Year’s to bless the whole herd. Some saw the Green Man in it. As it’s evergreen, and gets noticed in deciduous trees when their own leaves have fallen, it was thought to be the tree’s green soul. Some used it to ward off fire and lightning; it was thought to be engendered by lightning strikes and have the power to control its source.  

Its name, also based on an idea about its origin, is less romantic than it sounds: By some accounts, it translates to “dung on a twig.” In the good old days of the Dark Ages, when maggots rose spontaneously from manure piles and geese from barnacles, bird droppings were thought to turn into mistletoe. That’s close to the truth. Mistletoe spreads its sticky seed via the birds who eat its berries and either plop undigested seed onto another branch, or wipe it off their bills onto the bark. It grows slowly and takes a few years to reach maturity. 

Mistletoe has separate sexes; the berries are on females. It’s a denizen of the air only with help, standing on the shoulders of giants. It’s mostly parasitic, getting water and nutrients from its host trees through haustoria, a functional combination of roots and vampire fangs. It has leaves and chlorophyll, and can make its own food on too. There are dwarf mistletoe species without much in the way of leaves, entirely parasitic and pests mostly of conifers. Mistletoe can hurt an individual branch, and infestation to the point of threatening a tree is not unheard of. Most mistletoes aren’t all that dangerous to trees, though (as with Spanish moss) you might find an arborist eager to make a buck “curing” your tree of the green plague. 

Our native mistletoe is not the same species as the one the Druids and the Aesir were messing with, though they’re related. Our most common species locally are Phoradendron macrophyllum and P villosum; the European is Viscum album. There are other species in North America, most fairly similar.  

There’s lots of the native growing on oaks in the hills around Livermore, for example. Don’t go knocking it down; it’s an important food for interesting birds like cedar waxwing and phainopepla, an elegant glossy black songbird with a cardinal-style crest.  

We also have the legendary European species nearby. Luther Burbank imported some and tried his hand at raising it. As he was Luther Burbank, of course it worked, and now a population of Viscum album is radiating, tree by tree, from his working lab farm in Sebastopol. As far as I know, he didn’t try crossing his mistletoe with cacao beans to produce homegrown chocolate kisses.

FRIDAY, DEC. 14 

CHILDREN 

“Alice in Wonderland” puppet show at 2, 4 and 6 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., off Grand Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 452-2259. 

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” at 8 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St., through Dec. 12. Tickets are $10-$20. 652-2120. 

Brookside Repertory Theatre “Hiliday Shorts IV” at noon at The Claremont, 41 Tunnel Rd. Tickets are $65-$75, includes lunch. 549-8512. 

Encore Theatre Company & Shotgun Players “The Shaker Chair” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m., at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Jan. 27. Tickets are pay what you can. 841-6500.  

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 

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 

Holiday Arts from 4 to 8 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Best of Actors Reading Writers “Serendipity” at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. ricaisabella@yahoo.com 

Daniel Marlin and Janell Moon at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave. 644-3977. 

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. 

The Venezuelan Music Project at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Mark Morris Dance Group “The Hard Nut” at 7:30 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$60. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Holiday Gospel Extravaganza with Zoe Ellis, Caitlin Cornwell, Carmen Jones and Ashling Cole at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Farlow-Kirch Band, David Gans, Pat Nevins at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

TC Brewitz and Trio at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Rebecca Riots at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jeff Oster plays selections from his new CD “True” at 7:30 p.m. at Sacred Space Yoga Sanctuary at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $15-$20. 486-8700. 

The Nomadics, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

El Capitan, Axton Kincaid, The Whoreshoes, bluegrass and country, at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Lifesavas, Pigeon John at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159.  

Broun Fellinis at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Chick Corea Elektric Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $40-$45. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, DEC. 15 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Bonnie Lockhart at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Boswick the Clown at 11 a.m. at Studio Grow, 1235 Tenth St. Cost is $7. 526-9888. 

“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.  

Bugs Bunny/Road Runner cartoons at 10 a.m. and noon, Sun. at noon at Elmwood Theater, 2966 College Ave. at Ashby. Benefit for local PTAs. 433-9730. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Of Ignorance and/or Mystery” A location-inspired project by Ken Fandell opens at Traywick Contemporary, 895 Colusa Ave. 527-1214. www.traywick.com 

“Robots are Art” Art show and contest at 6 p.m. at Float Gallery 1091 Calcott Place #116, Oakland. 535-1702. 

“Elegance and Simplicity” Mixed media group show. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. 644-4930. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Best of Actors Reading Writers “Serendipity” at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. ricaisabella@yahoo.com 

Wilde Irish Productions “A Joycean Christmas” with readings from James Joyce’s masterpiece “The Dead” at 8 p.m. at Gaia Arts Center. Tickets are $25. 644-9940. 

West Coast Live with James Tipton, Ruth Gnedler and Lemony Snickett and Lisa Brown at 10 a.m. at Freight and Salvage. Tickets are $13-$18. 415-664-9500. www.WCL.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Pacific Boychoir Academy “Harmonies of the Season” at 7 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave., Oakland. 652-4722. 

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. 

Trio Concertino with Amy Likar, flute; Madeline Prager, viola; Miles Graber, piano at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com 

“Carols Around the World Concert” at 5 p.m. at first United Methodist church, 201 Martina St., corner W. Richmond Ave., Point Richond. 236-0527. 

Sacred and Profane Annual Holiday Concert, traditional and contemporary music for Swedish Lucia, Channukah and Christmas, at 8 p.m. at St. Leo’s Catholic Church, 176 Ridgeway Ave., Piedmont. Tickets are $12-$15. www.sacredprofane.org 

Rebecca Riots at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Ravines at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Brian Andres & the Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Christie McCarthy & Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Pellejo Seco at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cuban salsa dance lesson at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Gateswingers Jazz Band at 8 p.m. at Central Perk,10086 San Pablo Ave. at Central, El Cerrito, 558-7375. 

Moment’s Notice improvised music, dance and theater at 8 p.m. at Western Sky Studio, 2525 8th St. Tickets are $8-$15. 992-6295. 

Fred Odell and Bob Harp at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Flowtilla at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Dave Gleason, 77 El Deora, The B Stars, alt country, at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

SUNDAY, DEC. 16 

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. 

Paintings by Julie Ross Opening reception at 2 p.m. at Poulet, Shattuck & Virginia. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra “Puccini’s Messa di Gloria” at 8 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free, donations appreciated. 

A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at 5:30 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way at Ellsworth. 845-0888. 

San Francisco Choral Artists “Glorious Sounds of Christmas” at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave. www.stpauloakland.org 

Rebecca Rust, ‘cello and Friedrich Edelmann, bassoon at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Al Stewart at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $29.50-$30.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mamadou Sidibe & Music Mali at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tom Huber and Misisipi Mike at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Pappa Gianni & the North Beach Band at 2 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198. 

MONDAY, DEC. 17 

CHILDREN 

“Alice in Wonderland” puppet show at 2, 4 and 6 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., off Grand Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 452-2259. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Express with Jeanne Powell at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Yolanda and Ric, opera and lieder, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Classical at the Freight with San Francisco Chamber Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. 

Dann Zinn at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, DEC. 18 

CHILDREN 

Arlington Children’s Choir Holiday Concert, suitable for ages 3 and up, at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tell on on Tuesdays Storytelling at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Cost is $8-$12 sliding scale. www.juiamorgan.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tom Rigney & Flambeau at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

The Christmas Jug Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Brian Wood Ensemble at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave.. 548-5198.  

African Roots of Jazz, with E.W. Wainwright & Friends at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 19 

CHILDREN 

“Alice in Wonderland” puppet show at 2, 4 and 6 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., off Grand Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 452-2259. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“A Christmas Carol” read by Martin Harris as Charles Dickens at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland City Center Holiday Concert with West African Highlife Band at noon at 12th and Broadway, Oakland.  

Berkeley Akademie Ensemble Debut performance under direction of Kent Nagano and Stuart Canin at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley. Tickets are $60. 841-2800. www.berkeleysymphony.org 

Fiveplay at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Balkan Folkdance at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $7. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ben Graves Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Charlie Hunter at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, DEC. 20 

CHILDREN 

Music with Bonnie Lockhart for ages 3 to 7 at 7 p.m. at North Berkeley Public Library, 1170 The Alameda. 981-6250. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now” Guided tour at 12:15 and 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. 

