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Holes in the roof of the Berkeley Hills home at 1156 Keith Ave. attest to the ferocity of the fire that gutted the three-level residence early Saturday and killed 61-year-old Richard Drury. Photograph by Richard Brenneman.
Holes in the roof of the Berkeley Hills home at 1156 Keith Ave. attest to the ferocity of the fire that gutted the three-level residence early Saturday and killed 61-year-old Richard Drury. Photograph by Richard Brenneman.
 

News

Storm Leads to Fatal Fire, Flooded Streets

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday January 08, 2008

A power outage caused by the heavy storm that swept through Northern California led to a Saturday morning fire that claimed the life of a Berkeley man. 

Richard Dury died after he was trapped in a bathroom by the flames that gutted a home at 1156 Keith Ave. Investigators suspect the blaze was caused by candles left burning after the storm knocked out power to the area. 

Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong said firefighters were summoned to the scene by a 911 call from neighbors at 2:26 a.m. 

“On arrival they found heavy fire on two floors,” he said. A second alarm was called at 2:33, bringing a total of 27 firefighters, two chief officers, five engines, two trucks and two ambulances to the scene. 

Dury’s caretaker had managed to escape the fire by leaping from a first floor window, but by the time the first firefighters arrived, flames were shooting out the windows, making entry impossible, said the deputy chief. 

The home was built on the downhill side of the street, with the residential floors beneath a third-floor garage and entry level.  

Flames had already consumed the floorboards on the uppermost level, preventing rescue efforts from above. The fire had also spread to nearby redwoods. 

It wasn’t until 4:53 a.m. that firefighters had the blaze under control. They found Dury’s body in the second floor bathroom, which had been heavily damaged in the fire. 

The dead man worked at the Shattuck Avenue Safeway store, where he was a popular figure. 

The fire, which started on the lowest level, was probably caused by candles the caretaker had lit because of a storm-caused power outage and left burning after he went to sleep for the night. 

“I really want to stress how important it is to have working smoke detectors,” said Dong. 

 

Storm havoc 

The storm kept firefighters, public works staff, city arborists and police busy fighting water backups, downed trees and an assortment of other emergencies. 

“During one 12-hour period we responded to 48 calls for downed power lines, fallen trees and flooding conditions,” said Dong. 

Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna said the city received a total of 225 calls for service during the storm, including a hundred downed tree reports and most of the rest for flooding. 

The worst flooding was on Bancroft Way and the Union Pacific RailRoad tracks in West Berkeley, where heavy flooding was dispersed by firefighters, public works crews and railroad staff. 

“That area took a huge hit last year,” Caronna said. 

“We used our hydro sub and our FlotoPumps,” said Dong, working between 10 a.m. Friday and 12:30 p.m. 

The sub is a 1,000-gallons-per-minute heavy duty pump also dubbed “Big Bertha” for its prodigious output. The smaller pumps move about 120 gallons a minute. 

Caronna said the city has worked hard over the last two years to prepare for flooding at locations where storms typically bring problems. “Traditionally, we’ve had flooding at Malcolm X Elementary School, but this year we had prepared and there were no problems,” she said. 

The heaviest rains, dropping two inches on southwest Berkeley, came during a a four-hour period starting at 8 a.m. Friday. But public works crews had been on alert and working 12-hour shifts since the day before, and were ready for the downpour. 

Supervisors had been assigned to work night shifts, and workers were staffing switchboards after hours until calls dropped off, Caronna said. 

A mere five minutes may have spelled the difference for two workers who had been eating lunch in a pickup truck cab in the 1900 block of Seventh Street, Dong said. 

Five minutes after they had swallowed their last bites, a redwood tree, loosened by saturated soil and uprooted by the storm winds, toppled over, flattening the truck. 

Another redwood was saved from keeling over only by a third, which managed to keep it propped up. 

Because the first tree took out power lines, crews had to wait for Pacific Gas & Electric crews before they could chop up the fallen tree. 

Another tree toppled into a building in the 1300 block of Seventh, and yet another crashed in the 1200 block of Hearst Avenue, while the intersection of Ashby Avenue and Fulton Street was briefly closed after another tree took down a power line. 

A tree took down yet another power line at the intersection of Poppy Lane and Miller Avenue. 

“Fortunately, the city was well prepared because we held meetings in advance of the storm,” Dong said. Public works crews had been placed on 12-hour shifts. 

Fire stations, which keep empty sand bags for residents, ran out of their supplies several times during the storm. 

A PG&E representative said the storm caused 21 outages affecting 834 customers in Berkeley, while five outages in Albany cut power to 700 customers. For Oakland the figures were 62 outages affecting 8,700 customers, while in Richmond 40 outages cut power to 3,719 customers. 

Less than 1 percent of affected users were still without power by early Monday afternoon.


Oakland Development Issues Continue Into 2008

By J. Douglas Allen Taylor
Tuesday January 08, 2008

While no one knows everything the new year will bring, there are at least two major Oakland development issues and controversies we know are coming up, unresolved in the old year and therefore carried over to the new. 

 

Oak to Ninth Development 

The controversial proposed development of a stretch of aging Oakland waterfront property just south of Jack London Square was the subject of litigation all through 2007. The prediction for 2008 is easy to make: more litigation, with, perhaps, a return to the Oakland Planning Commission process sometime in the year if the appeal by developer’s attorneys and City Attorney John Russo is dismissed. 

In 2006, Pleasanton-based Signature Properties developers won the blessings of the Jerry Brown mayoral administration and then 6-0 City Council approval of its proposed 3,100-residential unit, 200,000-square-foot commercial space development in an area along the Oakland estuary that includes the abandoned (and historic) Ninth Avenue Terminal. 

The approved project was the immediate subject of several citizen lawsuits: one charging that the project’s environmental impact report (EIR) under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was faulty, one seeking to prevent the planned demolition of most of the Ninth Avenue Terminal, and one challenging Russo’s throwing out of petitions that would have forced a ballot referendum on the project.  

The ballot referendum litigants dropped their lawsuit when they ran out of money, and a California Superior Court judge ruled against the Ninth Avenue Ter-minal litigants, but the same judge found that the EIR was, indeed, faulty in several respects, ruling that the Oak-to-Ninth project needed to go back through both the Oakland Planning Commis-sion and Oakland City Council approval processes in order to correct the problems. 

Last December, Russo and attorneys for Signature Properties asked the judge to reconsider her ruling or grant a new trial, and a ruling by Judge Jo-Lynne Lee is pending. Several scenarios are possible. The judge could reverse her ruling or grant a new Superior Court trial, neither of which are likely.  

If the judge denies the appeal, Signature and Russo could appeal the decision to the California Court of Appeal, a court process that would take up the rest of 2008, and more. Or Signature and Russo could drop any further appeal, sending the Oak To Ninth project back to the Oakland Planning Commission to correct the EIR deficiencies according to the judge’s original ruling. That would mean the Planning Commission would start a new round of EIR hearings on the project, leading to a new commission and City Council vote. 

Whatever the case, one thing seems almost certain: no ground will be broken to begin construction on the Oak To Ninth development in 2008. 

 

Housing Issues 

This is another set of Oakland issues that carried over from 2006 through 2007 and is expected to reach some conclusion in 2008. 

In 2006, the Oakland City Council split down the middle on two controversial housing issues: a proposed ordinance that would require affordable housing set-asides for city-subsidized housing projects in Oakland, and proposed changes to loosen the requirements on conversion of existing rental units in the city to condominiums. When the council could resolve neither issue, they voted to form a 17-member Blue Ribbon Commission for recommendations. 

After holding hearings throughout the city during 2007, the Blue Ribbon Commission—composed of representatives of city councilmembers and current Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and former Mayor Jerry Brown with appointees by the city attorney and city administrator—issued a 105-page report with affordable housing recommendations that seemed to satisfy neither side and had no majority recommendations on condominium conversion. That put the two issues back into the hands of the divided City Council. 

Late last year, after receiving the Blue Ribbon Commissions recommendations, the council decided to delay new deliberations on the two housing issues until hearing the recommendations of Mayor Dellums. Presumably Dellums’ staff is now working on those recommendations.  

If those mayoral recommendations are being worked out in consultation with key councilmembers with an eye towards a compromise solution, the two housing issues might be quickly settled once the recommendations are made. Otherwise, expect this to be a 2008 renewal of the Council housing fights of 2006. 

 

June Elections 

Oakland city issues in 2008 will be played out across the background of city elections, with several council seats going back before the voters in June. Two of those councilmembers already have serious opposition. 

In Council District 3 (West Oakland-Downtown), longtime incumbent Nancy Nadel, running for re-election, is being challenged by Greg Hodge, who represents the same District 3 voters on the newly-empowered Oakland School Board. Nadel and Hodge were both candidates in the 2006 Oakland mayoral election, but Hodge dropped out after Ron Dellums announced his intention to run, and Nadel came in third to Dellums, with 13 percent of the vote, in the June 2006 election. Nadel was unopposed for the District 3 Council seat in 2004. 

AC Transit Trustee Rebecca Kaplan has announced her intention for a second run for the Oakland City Council at-large seat currently held by longtime incumbent Henry Chang, who has not yet announced whether he is running for re-election.  

Kaplan lost handily to Chang, 44 percent to 56 percent, in a 2000 runoff for the at-large seat. In 2004, Chang easily beat Oakland Housing Commissioner Melanie Shelby for re-election, 54 percent to 37 percent. 

Three other Council seats—Council President Ignacio De La Fuente in District 5 (Fruitvale), Jane Brunner in District 1 (North Oakland), and Larry Reid in District 7 (East Oakland going towards the San Leandro border)—are up for new terms in the 2008 election, with the veteran incumbents in each expected to run for re-election, and no announced opposition so far. 

Both De La Fuente and Brunner were unopposed in 2004. After it was rumored that Reid would not run for re-election that year, then District 7 School Board member Jason Hodge (no relation to Greg Hodge) briefly entered the race, but dropped out after Reid announced that he was running. Hodge’s name remained on the ballot, even though he did not campaign, and Reid eventually won in a landslide with 68 percent of the vote to Hodge’s 20 percent and 11 percent for AFSCME labor leader Michael B. Hudson, who did campaign. 

In other Oakland elections, Alameda County Department of Social Services Civil Rights Coordinator Darleen Brooks has announced plans to run for the Area 2 Peralta Community College District Trustee seat currently held by incumbent Marcie Hodge, who is Jason’s sister. Brooks is the sister of Oakland City Councilmember Desley Brooks, who defeated Marcie Hodge for the council seat in 2006. Hodge has not yet announced her re-election plans. 

Meanwhile, an Oakland election that may, or may not, be contested in 2008 is the District 9 California State Senate seat currently held by Senate President Don Perata (D-Oakland). Perata is barred from running for re-election by California’s term limits law, and current District 14 Assemblymember Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) and former District 16 Assemblymember Wilma Chan (D-Oakland) have both announced plans to run for the vacant seat.  

All of that would change, however, if Proposition 93, which seeks to revoke term limits, passes on the Feb. 5 ballot, allowing Perata the chance to run for another term. In that case, presumably neither Hancock or Chan would run against the powerful Perata. 


Stabbing Victim Berkeley’s First Murder of Year

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday January 08, 2008

Berkeley logged what may be the first murder of the year when a 44-year-old man died Thursday at Highland Hospital, 12 days after he was stabbed outside an Adeline Street bar. 

Police were called at 11:19 p.m. on Dec. 22 by an employee of a market at 3198 Adeline St., after Kent Washington Evans walked into the store, bleeding from a neck wound. 

Berkeley Police Community Services Officer Steve Burcham said Evans was taken to Highland Hospital, where he underwent surgery later that night. 

Witnesses told police Evans and another man had been engaged in an altercation outside of Nick’s Lounge at 3212 Adeline St. 

The argument, which reportedly began over remarks made about the dead man’s companion, escalated into violence when Evans struck the other man, who responded moments later by pulling a folding knife and stabbing Evans in the neck. 

The assailant then got into his car before driving off with a woman. 

“We got a license plate and were able to track him down to his home in Oakland,” said Officer Burcham. 

Police arrested Roy Smith Jr., 71, at his residence and booked him into the city lockup for assault with a deadly weapon. He was later released on bail. 

With the death of Evans, the case now becomes a homicide, and even though the assault took place in 2007, the death will count as the city’s first killing of the new year, Officer Burcham said. 

Berkeley recorded five murders in 2007. 

A formal decision of whether to charge Smith with homicide will be made by the Alameda County District Attorney’s office. 

Meanwhile, an autopsy was under way Monday afternoon to determine the exact cause of death.


Bayer Leasing Agreement Worries West Berkeley’s Alliance Graphics

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday January 08, 2008

Bayer’s plans to close a parking lot used by artists and clients of West Berkeley’s Sawtooth Build-ing follow the company’s lease of an adjacent building. 

The German pharmaecutical giant has leased the building at 921 Parker St., and another business located on an adjacent building on the same parcel can’t get more than a year’s extension on their lease. 

And another groups of artisans who work at the adjacent building at 925 Parker fear they may have lost their shop to Bayer.  

Howard Levine, general manager of Alliance Graphics, said he is concerned about reports that Bayer is planning on buying the entire parcel. 

“We’ve called to try and find out more, but no such luck,” said Levine. 

The 17-year-old business is one of the few union shops in the Western states producing silk-screen and embroidered clothing, caps and other items. 

The company is a project of the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA)—hence the company’s name—and all profits fund the alliance’s programs. 

Clients include a wide range of union and progressive causes, including KPFA, environmental groups and social justice organizations. 

While Levine said Alliance wants a long-term lease on their building, they’ve only been able to win a one-year renewal, heightening concerns about the future of the firm’s tenancy. 

Bayer’s closure of the lot, initially set for Dec. 31 but extended to the end of January, has sparked protests from the artists and artisans in the Kawneer Building, popularly known as the Sawtooth Building for the jagged profile of its roofline. 

Woodworker John Curl and other occupants of the landmarked building say the lot is critical to their continued success, especially for the dance and yoga studios which attract sizable numbers of visitors to their classes. 

In search of a solution, City Councilmember Darryl Moore has scheduled a meeting he will host next Monday with tenants, a representative from Bayer and representatives of the Sawtooth Building’s owner. 

The session begins at 6 p.m. inside the 2525 Eighth St. entrance to the building. 

Curl has sent e-mails seeking support for the building’s tenants and other community members. 

One possible long-term solution would be construction of a parking structure at the site of the lot, something Curl said the Bayer had endorsed—so long as the city pays part of the cost. 

In the interim, he said, options proposed have included a request to Bayer to open the lot for evening public parking, a city lease on part of the nearby Fantasy Building parking lot, adding eight parking spaces along Carleton Street by restriping from parallel to angle parking and installation of two-hour parking meters. 

Sawtooth tenants have opposed the notion of meters.  

The parking lot had been leased for five years by the city from Bayer when the company signed a long term development agreement with the city in 1991, and the agree was twice extended—the last time with the assurance from then-City Manager Weldon Rucker that there would be no further extensions. 

Bayer spokesperson Trina Ostrander said last week that the drug company needs the lot to replace spaces that will be temporarily lost due to construction of a new lab building and to house 150 scientists who are moving from a lab in Richmond to work at the West Berkeley facility. 

A call placed to her office Monday morning about the lease of the Parker Street building was not returned by deadline. 


Locals Stump for Iowa Caucus Campaigns

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday January 08, 2008

What would it take to get Bay Area folk to trudge through Iowa snow in the heart of winter? 

For Linda Schacht and her husband John Gage of Berkeley and Jeremy Wolff of Lafayette, it was the call of the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses and the hope they would portend a new day in American politics. 

In a phone interview from Des Moines, Schacht, lecturer at the UC Berkeley journalism school, told the Daily Planet she believes Barack Obama has a different way of looking at things, one that brings people together. 

“He’ll talk to anybody who has a good idea because he wants information. And I love what he says: ‘This isn’t a blue nation or a red nation, this country is the United States of America.’ That is such a powerful message.” 

“People here are sick of the division,” she said, noting the river outside her hotel window had frozen overnight. 

For Schacht and Gage, chief researcher and vice president of the Science Office for Sun Microsystems, the trip to Iowa—which began the day after Christmas with Schacht’s 92-year-old father—was a family affair, with son, Peter, 29, working for the campaign soon after Obama announced his intention to seek the presidency and daughter Kate Gage, 25, who jumped into the campaign from the day she arrived, doing crowd control and other campaign work all over the state.  

“If Peter hadn’t been involved, I think we would have come here anyway. I think [Obama] represents the future,” Schacht said. “If he becomes president, the view of the United States from other places will change enormously.” 

Jeremy Wolff, a student at UC Santa Cruz, also came to work for the Iowa caucuses. His choice: John Edwards. “I’m passionate about this race,” he said in a phone interview Friday from Council Bluffs, where he was cleaning up the campaign office.  

Wolff made phone calls, stuffed envelopes, set up for events, including the Council Bluffs Precinct 4 caucus. He’s worked in campaigns before—the last one was the race for the Pleasanton-Tracy area House of Representatives seat, working for Democrat Jerry McNerney who beat incumbent Republican Richard Pombo. 

 

Outsiders on the campaign trail 

Both Schacht and Wolff said they were careful not to tell Iowans how to vote. Instead, they presented their candidates to the voters they met as they went door to door. 

“The people here are really into the process,” Schacht said. “They have really researched all of the candidates. And they talked the lingo. They liked to invite you in and talk about the candidates.” 

“It is startling to be in a state where almost everyone you talk to has thought about what kind of government they want,” said John Gage, writing on his blog at http://blogs.sun.com/SunScience/. 

“Maybe it’s because they see they can have an immediate personal impact, in contrast to states where one person’s vote is lost in a huge pool,” Gage wrote. “Here, one person can change the balance in a caucus of 50 people. People feel a personal responsibility, so they spend the time to learn.” 

Schacht talked about one 21-year-old she met. “He said Ron Paul was the only candidate who would really get us out of Iraq immediately. I talked to him for a long long long long time and finally got him to agree that it would be a wasted vote and that there were Democrats that would get us out of Iraq just as quickly. He showed up at the Democratic Caucus last night and voted for Barack—that was great,” she said. 

Schacht said there was an enormous amount of antipathy towards Hillary Clinton, which, she said came from Democrats as well as Republicans. They would say—and sometimes whisper—“I just want to do anything to make sure Hillary doesn’t become president,” Schacht said. “We heard it over and over and over again.” 

The question of whether an African American could do the job was raised during her campaigning once, perhaps, Schacht said. One person didn’t think Obama could win, and Schacht said she thought the implication was because he was black.  

Wolff also knocked on doors and spent a lot of time talking to people. There was one Clinton supporter, a retired teacher living on disability with a child who had cancer, he talked to for a half hour.  

“She was talking about all the issues that were important to her—we talked about health care and education,” Wolff said. Wolff said he was able to talk to her about the money Clinton took from lobbyists, drug and insurance companies.  

Like Schacht, Wolff said the campaign he worked on was careful not to tell people who to vote for. He said he would tell them why he likes Edwards. “A lot of people appreciated that Californians would come out in six degree weather,” Wolff said. 

 

The caucus 

Schacht said the excitement of the caucus and the ability for people to register on-site “brings more people into the process.” 

There are Democratic and Republican caucus sites. In years past, one would have to register to vote, and register with a political party or as an independent, 12 days before the caucus. 

The law changed this year, Schacht said, making it possible for people to register to vote at the caucus and to declare their party affiliation that night.  

“They want to make it very, very easy to participate,” Schacht said. “They just have to be able to prove that they live here now.” 

Once the signing in and registration process is complete, the doors are closed and instructions are given, people are asked to walk to the area corresponding to the candidate of their choice. During this time, individuals can try to convince caucus-goers to change their minds about their preferred candidate. 

Any candidate that does not attract 15 percent of the total caucus-goers is considered not viable. Supporters of a non-viable candidate either leave the caucus or join the group of another candidate.  

Once again, during this “realignment” time, participants can be persuaded to change alliances before the final count. 

Schacht and her husband went to the caucus at Saydel High School in Saylor, Iowa, a little town north of Des Moines, where they were observers and reporters for the Obama campaign. 

There were 250 participants, up from 150 the previous year, Schacht said, describing the area as working class and semi-rural. “There were a lot of union people so Edwards did very well in that caucus,” she said.  

Neither Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd nor Joe Biden had the 15 percent needed to stay in the race, “They all got together and formed one group, so Bill Richardson got one delegate,” she said. 

Schacht described how the Richardson group “kept yelling, ‘we need one more person, we need one more person.’” This was during the realignment time period. 

So one of the people in the Obama group was persuaded to join the Richardson group. But the loss of that person and the gain in the Richardson camp meant that, while Richardson got the requisite number of votes to get a delegate, Obama got one rather than two delegates. “Every vote counts,” Schacht said. 

This caucus got seven delegates: Edwards, three; Clinton, two; Obama, one; Richardson, one. 

Both Schacht and Wolff plan to bring the campaign home to California. Schacht is planning a January fundraiser for Obama and Wolff is bringing literature that he collected for other Santa Cruz students. 

Bay Area politicians who came out early for Clinton may regret it, Schacht said. “Some Bay Area politicians jumped on the Clinton band wagon due to the ‘inevitability factor,’” Schacht said. They believed a Clinton win was a sure thing.  

When the Democratic votes were tallied in Iowa, Obama took 37.58 percent of the state, Edwards got 29.75 percent, Clinton got 29.47 percent and Richardson got 2.11 percent. 

 


Remembering Louis Flynn, Pillar of East Bay Theater

Tuesday January 08, 2008

Actor, director, playwright, and pillar of the East Bay’s vibrant community theater scene for half a century, Louis Flynn is dead at the age of 86. Few individuals have touched so many others through the arts—not only participants in theatrical productions and other programs, but audience members as well. Flynn, or “Louie” as he was known affectionately to generations of theater people onstage, in the front of the house, and behind the scenes, died in El Cerrito on Jan. 4 following a brief illness. 

Flynn’s most visible legacy is Contra Costa Civic Theatre, which he co-founded with his late wife Bettianne in El Cerrito in 1959. Their vision and determination was enhanced by 20 local families who backed their belief in the dedicated husband-and-wife team with solid financial guarantees to remodel an old Boys Club and create a community theater in 1970. This dedication resulted in the theater’s home at 951 Pomona Avenue in El Cerrito. 

Louis Flynn was born in Edina, Miss., on Feb. 26, 1921. An accomplished pianist, Flynn would accompany his mother at singing recitals and church. A reluctant last-minute replacement in a school play at the age of 6, he would perform onstage for the next eight decades. Some of Flynn’s most memorable roles in his long career include Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey, Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, and Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner. 

