The planned BP biofuel lab, designed to house a multinational oil giant’s $500 million research program, means profits without honor, Berkeley residents declared Monday night. -more-

By Richard Brenneman -more-

Alarmed by a recent surge in newspaper theft, a coalition of Bay Area newspaper publishers is asking local authorities to help pursue thieves both on the street and at the recycling businesses where they fence the stolen goods. -more-

The City Council voted Tuesday to go out anew to the garbage/recycling industry to offer bidding on a contract that would include recycling 25,000 tons of rubbish that now goes into landfills. -more-

Neighbors of the Becky Temko Tot Lot on Roosevelt Street claimed victory on Thursday after Commissioner Jon Rantzman granted a three-year restraining order against Art Maxwell, a tot lot neighbor accused of harassing park users. -more-

Over the last few weeks, a series of takeover-style robberies hitting almost exclusively Asian restaurants around the Bay Area, including one in Berkeley, six in Oakland, two in Albany, one in El Cerrito, one in San Leandro, one in Richmond, and one in Union City, may be connected, police believe. -more-

Purse snatch -more-

The chair of the Berkeley Planning Commission offered a scathing critique of one of two major new laboratory buildings planned for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). -more-

The Berkeley Board of Education announced Wedesday that Bill Huyett, superintendent of the Lodi Unified School District, will replace outgoing superinten-dent Michele Lawrence when she retires Feb. 2. -more-

On Saturday Nov. 3 La Méditerranée in Berkeley, or “La Med” as it is known to locals, celebrated its 25th anniversary in the Elmwood neighborhood of Berkeley with a private party for its employees and families, friends and special guests that filled the evening with music and circle dancing, food and friendly banter, reminiscent of the kind of upbeat socializing that has been its hallmark for many years. -more-

When my granddaughter drew my portrait at the age 6, the very first thing she put on the outlined face, before she drew the eyes, nose or a mouth, were the liver spots on my upper cheeks. What a surprise! What impresses her the most on grandma’s face are the brown spots? -more-

You ask what it has been like for the rest of us, safely distant from the quake. ... Like death in the family. You know the feeling—a great emptiness, and somewhere inside you, a tight-coiled spring of sorrow wound beyond its limit, ready to slip its cog and suddenly let go with a whirring wail. -more-

Take the time-line, my time line. The present, the unspent-part stretches to the horizon of infinity. But this end is weighted heavily towards nostalgia; sometimes it takes only the flutter of a martin’s winged dance over the marsh to startle my soul into memory; or a snow-burdened pine bough drooping down ward; or a child’s china tea set. Let me tell you. -more-

After the Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now writer, director, producer Francis Ford Cappola was interested in making his magnum opus. At age 66 he hadn’t made a film in eight years and he said he felt “at the end of the road.” He wasn’t able to finish his dream project Megalopolis and was beginning to feel increasingly frustrated. -more-

Bush Plans Half-True Memoir—President Bush announces that he is “knee-deep” into writing his memoirs (tentatively titled “Remission Reaccomplished”). “I’ve told Presidential Librarian nominee (Laura) to make sure the book is in both the non-fiction and fiction sections of my presidential library because quite a lot of it is true.” -more-

In July of 2002, a then-homeless Dan Hopkins rescued a young pigeon he saw being hit by a car at the intersection of Dwight and Telegraph. Miss Pidgy, as Hopkins named her, had a broken wing, so he carried her in a box during his stay in People’s Park. -more-

In Africa near the equator the sun comes up at the same time and sets at the same time everyday. Our group was staying at a game lodge in Tanzania where the greater part of the Serengeti lies. The Serengeti is a reserve for African animals, made up of grasslands and the rift valley. -more-

Standing on the corner of Center and Shattuck in downtown Berkeley, I peer longingly north, toward the Gourmet Ghetto, wishing I had enough time to get to the Cheeseboard Pizza for a slice or two before class. -more-