Patrick O’Kiersey “Selected Paintings and Drawings” Artist talk at 7 p.m. at the Craft & Cultural Arts Gallery, Atrium, State of California Office Bldg. 1515 Clay St., Oakland. 622-8190. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Lutsinga Musical Ensemble at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Greenbridge, Celtic trio, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Anna Estrada & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Triskela at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Matthew Charles Heulitt Project, The Japonize Elephants at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Dietsnakes at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277 

Tomas Saraceno is a visionary artist who aspires to bridge the gap between art and science. Knowledgeable about principles of physics, chemistry and architecture, he has made use of high technology to design cities in the air.  

On view at the Berkeley Art Museum are models of Flying Gardens/Air-Port-City, elliptical plastic pillows filled with air and bounded by elastic cords. In his lecture at the museum the Argentine-born artist, who works mostly in his Frankfurt studio, traced his models for aerial cities back to hot air balloons. He had already experimented with the possibilities of passive solar energy and built and flew the largest geodesic balloon ever built. 

For his aerospace vehicles he proposes to use a chemical called “Aerojet,” a gas which is only three times heavier than air and which is already being employed in the aerospace industry.  

There are important precedents to Saraceno’s work: Buckminster Fuller’s pivotal geodesic dome and the Cloud Nine experiments on the 1960s. Paolo Soleri’s Acrosanti buildings minimized the use of land and energy by building very tall self-sufficient structures, which were exhibited at BAM in 1971.  

Ant Farm, shown at BAM in 2004, proposed pneumatic inflatable structures, which were designed to challenge the hierarchies of land-built architecture to provoke users to take charge of the environment. In Germany Frei Otto built lightweight fabric constructions and experimented with pneumatic membranes for his tent-like structures. In England, a group of visionary architects, called Archigram, came forward with hypothetical projects of high tech, low weight structures, which were not bound to the ground.  

The models for Saraceno’s Flying Gardens are evocative sculptural forms, which look great in Mario Ciampi’s open museum space. Elizabeth Thomas, the museum’s Matrix curator, has mounted an exhibition that can motivate the viewer to ponder a new technological utopia. Utopias of a political nature have, as we know, brought about veritable disasters.  

Saraceno’s vision proposes a network of habitable structures that float in the air. Will the social intercourse of humans, we may ask, improve with altitude?  

Tomas Saraceno: Microscale, Macroscale, and Beyond 

Through Feb. 17, 2008 at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2575 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

www.bampfa.edu. 

Image: Tomas Saraceno’s installations are on display at the Berkeley Art Museum. 

Brookside Repertory’s Holiday Shorts IV, their annual anthology of short holiday-themed plays by Bay Area playwrights, directed by Robert Hamm in staged readings, will be performed this Sunday afternoon at the Ballroom of the Claremont Resort and Spa. 

“The holidays affect us in many ways, and these plays help set the mood for what we’re about to experience personally as the year draws to a close,” said Mae Ziglin Meidav, founder and artistic director of Brookside Rep. 

Six new plays by local playwrights are joined by two past favorites of Brookside Rep audiences: Tamales on Christmas Eve, by Stephen D. Gutierrez, director of the Cal State-East Bay Creative Writing Dept., and Mae Ziglin Meidav’s Chanukah Is Not the Jewish Christmas. 

The six new plays are Missing Mistletoe by Thomas H. Bryan, New Year’s Eve by Risa Nye, Invitation by Donna LaFlamme (a Berkeley chiropractor who’s taught high school drama in Oakland), Baby New Year by Hillary K. Hann, More Fun than the Battle of Hastings by Nancy Cooper Frank and Apples and Spice by Pam Gutman.  

In More Fun than the Battle of Hastings, set in the year 2007, a century-old bottle of pinot noir has the chance to ignite the forgotten pleasures of the early 21st century in a futuristic couple. Its playwright has been involved with Playwrights’ Cafe at the Gaia Center. 

Mae Ziglin Meidav’s Franz/KAFKA, which Subterranean Shakespeare produced at LaVal’s on the Northside in 1997, will be shown in a revised form this May at the Berkeley City Club. 

Robert Hamm, who directs the afternoon plays, is a well-known East Bay actor, director and playwright, lately artistic director of Alameda’s Altarena Theatre. He has appeared in productions by the Aurora, Wilde Irish and Virago, which has also produced Hamm’s dramatic work. 

The show is coproduced by The Club at the Claremont and has a buffet luncheon from noon-1:30 p.m., with the show from 1:45-4 p.m. Tickets are $75 with buffet (Theatre Bay Area and Club members $65); $30 for show only, validated parking included.  

For reservations, contact Katy Yong at 549-8512; for information e-mail mmeidav@brookside-art.org.

Siddhartha, the Bright Path, The Marsh Youth Theater production about the life of Buddha, which serves as a kind of alternative holiday show on several levels, opening this Saturday and playing through Jan. 6 at The Marsh in San Francisco’s Mission District, is the result of a collaboration set into motion by Berkeley’s Emily Klion, the creative roots of which trace back years ago to Mills College. 

Siddhartha tells the story of the young Indian prince “who had everything and gave it up, in order to find out what made people suffer,” said Klion. “He found it was through attachment to things. That’s a good message for the holiday season. We work at The Marsh Youth Theater with kids from diverse backgrounds, and all somehow feel if they have the newest iPod, the newest sneaker, they’d be content. What Siddhartha discovers is having things doesn’t relieve suffering, but increases it.” 

Told through acting, song and dance with a young cast of 24, ranging in age from 11 to 16 (including veteran of San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker Vishnu Balunsat in the title role, Jenna Huxley and Misha Brooks from Berkeley and Audrey Eileo from Oakland), the show incorporates Indian dance and Bollywood-style hip hop from three different choreographers (kathak dancer Joanna Meinl, Antonia Minnecola—wife of tabla drummer Zakir Hussein—for the more theatrical numbers, and Russell Wright of Berkeley’s Walden School for hip hop), and three composers (Klion, Lisa Quoresimo and Klion’s husband, jazz musician George Brooks.) 

Siddhartha was written by Klion, Quoresimo and longtime Bay Area trouper Danny Duncan, directed by Quoresimo with costumes and videography by another Berkeley resident, Susana Aragon.  

Klion spoke of it all going back to her days studying music at Mills with Terry Riley, Pandit Pran Nath and Lou Harrison.  

“I travelled with Lou’s gamelan and puppet show,” Klion recalled, laughing. “Dick Whittington and His Cats—I think I played a cat part! He first showed me how to put on a show, to use music to get something across. Then I went to India for a year on a Watson grant and saw how they used theater, comic books, all kinds of ways to teach their children Indian mythology. I decided I wanted to tell the myths of the world to children, who would enact them. I’ve worked at the Mills Children’s School, the S.F. Day School, Center Stage—and now direct The Marsh Children’s Theater. We started out seven years ago with 10 neighborhood kids, and now have over 250 citywide.”  

Siddhartha was first performed last May with a cast of 40. 

“The houses were overflowing with families and friends,” Klion said. “This time, we wanted to reach out to the community at large, to the general public, so held auditions for the first time. There are so many skilled kids, all with some sort of stage experience, a few from the S.F. School of the Arts. Many have the desire to become artists, and through this can look forward to the time when they’ll appear at The Marsh asadults. We’re a full-service theater place, from two year-olds doing creative movement, on up. We accept everyone, from whatever background and financial situation.” 

The story parallels that of the young Buddha with a Bay Area girl, Chandra, surrounded by gifts at her birthday, “who becomes aware of the suffering on the street around her, and gives away everything—gives up too much, in fact, and realizes, as Siddhartha did, that too much deprivation, like too much attachment, makes you unhappy. She sits down under a tree, which turns out to be the Bodhi tree, under which Buddha was tempted. It’s the one place she and Siddhartha meet. The temptations are shown in a video dance piece. We asked the kids, ‘What tempts you?’—and they all said, Money, computers ... lots of temptations out there to resist.” 

The show moves between “two feelings, Indian dance and Broadway showtunes and video, just as the music itself draws on ancient Indian as well as jazz and gospel. It shifts between two worlds. My husband, George Brooks, also studied with Pandit Pran Nath and Terry Riley, and went to India with me. He’s been involved in jazz fusion with Indian music. He cowrote some of the score, and also sprinkled in some of his own music throughout.” 

Being asked about harnessing the energies of all her collaborators, plus 24 kids “and their parents!” took Klion back to her days at Mills. 

“Learning pipe organ, playing a four-part Bach fugue with all your arms and legs taught me to think on many levels at once,” she said. “It’s been very rewarding work, with a good message for the holiday season—that, whatever your path, each one can change the world through enlightenment. A message of light.” 