Entering military service during World War II, Flynn served in the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, 30th Infantry Regiment until 1945. Though he participated in significant and historic events, including landing at the beaches of Anzio in Italy, battles in Southern France, and entering Germany in 1945, battle-scene recollections were rare. It was the entertainers in touring USO shows that Flynn recalled fondly, among them Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontane, Jack Benny, and Ingrid Bergman along with Maurice Evans in G.I. Hamlet. 

Flynn received his bachelor’s degree from Seattle University in Seattle, Washington. There he met his future wife, Bettianne Foster, who was in the audience of a drama department production that she was reviewing for a Seattle newspaper. Graduate school followed at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., where Flynn completed his master’s degree in playwriting. Samuel French published his master’s thesis project, The Orchid Sandwich, in 1976 under the title Madness on Madrona Drive. The play has been performed several times on Contra Costa Civic Theatre’s stage—most recently in 2006—and numerous times around the nation. 

Louis and Bettianne married June 11, 1949, in Seattle. They moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1955 and settled in El Cerrito in 1956. In 1959 they founded Contra Costa Civic Theatre, with Louis serving as artistic director, remaining in that role for the next 48 years. CCCT’s first curtain rose on Feb. 15, 1960, for the play Dear Ruth. Bettianne managed the administrative end of CCCT. During Louis’ run at CCCT, he served as director, producer, and, most prominently, as an actor in literally thousands of performances. His most recent appearance was as the trolley car driver in Meet Me in St. Louis in summer 2007. 

Outgoing and energetic, Flynn acted anywhere, anyplace, and in any medium including early Bay Area television. These appearances included background work in locally shot films and on other Bay Area stages with stars as varied as Glenn Ford, Luciano Pavarotti, Dan Dailey, and Giselle Mackenzie. In the 1970s he hosted the The Louis Flynn Show, interviewing local notables on a local cable access station. 

The Flynns envisioned a community theater that was a family affair. For almost 50 years, generations have come to participate both on- and offstage at CCCT. An enthusiastic supporter of arts education for all ages, Flynn could be found lending his support with brief appearances alongside young performers in student productions at CCCT. His most recent such appearance was as the Masked Avenger in CCCT’s 2007 Summer Drama Camp video. Flynn would often say, “It is ludicrous to think that only one person or family is responsible for Contra Costa Civic Theatre. It is an ensemble of very talented individuals with whom I was fortunate to have fallen in with … I fell in with the right crowd.” 

Louis lived a rich, full life right up until the end. He continued to play walk-on roles at CCCT, hosted cast parties, and enjoyed having friends over for dinner. He hosted the monthly CCCT Artistic Advisory Committee meetings at his home and was actively working on selecting productions for the upcoming 2008-09 season. Flynn invented and relished CCCT’s unique closing night ritual of presenting Saint Genesius medals to everyone involved in the production. His love of film made him a regular at the movies, and he was a card-carrying member of the Jeanette MacDonald Fan Club. 

According to Flynn’s daughter, Kathleen Ray, “Nothing made Louie happier than when complete strangers approached him on the street, at the grocery store, or while walking his dog Kelly, and telling him how much they had enjoyed a recent production at CCCT.” Kate Culbertson, CCCT’s current artistic director commented, “Louie’s youthful exuberance was infectious … people just loved being around him.” 

Louis Flynn received several proclamations and honors from the El Cerrito City Council, recognizing CCCT’s contribution to community theatre and acknowledging its commitment to volunteers. In 1978, the El Cerrito City Council named CCCT’s home on Pomona “The Flynn Building.” Additional honors include: 

• City of El Cerrito: El Cerrito Wall of Fame, 1991 (Louis & Bettianne). 

• Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors: Arts Recognition Award, 2002, honoring Louis Flynn for being a “…leader in the arts and having a significant impact on the arts of Contra Costa County.” 

• California State Senate: 2002, Certificate of Recognition acknowledging “outstanding achievements as artistic director and co-founder of Contra Costa Civic Theatre.” 

• Solano Stroll: 2000, a local “Living Legend.” 

Louis Flynn is survived by his daughter Kathleen Ray of Richmond, who runs the Drama Department at Head-Royce School in Oakland, son Matt Flynn of Los Angeles, art director on the television show “The Office,” son-in-law Ken Ray and grandson Alexander Ray, also of Richmond, and granddaughter Maureen Ray of Oakland. 

The Neptune Society handled cremation. Contributions in honor of Louis Flynn may be sent to the Flynn Memorial Fund, Contra Costa Civic Theatre, 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, CA 94530.  

A celebration of Louis’ life will be held at a later date in 2008. Details will be announced on CCCT’s website: www.ccct.org. For further information contact the CCCT office at 524-6654. 


Open House for Middle-Eastern Studies Series at Berkeley City Club

Tuesday January 08, 2008

Horizon Studies, a lifelong-learning institute at the Berkeley City Club, will be offering two six-week classes that give historical background on Islam and the volatile situation in the Middle-East: “The Spirit of Islam: Past and Present" and "Iran and the U.S.—An Anthropological Perspective.” 

These courses, taught by university professors, provide mature students with in-depth information in an engaging format: classes combine lectures, slides, videos and discussion.  

Preview the upcoming classes at the Winter Open House on Tuesday, Jan. 15, from 10-11:30 a.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. The classes will run from Jan. 29 to March 4. The Spirit of Islam will meet Tuesdays 10 a.m.–noon and Iran and the U.S. will meet Tuesdays 1–3 p.m. 

Director Bruce Elliott, who also teaches European History at UC Berkeley, said, “our mission is to take university-quality education beyond the institution to people in the community.”  

Details on the Middle-Eastern series and the Horizon Studies program are available online at www.horizonstudies.org.


Clashes Continue Inside KPFA

By Judith Scherr
Friday January 04, 2008

Nicole Sawaya was named executive director of the Pacifica Foundation Sept. 29, began her job part time in November, and plunged in full-time in December, all according to an agreement with her bosses on the foundation board of directors. 

The Pacifica Foundation holds the licenses to five nonprofit progressive radio stations across the country, including Berkeley’s KPFA FM. 

One day in early December, however, Sawaya, the popular KPFA general manager terminated by the national board during the 1999-2001 strife between the local stations and national board, turned in her Pacifica-issued keys, cell phone and laptop and left the national headquarters without a word of explanation to staff or listeners. 

While the KPFA audience learns details of the war in Iraq other media don’t cover and hears reports directly from tormented Pakistan or Kenya, listeners are told few details on air of the turmoil inside KPFA and Pacifica National offices on Martin Luther King, Jr. Way.  

Some questions not covered: What is Sawaya’s status? What are the criticisms of the recent KPFA Local Station Board elections? What’s the story behind the termination of Peter Laufer, briefly a Sunday morning talk- show host?  

 

Sawaya’s Comings and Goings 

On Dec. 17, the KPFA Evening News announced that Sawaya had resigned, citing as the source the “Lasar Letter,” a blog written by Matthew Lasar, often called Pacifica’s historian.  

However, according to Dave Adelson, chair of the Pacifica National Board, speaking in an interview with the Planet on Wednesday, Sawaya has not tendered her resignation. In fact, she continues “in discussions” with the board, Adelson said. 

Citing personnel issues, Adelson said he was unable to elaborate. He said he would have preferred to speak openly on the question: “We fought this whole fight for transparency,” he said, referring to the struggle against the Pacifica Foundation attempts to take over the network in 1999-2001.  

Sawaya was apologetic when she returned a Planet call for comment on Thursday, saying it was up to the Pacifica board leadership to speak on the record. She did confirm, however, that she is in discussions with the board. “I’m sorry to be so cold about [discussing] it,” she said. 

Lasar’s Dec. 12 post said: 

“LLFCC [Lasar’s Letter on the Federal Communications Commission] is dismayed and embarrassed to report that Nicole Sawaya has resigned, following a very brief tenure as executive director of the Pacifica radio network. 

“What happened? Without going into all the details, Sawaya found the level of internecine dysfunction at Pacifica overwhelming, and fled her job. 

“LLFCC will not conceal its chagrin at this development. The author of this blog had high hopes for Sawaya, but they were obviously too high. Her quick departure reminds us that there are no saviors, no simple solutions to complex problems. And Pacifica radio is always a complex problem.” 

Everyone reached by the Planet for this story said they had great respect for Sawaya.  

Brian Edwards-Tiekert, a staff representative to the Local Station Board, told the Planet Wednesday that her return “raised our expectations and hopes.” He added, however, that her loss is “an emotional blow, not an operational blow,” as KPFA has stabilized with an interim general manager in place for over two years. (Others, however, are calling for a new, permanent general manager.) 

One person who did not want to speak on the record said Sawaya’s weakness is that she wants to please everyone, something not possible at the radio network fractured by ideology and egos. 

 

Local station board elections 

After the crisis during which the national board attempted to take over KPFA, bylaws were written to promote democracy. Listener-sponsors would elect local boards, which would elect the national board. 

The elections that took place this year were fraught with charges that the process lacked fairness, with People’s Radio supporters contending that station staff worked with the Concerned Listener slate to rig the vote. 

Multiple charges and countercharges can be read on the Internet in the Daily Planet opinion pages, on blogs and on Indymedia.  

Here, the Planet will focus on the allegation made by members of the People’s Radio slate that former programmer Larry Bensky violated election rules by sending e-mails to a large number of listeners in support of Concerned Listener slate candidates and that he used station resources to do so. 

Bensky tells it this way: When he left his Sunday morning show in April, he took along an e-mail list of people who said they’d like to stay in touch. He also retained control of the website www. sundaysalon.org, through which he sends out occasional messages to the large e-mail list.  

“My termination agreement with KPFA stated that after June 1 I would pay for that site myself, which I have been doing. (I have bills, and canceled checks.) The site is maintained by a volunteer who has nothing to do with KPFA. The names on my list were and are people … who voluntarily asked to be put on the list. It is in no way a KPFA list, it's a Sunday Salon list, now my property,” Bensky wrote in an e-mail to the Planet. 

Bensky said he decided to get involved with the 2007 elections and wanted to alert his e-mail list to his support for the Concerned Listener slate. But before doing so, he said he tried to check with JaNay Jenkins, the local elections supervisor, to make sure that was OK, since he was no longer on staff. (He said he recognized that if he were still on staff, that would violate the rules.) 

“I called her and her voice mailbox was full,” Bensky said, adding that he also sent an e-mail query to Jenkins, a copy of which he sent to the Planet on Thursday. 

In a separate interview Jenkins confirmed this, saying she had been behind in her work and unable to keep up with phone calls and e-mails, having been hired late—in September rather than June (she was the third person in the position of elections officer). 

Those who were on a KPFA staff  

e-mail list received an e-mail from the elections supervisor explaining election rules, but Bensky hadn’t been on the air, except for a couple of quick appearances, and so was not on that staff list. 

Soon after he sent out the e-mails in support of the Concerned Listener slate, Bensky was informed by the interim station manager that National Elections Supervisor Casey Peters had banned him from the air for several weeks for violating the rules. 

Neither Peters nor Jenkins contacted Bensky directly. “I never got an e-mail or phone call,” Bensky told the Planet. “They at no time tried to ascertain the facts.” 

 

People’s Radio responds 

Richard Phelps, KPFA local board member and part of the People’s Radio group, told the Planet on Wednesday that the elections had been run by management in “collusion” with the Concerned Listeners slate. 

Whether Bensky had received the memo on the election rules from management and whether he had been able to contact the elections supervisor about the rules was irrelevant, Phelps said, arguing that Bensky had been with the station during the time the new bylaws were written and had been through several election cycles. He should have understood the rules, Phelps said.  

Moreover, when the national elections supervisor penalized Bensky by banning him from the air, Bensky was allowed on the air by local management, Phelps said. “Management ignored the penalty,” he said. 

Responding for KPFA’s station management—the interim KPFA general manager is on vacation—Interim Program Director Sasha Lilley said that local management has nothing to do with whom radio show hosts invite to be on the air.  

Neither management nor programmers knew about the ban, Lilley said, underscoring there is a clear separation between the station management functions and overseeing the elections.  

Lilley forwarded an e-mail to the Planet written to the interim general manager from National Elections Supervisor Casey Peters on the question: 

“My apologies of issuing this late in writing. On Friday, Nov. 16, I issued a verbal ruling that Larry Bensky will not be allowed on Pacifica airwaves or websites until after my term of office as National Elections Supervisor ends in 2008, for his Fair Campaign Provisions violation and his refusal to cooperate with the remedy. [Turning over his e-mail list to other candidates.] That INCLUDES rebroadcasts of Mr. Bensky's programs…” 

Beyond the various specific election complaints made by People’s Radio and its supporters, the question of management downplaying the elections is key to what is happening at KPFA, said Phelps and Bob English, a defeated People’s Radio candidate who made a formal complaint to the elections supervisors. 

Phelps said that management’s goal, like that of the Republican Party, is suppressing the vote through “benign neglect,” ignoring the elections on the air. 

“Two weeks before the crafts fair [a major KPFA fundraiser], every hour, or every other hour they would be pushing the crafts fair on the air, but two weeks before the ballots went out, I heard very little about the elections,” Phelps said, noting, moreover that during a two-week fund drive there was a blackout on election coverage. 

“They don’t want the listeners involved,” Phelps said. 

When they did promote the elections, by playing one-minute promotional pieces by candidates, they played all 21 of them in a row. “The person at the end couldn’t be heard,” Phelps said. 

Responding, Lilley said that the station promoted the elections by frequently calling on listeners to become subscribers before the deadline so that they could vote in the elections. Further, she said, programmers did live promotions of the elections, which are more effective than prerecorded Public Service Announcements. 

English and 25 others, including board members and listeners, sent National Elections Supervisor Peters a formal letter of complaint on Dec. 5. In a follow-up letter they wrote: “We requested you either delay certification of the KPFA listener election pending complaint investigation and remedies or apply a substantial penalty to the vote tally appropriate to balance the effects of the primary established violations.”  

However, certification has been completed, according to Peters. The only option at present would be for those who say they were disenfranchised to go to court—which is what has happened at the New York Pacifica station, WBAI.  

Peters told the Planet on Thursday that he hopes, because of the many problems with elections at various stations, that the national board will look seriously at election reform. 

 

Peter Laufer terminated  

The termination of Peter Laufer, the programmer who replaced Bensky, has turned into another KPFA-related uproar. Laufer told the Planet on Wednesday that he was fired “gracelessly and capriciously via telephone while on vacation in New York, two days after I acted as facilitator in Berkeley for a KPFA event with Naomi Wolf and Daniel Ellsberg.” 

Laufer said he has filed a complaint citing discrimination through an attorney with the Equal Employment Occupation Commission.  

“I was fired because I am white,” Laufer told the Planet, arguing that station management wanted a person of color in the slot. 

“I do magnificent work; I’ve won every award that exists,” Laufer said, noting that in his career he’s worked at every level in the broadcast industry—programmer, manager, consultant. 

Laufer said he is currently piloting his Sunday morning program on 960 AM, the Clear Channel station that runs many of the Air America programs. 

Lilley declined to respond, citing confidential personnel issues. 

 

••• 

Despite the ban imposed on him, Larry Bensky spoke on Thursday evening’s KPFA news, analyzing the results of the Iowa caucus. The news anchor announced that Bensky would be on the Friday Morning Show to do the same.


Tree-Sit Supporter Hangs Jury at Trial

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 04, 2008

The coordinator of the tree-sit at Memorial Stadium represented himself in a court battle with UC Berkeley that ended in a hung jury Wednesday afternoon. 

The vote was 11 to 1 in favor of conviction of Eric Eisenberg, who is better known as Ayr to tree-sitters, campus police and media readers and watchers, when jurors announced they were deadlocked just before 5 p.m. 

Whether or not he faces a second trial on the misdemeanor criminal charge—something that will be the subject of a Jan 23 hearing—he still faces trial in a civil courtroom for the same offense. 

A hearing to assign a judge to the civil case is scheduled two days later, also in Oakland. 

The criminal charge carries a six-month jail term, while the civil offense carries a five-day term. 

“It doesn’t really seem fair they can try you for the same offense in two different courts,” Ayr said. 

He was arrested Nov. 19 after clipping a bag of oranges on a line tree-sitters were using to receive supplies from supporters on the ground and charged with violating a court order banning aid to the protesters who have been camped out for more than a year in the branches along the stadium’s western wall. 

The protesters are fighting plans to level a grove of Coastal Live Oaks and other trees to make way for the Student Athlete High Performance Center, a $125 million high-tech gym and office complex. 

The university won a court order in October that declared the tree-sit illegal and bars support of the airborne protesters. 

While he has been representing himself in the criminal case, Ayr said attorney Dennis Cunning-ham is handling his civil prosecution. 

Karen Pickett of the Bay Area Headwaters Forest Coalition, a supporter of the stadium-site protest, attended the two half-day court sessions Dec. 28 and Wednesday. 

“He acted as his own counsel, and when he testified on his own behalf, he questioned himself. It was a little bit comical, but very effective,” she said. 

“Thank heavens one woman decided it shouldn’t be illegal to give food to osomeone,” she said, referring to the jury’s lone holdout. 

Pickett said the protester had been arrested after a private security guard at the grove told him he could attach the oranges to the support line. 

Ayr said he had been scrupulous in following the letter of the law, because he didn’t want to jeopardize his role in supporting the protesters. 

Meanwhile, the protesters will hold their weekly 2 p.m. gathering at the grove, where volunteer grandmothers send up food to the tree-sitters. 

The Daily Planet was unable to reach UC attorney Michael Goldstein late Thursday for an official comment on the case.


City Psychiatrist Struck, Killed by Auto Crossing Marin Avenue

By Judith Scherr
Friday January 04, 2008

Sandra Graber, a psychiatrist with the city of Berkeley, was struck and killed by a car as she was crossing Marin Avenue at Colusa Avenue on Monday at about 9:40 a.m. 

“Sandy had a routine; she used to walk every morning to exercise and center herself,” Council-member Laurie Capitelli, Graber’s neighbor for 30 years, told the Planet. 

Graber, 61, was walking north on Marin in the crosswalk at Colusa Avenue near her home when she was struck by a car driven by a 79-year-old man traveling south on Colusa and turning east onto Marin, according to Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, Berkeley Police Department public information officer.  

“She was a gentle soul,” said Capitelli, adding that she leaves two adult sons and a husband. 

Police have determined that no drugs or alcohol were involved in the collision. Graber was in the crosswalk and the driver is at fault for not yielding to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, according to Kusmiss. The district attorney will determine whether or how to charge the driver. 

This is the second pedestrian fatality on Marin within a year. A previous accident happened June 6 at Marin and Talbot avenues on the Albany section of the avenue. In that accident, police determined that the driver was under the influence of alcohol. He was charged with manslaughter. 

On Dec. 12, another city worker, Erica Madrid, was struck and killed while crossing Solano Ave. at Fresno Ave., just two blocks from the scene of the Monday morning fatality.  

Graber had been walking without identification when she was struck. Berkeley Fire Department paramedics transported her to Highland Hospital, where she later died of her injuries. 

Kusmiss said officers spent a number of hours knocking on doors in the area and attempting to activate the car alarm on the Honda key she carried in order to determine where she lived. It  

wasn’t until that evening that Graber’s husband reported his wife missing and that her identity became known, Kusmiss said. 

Fred Madrano, who heads the city’s Health and Human Services Department, sent an e-mail to his staff Thursday saying: “The more I think of Sandy’s life’s work with Berkeley Mental Health over the past 30 years, the more I am humbled and honored to have served with her.”  

Over the past five years there have been seven collisions, in addition to Monday’s accident, at the intersection of Colusa and Marin. None of the other collisions resulted in fatalities, according to Kusmiss. 

Four of five traffic collisions in Berkeley in 2007 involved pedestrians, according to Kusmiss. On June 25 a pedestrian was struck at Telegraph Ave. and Blake St. and died July 5; it was determined that the driver was under the influence of a prescription medication. On June 3, a pedestrian was killed at Solano Ave. and Fresno Ave., the same intersection at which the Dec. 12 fatal collision occurred. 

Jan. 19, on Eastshore Highway north of Page Street, a driver determined to be under the influence of alcohol struck a parked car and killed the occupant. The driver was charged with manslaughter. 

Three years ago, Marin Ave. was reconfigured, changed from a four-lane street to a two-lane street with a middle left-turn lane. The change caused the removal of raised islands in the middle of the street. 

“Reconfiguration of Marin certainly could constitute a condemning factor in this pedestrian fatality; because previous to the reconfiguration, there were raised islands on the centerline of Marin Ave. at both this pedestrian crossing and the one on the other side of Colusa at this intersection,” said Raymond Chamberlin, a nearby resident who had fought the reconfiguration of the street at the time. 

The reconfiguration was to have slowed traffic, but at the last report, had not done so, according to Councilmember Capitelli, who sent out an e-mail to his constituents calling on them to take personal responsibility when driving. 


Sawtooth Building Artists Lose Parking Lot to Bayer

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 04, 2008

Plans to close the parking lot used by one of West Berkeley’s last relatively inexpensive havens for artists and craft workers are galvanizing occupants of the Sawtooth Building. 

“We’re not going to go down quietly,” said John Curl, a tenant in the landmarked factory building at 2547 Eighth St. at the corner of Dwight Way. 

The problem facing occupants and customers of the venerable structure is the move by Bayer Healthcare to close the lot used by many tenants and visitors to the building.  

Bayer representative Trina Ost-rander said the company needs the lot to replace space that will be lost to construction activities resulting from the demolition of a warehouse and its replacement by a new research building that will bring 150 scientists to Berkeley from a site in Richmond. 

Curl said tenants received no formal notice of the impending closure. 

“I learned about it from a phone call from another tenant,” he said.  

A city notice posted shortly before Christmas simply an-nounced that anyone using the lot after Dec. 28 would be ticketed and fined.  

After tenants contacted city officials, City Councilmember Darryl Moore, who represents West Berkeley, talked to Bayer officials, who granted a one-month extension. 

Curl said continued use of the lot is critical to the survival of many of the building’s tenants, especially the dance studios which attract large numbers of clients in the evening hours. 

Closure of the lot means many attendees would have to park blocks away, raising safety concerns he fears could result in the loss of clientele. 

Ostrander said city Transpor-tation Planner Matt Nichols had developed a plan to add eight parking spaces on Carleton Street by restriping spaces from parallel to angle parking. 