“There are so many different worlds passing through this spot,” I think, standing on Shattuck Avenue and Center Street in downtown Berkeley in cool twilight. It’s a visual feast, a slightly surreal movie unfolding before my eyes. -more-

If the axiom apllies that one must write about what one knows about, then for the Bay Area Rockin’ Solidarity Labor Heritage Chorus it must be “Sing out about what you’ve LEARNED.” -more-

Last night, I dreamed I lost the only love I had ever known. At first, I could not breathe, then I felt my chest burst into flames and I was consumed by an inferno, the flames of jealousy, the flames of insecurity, the flames of suspicion, the fumes depleted my soul of all hope; where my heart had once been was void; a place of desolation. -more-

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This story was supposed to have begun on my father’s shoulders and, in a moment, it most certainly will. It was also meant to be longer and about my dad and me, one of many tales I’ve written about my fathers’ and my relationship. Instead, I think it’ll end up being about something different. Anyway, I’ve only a thousand words so here goes. -more-

Excerpted from Y’all Come Back, Now; Reflections on Reincarnation -more-

The game is supposedly called bridge, -more-

When acacia bloom and quince flowers from its spare stem, -more-

My recollection of Prague in winter is the snow falling in big fat flakes outside of my double-paned window so densely that I could barely make out the neon colored lights of the alien tower ahead. The Zizkov TV tower, as it is known to locals, juts up into the sky like a robot arm. The sculptures of black, faceless babies crawling up its silver, tubular shape add to the weirdness of its energy. Whoever commissioned this art piece certainly had a strange sense of humor. Not surprisingly, the artist is also Czech. -more-

Although it wasn’t on my One Thousand Things To Do Before I Die list, the rock and roll frenzy, Yemeni style, that I was caught up in, dancing with dozens of Yemeni men and boys, will certainly be among the One Thousand Things I’ve Done That I’ll Never Forget entries when my life-journal is written. -more-

Hey Mom!— -more-

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They say it takes a village to raise a child. Lacking a village, I was fortunate to have, instead, Piedmont Avenue. -more-

Christmas time in December is the time to buy gifts for family and friends. It’s the perfect time to spend with family, have a lunch or dinner together, and enjoy your lives. It’s the time to be benevolent and kind. The most important thing for most people these days is buying new stuff: cars, phones, furniture, computers, new technology, clothes, food, etc. We live in society driven by consumerism. It is more important to HAVE than to BE. -more-

In center of a geometric shine -more-

Studies have shown that the time workers believe they have to themselves really belongs to an authoritarian presence, particularly on weeknights. For no apparent reason the subject will up and leave a movie, a party, even a steamy moment of passion. In 97 percent of the cases the explanation the subjects gave was the same: “I have to work tomorrow.” -more-

Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? This year the precious lives of Molly Ivins, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley and Judith Pomarlen Vladeck ended. Likewise, those of many other strong women who struggled in diverse ways in behalf of the status of women and girls. And within the present decade we have lost Shirley Chisholm, Amanda Cross, Andrea Dworkin, Margaret Ekpo, Betty Friedan, Martha Wright Griffiths, Carolyn Gold Heilbrun, Dorothy Coade Hewett, Patsy Takemoto Mink, Susan Moller Okin, Estelle Ramey, Ann Richards, Margaret Sloan-Hunter, Susan Sontag, Dorothy Stratton, Wendy Wasserstein, and Monique Wittig—to name just a few. -more-

For this Christmas -more-

On a Tuesday morning in the usual tranquil Tilden Park, we Senior Strollers were surprised by several unusual phenomena: -more-