SIDDHARTHA: the bright path 

Through Jan. 6, with matinees between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The Marsh, 1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco. Tickets: 800-838-3006, information 415-826-5750. 

Opening Night Benefit on Saturday, Dec. 15: $50-$100 sliding scale. 

Doors open at 6:00 p.m. for Indian hors d'ouvres and Silent Auction. Show begins at 7:30 p.m., followed by wine reception. 

Image: Contributed photo  

A scene from Siddhartha, the Bright Path at the Marsh in San Francisco.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a huge oak tree stood east of Shattuck Avenue near Strawberry Creek in old Berkeley. It was variously known as Gibbet Oak, Vigilante Oak, and Hanging Oak.  

A rumor persisted that in the 1850s a horse thief had been captured by ranchers who, wishing to return to their work and tired of waiting for the judge, tried the man themselves and hanged him from that tree. 

There was certainly a huge oak on that spot, probably hundreds of years old, but no one could confirm the hanging. William Waste, an early Berkeley resident who was the first member of the State Bar of California, a graduate of Hastings Law School, and a member of the State legislature who would become Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, had never heard of the incident—and he was known as a local history buff.  

Clarence Merrill, son of Berkeley’s first druggist, Berkeley postmaster, and operator of the city’s first telegraph service for 30 years, said he had heard the story, but, from what he gathered as a boy, no one was ever hung there. William Warren Ferrier, a premier Berkeley historian and author, agreed with that conclusion. 

This slate of early Berkeley luminaries clearly disbelieved the story of the hanging. So where did it come from? While the origin of the story is unknown, it appears to have been recounted by one of the great editorialists and working-class heroes of early Berkeley—the expressman known in town as the “Boss Baggage Buster of Beautiful Berkeley,” John E. Boyd. In 1902, the Berkeley Gazette published a story written by Boyd in which Cloromeda Mendoza was hanged on this tree. The Gazette reprinted this story on Jan. 14, 1908. 

Interestingly, Boyd had perpetuated quite another myth about the tree many years earlier. This version of the story appeared on April 2, 1887, in the Berkeley Advocate in a letter to the editor: 

Talking to an old timer on the occasion of the recent trials in East Berkeley he gave me an account of the first trial ever held in what is now the town of Berkeley, and thinking that the story would be interesting to your readers I jotted down the particulars which are as follows: It appears that early in the year ’51 a warrant was issued by Judge Blake against a man named William Harding who resided on San Pablo avenue about where Duffy’s saloon now is [San Pablo Avenue near Folger Street], charging him with stealing hogs. The accused was arrested by a constable named Kellogg, and brought before Judge Blake at his residence in what is now known as the Poinsett house on Shattuck avenue, near Strawberry creek. A jury was quickly found and the court sat under the old oak tree which is still standing on the left of the railroad track. After the court was called to order, the prisoner pleaded “not guilty” and the jury impanneled. One of the jurymen announced that he was as dry as Strawberry creek and the prisoner at once offered to pay for the liquor if any person would go after it. The nearest gin and sugar establishment was at Temescal kept by Smith Bros. and a man known as “Whiskey Jack” volunteered to be the messenger if any one would lend him a “bronco.” The horse was soon ready two demijohns were hung in grain sacks, one on each side and the rider started with “Temescal and whiskey only 3 miles away.” Eager eyes watched for his return and soon a cloud of dust announced the looked for messenger. 

The demijohns were quickly brought forth and all hands took a hearty drink which was soon followed by another. The judge then proposed to proceed when one of the hilarious jurymen proposed that all the liquor be drank up and then they would not be “hankerin” after it. All hands agreed to the suggestion, the liquor was soon disposed of and the court started to resume business when one of the jurymen said that he be hanged if he ever sat on a jury without whiskey and he was not going to begin now. Another adjournment took place and the prisoner handed over seven Mexican dollars and Whiskey Jack was soon riding away for more “juice.” He quickly returned, another drink was taken and the business of the day resumed. Before the evidence was all in Whiskey Jack had made two more trips for supplies and about two o’clock in the afternoon the judge charged the jury who soon retired to deliberate. The jury room was under the other oak tree near the creek, each juryman first rolled his coat up for a pillow and after lighting his pipe lay down to deliberate. The prisoner, constable and spectators all picked out a soft place under the other tree and soon the majority were snoring. At this juncture Mr. Clark (who now and for many years past has been in the employ of Capt. Bowen) gave the prisoner a wink and pointed to the foothills. The prisoner took the hint and not waiting to take a formal adieu, or not liking to disturb the sleeping multitude, quickly crept away through the tall grass. He remained hidden in the hills for about two weeks, his hiding place being near the pile of rocks situated on what is now known as Capt. Boswell’s ranch, and being supplied with provisions by his friend Clark. After remaining in hiding a short time, a boat was procured for him and he made his escape to San Francisco. Many years have passed since the above occurance but I never pass the old oak trees without thinking of the story of the first court in Berkeley as told to me by an old pioneer.  

—John E. Boyd  

One possible explanation for the two differing stories told by the same John E. Boyd is that the later story was published at a time when many residents were attempting to save the tree from developers who planned to chop it down. In 1896, the city culverted Strawberry Creek, which had run down Allston Way, to make Allston Way a real street. The Berkeley chapter of the Native Sons of the Golden West offered to save the tree by donating an ornamental iron fence around it where it stood in the street by the southern curb, near where Eddy’s ice cream parlor later stood. It seems probable the later story was manufactured simply to save the tree. In the end, the developers won the fight. The tree was felled in 1908: 

Acting upon the order of Superintendent of Streets Turner two laborers were at work today cutting down the historic oak tree which has been standing since time immemorial on Allston way, a short distance from Shattuck avenue. This gnarled old tree was standing long before Allston way or even Berkeley was thought of and is the one oak in the uptown district which unites the past with the present. 

Out of a spirit of sentiment the tree has been left standing while all the other trees in the neighborhood have been destroyed. When Allston way was graded care was taken not to injure this tree and it stood unmolested until this morning. Then Turner gave his orders and the tree is now a thing of the past, not even a relic. Improvements are to be made on this street and it was found necessary to destroy this old landmark.  

Aye, cut it down, this old landmark 

Tis but a relic of the past; 

Though for ages it has stood 

The storm king’s wintery blast. 

What though it sprang from mother-earth 

Ere the white man reached this land, 

Before kind earth did yield its gold 

To the grasping Gringo’s hand. 

No matter if an outlaw met his death 

By Judge Lynch’s stern decree— 

No matter if the court was held 

Beneath the old oak tree. 

No matter of the statement made 

By one of Berkeley’s sages, 

No matter if the wise Le Conte 

Said, ’tis a relic of past ages. 

Aye, cut it down, ye ruthless sons 

Of Berkeley’s lovely clime; 

Aye, cut it down and burn it up— 

It has outlived its time. 

— Boyd, the Boss Crank of Berkeley, Berkeley Daily Gazette, Jan. 14, 1908 

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a three-part series featuring stories of forgotten Berkeley history excerpted from Richard Schwartz’s new book Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley. Schwartz has been writing California history books and giving talks for more than 20 years. His other books include The Circle of Stones: An Investigation of the Circle of Stones in Stampede Valley; Sierra County, California; Berkeley 1900: Daily Life at the Turn of the Century and Earthquake Exodus, 1906: Berkeley Responds to the San Francisco Refugees.  

Eccentrics, Heroes and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley is sold at local book stores, lumber yards, hardware stores, gift shops, movie theaters, and other local and online merchants. For a list of the locations where the book is available and information about Schwartz and his other books, see www.RichardSchwartz.info. 

The Planet will publish parts two and three of this series in upcoming issues. 

Image: Courtesy Berkeley Firefighters Association. 

This 1888 photograph of the area just east of Shattuck Avenue and Allston Way shows the hanging oak on the right. Strawberry Creek runs along along the bottom of the image.

Among the original Northside residences that survived the Berkeley fire of 1923, the Bentley House at 2683 Le Conte Avenue is one of the least assuming. Built in 1900 by the prominent Berkeley contractor and amateur artist A.H. Broad, this modest Dutch Colonial Revival residence is the quintessential “simple home” advocated by Charles Keeler in his 1904 book of the same name. 

Clad in unpainted shingles and strategically positioned at the crest of the hill, the house is sited at the center of its lot, surrounded by a garden that has always been informal, a graceful reminder of the Hillside Club’s Living with Nature ideals. 