But Curl said that’s not enough. 

 

Meeting set 

Moore will meet with Curl, Nichols and West Berkeley building owner Dennis Cohen on Jan. 16 to discuss alternatives, Curl said. 

“I don’t know what that can accomplish,” he said. “None of the options are acceptable.”  

In addition to the angle parking, Curl said city staff had suggested installing two-hour meters, but meters would be a problem for tenants, who would be forced to leave their businesses to shuffle cars throughout the day. 

While metalsmith Curtis Arima sells his work at galleries and doesn’t depend on walk-ins, except on open-studio days, “the building as a whole will be deeply impacted,” he said. 

With parking already tight because of dance and yoga studios in the building, closing the lot could be a real tragedy for some of the building’s tenants, he said. 

The Kawneer lot lease, initiated when the city signed a 30-year development agreement with the pharmaceutical company in 1991, has been twice extended, and formally ended on Dec. 31. 

It was Nichols who posted the notices that alarmed the building’s tenants. 

“The city posted the signs so late that people got distressed,” said Ostrander. “We were able to extend it a month,” but construction must move forward on the new building at Seventh Street and Dwight Way, she said. 

Curl said that at the time of the last agreement, then-City Manager Weldon Rucker had assured the company the city would seek no further extensions. 

“Someone really dropped the ball about getting the notification out” about the end of the lease, Moore said. “When I heard about it, I was able to get an extension.” 

While Bayer plans to keep the lot for its own parking needs, Moore said he would be asking the company about the use of the lot in the evening to accommodate students who attend classes in the Sawtooth Building. 

The councilmember acknowledged that the eight spaces along Carleton wouldn’t replace those lost when the lot closes, “but the lot doesn’t belong to us, and what more can we do?” 

 

BID needed? 

With the city looking for ways to increase development in West Berkeley, Moore said, the obvious solution is a business improvement district (BID) that will levy fees on businesses—“but not residents”—to provide new transportation, infrastructure and policing services for the district. 

The call for a BID hasn’t gone without opposition. 

“We really need to sit down and look at the level of services west of San Pablo Avenue,” he said. 

With parking structures costing $40,000 to $50,000 per space, Moore said one solution may be shuttle services so people who work in the area can take BART to and from San Franscisco and ride shuttles to their West Berkeley places of work. 

The Transportation Commission is already looking at a traffic circulation and parking study for the area, he said. 

Though officially named the Kawneer Building, the building’s roofline—designed to catch sunlight to illuminate the factory floor below—provided the structure’s popular name. 

According to the application that led to the building’s recognition as an official city landmark, the plant produced window sashes and metal store fronts from 1913 to 1958 for the Kawneer Manufacturing Co. 

Landmarked in 1986, the building is popular with artists and artisans, who occupy workshops and studios in the subdivided factory floor space in one of the few remaining West Berkeley buildings available at rents they can afford. 

Recent losses to artists of live/work spaces at the Drayage, eviction of the Nexus collective, the closure of the Crucible’s West Berkeley site and the temporary shutdown of the Shipyard for city code violations have heightened their concerns. 

“This is a very important issue for the city, because there’s already been such a loss of artists and arts and crafts that the city really needs to protect those who are left,” Curl said. “We’re a major anchor for the arts and crafts in the city, and if they turn their backs on us, we won’t let it happen without a lot of fallout.”  

 

Trail closure 

Another concern affecting another group comes with the closure of a popular stretch of bike trail between Folger Avenue and Murray Street in West Berkeley. 

The trail closure marks the site where a Berkeley Fire Department will build an emergency equipment warehouse, adjacent to the site of the Shipyard. 

During last summer’s city shutdown of the Shipyard, where artists occupied studios in converted shipping containers, leaseholder Jim Mason blamed the action on a city goal of removing inconvenient neighbors. 

But Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong said the closure was needed to prevent trash dumping at the site and to allow time for a cleanup before construction of the warehouse can begin. 

The project is expected to take about a year to complete. 

The new warehouse will house the city’s new emergency water supply system that will enable firefighters to pump up water from the bay to fight fires in the event of a major earthquake or other natural disaster, Dong said.  

Several shipping containers from the Shipyard had been located on the property, which was then owned by Union Pacific Railroad Co. 

The city purchased the railroad’s abandoned spur line in June for $3 million. 

One irate cyclist, Will Steele, emailed the Daily Planet that the closure forced bike riders to make a quarter-mile detour either to San Pablo Avenue to the east or Seventh Street to the west to ride into Emeryville. 

Dave Campbell of the Bicycle Friendly Berkeley Coalition and a member of the city’s Transportation Commission said the closure may be discussed at the first ever joint meeting of the bicycle and transportation advisory commissions of Berkeley, Oakland and Emeryville on Feb. 4.


Critics of UC Computer Lab Seek Review Extension

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 04, 2008

Concerns over the timing of the environmental review of a towering computer lab planned for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) are triggering newly organized opposition. 

The opponents’ aim is to generate last-minute critiques and push for an extension of the review period. 

Julie Dickinson, Janice Thomas, Merilee Mitchell and other Berkeley residents say they are concerned about the Computational Research and Theory (CRT) facility planned for a site adjacent to the lab’s Blackberry Gate in the Berkeley Hills. 

One of their first concerns is the timing of the public comment period on the draft environmental impact report (DEIR) issued by the lab. 

What worries critics of the project is that much of the public comment period occurred over the winter holiday period, when many university students and faculty were out of town, along with many townspeople. 

On campus, final exams ended Dec. 20 and classes don’t begin again until Jan. 15.  

The comment period ends today, Friday. 

While he refused to extend the comment period for the CRT building, LBNL Director Steve Chu did lengthen the comment period on a second lab building. 

Chu agreed to add three weeks to the comment period for the Helios Building, the structure which will house the research labs of the Energy Biosciences Institute, the $500 million research program funded by BP—formerly British Petroleum—to develop genetically modified crops and microbes designed to produce the next generation of transportation fuels. Though the period was originally slated to expire Jan. 11, comment will be accepted through Feb. 1. 

Lab community relations officer Terry Powell said Thursday that the DEIR for the CRT building had been issued on Nov. 9, and with the close of the review period today, the document has been available for comment for 56 days, “so we didn’t see the need of extending the comment period.” 

With the Helios building, she said, the DEIR was issued a week later, and “it had some more complex issues, and the comment period wrapped around the holidays more directly,” so the extension was granted. 

The California Environmental Quality Act, which mandates reviews of major projects for their impacts on the physical, biological and social environments, requires a 45-day review period of DEIRs so that the public and public agencies can comment on a report’s adequacy. Comments must be considered in the final EIR. 

“We want them to extend the comment period for the computer facility,” said Julie Dickinson. “We’re also asking other people to request an extension, and we’ve been contacting people in public agencies, too. 

“It’s going to be a huge facility, and not many people are aware of what it means,” she said. 

The CRT described in the DEIR would rise 160 feet from its base at the Blackberry Gate following a design blasted by James Samuels, the architect who chairs the city’s Planning Commission. 

“The height was unexpected,” said city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks. “It’s quite visible, and almost as tall as the Wells Fargo building. That was quite a shock.” 

“The lab asserts that it will have no impact on the scenic vistas of the hillside, but it’s huge compared to the lab’s other buildings,” said Janice Thomas, who lives on Panoramic Hill. 

But Marks also said that lab officials have told him they are looking at scaling back the height. Marks is preparing the city’s official comments, which he said he’ll be submitting Friday. 

Only the Planning Commission submitted comments of its own, though the document was circulated to other city commissions for their comments, Marks said. 

“It was pretty hard to get comments from the commissions because of the holidays,” he said. 

Most of the critiques of the CRT project focus on that core principle of real estate: Location, location, location. 

In an e-mail to environmentalists, Thomas said specific concerns include: 

• A project site on undeveloped land and near areas with important biological resources, including the Alameda whipsnake, identified as a threatened species by federal and state agencies; 

• The requirement for removal of 72 trees from the project area; 

• Proximity to sensitive scrub, riparian and woodland habitats; 

• Potential harm to a range of raptors and other creatures identified as species of concern. 

“The university’s Richmond Field Station would be a much better location for this building,” said Dickinson. 

The building will house the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, currently located in Oakland, and its massive array of Cray computers dubbed “Franklin” and ranked as one of the world’s 10 most powerful computing systems. 

Plans for the 140,000-square-foot building include cooling towers mandated by the heat generated by the computing array, which runs at 101 trillion operations per second, according to the lab’s Nov. 16 community newsletter.  

Besides research aimed at measuring the parameters of the Big Bang that gave rise to the universe, the computers will also be used in energy research from the Helios Building’s projects. 

“It’s ironic that a computer that will be used to look at the origins of creation will also be the reason for destroying some of its beauty,” said Dickinson.  

The CRT DEIR is posted at www.lbl.gov/community/CRT/, while the Helios report is at www.lbl.gov/Community/Helios/documents/.


New Year’s Day Blast Startles Neighborhood

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 04, 2008

For Berkeley firefighters and police, 2008 started with a bang—an explosion that sent pieces of a stolen car flying more than 200 feet. 

Just what caused the blast remains the subject of an ongoing investigation, said Police Sgt. Mary Kusmiss and Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong. 

Fortunately, no one was hurt by the blast, which ripped the driver’s-side door off its hinges. 

The 911 call came at 9:05 p.m., reporting an explosion and a car fully engulfed in flames near the corner of Woolsey and Ellis streets. 

“We received a report of an explosion, and the car was fully involved” when firefighters arrived, Dong said. 

Kusmiss said that the car was rolling down the street when officers arrived, probably because the searing flames had burned out the emergency brake. 

The car had rolled 34 feet from the site of the explosion by the time firefighters were able to arrest its progress by throwing a chock beneath its wheels. 

Firefighters quickly extinguished the flames, which left the vehicle’s interior charred and melted beyond recognition, said the sergeant. 

What triggered the explosion is still the subject of an investigation, but Dong said pieces of the vehicle were blown as far as 300 feet. 

Whether or not an explosive was used remains an open question, “but you can get almost the same reaction from a can of gasoline if it’s sealed up” said the deputy chief. 

Kusmiss said that a chemical sniffer identified the presence of an accelerant, without pinning down the precise chemical. 

The car was a 1995 Pontiac TransAm, and when police officers at the scene ran its license number, they discovered it be-longed to a San Francisco woman who had reported it stolen from West Oakland 12 hours earlier. 


February Election Offers More Than Presidential Choices

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday January 04, 2008

When local voters go to the polls less than a month from now, the media emphasis and advertising blitzes will be focused on the Democratic and Republican presidential nomination races. But while there are no state and local offices up for grabs on Feb. 5 or for the absentee ballot period that has already begun and will run through 8 p.m. on election day, there will be important state and local measures on the ballot. A brief summary of local measures: 

 

Alameda County Measures A & B:  

Children’s Hospital Bonds 

Voters who have not been following the Children’s Hospital new hospital construction bond issue over the past several months may find themselves utterly confused when they look at the Feb. 5 ballot for Alameda County. Although there are slight differences, both Measures A and B seek to enact a $24 per year parcel tax increase on residential real property (more for non-residential parcels) designed to pay part of the cost towards the construction of a new 250-patient room, $700 million facility, complete with a 12-story tower, between 52nd and 53rd streets near the Oakland hospital’s current location. Both require a two-thirds approval vote for passage.  

State law enacted following the 1994 Northridge Earthquake requires all California hospitals, public and private, to meet stiffer earthquake retrofit guidelines within the next few years. Children’s Hospital has chosen to meet those guidelines not by a simple retrofit, but by a more ambitious complete building construction program. Both measures would accomplish that goal. 

What’s the major difference between the two measures? Measure B is the original hospital-written bond measure that Children’s Hospital has since discarded. Hospital officials are now supporting Measure A, which was worked out in a compromise with the Alameda County Board of Supervisors after a bitter political battle between hospital officials and supervisors that lasted through the summer and fall. Measure B, in fact, appears on the ballot with no ballot argument written in its favor. 

Both sides in the dispute agree that the Children’s original measure (Measure B) was written without consultation with county officials, a serious flaw since, if passed, the measure would add to the county’s bonded indebtedness and require the county to collect the tax without compensation.  

County Supervisors and Children’s Hospital officials eventually worked out a compromise in which the alternate Measure A was put on the ballot, and the hospital agreed not to support the original Measure B. But even after the compromise was reached, Supervisors still expressed reservations, calling the compromise measure “flawed,” and there is some question whether all or even any of the Supervisors will give Measure A their support. 

Measure A is being opposed by a coalition of residents of the hospital neighborhood, who argue that the hospital expansion is unnecessary and will disrupt and even destroy large parts of the neighboring community, and that the planned high-rise building is not necessary to meet the state retrofit mandate. 

The ballot argument in favor of Measure A has been signed by five Children’s Hospital staff doctors, who say that the compromise measure is “a fiscally prudent way to rebuild the hospital” and that under the revised measure, the county’s bonded indebtedness will not be impacted, and the county will not be stuck with the cost of collecting the tax for Children’s. Instead, the new measure passes that cost onto the hospital. 

Although Measure A appears to be a straight-up vote on Alameda County property owners putting up money towards the building of the new Children’s Hospital, there are other complicating factors that voters may have to consider.  

Children’s Hospital has recently considered relocating outside of Oakland, a move that would be considered a serious blow to the city, and there is a possibility that the failure of the passage of Measure A would increase the chances of such a move. On the other hand, intense opposition to the new hospital has surfaced among neighbors of the existing Children’s, and the passage of Measure A would not ensure that the hospital’s plans, as presently projected, would make it intact through the Oakland planning process that would follow. However the vote goes, expect this to be a continuing issue for some time to come. 

 

City of Oakland 

Measure G—Oakland Unified School District Parcel Tax Extension 

This bond measure is a permanent extension of the $195 per parcel tax approved by Oakland voters in 2004. Low-income homeowners are exempted from the tax. The original parcel tax expires next year. A two-thirds majority is needed for passage. 

If renewed, proceeds from the parcel tax extension, as with the original 2004 measure, can only be legally spent to “attract and retain highly qualified teachers, maintain courses that help students qualify for college, maintain up-to-date textbooks and instructional materials, keep class sizes small, continue after school academic programs, maintain school libraries, and provide programs that enhance student achievement.” An independent citizens oversight committee is authorized by the measure in order to ensure the bond money is spent only on the purposes outlined in the measure. 

The original Measure E that Measure G seeks to renew was approved by close to 75 percent of Oakland voters in March of 2004. 

No ballot argument was submitted opposed to Measure G.  


Fire Department Log

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 04, 2008

With the retirement of David P. Orth as Deputy Fire Chief Dec. 16, Gil Dong assumed the high profile slot as deputy chief and department spokesperson. 

Five days later, the new deputy chief found himself looking at two fires which began less than an hour apart and which included a dramatic rescue. 

 

Covered furnace  

The first call came at 3:13 a.m. on the 21st from a home in the 3000 block of Benvenue Avenue. 

“The crews found a couple on the roof,” Dong said. “They had been trapped because the fire started at the base of the stairs.” 

The firefighters plucked the couple from their perch, then set to work battling the flames, which were quickly extinguished. The cause of the fire, which did an estimated $10,000 in damage, was traced to a common firefighter’s nemesis: belongings piled atop a floor heater. 

“We get people who move out here who aren’t familiar with how floor heaters work, so we get fires like this,” Dong said. 

But what was working right was the smoke detector that alerted the residents to the fire in time to make their escape and call for help. 

“That’s my safety message for the day,” said the new deputy chief. 

 

Second blaze  

Less than 45 minutes after the first blaze, a call from an alarm company sent engines rolling to an apartment building in the 2800 block of Derby Street, where firefighters discovered a small fire in a studio unit. 

“The other residents were awakened by their smoke detectors,” Dong added. 

That blaze did about $5,000 in damage, he said.


A Reporter’s Eye: 2007 in Photos

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 04, 2008

Former Mayor Shirley Dean, City Councilmember Betty Olds and environmentalist Sylvia McLaughlin drew a flood of media attention when they became Berkeley’s oldest tree-sitters Jan. 22. The trio brought 245 years of savvy to a high-profile protest to save the grove of trees UC Berkeley hopes to ax to make way from a $125 million gym complex along Memorial Stadium’s western wall. The project ended the year embroiled in litigation. 

 


A Reporter’s Eye: 2007 in Photos

A Reporter’s Eye: 2007 in Photos
Friday January 04, 2008
A protest ended in the arrest of one of the protesters outside the university’s administration building during a protest opposing the $500 million agricultural fuel program funded by the company once known as British Petroleum. Protograph by Richard Brenneman.
A protest ended in the arrest of one of the protesters outside the university’s administration building during a protest opposing the $500 million agricultural fuel program funded by the company once known as British Petroleum. Protograph by Richard Brenneman.

Another protest ended in the arrest of one of the protesters outside the university’s administration building during a protest opposing the $500 million agricultural fuel program funded by the company once known as British Petroleum. 

 


A Reporter’s Eye: 2007 in Photos

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 04, 2008

Wendy Alfsen (left)of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee reacts with dismay to a proposal to erect up to 14 16-story high-rise point towers in the city center. DAPAC wound up its two-year struggle to draw up a plan with a draft that rejected the towers. Sitting beside Alfsen is Mark Rhoades, who left his post as city Planning Manager, triggering a celebration by some of Alfsen’s allies.


A Reporter’s Eye: 2007 in Photos

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 04, 2008

Three artists from the Shipyard removed their belongings after a city inspection handed down multiple citations for building, zoning and fire code violations to the assemblage of studios housed in shipping containers at the West Berkeley site. The artists were given additional time to finish their projects for the annual Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. 

 


A Reporter’s Eye: 2007 in Photos

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 04, 2008

A Berkeley firefighter carries Misti Mina Hassan, 31, from her Shattuck Avenue apartment after a friend called police on Oct. 10 to say Hassan had told her she had murdered her 9-year-old son Amir. Police found the boy’s body in the apartment. Hassan has been charged with murder.


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: All Change Is Not Progress

By Becky O’Malley
Tuesday January 08, 2008

Despite my announced official position on the race for the Democratic nomination for president—that I’m happy to let those who care passionately decide who it will be—I occasionally sneak a peek at the campaign propaganda. Watching the thrust and counter-thrust in the battle of slogans, and how the press reports on it, you can get a pretty good picture of what Americans care about, or at least what the people in power or aspiring to power hope they care about. 

The word of the week, maybe even the word of the month, is “change.” Right after the Iowa caucusers (many more of them Dems than Repugs) had trudged home through the snow, the quick-turnaround soothsayers announced that Obama and Huckabee had come out ahead because they promised change. After I heard all the normally sharp-tongued partisans on Left, Right and Center, my favorite radio program, drooling over Obama’s victory speech regardless of their individual politics (the show tries to provide One of Each to comment on the week’s news) I felt compelled to look it up on YouTube. (I should probably be disqualified from commenting since I seldom watch broadcast television.) There it was, on enormous signs purposefully thrust into the Obama picture. On the podium: “Change we can believe in.” Held by supporters in the background: “Stand for change.”  

Okay, we get it. Tired of Bush? Want a change? Here’s the guy who brings the most change the fastest. But wait for the spin. On Monday Hillary Clinton talked to Renee Montagne on NPR, and assailed Obama for changing his mind on a couple of issues: Change is bad, she implied.  

Still, “it’s time for a change” is the most durable and long-lasting of political slogans. I used it myself to great advantage when I managed a few campaigns in my youth, and it worked every time. It’s second only to a denunciation of potholes for grabbing the attention of even the most reluctant of voters, since the status quo, almost by definition, is never what it could and should be.  

Voters are easily persuaded that a new broom sweeps clean. Berkeley’s current mayor Tom Bates ate out on promises of change when he successfully opposed incumbent Shirley Dean, even though it’s been development business as usual since he won. Ron Dellums owed much of his Oakland mayoral victory to not being Jerry Brown. In Richmond outsider Gayle McLaughlin was elected mayor precisely because she hadn’t been part of the previous administration.  

Now an unlikely coalition of local activists is coming together in Berkeley around the proposition that we need an immediate change from Bates himself, in the form of a recall election, even though he’ll be up for a vote again before long. Some of them were Shirley Dean supporters when Bates defeated her in his first run for the mayor’s job, but others were strongly anti-Dean. And there’s a substantial number of otherwise sensible people here who think that it would be better to impeach President Bush now than to tough it out until November. Change is still selling well in the urban East Bay. 

But is change for change’s sake always a good buy? It’s related to that other slippery word, progress, which carries with it the implication that all change is for the better. Both Democrats and Republicans at various points in their history have latched on to the title of “progressives,” based on the very American hope that every day in every way we’re getting better and better. “Progressive” has been especially beloved of those who hope that they’re above the two-party system, everyone from the Bull Moose Republicans at the turn of the twentieth century to the mid-century supporters of Henry Wallace on the left of the Democrats.  

“Conservative,” progressive’s oppo-site number, hasn’t fared nearly as well. Conservative Democrats have withered on the vine and eventually faded away, while supposedly conservative Republicans have actually tended to espouse radical change in the last half-century. But there’s something to be said for conservation, if what we’re conserving is what’s best about America: for example the Bill of Rights and related traditional civil liberties. The Patriot Act was a big change, for sure, but not for the better. A few traditional conservatives have spoke out against it, but not many. 

On the local level, five of the nine Berkeley city council members have probably claimed the title of “progressive” at some point in their career, while the remainder have eschewed the conservative label in favor of the more moderate “moderate.” But when push comes to shove, only two of the five “progressives” reliably vote against powerful monied interests, the posture which best fits the modern definition of being progressive. Two more of the so-called progressive five (one the mayor, the other his loyal follower) have voted consistently to further empower the powerful, whether it’s developers who want carte blanche to build wherever and whatever they please or merchants who want to make the streets safe for shopping by banishing the poor. The current council’s two legislative claims to fame, passed by a Mod-Prog coalition, have been the revision of the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance to make it easier to tear down buildings which stand in the way of builders and the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative, proof that 1984 marked not the end but the beginning of the Orwellian era in local government (even though the PCEI didn’t outlaw sex on the sidewalk). 

Perhaps it’s time to examine the idea that all change is good. With a president like George Bush, it’s easy to imagine that anything would be better than what we’ve got now, and that might even be true. But the next president will have to stand for something besides not being Bush, and the voters deserve to know what that might be.  