An essay by playwright Alan Bennett, telling about how he declined a knighthood and other honors, prompted me to think on my past for a moment, so I’ve borrowed the title above. In that essay, he says that he grew up taught to shun this sort of attention, had stopped trusting authority, and was not a “joiner,” or one who cared to be a part of such ranks. I identified with his words because although I have had a few minor acknowledgements I never felt fully recognized by them. My reasons, I thought, were probably a lot like his. He wrote, though, that the greatest honor he had ever been given “had nothing to do with the Honours List and thus evaded the strictures of [his] recusatory temperament and all [his] misgivings about authority”: namely, being given a Trusteeship in the National Gallery, a position that gave him permission to visit the gallery outside of their open hours for the rest of his life. -more-

When my grandchild asked where I would be when I died, this poem was my reply. -more-

Planet Publisher Mike O'Malley and Arts Editor Anne Wagley help to shear a sheep. Photograph by Elizabeth Paxton -more-

Poets ... -more-

Do I have a song to sing? -more-

George Lakoff, linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and Mark Johnson, professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon, collaborated to produce Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (Basic Books, 1999), but oh what a tangled web of words they wove in the process—and one of them a renowned linguist by trade, at that. Beginning with the first sentences of the book, readers should fasten their seatbelts tightly because they’re in for a bumpy read. -more-

Halfway down the long line moving toward her she noticed a man. It had to be him. He had salt and pepper hair now like her. His eyes were hidden behind glasses. OK, they were both now wearing high refractive index lenses, not like the windshields of old, but still there were those layers separating their eyes. -more-

The long lean branches of the weeping willow dangled low over the little oval pond in our backyard. Faded red bricks fringed the concrete pond and the narrow bridge that crossed it. The bridge sloped up ever so slightly, then down to the other side of the pond. It was an unnecessary bridge. I could have walked around the pond had I wished to pry through the tangled branches of the drooping trees and unruly plants that surrounded it. But I never ventured around the pond during those years when I was six, seven, and eight years old. I always sat in my favorite place, the middle of the bridge. -more-

And there is nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong at all. But only in the discovery of an autonomous and benevolent republic of an artful creation. Through your own rigorous stirring and folding in a bowl of uncertainty, intellectual, emotional, spiritual and even its physical effort. It takes a lot of individual will to smooth out the roughness, “kneadless” pieces of grains. Pounded to perfection, and though it were whole kernels (thought processes), to rise up! Make yourself sit on your butt day in and day out to make this substance to be enjoyed. -more-

I -more-

The flood waters rising in Bihar and Bangladesh threaten -more-

It was May Day in Paris, and Mark and I were among the throngs of Parisians promenading throughout the city on this most festive day. We were standing by the Arc de Triomphe when a young man approached us. -more-

JAPANESE AMERICAN HISTORY -more-

I speak here not about Planet Earth, though god knows we need to protect it from the Strangeloves in Washington who don’t mind pulmonary disease from truck exhausts and lost shorelines from rising sea levels. I’m referring to the Berkeley Daily Planet because democracy in the United States requires something that is provided by papers like the Planet. -more-

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was signed into law in 2001 by President George Bush, backed by both Democrats and Republicans. The backbone of the program, allegedly designed to hold schools accountable for academic failure, is standardized state testing for students and educators. Rather than improve public education, however, there is now ample evidence that NCLB testing is part of a systematic effort to privatize diverse urban public schools in the United States. The objectives of privatization have been threefold: first, to divert taxpayer money from the public sector to the corporate sector; second, to capture part of the market, which would otherwise be receiving free education; and third, to drive out middle class accountability, leaving behind a disposable population that won’t have a voice about the inappropriate use of their tax dollars, nor the bleak outlook on their futures. -more-

I look at my bath, see the fungus that’s growing -more-

One of the more common plants to be handed about as décor and, say, hostess gifts is the poinsettia. It’s a Christmas cliché, and it’s been around long enough that some people have found it necessary to call it names and dismiss it. Others have bred it into some fairly weird forms: dappled, ruffled, wrinkled, ivory, pink. I myself like all but the pink, because who needs more pink? But de gustibus non est disputandum. -more-