The modest house accorded well with the personality of its first owner, the Rev. Dr. Robert Bentley, a leader of the Methodist Episcopal Church on the West Coast. 

Dr. Bentley purchased the lot in 1898 with the intention of building a retirement home. At the time, the family was living at 2210 Chapel St., near the First Trinity Methodist Church, located at Allston Way and Fulton Street (current site of Edwards Stadium), of which Dr. Bentley had been the pastor from 1892 to 1897. 

Reminiscing about Dr. Bentley in the 1980s, his grandson, the well-known printer, poet, calligrapher, and liberal arts professor Wilder Bentley (1900–1989), recalled that after a busy and peripatetic life, the minister had looked forward to a home of his own where he and his wife, Frances, could settle down in restful retirement. That hope was not to be fulfilled, as he lived only a few months in his new home, passing away on Sept. 28, 1900 after a brief illness. 

All the local newspapers devoted substantial space to Dr. Bentley’s obituary and funeral services, with the San Francisco Call outdoing its rivals in the bombast of its headline, “EMINENT DIVINE CLAIMED BY DREAD DESTROYER AT HIS BERKELEY HOME.” 

Robert Bentley was born in Cambridge, England, on May 6, 1836 or 1838 (accounts vary). He was the eldest son of the family. His father died when he was 12, and a year later the family came to America. He studied at Northwestern University and the Garrett Biblical Institute (now Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary) in Evanston, Illinois, and was licensed as a preacher in the annual Rock River Conference of the M.E. Church. 

Beginning his ministry in Chicago, Bentley married Frances Harvey in 1863. Their eldest son, Robert Irving, was born there in 1865. Three years later, they came to California and Dr. Bentley took charge of the Central Methodist Episcopal Church in San Francisco. Later he was pastor in Portland, Santa Barbara, Sacramento, Oakland, Alameda, and Berkeley. 

The U.S. census recorded the Bentley as living in San Francisco in 1870 (their second son, Charles Harvey, was born there the previous year) and in Sacramento ten years later. By 1880, the family had grown to include a third son—Edward, born in 1871—and a daughter, Mary, born in 1878. 

From 1886 to 1892, Dr. Bentley served as presiding elder of the M.E. Church’s Oakland district. After five years as pastor of Berkeley’s Trinity Church, he became presiding elder of the Sacramento district, territorially the largest in California. 

In 1891, Dr. Bentley founded the Fred Finch Orphanage (now the Fred Finch Youth Center) in Dimond, Oakland. He continued as its president until the end of his life. 

In September 1900, Dr. Bentley attended the California Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Pacific Grove, where he was appointed presiding elder of the Oakland District for the second time. Eleven days later, he was dead of either heart disease (according to the S.F. Call) or malarial fever (per the Oakland Tribune). 

At his memorial service, held on Sept. 30 at the Trinity Methodist Church in Berkeley, “the church was not large enough to hold the many friends who came to pay their last tribute of respect to the deceased,” reported the Tribune. 

Following Dr. Bentley’s death, his widow continued living on Le Conte Avenue. In 1904, she shared her home with the first African-American co-ed at the University of California. On February 8 of that year, The Berkeley Daily Gazette reported on its front page, “The first colored co-ed to register at the University of California is Miss Regina Crawford, whose home is in far away Meridian, Mississippi. [...] Miss Crawford is now staying at the home of Mrs. Robert Bentley, widow of the late Rev. Robert Bentley of the Methodist Church. She is being given employment by Mrs. Bentley and is thus enabled to support herself while carrying on her University work.” 

The Bentley sons were thriving in San Francisco. Robert Irving Bentley founded a fruit canning company, which his brother Charles, a Beta Theta Pi at Cal, joined following his graduation in 1891. In 1899, their company merged with seventeen others to form the California Fruit Canners Association, which used the Del Monte name as one of its many brands. 

In 1905, Charles Bentley’s wife died, leaving him with two young children. His mother joined them in Pacific Heights, leasing the Berkeley house to renters. When Charles remarried in 1909, Frances returned to Berkeley, living at various addresses. 

In 1920, Frances and her unmarried daughter Mary were lodgers in the old Henry boarding house at 2401 Le Conte Avenue, then run by Emma Greet. (The boarding house, built in 1897 by George Frederick Estey, burned in 1923. The University Christian Church now stands on the site.) At the time, Mary Bentley was working as a secretary at the YWCA. Ten years later, mother and daughter were living in a house they had purchased at 758 Contra Costa Avenue, near John Hinkel Park. 

Frances Bentley died in 1934, at the age of 94. Following her death, Mary returned to 2683 Le Conte Avenue, residing there until her own death in 1940. 

Perhaps the most interesting figure in the Bentley family was Harvey Wilder Bentley, the eldest of Charles H. Bentley’s children. Wilder (after his mother’s maiden name) graduated from San Francisco’s Lowell High School in 1918. He attended Yale University and the University of Michigan, then spent several years in Europe providing relief work with French war orphans and later traveling. 

Wilder married Ellen Mayo in 1927. In the late 1920s, he was at the University of Oklahoma, where his book The art of Laurence Pickett Williams (1930) was published. From 1930 through 1933, Wilder worked at Porter Garnett’s Laboratory Press at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, honing his skills in the craft of fine printing. In 1932, he became an honorary associate member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. 

Having returned to Berkeley with their two young children, Wilder Jr. and Margaret (later Sevcenko), Wilder and Ellen settled at 1836 San Antonio Avenue. They found an old Acorn hand press that had been shipped around the Horn, bought it, and established a small publishing business, producing limited editions of finely printed books, portfolios, broadsides, scrolls, and cards. 

Their earliest publications were broadsides in the Acorn Series, beginning with Wilder’s own Excursion on the Bay and Unheroic couplets for the poets of New Albion (“Printed on the Acorn Press in the Thousand Oaks”). The following year, they began publishing under the Archetype Press imprint and opened a shop at Euclid Court, on the commercial block just north of the campus. Wilder taught Ellen how to set type, and it was she who did the typesetting and proofreading, in addition to sewing the books that Wilder designed. Their motto was “The fine printer begins where the careful printer leaves off.” 

One of the items Wilder “and his faithful spouse, Ellen” published at Euclid Court was N’en Parlons Plus!, Excerpts From Divers Papers & Chronicles of The Arts Club, 1937–1938. This 20-page folio was limited to 105 copies and issued for private distribution among members of The Arts Club and their friends. 

The Bentleys also printed William Saroyan’s A Native American (San Francisco: George Fields, 1938) in a limited edition of 450 copies, each signed by the author. By far the best-known book to emerge from the Archetype Press was Ansel Adams’ Sierra Nevada: the John Muir Trail (1938). In addition to being a photographic masterpiece, the book became a promotional tool on behalf of the Sierra Club’s campaign to establish a new national park on federally owned land in the Kings River Canyon region southeast of Yosemite: 

Ansel Adams sent a copy to Harold Ickes, secretary of the Interior. “The pictures are extraordinarily fine and impressive,” Ickes thanked him. He hoped that Congress would soon establish the park: “Then we can be sure that your descendants and mine will be able to take as beautiful pictures as you have taken—that is, provided they have your skill and artistry.” Ickes showed the book to his boss, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who kept it for himself. Kings Canyon National Park was established two years later. 

With the advent of World War II, the Bentleys closed the Archetype Press. The printing press was dismantled and stored in the basement of 2683 Le Conte Ave., which Wilder and Ellen had purchased from his aunt Mary’s estate. 

In addition to his printing activities, Wilder Bentley was a prolific poet, calligrapher, and brush artist. The Bancroft Library houses a large collection of his poetic output, practically all of it printed by the Archetype Press. In May 1943, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco exhibited his brush drawings. 

After the war, Wilder Bentley returned to teaching. Between 1946 and 1956, he was professor of English and Philosophy at the College of the Pacific and Stockton Junior College, both in Stockton. In 1957, he was appointed professor at San Francisco State College, where he taught until his retirement in 1971. A former student described him as “a white-haired, elderly, enthusiastic expositor of the beauties and significance of American writing” who “was well-known in the college, if not beyond it, as one of those professors who is an inspiring catalyst for receptive students.” 

Following his retirement from teaching, Wilder dedicated himself to the epic poem The Poetry of Learning (Archetype Press,1975–85). A collection of 26 scrolls (some rolling out to about 15 feet in length), it was printed on an 1870s-issue Palmer & Rey “Washington”-type hand press in the basement of 2683 Le Conte Ave. 