Hillary Clinton’s main claim to fame these days is her experience, but experience doing what? Standing by her man, when her man and his Democratic Leadership Council allies made quite a few changes in the federal government which were anathema to true progressives of the post-1948 variety? And then there’s that vote to invade Iraq, but perhaps she’s changed her mind about that one. 

Obama’s principal asset is that he wasn’t around when a lot of the bad stuff came down, but voters need to know what he’ll do when he does face such decisions. Clinton cites his vote for the latest version of the Patriot Act which contained only modest improvements on the original horror, which she voted for herself, of course. Edwards freely admits having changed his mind about Iraq, no ifs, ands or buts, but what about Iran? Or Afghanistan? Or Darfur, or Kosovo? 

Is it progressive to continue to try to be the policeman of the world by dint of military might? Is it possible? Can we maintain our civil liberties if we do? These are questions for which the voters should demand answers between now and August.  

On the local level a year later, voters might want to ask candidates and potential candidates if they’ll continue to back the inexorable march of huge luxury condos down our main avenues. Stances on repealing the new pro-developer landmarks ordinance when it’s up for a vote in November might give a clue.  

In large matters and small, the underlying questions of what it means to be progressive and whether change is always progress have become central. We’ve grown up with the vision of a universe in which possibilities are infinite, but we’re belatedly realizing that it’s now (and perhaps always was) a finite world we live in, and choices must be made. Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s good. 


Editorial: Looking for Leadership on Every Level

By Becky O’Malley
Friday January 04, 2008

What’s nice about taking a midwinter break is that it provides an opportunity to poll the delegation: to inquire of the citizenry about what’s on their minds. Holiday parties are great for taking informal surveys, discretely of course. The best thing about residents of the urban East Bay is that they rarely agree on much, so when they do, it’s news. 

First, the local returns: nobody, no-where, likes the multi-story condos that are popping up everywhere. Some just don’t like them, period. Others, more judicious, would like to see more affordable housing, but think that market-rate units (translation: cheap construction, expensive price) are sucking up all the available building sites. This is the word on the street in Richmond, El Cerrito and Oakland, as well as in Berkeley, and it’s also true in San Francisco (check out the latest San Francisco Bay Guardian and Beyond Chron on the internet for documentation.)  

There’s a strong undercurrent of muttering among the chattering classes about what they perceive as the skewed relationship between taxes and services on the local level. Those who watch such things are aware that pay for municipal administrators is already high and continues to go up, and yet the level of services received by the taxpayers continues to go down. They see public employees with too much time on their hands getting embroiled in senseless neighbor disputes like so many nannies, and yet complainers note that their authentic crime reports are often shrugged off by the authorities, sometimes with excuses about understaffing.  

Berkeleyans are plenty mad at the University of California, as are residents of El Cerrito and Richmond, who also live near branches of the UC fiefdom. They’ve finally started to notice that the uglier aspects of the no-longer-lovely UC Berkeley campus are metastasizing into their pleasant urban neighborhoods. Some are threatened by the toxic legacy of years of the University of California’s devil-may-care experimentation. And many of these angry citizens are UC alumni, faculty and/or employees embarrassed by Alma Mater’s licentious behavior. Some are even football fans. They all pay taxes to support UC. 

When the talk turns to the world outside Lake Wobegon, the overwhelming consensus is that a Democrat really has to win the next presidential election. Where there’s no perceptible consensus is about which Democrat should win. Analysis splits along purist and pragmatist lines. The purists argue about which candidate is the best person to do the job of president; pragmatists try to figure out which one has the best chance of beating the Republicans.  

We encountered our old friend the pundit at one holiday gathering, and he’s still advancing his thesis that no one, even an intellectually pretentious Berkeleyan, really does a logical analysis of the positions espoused by the various contenders. He says that voter decision-making is more like a quick Gestalt (does anyone still use that word?)—an impression formed by the way the candidates frame their ideas and project their personalities. The package, he seems to be saying, is everything. 

Chats with the fraction of the local body politic who claim to have made up their minds bear this out. The professor who’s made her reputation since the seventies as an ardent and articulate feminist is staunchly behind Hillary Clinton, not to be distracted by the nitty-gritty details of health plans. Union activists are attracted by Edwards’ populist support for the needs of working people, as are those whose ultimate espousal of the Democratic party was preceded by romantic flings with other parties whose populist rhetoric was even more colorful than Edwards’. Obama supporters, at least the older ones, see him as the present embodiment of the future they’d envisioned when they worked for civil rights in the sixties and seventies. The younger Obama fans look on him as “one of us”—the kind of high-achieving guy they’d like to claim as a friend. Kucinich diehards (yes, there are quite a few of those around here) are the purest of the purists, with a high-minded disdain for any pragmatist’s analysis of electability 

None of these true believers has the slightest need for the kind of issues spreadsheet being proffered by everyone from the New York Times to Grandmothers Against the War. It’s clear that they’ve made their choice on the basis of their candidate’s public persona—with their hearts, not their heads. But advocates like these are still a distinct minority among the chattering classes of the urban East Bay.  

The pragmatic majority is ready to embrace all of these candidates. They would love to be able to combine them: to roll them all into one big ball of Democratic clay from which the sure winner could be sculpted by some party Pygmalion. The dream candidate—let’s just fantasize for a while here—would be a feminist like Clinton, transcend race like Obama, speak up for the little guy like Edwards and have the courage of convictions like Kucinich. But since the composite candidate is not on offer, most pragmatists will settle for any one of them (well, maybe not for Kucinich). Everyone we encountered hopes that the Republicans will continue down the path to self-destruction as per the script, so that whatever Democrat emerges as the official candidate can pick up the pieces. 

The last word on the health of the body politic goes to Ariel, artist and long-time activist extraordinaire. She quipped on New Year’s Day that Americans have two patron saints: Santa Claus and Horatio Alger. I offered her the opportunity to riff on this brilliant line in these pages, but when she didn’t immediately accept the offer, I said that I’d steal it instead.  

Here’s what I think it means: most of us seem to hope and believe that government is there to provide anything and everything we might need or want. That includes cheap mortgages, clean air and water, pure food and drugs, adequate health care—all for free, with no burdensome taxes or annoying regulations needed. And at the same time we want to believe that we’ve somehow earned all this by our own efforts: that’s the Horatio Alger part. (For younger readers, he was a guy who wrote books about earnest young men—always men—who became millionaires through hard work, back in the day when a million dollars represented more than a house in a middle-class part of North Berkeley. )  

This is certainly the vision Republicans have tried to sell to the voters. No American has ever consciously voted in favor of pollution, but many have voted against paying for the government oversight necessary to prevent it. Many poor working people have voted against taxes on the rich because they sincerely believe that some day they’ll be rich too and will want to pass their wealth along to their heirs.  

The challenge for whatever Democratic candidate emerges from the fray is to persuade today’s voters that there’s a reasonable way to use government to provide what they actually need. Polls, both official and informal, consistently show that Americans now think that the country needs and deserves an end to the war in Iraq, decent medical services for everyone and attention to the risks of climate change, but that they don’t have a clear vision of how to reach these goals through electoral politics.  

The ideal candidate for the Democrats would be the one whose public persona demonstrated that the way to meet our needs is to tackle them together, not to rely either on cost-free benefits distributed by an omnipotent government like Santa Claus or on individual bootstrapping a la Alger’s heros. 

It’s what used to be called leadership. 

Franklin Roosevelt was able to provide it, but has anyone since? Or can any one of the current crop of hopefuls pull it off? The upcoming round of primaries might tell the story.  


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Tuesday January 08, 2008

KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Isabella La Rocca’s Jan. 4 letter calling for a boycott of Kentucky Fried Chicken, I presume it was inspired by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ five-year campaign focused on KFC. Readers should be aware that the real targets of PETA’s campaign are the large wholesale chicken producers that supply all major restaurant chains, conventional supermarkets, and the vast majority of independent restaurants. In this context, singling out KFC may be politically pragmatic, but it’s ethically arbitrary. If you want to boycott inhumanely-raised chicken, limit your purchases to the small but growing minority of restaurants and markets that specifically identify their suppliers and/or have been certified humane by organizations such as Humane Farm Animal Care (certifiedhumane.org). 

Robert Lauriston 

 

• 

TRADITION OF TORTURE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s column (Dec. 14) speaks to an issue that is coming more and more into focus. 

“There is a Tradition to American Torture,” and there is also the problem of what to do about it. The founding fathers took on “cruel and unusual punishment” in the Bill of Rights, but they neglected to ban torture in the Constitution. They seem to have thought it was “obvious.” 

He says, “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.” 

This summer in San Francisco the American Psychological Association split over psychologists providing services for (interrogation) torture. A similar issue happened with the American Anthropological Association. “Resurfacing” is happening in a serious way. 

I work with the Coalition for Justice and Accountability in San Jose. Our group was organized around police brutality, notably the July 2003 shooting of Bich Cau Tran by the SJPD. We struggle against several kinds of torture, including, as well as police brutality, Tasers, forensic abuse of prisoners, and child abuse. We are allied with the SVDebug effort to create police oversight in San Jose. We also struggle against behavioral health “treatment” when it takes the form of torture, and we were a cosponsor of the “Ethical APA” demonstration against interrogation torture in San Francisco this summer. 

This country should face up to the “tradition” and move towards a Constitutional ban on torture. 

Andrew Phelps 

 

• 

RELIGION AND THE CANDIDATE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor (Jan. 4) suggests that a debate on faith and religion should be part of the electoral process, to explore and explain the relevant positions of process, to explore and explain the relevant positions of candidates. Since the supposed merits of various religious superstitions and shibboleths have been debated and fought over for thousands of years and since there can never be a factual basis for any opinion, I doubt that we would be enlightened by such a colloquium. 

In an ideal world we could hope for a candidate who had the courage to eschew any religious affiliation, but given a populace that considers obeisance a virtue, the best we may hope for is a pledge not to let religious conviction affect political policy. Meanwhile, we have a president who—acting on the advice of god, he tells us—has wasted our military reserve, crippled our economy, and eroded our stature in the world. Such a president can send thousands of men to their death in military adventures, comforting himself that their valor will win them a virtuous place in an eternal afterlife. So long as we elect men who believe such hokum we consign ourselves to having a madman as president. 

And one would-be replacement rejects evolution, perhaps the most researched and validated concept in science, while his belief that the world was created 6,000 years ago dismisses many areas of established knowledge in physics, chemistry, genetics, geology, archeology, and astronomy. It’s an international embarrassment that this ignorant man is considered a viable candidate for the presidency. 

Jerry Landis 

 

• 

NO ROOM AT THE INN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s Undercurrents essay entitled: “A Religious and Spiritual Test for Candidates,” he calls for a “roundtable” where representatives of all major faiths from Christians through Wiccans can discuss their faiths and religions. But nowhere in this dialogue does he include the 14 or so percent of us who are estimated to have no religious views. 

Not that much different from Mitt Romney who, to smooth over apprehensions about his Mormonism, tries to appeal to all faiths but leaves “no room at the inn” for us non-believers. Instead, he cites “secularism” as the great common enemy. His fellow Republican ex-president George H. W. Bush once said: “I don’t know that atheists should be regarded as citizens nor should they be regarded as patriots. This is one nation under God.” 

As a life-long atheist and/or secular humanist, I regard our thinking to be more along the lines of our Deist early statesman who wrote the Constitutional clause decreeing the separation of church and state than that of most theists. 

Theists talk about “values” candidates for office as those professing a religious faith as if non-believers have no “values.” 

I was raised by working-class immigrant atheist parents, of whom I’m proud and whose values were part and parcel with their humanist, democratic socialist politics. They inspired me with their advocacy for the underdogs and have-nots of society, social equality, the rights of labor and in their horror of war as a means of solving human problems. They had no need for a supreme being to arrive at these values in their lives. 

Only one member of the U.S. Congress has the courage of his convictions to declare himself a non-believer. He is Rep. Pete Stark of our own Bay Area. So deep is the prejudice of so many of the religious in America. 

But it is different in some other countries. A couple of years ago, overwhelmingly Roman-Catholic Chile elected an avowed agnostic, Michele Bachelet, as its first woman president. 

Tarja Halonen, the first woman president of Finland, now serving her second six-year term, left the Lutheran Church, a state religion, some decades ago in protest over its refusal at that time to ordain women clergy. In a country that is now 80 percent Lutheran, her current popularity figures surpass 80 percent. 

One hopes that some day our own country would become so open-minded and leave religous affiliation or profession aside as a determinant for elective office. 

Harry Siitonen 

 

• 

CAPITAL WICCAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In reading J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s column “A Religious and Spiritual Test for Candidates” (Jan. 4), I noticed that when he is mentioning religions, he uses the terms Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Christian, Buddhist, Islam and Mormonism. He also uses “wicca” and “ifa.” I’m not sure why he chose to not capitalize the latter two religions, or why the editors chose to allow the article to be printed that way. It is admittedly a very minor quibble with what was otherwise a good column, but it has been my experience that when the uncapitalized form is used, it reveals an opinion that the religion isn’t a “real” one, and that it can be denigrated. I do not know if this was the author’s intent or not, but I wanted to ask the Berkley Daily Planet to consider using the term “Wicca” in its proper capitalized form, just as it would any other religion. 

Robert A. James 

McFarland, WI 

 

• 

REPUBLICAN FEAR FACTOR 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Voters in both parties went for new faces, new voices and a new approach to politics in Iowa’s caucuses. There is nothing new about the Republican winner Mike Huckabee. He is the product of three decades of religious and political inbreeding of the far right. 

Mike Huckabee as George Bush’s shadow and as a future Republican president would bring America four more years of Bush administration lite; more war, more deficits, more lies and secrecy, and more policies out of touch with mainstream America. 

How scary is Mike Huckabee: Fear factor 7. 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley  

 

• 

ANTENNAS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I live in the south campus area but am not nearly as close as some longtime friends to the UC Storage building—where the City Council has signed off on a minimum of 23 cell towers beamed straight out from Ward and Shattuck into this dense residential neighborhood. 

People who have lovingly kept up and improved their home right in the “line of fire” are now most reluctantly looking into selling the house they’d hoped to one day pass on to their son. 

Why? Two reasons come to mind: First, a recent Israeli study which showed that some 622 people living close to cell towers for three to seven years faced four times the risk of cancer compared to those who did not. 

Second is the haunting memory of an older woman who came to a public hearing on the UC Storage proposal. She told of how dramatically her own life and health changed for the worse when a cell tower was beamed toward her apartment from a short distance. It was clear she had no “political” axe to grind, but wanted others to hear her story. 

The EPA says California cannot use a higher vehicle-emissions standard than the federal one. The FCC says it’s fine for media conglomerates to own all the outlets in a market, and that human health can’t be taken into consideration in siting cell-transmission towers. 

Let’s show support for those directly affected by the UC Storage decision. Personally, I think several of our council members need spine transplants. 

Donna Mickleson 

 

• 

BROKEN SIGN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On New Years’ Day I took a walk at Eastshore Park. “Where?” a friend asked: “Oh, you mean ‘the Bulb.’” 

Several small wooden signs, like oblong mushrooms, seemed to have sprung from the damp ground. “Trust Everyone.” “Share Everything.” Their idealism and optimism a reminder of the creative spirit that painted the caves at Lascaux and drew beauty out of the scrap and refuge that still litters this place. 

The beach was sealed off with yellow tape because of the oil spill. I walked the trail to Mad Mark’s castle and hobbled down the rocks to the breakwater. The rippling water reflected its shifting patterns on the hillside rocks while water birds fed and traveled across the surface of the bay. 

I noticed a small piece of metal embedded in the ground. “Listen” it read. So I stood in place and heard the wind while overhead two lines of cloud met in a burst of spectrum like a compressed rainbow. 

On my way back I saw lying on the ground two pieces of wood with lettering on them. Approaching closer I recognized them as the broken halves of the “Trust Everyone” sign I had seen on my way in. I suppose you could call the vandalism of that sign ironic. But that would be too cerebral a response. I felt it as heartbreak. 

Pete Levine 

Albany  

 

• 

GLOBAL WARMING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s easy to be seduced by intensifying winter storms and summer hurricanes into thinking that global warming only produces the melodramatic effects we see on television. But the real effects of global warming are arriving far more gently—and in Berkeley I have the personal data to prove it. When I moved into my northwest Berkeley house in 1977 (near Lalime’s restaurant on Gilman Street and a mile from the bay) I built a highly insulated space in the basement to use for wine storage. The temperature never changes measurably from day to night, but it does gradually change from summer to winter and back. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s that annual temperature variation consistently ranged between 60 and 65 degrees every year. In the current decade the annual variation—now over several years—has consistently moved up to between 62 and 67 degrees. That’s not much of a change, but it is a measurable one. It’s my own little two-degree share of global warming, and it’s a data source I will certainly continue to monitor. 

Alan Tobey 

 

• 

WISH LIST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With the coming of each new year, I’ve been in the habit of making a Wish List—things that I believe would make this a better country. This year my list includes, among other things, the following: 

1. An end to the war in Iraq. 

2. Peace in the Middle East. 

3. A let-up in random, senseless shootings. 

4. No Britney Spears stories on TV and in the press. 

Having heard all I can bear about the trials and tribulations of Britney—her marital woes, custody battle for her children, frequent stays in rehab and/or the slammer on drunk driving charges, her nervous breakdown this past week, and, of course, her shaved head—in desperation I’ve sought help from above. “Heavenly Father, in your infinite mercy, please, please spare us further saturation of this unfortunate woman’s problems. Above all, may we not be subjected to similar stories about her pregnant 16-year old sister, Jamie Lynn!” 

It’s my sincere hope that we can go back to the more uplifting news of Jolie and Brad. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

 

• 

MORE BRITNEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A recent newspaper headline announced: “Spears exits hospital, escorted by Dr. Phil.” I for one am fed up with reports, sightings, etc. of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan. They seem such vacuous people who shouldn’t appear in the media again until they discover a cure for cancer, settle the Mideast crisis, curb global warming, or perform some more newsworthy accomplishment other than being their silly, self-destructive selves. Otherwise I really don’t want to hear their names or see their inane faces in the news again. They seem such useless and annoying creatures. The media has more important news to cover. 

Ralph E. Stone 

San Francisco  

 

• 

THANKS FOR PUBLISHING 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

I would like to compliment you and your newspaper for publishing the article “Christmas Should Be All Year.” 

In fact, Mariana Castilho Rogedo was extremely happy to describe Christmastime in the present days. A great deal of consumerism and lack of understanding among people prevails. 

The same situation occurs here in Brazil, unfortunately, as a result of this world trend. 

My congratulations to Mariana. 

Antonio Castilho de Souza 

Belo Horizonte, Brazil 

 

• 

WHAT HAVE WE  

ACCOMPLISHED? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It was recently reported that after four-and-one-half years, 3,000 U.S. troops have died in Iraq and another 28,661 wounded. A 2006 “Lancet” study estimates that since the U.S. invasion in March 2003 through July 2006, there have been 654,964 “excess deaths” of Iraqis due to the war. In addition, it is estimated that 2.2 million Iraqis have been displaced inside the country and another 2.2 million have sought shelter in neighboring countries. Finally, the Iraq war costs to date exceed $480.6 billion and the cost could eventually surpass $1 trillion. 

What have we accomplished? Quoting President Bush: “Victory in Iraq will bring something new in the Arab world—a functioning democracy that polices its territory, upholds the rule of law, respects fundamental human liberties and answers to its people.” That’s not today’s Iraq. Iraq is no closer to a functioning government or to a reconciliation among its various religious groups as when the war began. In fact, a September 2007 BBC, ABC News, and NHK poll of 2,000 Iraqis found that about 70 percent believed that the recent surge “hampered conditions for political dialogue, reconstruction and economic development” and that nearly 60 percent see attacks on U.S.-led forces as justified. When will this president and Congress come to their senses and bring our troops home? 

Ralph E. Stone 

San Francisco 

 

• 

SAGA OF SEVEN YEARS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

First there was the bait and switch - substituting war in Iraq for the apprehension of Osama bin Laden. 

There were non-existent WMD’S, War in Iraq, and “Mission Accomplished.” 

There were Bush tax cuts for the most wealthy using Clinton-era surpluses to hoodwink the public. Since then Bush and anti-tax Republicans have run up deficits in the trillions. 

There was Abu Graib, Gitmo, Gonzalez, secret prisons and always the coverup. 

Along came Hurricane Katrina, “Brownie,” and Bush administration ineptness. 

There was the White House outing of Valerie Plame, and U.S. Attorneys, “Scooter” Libby taking the fall for higher ups in the Oval Office. 

Now the missing CIA torture tapes. 

How much more damage can Bush do in the remaining year? 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley  

 

• 

A BETTER WORLD FOR  

CHILDREN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the new year 2008 I would like to see more peace, more happiness, better health and better education for all Bay area schools. I would like to see communities sharing their best resources with school-age children. 

I am distressed, when I read news about the difficult situation a child has to face. Neighborhood streets are preyed upon by a few uncaring adults who can take away an innocent child’s safety. The child cannot step out to play for fear of getting harassed or abused or kidnapped or killed. These uncaring adults on account of drugs or other addictions have lost the power to think that children of any group or race need the whole community’s help to grow and develop fearlessly. Those who have not experienced secure spaces during their early years may lose motivation. 

I am especially concerned about low income, single parent families which are already struggling to raise their children in this kind of unsafe environment. I have overheard children saying that they don’t like to walk home without their mothers because they don’t feel safe walking alone. 

My personal wish is for neighborhood communities to contribute their helping hands and their vigilant eyes to protect all children. Perhaps neighborhood adults can be more observant while children play close to schools or near public parks. Perhaps neighborhood businesses can help install good lighting in areas where children hang out. I will be very happy if civic leaders can give more thought to the safety of our children in the East Bay. 

Romila Khanna 


Commentary: Recall Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates

By Julie Dickinson
Tuesday January 08, 2008

In December a recall petition was begun against Mayor Tom Bates of Berkeley. 

Two questions come to mind: What has Bates done wrong, and what has happened to the petition? 

Bates’ agenda for development and growth in Berkeley is against the predominant opinion of the citizens, and he works to achieve these goals through secret deals. He has also been visibly rude to Berkeley citizens protesting some of his actions as documented on City Council videos. 

The list of problems is long; it includes: 

• Ignoring citizens’ opinions at City Council meetings. 

• Using the Green movement as a pretext to overdevelop, cut trees, fund developers—the Brower Center is a boondoggle, a public parking lot has been eliminated and City funds are being used to support this private development. 

• Encouraging huge polluting development in favor of University expansion, such as a virtual take-over by BP (British Petroleum) and massive development in our Strawberry Canyon above Memorial Stadium. 

• Discouraging citizens from shopping downtown by eliminating downtown parking, ruining businesses. 

• Giving Federal HUD Section 8 vouchers to developers (Project-based Section 8) and not to deserving tenants. 

• Voted against saving Iceland, a landmark ice rink. He said, “We can put up a plaque.” 

• Weakening Landmark laws to enable demolition of the structures that give Berkeley character. The mayor and the Board of Education are intent upon replacing our warm pool (in a landmarked school facility) with a tremendously expensive building that has no parking for handicapped users? $4 million in bond money was voted in by the electorate to fix the pool, and now the City wants a $15 million bond issue to replace it. 

• Supporting unpopular BRT (Bus Rapid Transit), which would turn leafy Berkeley avenues into bus-only lanes even though BART already serves the same corridors. 

• The DAPAC committee for downtown Berkeley came out of his secret deal with the University in 2005. Development enthusiasts were appointed to this body; thus high-rise and extreme growth were the consensus. 

The recall petition 

The City Clerk refused to review or approve the form of the petition and additional requirements surfaced in the City Charter in regards to a recall—That a precinct number be placed after every signature, and “that each petition had to be sworn to before an officer competent to administer oaths.” Does this mean a notary public? We are awaiting the City Attorney’s opinion. 

These are serious roadblocks to First Amendment rights of citizens to make petitions for Recall. It could take more than 1,000 hours of petitioners’ time and more than $30,000 in Notary fees! 

This is reminiscent of the Mayor’s collection and trashing of the Daily Californian on the eve of his first election several years ago. 

A comprehensive list is at recalltombates.blogspot.com, Or check the website at berkeleyrecall.com. Signatures are being collected by volunteers. Please email or call Julie Dickinson at julieeed@msn.com, or 510-432-1054. 

 

Julie Dickinson is active in Berkeley politics.


Commentary: Jane Brunner—The Teflon Incumbent

By Robert Brokl
Tuesday January 08, 2008

When Jane Brunner ran against then-Planning Commissioner Peter Smith in 1996 for the Dist. 1 (North Oakland) open seat vacated by Sheila Jordan, one of her most pointed criticisms of Smith was his “ambition.” She charged that Smith, whose father worked on disarmament issues in the Clinton administration, would use the council seat as a stepping stone to higher office, such as Congress. 

Now, Brunner is reconciled to stay put, after an unsuccessful stab at an Assembly seat and an unexpected roadblock to the job of City Attorney. Brunner was thwarted by rival machines—the Bates and even the Perata machine to which she belongs—when her Rockridge residence street was redistricted out of District 14. It’s no secret Brunner hoped to succeed John Russo for City Attorney—a job that pays more than the California Governor. Unfortunately for her, Sandre Swanson beat Russo for the Assembly job, and Russo is also stuck in place. 

So, unable to move up, Brunner is running for re-election, resuming her infrequent—formerly—monthly community advisory meetings and increasing her visibility. Brunner was unopposed 4 years ago and no opponents have come forward so far this time. But will she have so easy a time of it again? Her teflon quality has served her well to date. For example: 

Others get blamed 

Crime and public safety are hot button issues in Oakland right now, but much of the frustration seems directed at Mayor Dellums, in office one year, and not at long-time incumbents like Brunner, in office 11 years. And the most teflon-coated, wily politician of them all—Jerry Brown—seems headed back to the governorship by way of Attorney General, in part because of “fixing Oakland!” 

Griping about crime saturates the postings on the OPD yahoo group. One not atypical holiday posting from Ian Martin, the owner of the Nomad Cafe building at 6500 Shattuck: “HELP! SIX MUGGINGS! BROKEN WINDOWS!” Many feel unsafe even walking to Ashby BART in the middle of the day! But I don’t necessarily feel that secure myself—my immediate neighbor was hit on the head with a metal object and knocked from his bike while coming back from work right in front of his house. Recently, my partner and neighbor were verbally and physically assaulted by an irate hot goods peddler (calling himself “Mr. Murder”) in front of our house. 

So while citizens complain the large Measure Y bond measure we voted for hasn’t resulted in more officers on the beat, and Dellums is pummeled, Brunner and her fellow incumbents get a pass. 

She’s good at window-dressing 

As part of political consultant Larry Tromutola’s stable, she’s coached to trumpet mom and apple pie issues like litter, smoking, plastic bags (“no way!”) and street trees (“yup!”). She’s also good at playing Lady Bountiful. Like all the councilmembers, Brunner has a large pot of money to use at her own discretion. She’s spent it on capital improvements like roundabouts and—most recently—the gussying up of an edge of Bushrod Park on Shattuck. The resulting Steps to Nowhere are so far used only by skateboarders who have—literally—broken them in. The stairs, turf, and new trees cost over $370,000, with $353,000 coming from Brunner’s discretionary pot of money. 

Alarmingly, from a public safety standpoint, the alternative to the park “up-grade” was additional street lighting on Shattuck. 

In the quest for more money for police, no rock is being left unturned. Even local redevelopment boards are voting to “buy” officers. So, while it’s perhaps unrealistic to think Brunner or other Councilmembers are going to return their slush funds to the General Fund to hire more police, nevertheless, that IS one alternative. 

No scrutiny of the developers’ maven 

Brunner keeps a day job in the Siegel & Yee law firm. Her most publicized ethical dustup occurred in a flap with powerful developer Phil Tagami. Brunner was accused of helping to negotiate a good rent for her spouse, James Nixon, and his non-profit in the Rotunda Building. The City underwrote the renovation of the Rotunda to the tune of $12 million and Brunner was head of the City’s CEDA committee, which oversaw the complex leasing and funding. Chronicle columnist Chip Johnson complained about the apparent conflict-of-interest in an Aug. 4, 2000 piece headed “Shaky Ethics in Oakland Downtown Development Deal Bad Ethics in Brunner’s Aid to Spouse.” The Aug. 12, 2000 East Bay Business Journal also covered the story. 

The issue was referred to the Ethics Commission, where all such matters are sent to die. 

Her support for developers is normal for this City Council, and their contributions to her go unmentioned. The most controversial market rate condo developers in Dist. 1 are Roy Alper, Patrick Zimski, and Ron Kriss. Their projects generally involve demolition of historic buildings, with the loss of affordable residential and commercial space. The developers’ aggressive tactics have included deceptive mass mailings to residents. All but their first project have resulted in appeals to the City Council and, now, a lawsuit.  

Brunner has consistently voted to deny the appeals, while calling for miniscule changes. Her campaign contribution reports reveals $6000 in campaign contributions from these same developers and spouses in the period of 2003—2006. The developers gave the maximum $600/individual amounts, at the time when their projects and the Temescal rezoning they were attempting to influence toward increased heights and density were in the balance. I asked a “good government,” former member of the Oakland Ethics Commission whether the $6000 amount was a significant one. He said that the contributions would stand out in any of the council districts. 

In addition to supporting their projects, Brunner also indirectly pushed a taxpayer subsidy for these entrepreneurs. The recent effort to declare most of the rest of North Oakland “blighted”, in order to place the areas into a redevelopment zone, would have benefitted Alper & Co. The first project in the pipeline was street enhancements for upper Telegraph Ave. Many of these “improvements” totaling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars were for improvements of the sidewalks, streets, and other public infrastructure around their existing condos, and projects in the pipeline. 

Brunner also supports the Children’s Hospital Oakland expansion right out of the chute, even before the details of the expansion are explained. Their plans include a twelve story 180’ tower and the displacement of homeowners and tenants, including unwilling sellers if the project is approved as proposed. 

She successfully passes the buck 

After belatedly updating the General Plan, Oakland has now waited some 9 years to update the zoning, a step that was to follow soon thereafter. Brunner has taken to blaming the delay on Brown, who wouldn’t hire the staff to do the work. 

Despite the fact that Rockridge and Temescal had been most recently rezoned of any area in the city—1989 and 1991 receptively—Brunner undertook a series of meetings—some dozen in all—to rezone Temescal. The staff-heavy meetings were contentious and no consensus ever emerged over issues of building heights and preservation. In exasperation, Brunner who had been warning residents to compromise with developers before the council took up the matter, finally announced there would be no more community meetings and the proposed zoning would go to the Planning Commission. 

But as a result of a lawsuit over planning department practices, the City has abruptly decided to reverse course and conduct an EIR on Temescal rezoning. Perhaps the 12 meetings that ended in fizzle contributed to Planning Director’s Claudia Cappio’s abrupt resignation. She couldn’t have been happy about the hundreds of staff hours spent in only one area’s rezoning, only to have the whole process start over again. But who blames Brunner for the flawed, acrimonious, and wasteful process? 

Meanwhile, because the zoning hasn’t been updated, the city renewed their “best-fit” procedure for spot-zoning projects that violate existing zoning. No surprise STAND, the group most involved in the dustup over out-of-scale condo projects in Temescal, wasn’t noticed by Brunner’s office about the re-authorization. 

Ineffectual doesn’t matter 

Since City Council seems a job few want (while requiring considerable money to run for), seat-warming seems to be considered adequate. Even the issues Brunner says she cares about, like inclusionary zoning and housing affordability, haven’t been moved by her, despite her starring role in the Perata/De La Fuente/Brown block. 

She has a “progressive,” green veneer 

Brunner has made a name for herself pushing street trees and, indeed, saving the mature street trees on her block in Rockridge from the city’s cutters was her only community activity prior to running for Council. She held an Iraq War teach-in, and supported Howard Dean. 

She also, to self-generated fanfare, helped to launch the Sunday farmers’ market on the DMV parking lot on Claremont. But when some rare Brunner-bashing erupted on the Temescal Families website over a recent unannounced closure of the market for Colombo Club parking, she peremptorily responded that two Sundays a year were given over to Colombo parking. Complaints by still irate members on the site over whether the market proprietor was charged rent for those weekends or whether Colombo pays any at all were rebuffed with regal silence. 

Frank Rich has written that the country is suffering from clinical depression. He was referring to the effect of Bush, but the political process in Oakland is just as sad. The incumbents have been there a very long time, and haven’t done very much but fret about public smoking and let others take the heat about crime. Even Nancy Nadel—the “conscience of the council”— seems diminished. Hopefully, Brunner will attract a challenger this time round. Maybe even the desperate tactic of term limits for local officials, or elimination of the rancid fiefdoms district elections have created, is necessary to thaw the frozen political process in Oakland. 

 

Robert Brokl is an artist/activist living in North Oakland 36 years. This letter reflects his opinions, not necessarily those of any organization to which he belongs.


First Person: Living in the Last Days of the American Republic

By Marvin Chachere
Tuesday January 08, 2008

Many distinguished scholars agree in general that we are witnessing “the last days of the American Republic.” But, ordinary people don’t need to rely on scholarly insights because the evidence that our republic is failing hits us almost every day, evidence summarized in the record low job approval ratings of both President Bush and Congress.  

So many basic prescriptions of the Constitution have been violated that our government no longer honors the genius of its founders: legislative, executive and judicial powers go unchecked, unbalanced and often overlap. Even so, I can neither weep for the loss nor welcome what we have become.  

 

The reason I do not weep arises from the conditions of my growing up in Mobile, Alabama, at a time when Jim Crow was in its prime; I was too white to be Negro and too dark-skinned to be white.  

The Constitution allowed for each slave a political credit worth 60 percent of a man and this allotment was deposited in the voting accounts of the slaveholders. Emancipation effectively emptied those accounts and a subsequent attempt at redirection—“forty acres and a mule”—failed. The void was eventually filled by the “separate but equal” doctrine. Then Jim Crow arrived to personify prejudicial practices and to impose capricious and degrading legal limits on former slaves and their descendents. Thus, the 60 percent credit evolved into a segregated condition fixated on a “one drop” rule—one drop of Negro blood from one of my sixteen ancestors debased, by fiat, gallons of other kinds. 

So it happened that Grandpa, Daddy and I were inured to those blessing of the liberty the founders sought to secure for themselves and their posterity. 

Let the following anecdotes stand for a myriad of ways, both subtle and blatant, that Jim Crow used to annul for us those constitutional provisions.  

A hundred years ago my maternal grandpa was jailed for picketing in front of City Hall against a cumulative poll tax, starting at $1.50, that few whites and no Negroes could afford. Daddy was a union leader at the aluminum ore company plant, ALCOA, outside Mobile. When union bosses reneged on their promise to negotiate for in-house professional training and career advancement for Negro employees Daddy resigned in despair, disgust and rage. He retired after two decades as a janitor. 

Let this incident stand for my own encounters with being second-classed. In 1945 I was admitted to a northern college on condition that, because I was Negro—the only Negro, as it turned out—I would have to get grades above the norm. To be equal I had to be better. 

So it happens that the Constitution’s purpose of providing for unity, justice, domestic tranquility, common defense, general welfare and liberty becomes a revered list for vacuous rhetorical political flourishes. Why, therefore, should I weep for benefits that I never fully enjoyed? 

 

II 

I look at the nation we have become and I see a pearl of promise being uncultivated, ignored and debased. Those old and noble American ideals, although honored more in the breach than in the fulfillment, are so distorted by officials sworn to uphold them that I have little and my children will have less to say about how we are governed.  

Consider the drift of the “American experiment” from its mooring as a republic towards a de facto empire.  

Our government spans the world; our soldiers are installed in almost 800 military installations in almost 200 nations worldwide. Hegemony, by its nature, requires the protection of a “standing army” and ours is a stupendous and expensive military complex that prospers and wags the authority of civilians constitutionally designated to control it. A nation that becomes a fortress to those outside will be a prison to those within. 

Despite shrinkage in the gap between major left and right political parties, partisanship, like a virus, has infected the body politic frustrating every attempt to solve problems. For instance, neither the legislative nor the executive branch is able (or willing) to find a way to honor our immigrant heritage without criminalizing millions of decent residents. Separating us from them is shallow patriotism.  

Or again, those in positions of authority assume that increased security necessarily means diminished liberty. The drift initiated by ubiquitous legalized spying leads to a “1984” future in which the television we watch is also watching us. 

The Constitution gives Congress the power to vote for war and yet it votes a resolution that transfers to the president the unconditioned right to start a war. Never mind that his stated reasons are lies as they were, for example, in 1964 (when President Johnson told the nation that our destroyers were fired on by North Vietnam torpedo boats), or again in 2002 (when Bush insisted that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction).  

Bush’s two-term presidency has greatly advanced the imperial drift. Bush makes signing statements that effectively veto legislation and claims inherent powers normally exercised by Congress.  

We do not have a government of, by and for the people. Seventy percent of Congresspersons favor policies opposed by the same percentage of the public: military occupation in Iraq, legal hair splitting about torture, double standards in choosing friends and foes, and double dealings when it comes to the needy, the dispossessed and the darker masses.  

Finally, we the people are complicit in the failure of the republic. 

We know that might does not make right, that the ends do not justify the means and that legal is not the same as moral. But we fail to act. We fail to demand openness. We allow ourselves to be influenced by a media that values image and celebrity above substance and service. Commerce is not a substitute for culture nor does great wealth lead the way to a better world. 

We must reject bogus patriotic cant that paraphrases Malvolio’s self-righteous boast: America was born to greatness, America achieved more greatness, and America’s current super-greatness has been thrust upon us. When great nations boast, they have already become tyrannical. 

I do not welcome a nation-state in which my children and their children will live not as citizens but as subjects.


Letters to the Editor

Friday January 04, 2008

AUTO BURGLARIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My neighborhood on the South Berkeley/ North Oakland border has seen a huge number of auto burglaries and break-ins in recent weeks. Your paper also reported the escalation in thefts of catalytic converters from automobiles. I want to offer an effective strategy to help prevent such auto burglaries during times when an owner’s car is parked sufficiently close to their home or place of business for this method to work. There is a product called the REPORTER available from Radio Shack (I am not affiliated with Radio Shack or this product) which functions as a wireless motion detector that operates both day and night. It can be placed inside a car, or in a trunk, or in a way that would detect motion if someone crawled under the car to remove a catalytic converter. When it senses motion it causes a receiver that you have in your house/business to either issue loud beeps, or, if you choose to plug something into it, it can turn on an item such as a loud TV or radio to wake you. Thus the car owner can be alerted if anyone either breaks into or crawls under his/her car. This product has many other uses. It can be placed in a garage to detect break-ins there: it can be set up to guard perimeters of your property to detect trespassers: one receiver works for up to four transmitters so you can monitor four different locations. Cost is $60-200. Other wireless motion detectors could function similarly, although as far as I know only this product works during the day as well. The more everyone does to safeguard their property, the more whole neighborhoods will benefit, since confrontations or lack of success in their “business” will dissuade thieves. Then too, I wanted to comment that a huge increase in catalytic converter theft could be considerably ameliorated if scrap metal buyers, aware of the problem and willing to be part of the solution, simply began to refuse to buy catalytic converters.  

Deborah Cloudwalker 

Oakland  

 

• 

KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing to ask your readers to help prevent the sickening atrocities to animals for which Kentucky Fried Chicken is responsible. If you know about the way these animals live and die, you know it’s wrong. They are bred and drugged to grow so fast that many become crippled under their own weight. They live in sheds so crowded they barely have room to spread their wings. They are de-beaked without painkillers in order to stop the neurotic cannibalizing behaviors that such overcrowded conditions engender. They are brutally slaughtered and many are scalded while they are still conscious. These practices are horribly cruel and make a mockery of life. 

You have the power to make a change. There are many other food choices you can make that are healthy, humane, and even convenient. Please boycott Kentucky Fried Chicken. 

Isabella La Rocca 

 

• 

OPTIONS RECOVERY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As the new year approaches and I’m among those thinking about all sorts of hopes and dreams we’d love to have fulfilled in the future—many grandiose (like peace on Earth, social justice, and husbanding Earth in such a way as to ensure the well-being of all of its creatures). However, my most immediate hope and dream for 2008 is that Berkeley’s recycling program be radically altered. 

By now, probably everyone has heard that noise pollution and insufficient sleep are serious problems in our society. Berkeley’s recycling program has been a huge contributor to both of them, and is in fact a public nuisance that should be stopped. 

From its inception, the recycling program created a cottage industry of nocturnal nomads roaming the town, clanking shopping carts in tow during the wee hours, leaving streets and sidewalks strewn with litter and broken glass in their wake. From what I’ve seen over the years, nothing that the recycling trucks pick up has any value unless it is indeed sent somewhere other than to the dump. 

The rattling of shopping carts is a minor disturbance compared to the town’s recycling behemoths that roar around my neighborhood—often as early as 6:15 a.m.—three or four times a week. Apart from the noise made by virtue of their construction and the speed at which they are driven, it seems the drivers are trained to drive in reverse in most circumstances. As a result, we are treated to a pre-dawn symphony of trucks’ engines and clanking, augmented by the noise-maker that warns everyone within a couple of miles not to go sleepwalking behind one of them. (Just how many lives have been saved by those noise-makers versus how much they have added to the stress level of city living is a question for another day.) 

Yes, I’m cranky from suffering the un-necessary noise pollusion and lack of sleep caused by the recycling program. It’s im-possible to contact anyone there. Maybe someone with influence will read this letter? 

Nicola Bourne 

 

• 

PARKING AND BRT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If the commentary by Sharon Hudson represents the core of opposition to BRT, then there is only one issue—parking. 

If one is convinced that any parking loss will be detrimental to business activity and residential convenience, then the question is whether the benefits of the BRT will reasonably balance the detriments. 

The benefits of BRT, not at all considered in the Hudson commentary, are based on a reduction in the number of cars on our roads, which means less congestion, less air pollution and a net reduction in GHG emissions. 

Does the exclusive focus on parking mean that there is no value to any of these BRT benefits? Perhaps these benefits are illusory—they will not happen as a result of deploying the BRT? 

We have three nearby deployments of something close to BRT—in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Eugene. All of these appear to have dealt with the parking issue without destroying local business. Have these BRT deployments reduced local car traffic? That’s the question we should be asking, not endlessly worrying about preserving parking spaces. 

Steve Geller 

 

• 

ANIMAL INJURIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have in hand copies of the 2007 rodeo animal injury reports submitted to the State Veterinary Medical Board, as required by law (Penal Code 596.7). 

Are you ready? A grand total of only two! NO reports were submitted in 2006, and only one in 2005. Not possible. 

Rodeo injuries are commonplace. What with some 250 rodeos held annually in California, there should be at least several dozen such reports every year. It’s clear that the “on call” veterinarian option allowed by current law isn’t working. Vets are not being summoned, and injured animals are suffering needlessly. 

There’s an easy fix: State law should be amended so as to require an on-site veterinarian at every rodeo and charreada (Mexican-style rodeo)—“on call” not allowed. Rodeos already require on-site paramedics and ambulances to care for injured cowboys, and rightly so. Surely the animals deserve equal consideration. 

There’s good precedent. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) requires on-site vets at all their rodeos, as do Alameda and Contra Costa counties, the Hayward Rowell Ranch, the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, the Solano County Fair, and the California State Fair. So do all horse shows and thoroughbred race tracks. It’s common sense. 

Ask your state reps to introduce and/or support the needed humane amendment. All legislators may be written c/o The State Capitol, Sacramento, CA 95814. 

Eric Mills, coordinator 

ACTION FOR ANIMALS 

Oakland  

 

• 

CALIFORNIA CAUCUS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Why all the media coverage, frantic in-tensity and TV news truck gridlock over presidential primary caucuses in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada? Supposedly because they are early, thus bellwethers. 

But it could be that the caucus system is open and hard to control by political pros and thus represents a democracy that frightens the powers into attention. Selma Vincent’s friend in Las Vegas, Phyllis Needham, recently attended a “Mock Caucus” of near 70 supporters of Obama. “We all met in this big house. The host had a large spread of hors d’oeuvres, and since we were all for Obama, we decided to vote for our preference in the hor d’oeuvres. I picked the meatballs. It turned out that meatballs and jalapeno poppers grabbed the most votes. Those who voted for an hor d’oeuvre that didn’t get the minimum 15 percent were made to go line up by the wall and we came and campaigned at them to change to meatballs or poppers. Meatballs won 35-34.” The caucus was not winner take all, so, Phyllis informs, the 20 mock delegates were distributed 10 to meatballs, 10 to poppers. 

How about bringing the caucus system to California. If not now, then after the revolution. 

Ted Vincent 

 

• 

WEAR WHITE AT NIGHT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If pedestrians in Berkeley expect to live through the dark, cold wet weather of winter, they will wear WHITE AT NIGHT. It seems as if people believe that if they exist they must be seen even if it’s pouring rain and all their clothes look black—not true. Add many other factors such as speed, inattention and blinding glare and it’s a wonder any pedestrian (or bicyclist for that matter) makes it home. Dumb luck. 