Wilder Bentley passed away in 1989. His widow Ellen continued living at 2683 Le Conte Avenue until 1996, nearly a century since the Rev. Dr. Robert Bentley purchased the lot for his retirement home. 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

Photograph: Daniella Thompson  

The Bentley House at 2683 Le Conte Ave. with a curved staircase leading to the street. 

Some of the best gifts I’ve ever received have been from people’s gardens.  

I got my first lemongrass from Beulah Stringer, when I lived just down the block from her. She was splitting her cluster, and handed me a nice hunk when I stopped to exclaim that Gee, that smelled and looked just like lemongrass. She used it for tea; I used it in Thai recipes. Over the years, we swapped seeds and starts and stories and I think the stories were the best things I got, along with her friendship.  

One thing she taught me was not to say “Thank you” for a plant. As she explained it, plants thrive better when they’re stolen, and by not quite acknowledging that you’ve received it as a gift you’re improving its chances. Beulah hails from Arkansas, on the other side of the state from my in-laws’ hometowns. When I checked her folk story out with my mother-in-law, she confirmed it, though I don’t remember her ever insisting on that bit of etiquette herself.  

I still have, if it hasn’t disappeared since the last time I looked, a walking onion left from the set that sweet innocent white-haired Auntie Ev smuggled here from Fostoria, Ohio. It’s also called “Egyptian onion,” and it “walks” because it bears a cluster of new bulbs on top of its stalk, which eventually bends with their weight so they come to rest and can take root on the ground at a strategic distance from the mother plant.  

Auntie Ev was someone else’s auntie officially, but we adopted her as ours too. Smuggling live plants rather shocked my sensibilities but I had to recognize the inherent heroism in the gift, as Auntie Ev had a serious allergy to onions, garlic, and their relatives. She couldn’t consume it herself and probably shouldn’t have been carrying it tucked into her bag, but she thought it was a plant of interesting habits. She was right, and it’s tasty too. 

I used to have a pine in a pot—not really a bonsai, because it was too tall. Too long. Too big in some dimension or other, maybe measured on the diagonal like a TV, anyway more than three feet from base to top and more like a bottle brush than a tree. I thought maybe I could make a bunjin bonsai out of it, as that form allows for eccentricities. 

Didn’t have the heart to part with it, even aside from the sentiment attached to it because I got it from a good friend and colleague. It was like that homely puppy in the litter who somehow just belongs in the household. I confess to keeping it more out of sight than on display, but that was mostly because it needed support on both ends. 

Time and happenstance have done for rather a lot of the living gifts I’ve received over the years. Still, though they’re mortal, a living gift grows and changes and develops and surprises long after the occasion’s over.  

I’m Bolted, I’m Ok? 

I’m hearing from way too many folks who have taken a peek in their crawl space, seen some bolts connecting their “mudsill” to their foundation, and are thinking “Oh, good, my foundation is bolted, I’ve got a retrofit.” 

A “bolted foundation” is NOT a retrofit. It is an essential ingredient of a retrofit, yes, but there is another ingredient (transfer ties) and very often a third (shear panels) which are also essential. If your foundation is bolted, it just means that the mudsill will probably stay put during a serious quake. The house, however, could very easily fall off the foundation. 

Be sure—have your retrofit checked.  

Make your home secure and your family safe. 

Larry Guillot is the owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing and kit supply service. Contact him at 558-3299 or see www.quakeprepare.com to receive semi-monthly e-mails and safety reports.

You’re in the last throws of the deal and it’s time for the home inspection. The inspector finds that the water heater is defective and needs replacement now. You’re a little upset, since you’ve just offered more money to buy this house than your parents have in their retirement fund. You expected the house to be perfect for that kind of money and you’re not about to shell out another dime.  

So, you ask the realtor to negotiate to have a new water heater installed prior to close of escrow. Being your diligent and obedient representative, he/she says fine, we’ll see if we can get them to put in a new water heater prior to closing of the escrow.  

Stop everything. Let’s run this scenario out to a likely conclusion before you choose this path. It is not unlikely that the seller will agree get this deal closed since it’s a relatively small item. But think about who they are likely to hire and what they are likely to buy … for you. Are they going to buy the best water heater on the market? Are they going to hire the top plumber in the field? Will they consider moving the water heater if that’s advised? Will they make sure it is placed on a stand, if this is advised or necessary?  

I can go on with at least another dozen considerations on this one kind of job, but you get the point. The seller, as fair and honest as they might be, is far more likely to get this job done fast and, well, let’s say economically. Of course, this is a broad generalization but I believe (with plenty of experience to stand upon) that this is, in fact, what happens the vast majority of the time.  

Any seller is likely to get the job done faster, cheaper, and with less consideration for long range consequences then you are as the new homeowner. The seller is not very likely to have a parental and deeply vested interest in the new owner’s well-being and that of the house beyond their ownership. With that in mind, who should be buying the water heater? Of course, it’s you the buyer.  

Now you can still seek additional funds from the seller. But you, the buyer will be using the money and getting the job done. This might mean adding some of your own money to the pot to get the best job done, but at least the seller’s money will be going to buy the better job, since you will be trying to get the best plumber you can afford as well as the best equipment. 

Another very good reason for you to be the buyer of any fixes that you feel are needed upon purchase of your new home relates to the nature of the contractual relationship between the client and the contractor.  

Let’s say that the sellers hire Joe the plumber and pay him to install the very finest water heater that mankind has yet to produce. He applies his greatest skill and makes a masterwork of installation that the city inspectors (three of them) come to see, bearing signatures, tags and words of great praise. The water heater works great. Everyone’s happy but surprise of surprises, the thing begins to leak from eight locations about 3 weeks after the sellers have moved to Malaysia. Not to worry, you have the name of the plumber and call him up.  

Joe (really a great guy) says how sorry he is but you are not his client and only his client can call in the warrantee. He’s right. You and Joe are not named in any contract as client and contractor and services on any piece of paper. Warrantees for roofs do transfer in the state of California but most workmanship does not transfer from one owner to another.  

If you attempted to take Joe to court to get him to come and repair his unconscionably bad workmanship, it is most likely that the judge would ask to see the contract for work and would find that you had not hired Joe at all and throw the case out.  

If, on the other hand, you asked for a cash sum or adjustment in the sale price of the house (or money held in escrow to pay for such a repair, which is a common tactic) you could hire your dear friend Joe and when the leaks began, you would be in a much better position to get him back to fix the repairs that you paid for. And if he turns out to be the scoundrel your cousin Vanessa said he was (they dated very briefly), you could take Joe to small claims and would likely find (remember to bring photos) that the Judge would like your case and force Joe to return some or all of your payment to him or force him to make good and fix the water heater properly.  

And here’s a word to the wise. If Joe is the one who screwed up you water heater in the first place, he might not be the best choice to come back and fix it. 

A final note regarding this whole issue of who gets the repairs done when houses change hands: Just a spoonful of money makes the escrow get done. When buyers request repairs as a requirement of closing, this sets the clock back as people start rushing about doing these repairs. Sometimes the repairs get done and get looked at and are disapproved and more time gets lost. Occasionally deals fall apart under theses circumstances. Mostly, it just leads to bad work and irritated buyers and sellers. So taking a sum of cash, or a cost adjustment or doing nothing at all may be preferable to receipt of this particular gift horse. 

Happy home hunting. 

FRIDAY, DEC. 14 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Christine A. Hastorf, Prof. of Anthropology on “Local Work and World Heritage: How Archeologists Work on the Ground to Learn About the Past as Well as to Protect it for the Future” 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.  

Conscientious Projector Film “Life in Occupied Palestine” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donation $5-10. No one turned away. 528-5403. 

Teen Playreaders meets to read “Hamlet” and other plays based on the classic, at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 15 

Open The Farm Meet and greet the animals at the Little Farm in Tilden Park as you help the farmer with morning chores, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. 525-2233. 

Reptile Rendevous Learn about the reptiles that call Tilden Park home, at 1:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Holiday Crafts Fair at Civic Center Park with live music from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and handmade gifts by local craftspeople. 548-3333 . 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios Sat and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Dec. 16. 845-2612. www.berkeleyartisans.com 

Celebrate a Muir Christmas at John Muir National Historic Site, 4202 Alhambra Ave., Martinez. Music from 10 a.m. to noon, 1 to 3 p.m., House tours at 10:30 and 11:30 a.m. and storytelling at noon and 3 p.m. Cost is $3. 925-228-8860. 

Chapel of the Chimes Historical and Botanical Tour at 10 a.m. at 4499 Piedmont Ave. Other events throughout the afternoon. RSVP to 228-3207. 