Jean Lieber 

 

take all, so, Phyllis informs, the 20 mock delegates were distributed 10 to meatballs, 10 to poppers. 

How about bringing the caucus system to California. If not now, then after the revolution. 

Ted Vincent 

 

• 

• 

CELL PHONE TOWERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

People who don’t like liberals or progressives often say that as soon as they get power and start to smell money, they are no better than the Republicans. That certainly seems to be the case in regard to the proposed battery of cell phone towers to be erected on the old Bekins building in South Berkeley. 

It is well known that the radiation from towers like these might be the cause of increased cancer rates among people living in close proximity. Yet the developers and the cell phone corporations have said, “We want!” and our beloved mayor and City Council have replied, “You shall have!” 

Every citizen of Berkeley should be gravely concerned about this latest cave-in to developer and corporate interests, because if the towers are allowed to go up in South Berkeley, there will be absolutely nothing to discourage the same companies form putting additional ones up in neighborhoods throughout the city (including affluent neighborhoods). 

We should be marching on City Hall. We should be demanding, at the next City Council meeting, that the City just once have the guts to say no to the big money, and start thinking of the health of Berkeley citizens. 

Peter Schorer 

 

 

• 

FOXY MAYOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley’s internationally famous again! Fox TV recently celebrated Santa Mayor Bates and Berkeley as the city that’s most ruthlessly cracking down on the appearance and manners of the holiday season’s most helpless and ill—the homeless. The Scrooges of the entire world now know the secret that Berkeley has been trying desperately to hide. It is no longer the famous cultural and political tourist magnet, tolerant and “How Berkeley Can You Get” eccentric. Those people, including some of our most honored teachers and well-known artists, civil rights and free speech activists are being systematically kicked out of the city they made famous. 

How? They can’t afford the rents and as most of them get older or disabled they’re forced onto Section 8 housing. There a nasty fall awaits them. If they’re in one bedrooms or studios Mayor Bates, City Manager Phil Kamlarz and new Housing Director Reynalda Mary will jack up their rents as much as $100 per month. This may be happening in order to give those Berkeley residents’ housing vouchers to Berkeley’s developers. They then use HUD vouchers as a legal loophole excuse to build more and more empty “skyscrapers,” It’s certainly what’s happened to Berkeley’s Housing Fund, which could have saved many people from homelessnes. Fox News’ (admittedly sometimes shaky) statistics alarmingly claim that while Berkeley is only 7 percent of Alameda County, it contains 40 percent of its homeless. And it’s rapidly rising as our developer-rubber-stamp, sadly corrupt officials continue breaking city, state,federal and HUD fair housing and discrimination laws.With one hand they punish the homeless, while the hand hidden behind their backs floods our streets with a holocaust of new homelessness. 

And we Berkeleyites who are left for now in homes? Are we flooding those officials with e-mails, protests and easy discrimination lawsuits? Or like good Americans are we only following orders? Who’s next?  

Philip Ardsley Smith  

Berkeley Citizens for Fair Housing Endorsed by Berkeley Grey Panthers 

 

• 

TWO MEN FROM HOPE 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

The two men from Hope, Arkansas, both men of faith, couldn’t be more different. 

GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has flipflopped into the mold of an anti-immigration extremist, is a non-believer in evolution and is a religious conservative who puts George Bush to shame. Bill Clinton was inclusive, cooperational, and non-adversarial as president. 

Will Huckabee as a Republican president strive for deficit reduction, health care insurance for all Americans and work for a more bipartisan approach to government as Clinton did in office? 

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee can’t hold a candle to former President Bill Clinton and it is still hard to figure out whether Huckabee is running to be pastor or president of the United States. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley  

 

• 

APPRECIATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It would appear that our previously responsive mayor and City Council have rescinded their basic responsibilities to the citizens by capitulation to the Powers That Be, in this case the telecommunications industry. 

In 1996 the Federal Communications Commission stipulated that the erection of transmission antennas for cell phones, laptops, and all the other wired and wireless gadgets could not be opposed by an municipality for health reasons. They were to be placed in commercial areas where people were working for only part of the day. Why? Did they know something then that we are just beginning to learn about now? 

For several years now these antennas have been going up on Shattuck Avenue commercial buildings, many of which are only a short distance from residences. The recently approved antennas for the UC Storage building on Shattuck and Ward is the latest example. The French Hotel on Shattuck/Vine and possibly the commercial building that houses Prudential real estate on Rose/Shattuck. 

With the consistent exception of Council member Max Anderson who is prepared to actively protest this ruling, the mayor and council say they are sympathetic with the concerns of those who oppose the antennas, but legally powerless to oppose the practice. 

IF we had any responsible leadership in this town, we might hear them invoke their basic responsibility to act in the best interests of our citizens by making every effort to protect our health and safety. There are some tools—the Precautionary Principle—where threats of serious or irreversible damage to people exist the lack of full scientific certainty relating to cause and effect shall not be viewed as sufficient reason to postpone measures to protect human health. 

And there are a number of scientific studies now emerging, mostly from the Sweden and Finland, that present evidence of rising rates of childhood leukemia, brain cancer, breast cancer, depression and other ailments. A recent report from Israel indicates that compared with the total population there are four times as many cancer cases among people who live near a cell phone transmitter station for three to seven years. (For much more information google “electromagnetic field emissions.”) 

Does this all sound familiar?—think cigarettes, asbestos, mercury, excessive antibiotics, etc. Since government seems to have formed a coalition with corporations, all we can do is protest and take care of ourselves the best we can. A sorry state of affairs as we enter 2008. 

Joan Levinson 

 

• 

DREAM OF SOLIDARITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Primary elections are coming soon. I would like to see initiatives from any party which can bring about peace and security, better health care and better education for all, and most importantly, better relations with all nations on the planet. I would like to see happiness on the faces of today’s youth and not traces of discrimination due to race or economic status. We need solidarity; the despair of the least among us matter to the rest of us. I would not like to say where my vote will go but I want to share my dream of a direction for our country. 

Romila Khanna 

Albany 

 

• 

CLEAN WATER CRISIS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Several recent reports on TV and in papers indicate that the supply of clean water in many countries is severely hampered by the many problems arising from the expanding uncontrolled dumping of organic wastes. I pointed out in a Nov. 30 commentary in the Planet that we could be getting some energy and reducing the carbon dioxide overload on the globe by using pyrolysis on our organic wastes. By using pyrolysis on wastes, we could cut water pollution greatly as germs and toxics would be destroyed. Further, we would stop the reemitting of carbon dioxide by forming inert carbon: that will be taking advantage of nature’s own carbon dioxide trapping system, which we foolishly disregard by composting, a process speeds biodegradation of plant materials and recycles that gas back onto the globe. Present handling of organic wastes in the developed countries costs megabucks both in maintaining dumps to prevent seepage and in running composting operations. Pyrolysis of thewastes would make some money from the energy as well as recover costs from not maintaining dumps to prevent seepage. 

If the people of Berkeley really want green action, they should call on their officials to get a pyrolysis program set up. I can supply more details if the Nov. 30 Commentary is not enough.  

Dr. James Singmaster 

Environmental Toxicologist, Ret.  

Fremont 

 

• 

POLAR ENERGIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“Liberal” and “conservative” are two polar energies that are always present in the public arena, as they provide checks and balances for each other. Liberals, or progressives, archetypically push for changing what is outworn and no longer needed in a society, while conservatives archetypically preserve what is best in society. 

Until we recognize and appreciate the contribution of each of these basic energies, we will remain in polarized positions and won’t draw out the best of each other to creat a higher synthesis. 

Liberals and conservatives keep arguing about the same things when the country wants to move on. We are encouraging either/or politics based on idelogical preconceptions rather than politics based on ideas that broadly unite us. 

Ron Lowe  

Grass Valley 

 

• 

CAMPUS WORKERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As Richard Brenneman highlights events and issues at UC Berkeley in 2007 (BDP v.9, #77) he omits out some good stuff concerning workers on campus. Local 3299 of AFSCME chalked up important achievements this past year, we won a pay equity struggle to bring the lowest paid food services and custodial pay up from poverty wages a dollar or so and established protection of workplace language rights and restitution of faulty pension calculations for employees at the International House.  

Numerous commencement speakers honored our request to stay away from graduation when informed of the equity dispute, and some Democrat candidates for president refused to come on campus. We would like to thank them for their solidarity. 

In other news, UAW-represented academic student employees won wage and contract improvements while the coalition of UC labor unions—including UPTE Professional and Technical Employees, CUE clericals, UC-AFT lecturers and librarians, UAW Academic student employees, AFSCME service workers and patient care employees and CNA—successfully blocked pension-withholding increases for all 10 campuses, took up the struggle of toxic pollution at the Richmond field station and are working across boundaries to help the unions that are currently in or soon entering in to contract negotiations. 

Hank Chapot, Oakland 

UCB central campus gardener


Commentary: BRT: Orwell, Damned Lies and Parking

By Michael Katz
Friday January 04, 2008

AC Transit’s misnamed bus “rapid” transit proposal would not be very rapid. And it would not “replace” the many parking spaces it would remove, as Charles Siegel’s Dec. 14 and 21 letters mistakenly claimed. 

Rather, in exchange for destroying 945 to 1,299 parking spaces along its whole proposed route, the bus agency offers a remarkable “mitigation:” to destroy yet another 187 to 318 spaces! 

General parking spaces on Telegraph would become yellow-curb delivery zones, meaning that most people couldn’t use them. And free parking spaces on residential side streets would become metered, meaning that most people wouldn’t want to. That’s some “mitigation” for neighborhoods already threatened with increased traffic diversion from this boondoggle. 

This all comes straight from AC Transit’s recent draft environmental impact report (EIR). You can download that in a convenient (although very large) single-file format at: http:// Busduse.org/Brt-deir.pdf 

If you’ve ever defended your neighborhood against a big, berserk development project—the kind that Mr. Siegel keeps trying to plop into someone else’s backyard—you know what it’s like to read the project EIR. You tumble rapidly through the looking glass into a mix of Kafka and Orwell. 

Projects disguised as “green” or “sustainable” turn out to actually harm the environment. Impacts portrayed as “slight” are actually substantial. And, as in this case, the claimed “mitigations” are really further impacts. 

Oh, and, parking “replacement” is anything but. AC Transit’s EIR pays lip service to the phrase (on page 3-123), but immediately redefines “replacement” to mean: AC Transit might toss a little money into parking structures already built, or into those already planned by other agencies. 

So, what AC Transit is really proposing is a purchase of naming rights. When Monster Cable paid to rename Candlestick Park “Monster Park,” no one claimed they’d built a new stadium. And if you believe that AC Transit’s retroactive donations add up to “parking replacement,” I’ve got a nice orange bridge to sell you. 

Three pages later, the EIR flatly dismisses the very idea of fully replacing the 1,132 to 1,617 parking spaces that BRT would destroy. (Combining 945 to 1,299 spaces lost for unneeded bus lanes, plus 187 to 318 for “mitigations.”) Then it sums up just how few spaces the bus line is offering to rename. 

It would subsidize “zero to 20” spaces (either existing or already planned) in downtown Berkeley parking garages; and “zero to 101” spaces (existing or already planned) in Southside garages; and “zero to five” spaces in North Oakland. Merry Christmas. 

It gets worse. Even the “new” parking currently planned in Berkeley will only partly replace spaces already lost to other projects before AC Transit proposed BRT. 

Ask Telegraph and downtown merchants why our city’s core commercial districts are decaying, and they regularly cite these ongoing losses of parking. Their defecting customers agree. Also, for struggling storefront merchants, no amount of parking in remote garages would replace the business they’d lose when parking disappears out front. 

AC Transit’s BRT folly targets the district of one of Berkeley’s “greenest” City Councilmembers, the bicycling Kriss Worthington. And Worthington has forcefully rejected it. He wants to redirect its wasteful public subsidy (of up to $400 million) toward smarter transit incentives that might actually benefit our favorite planet. 

Charles Siegel and his ally Rob Wrenn constitute two-fifths of the prolific “Friends of BRT”—meaning they’re about two-fifths of Berkeley’s constituency for this big, berserk waste of scarce transit funds. If they again use these pages to make easily disprovable misstatements about AC Transit’s filings, you can safely disregard anything else they say about BRT. 

Among past misstatements: that BRT on Telegraph would significantly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions (the EIR never studied them), or energy consumption (where the EIR explicitly predicts only “negligible” changes), or conventional air pollution (where the EIR shows equally negligible results). 

Any claims about real environmental benefits from BRT are theoretical extrapolations from other cities, where routes were reasonably planned to substitute for missing subway lines. But AC Transit’s entire route would run an absurd one to six blocks beside BART. BART would remain faster, greener, cheaper to ride, more popular, and cheaper to expand. 

AC Transit is simply proposing to run big, dirty, and largely empty diesel buses through a giant loophole in federal and regional transit subsidies. Stunningly, the agency’s own EIR consultants concluded that on this nutty route, “buses are not as energy efficient as autos”! (Page 4-151.) 

Reclaim the $400 million that AC Transit’s Grinchlike accountants are seeking to nab, and we could buy a truly beneficial gift for our favorite planet. 

 

Michael Katz is a Berkeley activist and occasional journalist.


Commentary: BRT Parking Data Will Come in Due Time

By Alan Tobey
Friday January 04, 2008

Sharon Hudson’s 12/28 commentary (“AC Transit Will Not Replace Parking Loss”) is exceedingly unhelpful in shedding any light on our proposed Bus Rapid Transit project. She’s complaining prematurely: the concerns she raises will be much more definitively addressed as the ongoing environmental review process moves to its conclusion in 2008. 

She quotes extensively from the 2006 draft environmental impact report from 2006 (DEIR) as presumptively conclusive evidence that AC Transit will not replace any parking lost as a result of BRT implementation without taking it from the neighborhoods. Ms. Hudson—who publicly proclaims her expertise on the environmental review process—surely knows better. Responses received on the DEIR have certainly raised the salience of the parking issue, and AC Transit is preparing a much more thorough discussion of potential mitigations for any lost parking and other potential “adverse impacts” that the final EIR will describe in detail. It’s the final EIR (FEIR) that matters. Raising concerns about issues in the DEIR as if they were unchangeable commitments set in concrete is disingenuous and seriously misleading. 

Such issues as Ms. Hudson raises are not yet formally addressed by AC Transit because the next phase of the environmental review process is still incomplete, awaiting action by the City of Berkeley. That required action is the selection of the “preferred local alternative” (PLA) for the project, which will serve as the central organizing scenario for the FEIR. In this phase, the forthcoming commission and city council process will define the best “what-if” case we can make for BRT: If we were to build BRT in Berkeley, what’s the best net-positive plan we can define? That best-case may not prove good enough to actually build; but the decision on whether to go ahead follows the delivery of the FEIR and does not anticipate it.  

It’s important to make this distinction again for absolute clarity: the selection of a preferred local alternative is not a vote to approve the eventual project. The PLA will only help AC Transit write the complete FEIR—dealing with all concerns and objections raised to date—so that the City Council can have the most complete information available. The final Council decision will be based on the FEIR, not on the less fully analyzed preferred local alternative by itself. And that final EIR isn’t now expected before the latter part of 2008. 

If Ms. Hudson really wants to know what AC Transit is currently thinking about some of these issues—instead of clinging to the obsolescent DEIR as if it’s holy scripture—all she needs to do is give Jim Cunradi a call. While Cunradi can’t anticipate or announce any decisions that haven’t yet been made, at several public meetings I’ve attended, Mr. Cunradi has certainly been forthcoming about the process AC Transit has been following and about the nature of the major issues that are still unresolved. It’s certainly unfair to blame AC Transit for any lack of current information—until the City makes its PLA choice, AC Transit does not know what the central scenario in the FEIR will be that it has to analyze. For that reason it can certainly not yet make any promises about what the actual completed project would or would not do.  

Public debates about BRT may be helpful in the future, but only when we know exactly what BRT project we’re looking at, when we know what the potential negative impacts of that actual project would likely be, and when we know what potential mitigations for any negative impacts we could adopt. Until then, there’s simply no point in debating about speculations. That can only inflame people’s worst fears (or feed their unrealistic hopes). 

Let’s put aside the premature posturing about what we assume the worst will be, and join others in making a helpful contribution about what BRT could be. Choices about the PLA will be important: routes through south campus and downtown, the extent to which dedicated lanes are desirable on some or all of these segments, station locations and configurations, and the like. We now have a chance to work together to craft our best case for going ahead—so we can later decide, in the full light of all information we can bring to bear, whether or not we really want BRT to happen. 

 


Commentary: Resolve to Drive Safely in the New Year

By Laurie Capitelli
Friday January 04, 2008

Sadly, we are entering the New Year, carrying the burden of yet another pedestrian fatality in the Thousand Oaks neighborhood. On Monday, December 31, during the late morning, a pedestrian walking northbound on Colusa, crossing Marin, was hit and fatally injured by a vehicle going southbound on Colusa and turning left onto Marin. All parties were obeying the traffic signal. The driver contends the sun, shining directly into her eyes, prevented her from seeing the pedestrian as she completed her turn. My condolences go to the family who shouldn’t have had to face this unexpected and senseless loss. My sympathy goes out the driver who will have to bear this burden the rest of her life.  

After three years in the District 5 Council office, I can truthfully say that the number one constituent complaint is about traffic: too much, too fast, too careless. The outcry has been especially strong this holiday season. Many neighborhood residents feel under siege and appeal to the City for some relief in the form of speed bumps, crosswalks, stop signs, traffic circles—anything to force drivers to SLOW DOWN and PAY ATTENTION. BE RESPONSIBLE for residents playing near or walking across the street.  

I actually don’t think the answer is always a tangible change to the streetscape. What we do need to change right now is the culture of driving in Berkeley: to be able to expect that all of us will slow down, pay attention and be responsible. Whether we do it through a public relations program or targeted enforcement, we each need to take individual responsibility to drive safely.  

I challenge each and every one of us who live and drive in Berkeley to consider the pedestrian you approach as if they were the loved one of someone you know. Care about them. They are, most likely, your neighbor.  

So as we sift through and prioritize our New Year’s resolutions in this first week of 2008, may I suggest the following for all of us who walk and/or drive a car: 

1. Never drive faster than the posted speed limit. 

2. When you see a pedestrian in or approaching a crosswalk, stop for them. Take a deep breath and relax. 

3. If the sun is in your eyes and you cannot see, pull over for a few moments, stop, or take a different route. 

4. If you are insistent about using a phone while driving, use a hands-free device.  

5. If a car in front of you stops at a crosswalk, STOP! Do not try to pass them. 

6. Prioritize pedestrian safety above parking when considering a traffic control or traffic safety feature for your neighborhood. 

7. Do not park illegally ever, even if you hear yourself say, “It’s only for a minute or two.” 

8. Be especially attentive and careful around schools during drop-off times. 

9. Always use a crosswalk or appropriate corner when crossing a street. 

10. Teach your children to be alert to traffic, to obey pedestrian and traffic laws. 

Of course, many of these resolutions are already state law. That may be as good as any a place to start. 

 


Columns

Column: The Public Eye: Steroid America

By Bob Burnett
Tuesday January 08, 2008

Throughout 2007 Americans were warned of a looming steroid scandal in major league baseball. Nonetheless, many fans were surprised when Barry Bonds and 88 other players were identified as steroid users in the Mitchell Report. Sadly, indications are this is only the tip of the drug iceberg, as steroids are said to be an issue at all levels of American sports. Recent estimates suggest two to three percent of high school athletes use steroids, a number in the tens of thousands.  

Athletes use steroids because the drugs enhance their appearance and performance in the short term; they ignore long-term consequences including liver and heart damage. The epidemic use of dangerous drugs is a metaphor for our national character: America seeks to look buff now; we disregard the impact on future generations. Our massive overinvestment in the military-industrial complex helps us feel secure in an uncertain world, but undermines the viability of the American way of life for future generations, for example, by adding to our staggering national debt and deferring needed domestic expenditures. 

It’s possible to discern five aspects of what might be termed “Steroid Ethics.” The first is that many Americans only care about the short term. The “make hay while the sun shines, in the long term we’ll be dead” attitude is not unique to professional athletes or politicians. Many U.S. business leaders now focus exclusively on the present, taking the position that what matters most is performance in the current quarter. As a consequence, corporate executives take ethical shortcuts, for example, by abandoning communities where they have established ties and moving their factories to countries where labor costs less. And it’s become an entrenched cultural pattern for Americans to live beyond their means, often using their home equity to finance their profligate lifestyle. 

The second aspect is that many Americans will do anything to win. In the past athletes were told, “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.” Unfortunately, this isn’t being taught anymore, or if it is, few of us are listening. Our national motto might well be “the ends justify the means.” 

While the origin of our “winning is everything” attitude has many roots, we can point to the presidency of George W. Bush for providing the moral example that, for many Americans, legitimized Steroid Ethics. During his 2000 presidential campaign, Bush’s subliminal message was “greed is good” and “it’s in your personal interest to vote for Dubya.” His goal as president has been to consolidate his personal power, increase the influence of Republicans, and feather the nests of his affluent supporters. The sine qua non of the Bush Administration has been to maximize personal advantage.  

Sadly, a third aspect of Steroid Ethics is that many of us have adopted a herd mentality. Steroid users typically rationalize their behavior by arguing that all their friends are taking the same drugs. Business executives justify their exorbitant salaries by noting their peers are also raking in millions of dollars. Republican members of Congress ignore their president’s ethical lapses because, as the titular head of their party, all their peers support him. At a time when many of their fellow citizens are struggling to make ends meet, wealthy Americans justify exorbitant tax breaks by arguing they have to look out for number one—everyone does it. We’re willing to go along with the crowd, to participate in what columnist Frank Rich termed ‘the good German” syndrome. 

A more subtle aspect of Steroid Ethics is our reliance on magical thinking. Many steroid users hold onto a childlike faith that advances in medicine will eventually remedy the deleterious side effects of the drugs they ingest. Similarly, President Bush believes “history” will vindicate his administration. In the same vein, conservative theorists and many business leaders argue that despite Dubya’s mishandling of the American economy, in the long run “the market” will make the necessary corrections and everything will be okay. Neoconservatives argue that by having a bloated military we can enhance our national competitiveness; they seem to believe other nations like to trade with bullies. 

Finally, Steroid Ethics suggest we have become a nation of narcissists. Drug abusers are obsessively interested in themselves, they show bad judgment and selfishness. Many captains of industry are also overly concerned with money and personal power. This same psychological condition afflicts the president and his closest advisers, as they too are obsessed with their own image. A large segment of the American public favors image over substance, feels it’s better to look good than to be good. This explains our obsession with trash celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. 

My point is that the ethical system that supports steroid use, and drug use in general, has a corrosive influence on American society. At the personal level, this drastically diminishes the long-term quality of life. At the societal level, it undermines democracy: It’s a way of seeing and behaving that exaggerates the importance of individual accomplishment and ignores the notion of common good. Steroid Ethics is cultural cancer. 

 

 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net.


Green Neighbors: Going Medieval on the Streets of Berkeley

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday January 08, 2008

I was at that footsore stage where one’s mind settles fixedly on the goal—getting home and barefoot—but the shrub by the sidewalk stopped me anyway. It looked apple-ish but different; its leaves were longer and larger, and it was bearing fruit I didn’t recognize. It was obviously something in the rose family, but half the fruit-bearing trees I meet are roses: not much of a distinction.  

The fruit resembled nothing so much as giant brown rosehips. Each had that telltale five-flanged calyx remnant on its distal end. The skin was slightly rough, like a Bosc pear’s. They were almost perfectly globular. They tweaked at something in the back of my brain; I almost knew what they were but couldn’t quite name them. It was like running into a long-lost second cousin.  

After snooping around as much as felt decent, I was still stumped. There were noises from a back window of the house, though, so I walked up the driveway and yoo-hooed.  

A youngish guy well-decorated with plaster dust and paint poked his head out the door. He was the new owner of the place, friendly and willing to chat, and fortunately someone had told him what his acquisition was: a medlar tree. 

Well. I had seen medlars before—the plant at least—as whip-trunked, indistinguishable little saplings in a San Francisco nursery. How is it that I hadn’t seen the fruit at, say, the Berkeley Bowl? Maybe I had. Apparently my brain has reached field capacity on some matters, as the runoff seems to be increasing.  

Humans have invented writing for such problems, though, so of course I hit the books as soon as I’d hobbled home. What I found reinforced my still only half-formed conviction that some things, like calomel and the bombard, are obsolete for good reasons.  

Medlars, Melaspilas germanica, are indeed roses, related to loquats (which get called “Japanese medlars”) and hawthorns. They have a feature in common with persimmons, though: the fruit isn’t ready to eat until it’s been hit hard by frost, or has been allowed to soften—“bletted”—in cool storage. For medlars, a pile of moist sawdust or bran in the cellar is classic. Some people eat the finished product by poking a hole in the skin and sucking out the pulp.  

I’m disposed to like this idea, as I love soft Hachiya persimmons. But when people from Chaucer to Shakespeare keep calling medlars “rotten,” and D.H. Lawrence goes on about “… autumnal excrementa” and “… an exquisite odour of leave taking,” I find the idea less appealing somehow.  

Then again, I do like durian. A controversial fruit with a custardy texture might be right up my alley. Unfortunately, the single pome I was bold enough to ask for got lost in the shuffle when I brought it to Stew Winchester’s taxonomy class for show-and-tell. Stew himself was less than impressed, telling me that he’s used to bigger medlars. Hmph.  

But I never got to take it home and stash it under the bed until it got wrinkly and edible, or, more likely, forgotten until it was moldy. So I still don’t know what it tastes like, and the usual descriptions don’t help much. 

Stew’s larger fruit likely came from medlar scions grafted onto some related rootstock; reputedly, Crataegus, i.e. whitethorn or hawthorn, stock yields the biggest fruit. If the little tree I met was grafted, I’m not sure what its roots are; it’s multistemmed and not much more than a shrub. 

The Victorians supposedly relished medlars, but they were typically fond of odd fiddly things. Think of all those ferns and Gondwanalandish araucarias. Think of the silverware.  

Medieval Europeans liked them because they were among the few fruits available in winter. I wonder if their edibility was discovered by someone who thought she was storing ugly apples and never got around to throwing them all onto the compost after biting into a few.  

If you want one, nag your local nursery or ask the California Rare Fruit Growers. Their local scion exchange happens Saturday, January 19, noon to 3 p.m at the UCSF Mission Center, 1855 Folsom St., San Francisco. See the Golden Gate Chapter page of http://www.crfg for details. 

Here’s an oddity: a new species—not variety; whole species—of medlar, Mespilus canescens, was discovered in 1990 in the flat eastern third of Arkansas. It’s the only other species in the genus. There are about 25 individuals in the “wild,” that is, in the 22-acre conservation easement on private land. They’re reluctant to reproduce on their own, though they flower and bear shiny red fruit. Some suspect it’s of hybrid origin; unlike animals, plants have been known to speciate that way.  

Whatever’s happening, conservationists are grafting the new medlar onto Crataegus wood with some success. We don’t know what’s we’re messing with, so save all the parts! 

 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan 

Medlar fruit and leaves. These, about poolball-sized, are apparently some puny medlars. 

 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Green Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section.


Column: Threat of Eminent Domain Gets Writer Writing Again

By Susan Parker
Friday January 04, 2008

I haven’t written a column for a long while because I’ve been adjusting to this widowhood thing. Over the past 15 months I’ve spent time renewing old friendships that were lost after Ralph’s accident, fixing up my house, looking for and finding a job. It took some weeks for the people who lived with me and helped with Ralph’s care to relocate. Since then several folks have moved in and out, and moved in again. 

Soon after Ralph died, my friend Jernae came to stay with me. I’ve known Jernae since she was seven. Now she’s seventeen and trying to find her place in the world. It isn’t easy. She’s switched schools half a dozen times, moved back with her grandmother, and couch surfed at friends’ apartments. As I write this column she’s sitting on the living room sofa, bags semi-packed, deciding whether to come or go. 

A lovely couple from Japan, Sagiri and Hideyuki, and their four-month-old baby, Laia, stayed with me for a month. Hideyuki has a one-year appointment at Stanford, and Sagiri, an aerospace engineer, is completing a post doctorate in integrative biology at Cal. When they moved out, my sister-in-law Yuka and my niece Kanna and nephew Bryce moved in. Nothing cures a house of loneliness like energetic three- and five-year-olds.  

I really seemed to be getting my life back together when a new set of problems arose. On Sept. 13 I learned that Children’s Hospital is planning to build a 12-story tower and helicopter landing pad at the end of my street.  

I’m not against children and I’m not against the hospital expanding. They do good things and I’m happy to have them in my neighborhood. But I don’t want a 180-foot building looming over my house or a helicopter crashing onto my roof. I’ve had to do a lot of digging around to find out how I can protect my home and my neighborhood.  

What I’ve learned in a nutshell is this: Children’s Hospital has two measures on the Feb. 5 ballot to collect a parcel tax from the residents of Alameda County. It’s a private hospital. It will take sorely needed funds away from public entities such as schools, libraries and Highland Hospital. It has bought some but not all of the homes on the south side of 53rd Street, and also one to the north, my side of the block. I met with Mary Dean, CHO’s Senior Vice President of External Affairs, and inquired about a rumor that Children’s could take our homes by way of eminent domain. Specifically I asked, “Does CHO believe it possesses the right to exercise eminent domain without the Oakland City Council?” 

She answered, “I believe we do.” 

I can tell you right now that there aren’t many words that can frighten a homeowner more than eminent domain. Fire, earthquake, acts of God? Yes, those are scary, but what can you do? But a private corporation seizing a taxpayer’s home? Yikes!  

In the past few weeks I’ve talked with neighbors, city council supervisors, and representatives from Mayor Dellums’ office. I’ve contacted the Sierra Club, the League of Women Voters, the Alameda PTAs, and the Chamber of Commerce. I’ve held neighborhood meetings in my home and invited administrators from Children’s Hospital and City Hall to come and talk with us.  

I’ve gone down to the Alameda County Courthouse and filed arguments against measures A and B, and a rebuttal against Measure A. I’ve spent over $100 of my own hard-earned cash on photocopying fliers to distribute throughout the neighborhood. But that’s no match for the one million-plus Mary told me Children’s will spend on politicking for Measure A. 

After Ralph died I didn’t think I had much to write about, but now I find that I do. My house turned 100 years old this year. Ralph and I bought it together in 1992. He spent the last 12 years of his life downstairs in the living room. Since then I’ve filled our home with family and friends. I know he’d want me to fight for it, and so I will.  


Column: Dispatches from the Edge: Dispatch Awards for The Year That Was

By Conn Hallinan
Friday January 04, 2008

The following are Dispatches’ annual “I Don’t Believe I Am Actually Reading This” Awards. 

 

Psychic Insight Award goes to U.S. Maj. Gen. Richard Huck, former commander of the Second Marine Division in Iraq. Members of Kilo Company in his division went on a rampage Nov. 19, 2006 and killed 24 Iraqi civilians. Huck said he never looked into the massacre because it was not uncommon for civilians to be killed during a combat operation. 

“In my mind’s eye I saw insurgent fire, I saw Kilo Company fire,” said Huck during a military hearing this past May, explaining that he could see how “neutrals in those circumstances could be killed.”  

The general did not explain exactly how the eye in his mind works. 

An Honorable Mention in this category went to the pilots of U.S. aircraft and helicopters for their Nov. 16 attack on a group of Iraqis in the town of Taji north of Baghdad. The Iraqis were members of a Sunni militia that had just captured five members of al-Qaeda. According to a military spokesperson, the U.S. pilots detected “hostile intent” from the group—a neat trick considering they were several hundred feet up in the air—and opened fire, killing 50 Sunni militia members and their five prisoners. 

 

The Long Sorrow* Award goes to officials of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq who took members of the Iraqi government and military to visit Northern Ireland in order to demonstrate how building walls between the Catholic and Protestant communities greatly reduced the damage caused by sectarian violence. With Ireland as a template, the Iraqis can now look forward to more than four centuries of inter-communal warfare.  

*The Irish call their 800-plus-year struggle against the English “the long sorrow.”  

 

Great Moments in Objectivity Award goes to Jim Albaugh, chief of defense operations for the Boeing Corporation. Speaking during an air show in Paris this past June, Albaugh urged that U.S. military spending be kept at record levels in order to deal with terrorists and the threat of China. 

“The question is, what happens when we come out of Iraq and Afghanistan and the supplementals [additional payments used to fund the war] start to dry up?” he asked. 

Boeing is worried about cuts in the $200 billion Future Combat System—lots of high-tech whiz bangs, including robot tanks, helicopters, and planes—in which the company has a major stake. Boeing also may lose $400 million if congressional Democrats block the building of a third anti-ballistic missile site in Europe. 

Lest one think that Albaugh’s view of the world and the need for enhanced military spending is self-serving, the Boeing official said that he was “pretty objective” about the whole thing. 

 

The Entrepreneurship Award to Charlene Corley, owner of C&D Distributors in Lexington, S.C., for her creative approach to spending taxpayer’s money. C&D Distributors charged the U.S. Army $998,798 for two 19-cent washers. The firm has collected $20.5 million over a six-year period.  

 

Great Moments in Irony Award to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Meeting with reporters at the U.S. Ambassador’s house in Moscow, she accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of undermining the country’s courts, media and legislative bodies.  

“In any country, if you don’t have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development,” she said. 

The same day that Rice was chiding Putin for amassing too much executive power, a coalition of liberals from the American Freedom Campaign and conservatives from the American Freedom Agenda asked presidential candidates to sign a pledge to roll back the enormous power President Bush has amassed. 

The pledge reads: “We are Americans, and in our America we do not torture, we do not imprison people without charge or legal remedy, we do not tap people’s phones and e-mails without court order, and above all, we do not give any president unchecked power. I pledge to fight to protect and defend the Constitution from attack by any president.” 

Ron Paul was the only Republican candidate who signed the pledge. Five of the eight Democrats also signed. Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden and John Edwards did not, but issued statements denouncing torture, wiretapping without warrants, and imprisonment without judicial review.  

Rice’s statement in Moscow brings to mind Lily Tomlin’s remark about the Bush Administration: “No matter how cynical you get, you just can’t keep up with these people.”  

 

Bunker Hill Award goes to Canadian Lt. Col. Jamie Robertson who denounced the Taliban in Afghanistan this past July for refusing “to fight fair,” relying on roadside bombs and suicide attacks instead of “directly confronting Canadian troops in combat. 

“After failing to achieve any success…in conventional warfare, the insurgents have resorted to IED [improvised explosive devices] and other terrorist tactics,” said Robertson, deputy director of public affairs operations for the Canadian armed forces. 

Which is kind of the idea behind guerilla warfare, something the Canadian military apparently hasn’t worked out yet. 

Back in 1776, Major General William Howe, who led the British assault at Bunker Hill, expressed similar complaints about the “rabble in arms,” which inflicted over 1,000 casualties on his men. The colonials, on the other hand, thought it was an excellent idea for the British to wear bright red uniforms and stand in long, straight lines out in the open while the rebels got to shoot at them from behind barricades. 

 

The Grinch Award goes to Ronald R. Aument, deputy undersecretary for Veterans Affairs, who opposed giving full veteran benefits to Filipinos who fought with the U.S. Army during the WW II.  

Aument said such benefits would cost $4 billion over the next decade (the Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost will be only $1 billion), but the major reason the Bush Administration opposes the benefits is that it would allow Filipino veterans living in the Philippines to have a higher standard of living than most other Filipinos. 

“VA benefits paid to beneficiaries living in the United States, such as U.S. veterans, do not enable those beneficiaries to live higher than the general U.S. population,” Aument told the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs. “We do not support the bill because it would disproportionately favor Filipino veterans over U.S. veterans.” 

More than 200,000 Filipinos were drafted into the U.S. Army in 1941. Some were captured and imprisoned, while others led a successful guerrilla war against the Japa-nese. The Filipinos were promised full veterans benefits, but the promise was arbitrarily canceled in 1946. 

Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho), the leading Republican on the Committee, said he too was concerned about paying the benefits. “The same benefit paid to veterans in the Philippines would provide income that is almost four times the average household income in that country,” he said. 

The average household income in the Philippines is $4,133, compared to $48,201 in the U.S. The benefits for low-income Filipinos over 65 would be just under $11,000 a year. There are about 20,000 Filipino vets still living, most in their 80s and 90s. 

Merry Christmas from the Bush administration. 

 

The Totally Whacko Award to U.S. Lt. Col. Edward M. Bush III, spokesperson for the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay, who accused London lawyer Clive Stafford Smith of smuggling “contraband” to prisoners the Bush Administration is holding in the Cuban facility.  

“Contraband items are taken seriously, said Bush III, “They may be used in such a way to conduct harm or self-harm for which the Joint Task Force is liable.” 

The “contraband”? Underpants and Speedo swimsuits. 

Smith denies the charge, saying his job “involves legal briefs, not the other sort.” The lawyer also said he was “baffled” by the Speedo charge. He said his client “is hardly in a position to go swimming, since the only available water is the toilet in his cell.”


Column: Undercurrents: A Religious and Spiritual Test for Candidates

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday January 04, 2008

The issue of religion and candidates’ faith has been raised in the presidential race. Not for the first time, in such races. Almost certainly, not for the last. It raises the question whose answer is assumed but which is rarely tackled head-on by progressives: should there be a religious test for American presidential candidates? 

As if we don’t already have one, or could stop such a test, if we chose. 

Such a test does not appear, nor should it, in the qualification section for president at Article II Section 2 of the Constitution, which reads, simply, that “No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” 

But as Martin Sheen, as presidential chief of staff, remarked in the movie “An American President,” the American people have a habit of deciding for ourselves what or what not we think is an important issue, and over the years we have determined that in some form or another, religion and faith are things to be considered in making our decision as to whom we wish to elect as president. 

In fact, unlike in the case of a jury, civil or criminal, which is given legal guidelines on which to make their decision, American law, Constitutional or otherwise, is silent on what criteria a voter is to use when entering the voting booth. Constitutionally, therefore, the voters may use any yardstick, measure, or test we desire, serious or silly. We are not bound by law from considering race, gender, religion, intellect, familiarity, facial expression, facial hair, height and humor, the ability to make or grasp a point or sing a song or play a musical instrument, or any other criteria we want in deciding for whom to cast our presidential ballot. Legally speaking, all of these and more are permissible to be used in making our decision. 

But to say something is legal is not to conclude that it is proper. And so the question remains, should we apply a religious test to presidential candidates? 

Those who are against such a test almost always raise the point that had there been such criteria used by American voters a hundred and fifty years ago, it would have probably excluded the man who was arguably both our best and most spiritual president: Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln was not a religious man, if we apply that term in the modern application, by which one proclaims membership in one of the multitude of religious sects. He never joined any particular church, though he attended various services, and if he considered himself a Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian or other—the major American denominations of the day—he kept that fact to himself. And yet his speeches, writings, pronouncements, and remarks during his Presidency all reflect someone who thought deeply about spiritual matters, and was guided by them in a way that demonstrated such reflection. Told once that God was certainly on the Union’s side during the Civil War, a common assertion in those times that is reflected in ours, Mr. Lincoln responded that he was more concerned that we be on God’s side. That is a plainness and a thoughtfulness that would get distorted and utterly lost in the twists and turns and sound(back)byting of modern electronic politics. 

But faith and spirit and religion are an important part of an individual’s makeup, how they view the world and move through it, and I wish we had a more adult way of approaching it and discussing it in the context of the present presidential campaign. 

Much has been made of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith during this year’s Republican primary season, as it was of Senator Joseph Lieberman’s Jewish faith when he ran as the Democratic Vice presidential nominee four years ago, as it was of then-Senator John Kennedy’s Catholic faith when he ran for president in 1960. But the discussions all appeared to be a mile wide with no depth to them, the country’s Protestant majority approaching views different from theirs as if they were an oddity, as if someone showed up wearing orange at an all-red ball. The onus was on the “outsider”—the Mormon, the Jew, the Catholic—to show that they were actually no different from “us,” and, having shown, more or less, they are accepted into the fold, and we move on, ticking them off like cattle-call checkmarks on the side of a barn. A Jew can run for president. A Mormon can run for president. A Catholic can run for president, and actually win. But how much have we accomplished, and how much have we learned in the process? Little about Catholicism, Judaism, or Mormonism, I suspect. Or anything else.  

But there are differences—some of them subtle, some of them profound—between Mormonism, for example, and the various Protestant Christian denominations that are in the majority—or, at least, the plurality—of American religious belief that get lost in such a process. What we are left with is a sort of taken-for-granted commentary on the 24 hour cable news stations that Mr. Romney is still going to have trouble amongst some of the fundamentalists. But the exact nature of that trouble is only explained in 30 second clips at a time, at a rush, as if we had neither time nor patience for any more. 

I wish that the 2007-08 presidential election had been used as a time to actually hold a national discussion of Mormonism, just as I wish the 2004 election could have been used for such a discussion of Judaism, and the 1960 election a discussion of Catholicism. Not as criticism, but in the purest collegiate learning tradition in the same way, for example, that the national experience of the miniseries “Roots” sparked a national discussion of African-American history and the intertwinings of race in American history. I think that, as a nation, we would have been the better for it. There are few opportunities for such national dialogues, and these ones have passed, and, having passed, we are of the belief that they are no longer necessary. 

But since faith is such an important component of the human makeup, I think its inclusion in the presidential campaign is too critical to be left up to the candidates and their handlers themselves. Otherwise, such a “discussion” will be downgraded and relegated to endless wink-and-nod events such as the infamous Mike Huckabee commercial that the former Arkansas Governor’s handlers proclaim, all our senses roaring to the contrary, was only the studio lights catching the edge of the bookshelf just so, perhaps it was a miracle of God, but it was never actually intended to be a cross.  

It is too late for the 2008 primary season, which is upon us at the gallop, but in the fall general election campaign, and all the other campaigns to follow, I would hope that if faith and religion are so serious to us and our decisions in choosing a president, we should ourselves impose upon the candidates a serious way of discussing the issue. 

Somewhere along the endless line of presidential debates, we ought to have one in which faith and religion, alone, are discussed. Let it be in roundtable rather than podium form, to promote the impression that this is explanatory and exploratory, rather than confrontational. Intersperse the candidates with representatives of the major American faiths—not just the Christian faiths but all the Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Islam as well—and not just the Abrahamic faiths but representatives of the elder religions that preceded them and are followed and practiced by large numbers of our fellow citizens, wicca and ifá, for example, as well as Buddhist, Hindus, and any of the other major American-practiced faiths I may have left out through my own ignorance. 

Let the discussion be about how candidates define their own faith, and how they use their particular faith to operate in the secular world and inform their political decisions. Let the various religious experts and followers interspersed pose various questions and ask how candidates might approach different situations that challenge their faith and ethics. If any candidate wants to get by with declaring that America is a Christian nation founded on Christian principles, let them do so, but let them do so sitting next to one of our Jewish bretheren rather than in the friendly midst of a Pentacostal or Baptist congregation, so they might also be made to explain how and why such an assertion leaves so many Americans on the outs. Some candidates would skip such an exercise, of course, and there is certainly danger of sparking open religious warfare among those who do attend and take the matter honestly and seriously. But we are already at religious war, both in America and outside our borders. And I think that all of us, candidates and country alike, would benefit from a more public airing. 

Should there be a religious or spiritual test of American presidential candidates? It’s already happening. The only issue that remains is who is to do the testing. And how.


First Person: What Would Buddha Buy?

By Martha Dickey
Friday January 04, 2008

Today I am spending most of the daylight hours looking for a parking space. In the latter days of December, people in Berkeley are still trying to be polite, but I can see that it is becoming forced. Their necks tighten as they mentally calculate the size of each space versus the size of their SUV. They troll slowly, but I can’t pass them because a) I can’t predict their next move, and b) I can’t ignore even a slight possibility that they might pull a gun on me as I pull into a parking space that they believe to be rightly theirs. 

I go into Sur La Table on 4th Street to buy a six-cup Bundt pan and return the cookie press I bought in a pathetic surge of Christmas spirit last week. Sur La Table has thousands of everything. Gleaming, specialized kitchen equipment for the aggressive home chef is piled to the rafters in a market-square atmosphere with boutique prices—everything except six-cup Bundt pans: three-cup molds in many designs, eight-cup Turk’s Head molds (I’m not sure I know enough people to eat that large a cake), but no six-cup molds. 

Karen Carpenter is belting out Silent Night in her synthesizer vibrato. If I had a gun, I would use it to shoot out the sound system. The cashiers look as sweetly brittle as the packages of ribbon candy before them on the counter—this music has been candying their brains for several hours. 