Create Your Own Card with an Origami Star at 2 p.m. in the Edith Stone Room, Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720. 

Family Workshop: Wrapping Paper and Gift Cards, 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 Phoenix Mars Mission A presentation by NASA educators. Demonstrations at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., lecture at 1 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $9-$13. 336-7373. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 16 

Berkeley Hiking Club Hike on Mt. Tamalpais meet at 8:30 a.m. at Berkeley Way and Shattuck. Bring lunch and liquids hike about 8 miles. Rain cancels. 492-0470. 

Women on Common Ground Make decorations for the Women’s Drop-In Center, and some for yourself also. Bring a pair of small hand clippers and a bag lunch if you plan on joining an early winter hike afterwards. From 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $15-$17. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Waterside Workshops Sustainable Holiday Event and Toy Making Workshop with hands-on activities, music, food, and fun for people of all ages. Learn how to make your own wooden toy, or sew up a fleece hat to keep your ears warm. All of our materials are from sustainable sources, and non-toxic. From noon to 5 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr. in Berkeley’s Aquatic Park. Sliding scale donation is requested. 644-2577.  

Women on Common Ground Early Winter Hike from 2:30 to 5 p.m. from the Tilden Nature Center to Wildcat Peak, returning to the Nature Center for a warm fire and hot cider. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Daniel Ellsberg on “Secrecy, Freedom, and the Spiritual Life” a on his spiritual life and the role of conscience at 10:30 a.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St, a block above MLK Jr. Way. 841-4824. 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Dec. 16. 845-2612.  

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 526-7377. 

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club, Berkeley Marina. Wear warm, waterproof clothing and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. www.cal-sailing.org 

“Chimes Winter Starscape” events from 10 to 5 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 228-3207. 

“The Cross-Walk Walk” for war resistance, every Sun. at noon at the corner of Solano and San Pablo. Bring signs, ideas, young people. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Jared Baird on “The Value of Spiritual Retreat” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000.  

MONDAY, DEC. 17 

Public Hearing for the Helios Energy Research Facility, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst St. 486-5183. 

Two-and-a-Quarter-Mile Monday Join a short but strenuous hike from shoreline to ridge in Miller/Knox, from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Led by naturalist Meg Platt. Bring lunch, layers, and hiking poles. For meeting place call 525-2233. 

TUESDAY, DEC. 18 

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 Martin Luther King, Arrowhead Marsh. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Cancer Prevention and Survival Cooking Class on Planning Healthy Meals at 8:30 a.m. at Fruitvale Elementary School, 3200 Boston Ave., Oakland. To register call 595-6445. 

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. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 19 

War and Peace Book Group meets to discuss “Saturday” by Ian McEwan at 7 p.m. at Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 16. 

Cancer Prevention and Survival Cooking Class on Planning Healthy Meals at 8:30 a.m. at Cesar Chavez, 2825 international Blvd., 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. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Eay Does It Board of Directors Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 1636 Univestiy Ave. 845-5513. www.easyland.org 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley BART station. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, DEC. 20 

Winter Solstice Celebration Bring stories, poetry and music to share, and join a short walk to learn the solstice’s cultural history, at 4 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. For ages 6 and up. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Teen Book Club meets to discuss favorite tearjerkers at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue at Ashby. 981-6121. 

Cancer Prevention and Survival Cooking Class on Planning Healthy Meals at 8:30 a.m. at Jefferson Elementary, 2035 40th Ave., Oakland. To register call 595-6445. 

Juggling for Peace Learn juggling and plate spinning at 11:30 a.m. in front of the Marine Recruiting Station, Shattuck Square. 524-2776. 

Simplicity Forum meets at 6:30 p.m. at the Claremont Branch of the Berkeley Public Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave. jcecil@chw.edu  

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club meets at 6:45 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza. 3290 Adeline. namaste@avatar.freetoasthost.info  

CITY MEETINGS 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon., Dec. 17, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers. 644-6128 ext. 113.  

City Council meets Tues., Dec. 18, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900.  

Human Welfare and Community Action Commission meets Wed., Dec. 19, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5427.  

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., Dec. 20, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7415.  

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.  

Chick Corea Elektric Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $40-$45. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

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.  

“Ashes to Life” An art exhibit examining the mass exodus of Azoreans to America, and the 50th Anniversary of the eruption of the “Vulcão dos Capelinhos” Reception at 7 p.m. at The Stone Gallery, 600 50th Ave. Oakland. RSVP to 536-5600. 

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. 

FRIDAY, DEC. 14 

CHILDREN 

“Alice in Wonderland” puppet show at 2, 4 and 6 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., off Grand Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 452-2259. 

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” at 8 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St., through Dec. 12. Tickets are $10-$20. 652-2120. 

Brookside Repertory Theatre “Hiliday Shorts IV” at noon at The Claremont, 41 Tunnel Rd. Tickets are $65-$75, includes lunch. 549-8512. 

Encore Theatre Company & Shotgun Players “The Shaker Chair” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m., at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Jan. 27. Tickets are pay what you can. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.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 

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 

Holiday Arts from 4 to 8 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Best of Actors Reading Writers “Serendipity” 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. 

The Venezuelan Music Project at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Mark Morris Dance Group “The Hard Nut” at 7:30 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$60. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Holiday Gospel Extravaganza with Zoe Ellis, Caitlin Cornwell, Carmen Jones and Ashling Cole at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Farlow-Kirch Band, David Gans, Pat Nevins at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

TC Brewitz and Trio at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Rebecca Riots at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jeff Oster plays selections from his new CD “True” at 7:30 p.m. at Sacred Space Yoga Sanctuary at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way. Tickets are $15-$20. 486-8700. 

The Nomadics, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

El Capitan, Axton Kincaid, The Whoreshoes, bluegrass and country, at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Lifesavas, Pigeon John at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159.  

Broun Fellinis at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Chick Corea Elektric Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $40-$45. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, DEC. 15 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Bonnie Lockhart at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Boswick the Clown at 11 a.m. at Studio Grow, 1235 Tenth St. Cost is $7. 526-9888. 

“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.  

Bugs Bunny/Road Runner cartoons at 10 a.m. and noon, Sun. at noon at Elmwood Theater, 2966 College Ave. at Ashby. Benefit for local PTAs. 433-9730. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Of Ignorance and/or Mystery” A location-inspired project by Ken Fandell opens at Traywick Contemporary, 895 Colusa Ave. 527-1214. www.traywick.com 

“Robots are Art” Art show and contest at 6 p.m. at Float Gallery 1091 Calcott Place #116, Oakland. 535-1702. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Best of Actors Reading Writers “Serendipity” at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. ricaisabella@yahoo.com 

Wilde Irish Productions “A Joycean Christmas” with readings from James Joyce’s masterpiece “The Dead” at 8 p.m. at Gaia Arts Center. Tickets are $25. 644-9940. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Pacific Boychoir Academy “Harmonies of the Season” at 7 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave., Oakland. 652-4722. 

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. 

Trio Concertino with Amy Likar, flute; Madeline Prager, viola; Miles Graber, piano at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com 

“Carols Around the World Concert” at 5 p.m. at first United Methodist church, 201 Martina St., corner W. Richmond Ave., Point Richond. 236-0527. 

Sacred and Profane Annual Holiday Concert, traditional and contemporary music for Swedish Lucia, Channukah and Christmas, at 8 p.m. at St. Leo’s Catholic Church, 176 Ridgeway Ave., Piedmont. Tickets are $12-$15. www.sacredprofane.org 

Rebecca Riots at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Ravines at noon at Cafe Zeste, 1250 Addison St. at Bonar, in the Strawberry Creek Park complex. 704-9378. 

Brian Andres & the Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Christie McCarthy & Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Pellejo Seco at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cuban salsa dance lesson at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Gateswingers Jazz Band at 8 p.m. at Central Perk,10086 San Pablo Ave. at Central, El Cerrito, 558-7375. 

Moment’s Notice improvised music, dance and theater at 8 p.m. at Western Sky Studio, 2525 8th St. Tickets are $8-$15. 992-6295. 

Fred Odell and Bob Harp at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Flowtilla at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Dave Gleason, 77 El Deora, The B Stars, alt country, at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

SUNDAY, DEC. 16 

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 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra “Puccini’s Messa di Gloria” at 8 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free, donations appreciated. 

A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at 5:30 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way at Ellsworth. 845-0888. 

San Francisco Choral Artists “Glorious Sounds of Christmas” at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave. www.stpauloakland.org 

Rebecca Rust, ‘cello and Friedrich Edelmann, bassoon at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

Al Stewart at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $29.50-$30.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mamadou Sidibe & Music Mali at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tom Huber and Misisipi Mike at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Pappa Gianni & the North Beach Band at 2 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198. 

MONDAY, DEC. 17 

CHILDREN 

“Alice in Wonderland” puppet show at 2, 4 and 6 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., off Grand Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 452-2259. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Express with Jeanne Powell at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Yolanda and Ric, opera and lieder, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Classical at the Freight with San Francisco Chamber Orchestra at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Dann Zinn at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

The premiere recording of Ferruccio Busoni’s Complete Two Piano Works (EMI/Angel) will be celebrated by the Musical Offering (Bancroft Avenue below Telegraph), this Wednesday 5-7 p.m., with a reception for and signing by pianists Daniell Revenaugh of Berkeley and Lawrence Leighton Smith, currently musical director of the Colorado Springs Philharmonic.  

“Fantasia Contrappuntistica” and the “Berceuse Elegiaque,” as well as works based on Mozart and Bach, were transcribed by Egon Petri, Busoni’s protegé, who later taught at Mills College in Oakland. While Busoni was composing his opera, Doktor Faust, and reducing his own concert schedule, he composed these two works for a full concert program both would play, in order to promote Petri’s career.  

Busoni and Petri memorabilia will be featured, including photos, as well as letters and manuscripts related to the compositions, which were recovered by Revenaugh in Europe. The public is invited, free of charge, and refreshments will be served. 

“I was associated with Petri for about 10 years,” said Revenaugh, “looking him up due to his relationship to Busoni. In 1960, I rescued the papers and photographs Petri had left behind, in chaos, in the wake of the War, in Zakopanje [Poland]. Over 300 letters, including some to Brahms. He knew everybody, including Rilke and Joyce, from the years spent in Zurich. He was a fascinating character. I’ll have pictures as well as manuscripts and letters relating to the compositions in the Musical Offering’s glass cases.” 

The collaboration on this project, recorded at Yale, began when Smith conducted a premiere work for the Louisville Orchestra of Revenaugh’s schoolmate, Ellen Zwillich. When Zwillich introduced the two, Smith said to him, “You conducted the great recording of the Busoni Concerto. Let’s do something wild like that!”  

Revenaugh is pursuing another project of compositions from notable friends, like Smith (who will be represented by three pieces), including a piano sonata by Carlisle Floyd, composed at the time he was working on his opera, Susannah (1955), “which has been performed more than West Side Story,” according to Revenaugh, “the premiere American folk opera, after Porgy and Bess.” 

Revenaugh owns the ex-slave cabin in which Floyd lived in Tallahassee, now moved to a preservation plantation where Revenaugh plans to have it restored for seminars and study, “as Floyd House.” 

“I’m going to do something wrong here ...” Those ominous words, emblazoned on the cover of the program to the Shift Theatre/Berkeley High School Drama production of Michael Frayn’s backstage bungler, Noises Off, telegraph the message of this non-message play clearly. And a great deal is going to be done wrong. Repeatedly. That’s the whole show. 

A favorite with companies large and small, and their audiences—what stage actor doesn’t want to do a pratfall while playing something serious, and who doesn’t enjoy watching them do it?—Noises Off is really a 3-D look, fore and aft (onstage and backstage) of the same doomed show, from dress rehearsal (onstage) to a month on the road (backstage) to a couple of months later.  

A typical three-act entertainment, as defined by George M. Cohan: Act One: hero goes up tree; Act Two: throw rocks at him; Act Three: get him back on ground again. But in Noises Off, the ground itself is shaky. And the rocks—thrown by all, including the hero(es)—never stop flying. 

“All these doors!” exclaims dubious ingenue Brooke, a.k.a. Viki (Kelly Friedman) with a big sweep of the arm, at the beginning of “Nothing On,” the play we see deteriorate from scratch. And it does seem to be an old-fashioned door-slammer. “Only a handful, really,” breathes her escort, Garry/Roger (Nico Kiefer). And they’re both right: the doors commence to open and slam as the various couples and solitary characters file in, in syncopated entrances unbeknownst to each other—and they’re all a handful, in costume or in mufti. 

The great comedy of Frayn’s play, which the director, Molly Bell, and her cast of nine have a handle on, is the underbelly of the beauty of live theater. That is, what happens when the difference between the real people who act and the characters they’re playing gapes open, big as a chasm—and what happens when the spectacle you’re watching is the resulting implosion of the one you were supposed to watch? 

Door-slammers rely on pinpoint timing—and a door-slammer deliberately gone awry has to turn over that beat with a funny flourish. The Shift Theatre bunch bit off a lot with Noises Off, and they have a lot of fun bringing it off, from Dotty/Mrs. Clackett’s (Elena Wagoner) dottering entrance as the old housekeeper: “I can’t open sardines and answer the phone!” in East End drawl, constantly (and dryly) interrupted by her director Lloyd (Eli Wirtshafter), to the chorus of three burglars who serially break and rebreak the same window to enter onstage, covering (so they think) a missed exit, all finally reciting the lines in unison as the set breaks up in mayhem. 

The two-story set itself, on wheels, as meticulously built by Mathison Ott and Samuel Owens, is rotated twice—to thunderous applause—so the audience may glimpse the many doings onstage and off. 

The cast, crew and director of “Nothing On” all bring their own baggage along, especially Lloyd the philanderer, who—like various stage tyrants—enjoys making his victims cry, in particular the stage manager (Anne Yumi Kobori), constantly in motion, though he can’t seem to get a rise out of Belinda/Flavia (Sonia Decker), of his leading ladies. These three have the most pronounced characters, and get the most out of them. 

The rest are, more or less, real characters in the scenic sense: Selsdon/Burglar (Mark “Thor” Sorenson), the cast lush; Tim Allgood (Peter Walton), the sleep-deprived stage carpenter and erstwhile stand-in; and Frederick/Philip (Eric Chiang), whose nose gushes red when the going gets thick. 

Shift Theatre has a few more coming up at various locations: The Vagina Monologues in February at the Ashby Stage, Independent Theater Projects in Feb. and March at the Hillside Club—and back at the Schwimley at Berkeley High in late April-early May for Grease. 

One of the most enjoyable and inspiring films I’ve seen in a long time comes to Berkeley for one day only, this Thursday, Dec. 13 at the California Theater, a benefit for the local Gray Panther chapter. Screenings are at 2 p.m. and 7:15 p.m. Tickets are $10. 

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song played briefly in San Francisco this fall, but never made it to the East Bay. It is an exceedingly well-made biography of the rugged iconoclast who has insisted on living and working on his own terms for most of his 88 years. 

Of course there are marvelous clips of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, and the Weavers playing and singing, but the film is focused on Seeger, his life, music and activism.  

In one way or another he has participated in most of the great social movements of the twentieth century, singing at union rallies with Guthrie in the late thirties, writing and singing anti-fascist songs in the forties, staring down the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) in the ’50s, going south and playing for the civil rights movement in the early ’60s, singing at countless anti-Vietnam war rallies later in the ’60s and ’70s, then helping to launch the environmental movement with his drive to clean up the Hudson River.  

Finally, there’s a scene showing Seeger, in his mid-’80s, standing in the snow with a few friends beside a well-trafficked road at the beginning of the Iraq war, holding up a sign that says “Peace.”  

Through it all, Seeger has taken great pains to avoid celebrity and commercialization. He hated playing nightclubs and refused to stay in fancy hotels while the Weavers were at the top of the pop charts with “Goodnight Irene” and “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena.” He left the group when, after they had been blacklisted and out of work for a long time, they decided to make a commercial.  

Unable to find work in a mainstream setting for 17 years, Seeger made his living by singing at schools, colleges, and summer camps all across the country, “poisoning the students’ minds,” as he put it.  

During this time, he wrote or co-wrote (he liked collaborative efforts) wonderful songs like “If I Had A Hammer,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “We Shall Overcome” “Guantanamera,” “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.”  

The film also contains some chilling footage of the McCarthy-era Peekskill riots, a right-wing backlash against a Paul Robeson concert north of New York City, at which Seeger also sang, as well as his performance on the Smothers Brothers TV show in 1968, which effectively broke the blacklist.  

Beyond music and politics, The Power of Song also goes into Seeger’s personal life, making for a well-rounded portrait of the man who has tried to live by the principles he believes in, and has pretty much succeeded. His wife Toshi and their children talk about life around the isolated log cabin home which Seeger and friends built more than 50 years ago.  

Anyone who has ever participated in a protest march, walked a picket line, been to a rally or fought for social justice will love this film. Why it will be here for only one day is at this moment unfathomable, but it opened in New York City last week to excellent reviews and is being distributed by the Weinstein brothers who distributed Michael Moore’s Sicko. 

Living With Chernobyl: The Future of Nuclear Power, a new documentary by Berkeley filmmakers and journalists Cliff Orloff and Olga Shalygin, will air at 11 p.m. Thursday on KQED Channel 9.  

As the threat of climate change forces environmentalists to reconsider the virtues of nuclear power, Orloff and Shalygin explore the myths and misconceptions surrounding the world’s worst nuclear accident. In 2006, the United Nations established the Chernobyl Forum, a task force charged with putting together a definitive report on the aftermath of the 1986 disaster. The filmmakers interviewed scientists, environmentalists and Chernobyl survivors in an effort to illuminate the truth behind the accident, as well as the arguments in favor of and in opposition to the use of nuclear power as an energy source. 

The broadcast will be repeated on KQED’s Life-Encore channel at 1 p.m. and 2 a.m. Friday and on KQED World at 9 a.m. and noon Dec. 25.  

One of the several “pagan” plants that appear all over in the midwinter holiday season is one that lives in trees: mistletoe. It’s Frazer’s eponymous Golden Bough.  

What’s it doing up there in the doorway? Amalgamating at least two pagan lineages: Kissing under the mistletoe is a Nordic peace gesture, and a Druidic fertility blessing. Both ideas spring from mistletoe’s odd lifestyle, as not quite a terrestrial plant.  

Balder, the Norse god not of comb-overs but of sun and joy, had a premonition of death. His mother Frigga, hearing this, was rattled enough to extract a promise from every creature of the air, water, and land never to harm her son. They agreed—after all, to harm the sun god would leave them freezing in the dark—except for mistletoe. As it isn’t of any realm, but suspended between sky and earth, Frigga forgot to ask. Now that Balder was invulnerable, the gods made a game of using him for target practice. Boy, the Aesir knew how to have fun.  

Loki, the god of mischief, wickedness, and general nasty doings, noticed Frigga’s lapse and made a spear with a mistletoe tip. (It’s reputedly tough as well as toxic.) He handed it to Balder’s blind brother, Hoder, who launched it and killed Balder. After much weeping and grief, Frigga managed to resurrect him. Her tears became mistletoe’s white berries, the plant was forgiven and made sacred to her, and warriors who met under it kept peace.  

The Druids noticed mistletoe’s aerial habits, too. It was gathered with a gold knife or sickle and caught on cloths before it could touch the ground and discharge its power. Some Europeans preferred knocking it down with a rock or arrow and catching it. This does limit one’s chance of breaking one’s neck falling out of a tree. There are various times for gathering mistletoe; one is the fifth (or sixth) night after the winter solstice’s new moon.  

It was used in cultures from northern Europe to Africa, North America to Southeast Asia, as a healing herb. (Don’t try it; leaf, branch, and berry, mistletoe is poisonous.) It was also a fertility charm: a sprig was fed to the first cow who calved after New Year’s to bless the whole herd. Some saw the Green Man in it. As it’s evergreen, and gets noticed in deciduous trees when their own leaves have fallen, it was thought to be the tree’s green soul. Some used it to ward off fire and lightning; it was thought to be engendered by lightning strikes and have the power to control its source.  

Its name, also based on an idea about its origin, is less romantic than it sounds: By some accounts, it translates to “dung on a twig.” In the good old days of the Dark Ages, when maggots rose spontaneously from manure piles and geese from barnacles, bird droppings were thought to turn into mistletoe. That’s close to the truth. Mistletoe spreads its sticky seed via the birds who eat its berries and either plop undigested seed onto another branch, or wipe it off their bills onto the bark. It grows slowly and takes a few years to reach maturity. 

Mistletoe has separate sexes; the berries are on females. It’s a denizen of the air only with help, standing on the shoulders of giants. It’s mostly parasitic, getting water and nutrients from its host trees through haustoria, a functional combination of roots and vampire fangs. It has leaves and chlorophyll, and can make its own food on too. There are dwarf mistletoe species without much in the way of leaves, entirely parasitic and pests mostly of conifers. Mistletoe can hurt an individual branch, and infestation to the point of threatening a tree is not unheard of. Most mistletoes aren’t all that dangerous to trees, though (as with Spanish moss) you might find an arborist eager to make a buck “curing” your tree of the green plague. 

Our native mistletoe is not the same species as the one the Druids and the Aesir were messing with, though they’re related. Our most common species locally are Phoradendron macrophyllum and P villosum; the European is Viscum album. There are other species in North America, most fairly similar.  

There’s lots of the native growing on oaks in the hills around Livermore, for example. Don’t go knocking it down; it’s an important food for interesting birds like cedar waxwing and phainopepla, an elegant glossy black songbird with a cardinal-style crest.  

We also have the legendary European species nearby. Luther Burbank imported some and tried his hand at raising it. As he was Luther Burbank, of course it worked, and now a population of Viscum album is radiating, tree by tree, from his working lab farm in Sebastopol. As far as I know, he didn’t try crossing his mistletoe with cacao beans to produce homegrown chocolate kisses.

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. 

FRIDAY, DEC. 14 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Christine A. Hastorf, Prf. of Anthropology on “Local Work and World Heritage: How Archeologists Work on the Ground to Learn About the Past as well as to Protect it for the Future” 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.  

Conscientious Projector Film “Life in Occupied Palestine” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donation $5-10. No one turned away. 528-5403. 

Teen Playreaders meets to read “Hamlet” and other plays based on the classic, at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 15 

Open The Farm Meet and greet the animals at the Little Farm in Tilden Park as you help the farmer with morning chores, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. 525-2233. 

Reptile Rendevous Learn about the reptiles that call Tilden Park home, at 1:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Holiday Crafts Fair at Civic Center Park with live music from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and handmade gifts by local craftspeople. 548-3333 . 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios Sat and Sun. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Dec. 16. 845-2612. www.berkeleyartisans.com 

Celebrate a Muir Christmas at John Muir National Historic Site, 4202 Alhambra Ave., Martinez. Music from 10 a.m. to noon, 1 to 3 p.m., House tours at 10:30 and 11:30 a.m. and storytelling at noon and 3 p.m. Cost is $3. 925-228-8860. 

Chapel of the Chimes Historical and Botanical Tour at 10 a.m. at 4499 Piedmont Ave. Other events throughout the afternoon. RSVP to 228-3207. 

Create Your Own Card with an Origami Star at 2 p.m. in the Edith Stone Room, Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720. 

Family Workshop: Wrapping Paper and Gift Cards, 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. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 16 

Berkeley Hiking Club Hike on Mt. Tamalpais meet at 8:30 a.m. at Berkeley Way and Shattuck. Bring lunch and liquids hike about 8 miles. Rain cancels. 492-0470. 

Women on Common Ground Make decorations for the Women’s Drop-In Center, and some for yourself also. Bring a pair of small hand clippers and a bag lunch if you plan on joining an early winter hike afterwards. From 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $15-$17. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Waterside Workshops Sustainable Holiday Event and Toy Making Workshop with hands-on activities, music, food, and fun for people of all ages. Learn how to make your own wooden toy, or sew up a fleece hat to keep your ears warm. All of our materials are from sustainable sources, and non-toxic. From noon to 5 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr. in Berkeley’s Aquatic Park. Sliding scale donation is requested. 644-2577.  

Women on Common Ground Early Winter Hike from 2:30 to 5 p.m. from the Tilden Nature Center to Wildcat Peak, returning to the Nature Center for a warm fire and hot cider. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Dec. 16. 845-2612.  

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 526-7377. 

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club, Berkeley Marina. Wear warm, waterproof clothing and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. www.cal-sailing.org 

“Chimes Winter Starscape” events from 10 to 5 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 228-3207. 

“The Cross-Walk Walk” for war resistance, every Sun. at noon at the corner of Solano and San Pablo. Bring signs, ideas, young people. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Jared Baird on “The Value of Spiritual Retreat” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000.  

MONDAY, DEC. 17 

Public Hearing for the Helios Energy Research Facility, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst St. 486-5183. 

Two-and-a-Quarter-Mile Monday Join a short but strenuous hike from shoreline to ridge in Miller/Knox, from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Led by naturalist Meg Platt. Bring lunch, layers, and hiking poles. For meeting place call 525-2233. 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., Dec. 11, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900.  

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.  

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.