Grasping my too-small but very pretty Bundt pan and purple sanding sugar (they are out of red and green), I get into the long checkout line. Grinding my teeth, shifting from foot to foot, I notice I am now singing along with Karen, “sleeeep in hea-ven-ly pea-ea-ea-zz” under my breath. There is a big white ceramic bowl of potpourri on the counter next to the ribbon candy, $6.50 to fill a small cloth bag with dried orange slices, bay leaf and cinnamon sticks coated with a perfume that doesn’t smell like any of those things, but somehow says Christmas. Hands shaking like a junkie, I spill pieces of leaves and bark all over the counter as I struggle to aim the large scoop into the small bag. 

The woman behind me, eyes filled with concern, asks if she can help hold the bag while I scoop the dry bits into it like a starving child. Then she sniffs the mix and grabs the scoop almost before I have a chance to put it down. She starts shoveling as she shouts across the room “all you can get into the bag for only six dollars and fifty cents!” Three other women migrate to the bowl of sticks and leaves. 

A bit high from inhaling the sugary smells, I get to my car just as the meter clicks to –0:00. I sit quietly behind the wheel for a moment doing Waterfall Breath, the breathing technique I learned in yoga class to calm myself and become grounded in the moment. Immediately, cars slow down as they see a human shape inside my parked Toyota. They circle like hungry sharks trying to position for my exit. 

As I pull away from the curb, I breathe slowly, trying to stay in the moment. But The Moment, it turns out, contains only the plans for all the other moments of my quickly waning day: Meet my husband who is taking off work to buy a Christmas tree at 3 p.m.—allow 42 minutes not including parking. (Note to self: Remember last year’s tree bought in haste that only looked straight compared to the other trees on the lot, but trunk turned out to be corkscrew-shaped, which was starkly revealed when most of the needles fell off by December 23rd.) Allow 25 minutes for the Safeway where I will buy the necessities I ran out of three days ago. This store will be an oasis of sanity with its humble selections: milk, toilet paper, cat food, huge jars of pickles. The cashiers will be relaxed and friendly, wanting nothing more from me than my Safeway Club Card. 

I must not be getting sufficient protein or fiber or meditating enough, because Christmas has become an uncomfortable, tiring trial. I still start looking forward to it in November though, in a conditioned response from childhood when it was purely about sitting on the fat man’s lap and asking for things. Today, the fat man is my husband and there is no lap. And I am responsible for making the days merry and bright. 

But it will all be over (very over) on Dec. 26. In the meantime, I think I will splurge on buying that adorable Chicken-with-a-Hat ornament I saw at Stained Glass Garden earlier. I am sure that soon there will be a parking space, and when the colored lights in the trees twinkle on, it will offer a lovely moment. I am determined to ground myself in that moment as the sun sets over 4th Street in Berkeley.


About the House: Getting the Real Dirt on Dirt

By Matt Cantor
Friday January 04, 2008

I have preferred over the years to confine my writing to subjects outside of my actual day-to-day vocation, but sometimes a discussion of my work helps a bit to illustrate a point. It’s not very glamorous but I spend a lot of my life in crawlspaces. The cats look at me funny, wondering what I’m doing in their bathroom. People often say, as I suit up to get sub-domestic, “Well, here’s where you earn your money!” It’s really not true, but the comment reveals how unpleasant the average person perceives this to be.  

Sadly, this pedestrian and reasonably safe activity gives rise to more understanding about houses, their life cycles and their maladies than virtually any other single procedure. No effort is made to hide any system in the construction of crawlspaces. Over time, some tasks (e.g., seismic retrofitting) result in hiding certain features, but mostly it’s Open Architecture as the I.T. folks say and one feature that is rarely hidden and so revelatory is the ground itself. 

It may seem silly or obvious to say it, but looking at the dirt below your house can be tremendously revealing and I learn so much of real concern from a simple examination of the soil in a crawlspace that it’s one of the only items that I consider absolutely requisite in the examination of a home. 

So what’s the dirt on dirt? What can we learn from looking at soil? There are at least two major areas of study that can be plumbed from a simple visual examination of the soil under your house and for this reason, it’s well worth your time and the drudge to pull on a coverall and take a crawl. 

First, look for signs of moisture. One sign that may not be obvious but is of great value is the softness of the top layer of soil. Under houses that have remained dry for many years, the soil, even clay, will tend to be broken up and powdery. Over time a range of forces including animal activity will tend to break up the soil into a powdery texture if dry conditions have prevailed. 

If the soil is all hard and caked, this shows that, at some point, and perhaps recently, the soil has been damp or wet. In houses that flood seasonally, the ground may be dry to the touch but will tend to have formed into a mud cake. This will often be cracked like a desert soil (called laterization) if there is sufficient clay content.  

Here in Berkeley, where we live on a clay bed, the soil will commonly be seen in this state when it has been seasonally wetted. If you take a screwdriver and dig down a few inches, you can often see that the soil is slightly damp. Pinch the soil and see if it sticks together. This helps determine if it’s damp. Dry clay will crumble apart. Think about the time of year. If this is August, you may expect things to be really dry and if you discover that things are damp, you may be able to discern the presence of a subterranean source of water.  

Don’t forget to consider plumbing leaks and excessive watering, although these will not have a uniform or homogenous effect. They’ll form a pattern that coincides with the activity or source. A leak around a sewer pipe that might be invisible can produce localized soil conditions such as these but will not do so a few yards away. When the entire crawlspace shows a similar condition, that ain’t no leak. 

All properties are in some sort of drainage plain and the condition of soil relates to those conditions so it’s worthwhile to think about the slope of the ground, the proximity to nearby creeks and the local geography while looking at the soil. 

Look at the color of the soil. Dry soils are lighter in color, as a rule and dark areas may be damp areas. A low-lying portion of the crawlspace that is also darker in color may be a place that is currently damp or at least damper than the rest.  

Both concrete and soil will exhibit an effect called efflorescence in which evaporative salts such as bromide or chloride are driven to the surface along with water as it escapes to the surface seeking equilibrium. The depots are usually white and on soil can leave small white dotted peaks on the surface. Sometimes the whitish depots are more widespread but this is less common. In any event, this is a sure sign of significant moisture in the crawlspace. 

Many houses will display this effect on the surface of concrete in the crawlspace. As water travels through the foundation, it will pull this salts to the surface leaving a fluffy crystalline formation much like sea foam on the surface of the concrete. This can be easily brushed away and is not harmful in and of itself but tells of water flow through these hard but porous structures. Over time, this can weaken concrete but in the overall scheme of things, it’s not significant. What is significant is that water facilitates soil migration and soil migration cracks, rotates and maligns foundations, SO, dry soils below your house are a darned good idea.  

If the soil appears to be puffy and soft on the surface, you may be looking at a very high clay content and possibly a clay with a high expansion potential. 

Clay soils push houses up when they get wet and then drop them back down as they dry. Keeping this kind of soil dry can be the difference between a house that is being slowly misshapen and one that stays in a nice rectilinear shape (assuming it started out that way). 

Also, as we’ve discussed on many other occasions, damp below the house can and does create damp inside the house (even when imperceptible) and this grows tiny forests of fungi (including mold) that can affect our health. Keeping low humidity levels is extremely important and damp crawlspaces are primary culprits in cases of mold. 

Looking at soil may relate to science but you don’t have to be a scientist to do it. I’ve found that taking the time to touch and look and ponder in the monastery of mice can teach quite a lot. That and the use of a really bright flashlight. By the way, don’t use one of those million candlepower torches. They’ll just blind you. A high quality flashlight of 25,000-50,000 candlepower is perfect. An automotive trouble-light works pretty well too but you may want a 100 watt bulb. Be sure to compare the appearance of soil across the entire tire crawlspace so that you can discern patterns of dampness.  

If you choose to explore your crawlspace, the only safety warning I’ll offer is a strong admonition to wear a respirator. Not a dust mask but a real respirator, like painters wear. 

Now, this is a fairly broad look at a complex science but I firmly believe that some simple triage can be incredibly informative and of enormous financial benefit. Just don’t expect your results to make the scientific journals. They may tell you that it’s good garage science but it won’t qualify as “ground-breaking” (Sorry, couldn’t help myself). 

 


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Tuesday January 08, 2008

TUESDAY, JAN. 8 

FILM 

“Banished” by Marco Williams, chronicles the history of three towns that forcefully banished African-American families at 6:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., Oakland. www.pbs.org/independentlens/banished 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Andrew Carriere & the Cajun Zydeco All Stars at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Singers’ Open Mic with Kelly Park at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Matt Moorish, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Ambrose Akinmusire Group in an Oaktown Jazz Workshops Benefit Concert at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $25. 238-9200.  

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 9 

EXHIBITIONS 

East Bay Women Artists “Begin the Beguine” Group show opens at Royal Ground Gallery, 2058 Mountain Blvd, Oakland. 841-0441. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Coast of Utopia Reading of the trilogy by Tom Stoppard “Voyage” at 7 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Other readings on Jan. 16 and Jan. 23. Tickets for all three are $150. 841-6500, ext. 303. 

Dana Frank describes “Local Girl Makes History: Exploring Northern California’s Kitsch Monuments” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

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 

Ravi Abcarian Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Bass Culture Revue at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Orquestra Sensual at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

John Richardson Band at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Margo Leverett & Friends at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Andy Bey at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$18. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, JAN. 10 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Art and History of Early California” A curator’s tour with Inez Brooks-Myers at 1:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum, 10th and Oak St 238-2022.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Susan Dinkelspiel Cerny will discuss her book “An Architectural Guidebook to San Francisco and the Bay Area” at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Cost is $8-$10. 763-9218. 

Zaid Shakir introduces his collection of essays “Scattered Pictures: Reflections of an American Muslim” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Susan Debroah (Sam) King reads from “One Breasted Woman” poetry collection at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donations accepted. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Red Hot Chachkas at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Klezmer dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $13-$15. 525-5054.  

Sourdough Slim at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Peter Anastos & Iter at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Laura Klein & Ted Wolff, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Kapakahi, The Angry Philosophers at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082  

Roy Hargrove Quintet at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$24. 238-9200. 

FRIDAY, JAN. 11 

THEATER 

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 $20-$30. 841-6500.  

EXHIBITIONS 

IN•FORMATION Featuring Edge Art Group. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. 

FILM 

The Medieval Remake “Andrei Rublev” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Kim Shuck and Molly Albracht Sierra read their poetry at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave. 841-6374. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Hurricane Sam & The Hotshots at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Wake the Dead at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Hamir Atwal Trio and Uncle Jesse at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Mucho Axe, Latin world groove at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Rustler’s Moon at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Nomadics, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Pockit, Matthew Hansen at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Monster Squad, Whiskey Rebels, Cropknox at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Grease Traps, Mophono at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Beep! Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Roy Hargrove Quintet at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$24. 238-9200.  

SATURDAY, JAN. 12 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Gerry Tenney at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Henry Neff introduces “The Hound of Rowan” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Music and Puppets with Jen Miriam at 11 a.m. at Studio Grow, 1235 Tenth St. Cost is $7. 526-9888. 

THEATER 

“Old Man River: Mark Twain and the Mississippi” A dramatic portrayal and slide show at 5 p.m. at College Avenue Presbyterian Church, 5951 College Ave, south of Claremont, Oakland. Donation $10. 

San Francisco Theater Project “Aftermath of War: in their own words” Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $15-$20. 925-798-1300. www.willowstickets.org  

“Marriage Counselling” at 8 p.m., Sun. at 6 p.m. at Black Repertory Theater, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $15. www.mikeglendinning.com 

FILM 

Jazz and the Movies “Beware” at 6:30 p.m. and “Too Late Blues” at 8:10 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Have I Got a Story to Tell” A storytelling circle with Diane Ferlatte at 2 p.m. at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. 532-9142. 

Claire Becker, Sarah McKinnon, Matthew Thomas Russell, Dan Sanders, Ammon Torrence and Just Kibbe read from thier latest works at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jewish Music Festival presents Aron Saltiel at 8 p.m. at JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. www.jewishmusicfestival.org  

Monterey Jazz Festival at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$52. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Pellejo Seco at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

W. Allen Taylor & His Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Jacob Wolkenhauer, Mike Zawitkowski at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Steve Seskin, Don Henry & Craig Carothers at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $21.50-$22.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Bill Ortiz Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Gaucho, Gypsy Jazz Band at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Socket, Machina Sol at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Joshi Marshall Project at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Killing the Dream, Ruiner, Ensign, Braodway Calls at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JAN. 13 

FILM 

The Medieval Remake “Alexander Nevesky” at 2 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Maxine Hong Kingston and ten veterans will read selections from their book “Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace” at 3 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall, Cedar and Bonita. Cost is $20 and includes receptions. For reservations call 725-8515.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Live Oak Concert “Ensemble Theatrum Musicum” Elizabethan works for small consort, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 644-6893. berkeleyartcenter.org 

David Daniels, countertenor, Martin Katz, piano, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $48. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Stephanie Bruce & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Pappa Gianni & the North Beach Band at 2 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Big Lion, folk-rock, at 2 p.m. at It’s A Grind Coffee House, 555 12th St., Oakland. 268-9902.  

Escalay, Middle Eastern jazz, at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Flamenco Open Stage with Alicia Zamora at 6:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Young Lions, Old Dogs with Samora and Elena Pinderhughes, David Belove, Paul van Wageningen, at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

John McCutcheon at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

This Bike is a Pipebomb, Vema Cam, Max Levine Ensemble at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, JAN. 14 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Cultural Connections” Group show in various media with a special tribute to Chauncey Bailey opens at the Craft & Cultural Arts Gallery, State of California Bldg. Atrium, 1515 Clay St. 622-8190. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jane Rhodes describes “Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with Livermore Poet Laureate Connie Post and Damnyo from Los Angeles, at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Babshad Jazzz at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100. www.lebateauivre.net 

Parlor Tango at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Howard Wiley & The Angola Project, featuring Faye Carol, at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$15. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson at the de Young

By Peter Selz, Special to the Planet
Tuesday January 08, 2008

Few sculptors worked in wood in the late 1950s and ‘60s when Louise Nevelson made her great wooden walls. By the time she produced her Sky Cathedral in 1958, which was shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, she was 60 years old.  

She was an artist who did her great work late in life, a phenomenon fairly rare in the history of artists. Born to a Jewish family in the lumber business in Ukraine, she grew up near great forests in Maine and married a gentleman named Nevelson who was in the shipping business.  

She began studying painting in New York, separated from her husband, studied with Hilla Rebay (who became the first director of the Guggenheim Museum), went to Europe, studied with Hans Hoffmann in Munich, went back to New York, became an assistant to Diego Rivera in mural projects and began making small-scale sculptures of a Surrealist persuasion. She exhibited in New York galleries in the 1940s, and received good reviews, an unusual occurrence for women artists at the time.  

Her groundbreaking work was the creation of walls which she made from cut-off wood items—wheels, dowels, parts of chairs, boxes—all kinds of found objects which she scavenged on the streets of New York. She chose those pieces whose shape, scale and texture appealed to her. She then assembled them into large walls, which she painted black to conceal their previous function, endowing things which once had a practical function with a sense of mystery.  

Her process of making sculpture by assembling pieces is related to that of her colleagues such as David Smith and Herbert Ferber, except that they welded metal pieces and wood was Nevelson’s material of choice.  

In the spectacular exhibition in 1958 at MoMA the viewer entered into a dark night and was not at all interested in detecting the previous identity of all, the pieces. “I really deal with shadows and space,” she wrote. “Those are the important things in my work and for me, because I identify with the shadow.”  

But after the night comes the day, and Louise Nevelson began painting her walls a monochrome white in the late 1950s. These she named “Dawn’s Wedding Feast.” These festive works, she felt, would express hope and a new beginning. Finally, still working in monochrome, she produced golden walls which resemble altars in Baroque churches. But black, which she said “encompasses all colors, is the ultimate,” is the color to which she returned in her final phase.  

Although Minimal Sculpture was the leading mode for sculpture in the ‘70s in public spaces, Nevelson received many commissions. Her black metal walls and sometimes free-standing pieces began to appears in Princeton and Philadelphia and in Scottsdale, Arizona and Louisville, Ky.  

There is a Louise Nevelson Plaza filled with her work in Lower Manhattan and a beautiful white relief wall in St. Peter’s Church on Lexington Avenue, as well as a great wall in a synagogue in Great Neck, called “The White Flame for the Six Million” (1970-71.) One of her public pieces is in the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco.  

Unlike so much “Plopp Art” which we see in public places, Nevelson’s sculptures are site-specific and adapted to the environment in which they are placed. The retrospective of Nevelson’s sculpture was organized by the Jewish Museum of New York and is installed at the de Young Museum the way it should be seen.  

 

Image: Louise Nevelson’s Case with Five Balusters, from “Dawn’s Wedding Feast,” 1959. 

 

The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson:  

Constructing a Legend 

 

Through Jan. 13, de Young Museum 

Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco.


Benny Green Brings Monterey Jazz All-Stars to Zellerbach Hall

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Tuesday January 08, 2008

“I grew up in Berkeley in the 1970s,” said jazz pianist and composer Benny Green, who leads the acclaimed Monterey Jazz Festival All-Star Band this Saturday at Zellerbach Auditorium, after playing the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz Thursday. “It was a wonderful time to be in Berkeley—which looks a little different these days, but whenever I think of it, I go back in my mind to those days of the post-Flower Child generation.” 

Born in New York and a student of classical piano at seven, Green began his jazz studies in Berkeley, influenced by his tenor saxophonist father “introducing me to jazz, but also the jazz education program introduced by the late Phil Hardymon. He’d visit all the schools, from fourth grade on ... if a young person was serious, it became a goal to play in the high school band, really a big deal to us. I didn’t realize right away what a special program it was, that other towns, other states didn’t have such a program. It was important, too, because I associated older people with jazz, the faces on the sleeves of my father’s records, and in the jazz program I could hear and play with my peers, playing the music.” 

Green began his career as a teenager in the Bay Area. “I went professional at 15,” he recalled, “backing [singer] Faye Carroll and playing with [trumpeter] Eddie Henderson. Tenor player Hadley Caliman helped me so much.” He also worked in a 12-piece band led by bassist Chuck Israels. At 19, Green moved to New York, and worked briefly with alto saxophonist Bobby Watson, then spent four years backing the late, great bop vocalist, Betty Carter. 

“My goal when I moved to New York was to learn Art Blakey’s music, to join [Blakey’s band] The Jazz Messengers.” Green played with the late innovative drummer and group leader from 1987 until late ‘89, when he joined trumpeter Freddy Hubbard’s quintet.  

Recalling his formative time with Blakey, Green emphasized “the feeling on the bandstand. Art was so powerful, so electric ... he had the ability to elevate what everybody was doing, to breathe so much life into our improvisations and shape them. And he created the illusion you were the one doing this! I discovered sitting in playing with others that sometimes the bottom would drop out. I ended up feeling it was Art playing me! We had to work hard. It was his idea that we should all write music, to see how it worked in a group context, that we should become bandleaders ourselves--to be the ones with the initial conceptions and blossom as composers. He groomed us as composers and performers.” 

In 1993, Green joined the now late bassist Ray Brown’s trio. That year, virtuoso jazz pianist Oscar Peterson chose Green to receive the first City of Toronto Glen Gould International Protege Prize in Music. Green remembered Peterson, who died Dec. 26 at age 82. “His human achievement is just staggering. The example he set for all of us, with his integrity and emotional depth, created a legacy to learn from. But when Oscar died, he took a lot of information with him.” 

“I love learning from older people musically,” Green went on, “from generations closer to the time musicians played for dancing. They honored the melody ... there’s so much to learn from them, not just in terms of theory, but in the way they carry themselves.” 

One older musician Green singled out as someone who carries himself well is James Moody, saxophonist and flautist, who was a close Dizzy Gillespie associate, playing in the trumpet master’s late 40s big band. Moody will turn 83 in March. “He’s been around, been through it all and knows what goes on--and stays optimistic! He has such a positive attitude that comes through, is so enthusiastic ... great to emerge from a long life not embittered by experience, still playing music.”  

Green talked about the other members of the All-Star group—trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard (another Blakey alumnus), bassist Derrick Hodge, drummer Kendrick Scott and special guest vocalist Nnenna Freelon—of how the group gelled after a few quick rehearsals over a weekend to bring excitement to the world’s longest-running jazz festival’s Sunday finale show last September.  

“We have a variety of instrumental and vocal possibilities ... not all six of us will be up on stage for every tune. Terence is such a wonderful composer and he, Derrick and Kendrick have worked together all the time, for several years now, as the nucleus of Terence’s own band—that we want to feature his music as much as possible. And we want to see how much new music we can perform. There’s such diversity, such rich talent in this group. We came to perform, and at Monterey we came together in just a couple of days in our musical intentions and felt like a team, a family. And the way the audience received us there inspired us to new heights.”  

 

Monterey Jazz Festival: 

50th Anniversary Tour with Benny Green 

 

Sat, Jan. 12, 8 p.m., Zellerbach Hall,  

UC Berkeley Campus. $34, $40 and $52.  

www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. 

 


Green Neighbors: Going Medieval on the Streets of Berkeley

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday January 08, 2008

I was at that footsore stage where one’s mind settles fixedly on the goal—getting home and barefoot—but the shrub by the sidewalk stopped me anyway. It looked apple-ish but different; its leaves were longer and larger, and it was bearing fruit I didn’t recognize. It was obviously something in the rose family, but half the fruit-bearing trees I meet are roses: not much of a distinction.  

The fruit resembled nothing so much as giant brown rosehips. Each had that telltale five-flanged calyx remnant on its distal end. The skin was slightly rough, like a Bosc pear’s. They were almost perfectly globular. They tweaked at something in the back of my brain; I almost knew what they were but couldn’t quite name them. It was like running into a long-lost second cousin.  

After snooping around as much as felt decent, I was still stumped. There were noises from a back window of the house, though, so I walked up the driveway and yoo-hooed.  

A youngish guy well-decorated with plaster dust and paint poked his head out the door. He was the new owner of the place, friendly and willing to chat, and fortunately someone had told him what his acquisition was: a medlar tree. 

Well. I had seen medlars before—the plant at least—as whip-trunked, indistinguishable little saplings in a San Francisco nursery. How is it that I hadn’t seen the fruit at, say, the Berkeley Bowl? Maybe I had. Apparently my brain has reached field capacity on some matters, as the runoff seems to be increasing.  

Humans have invented writing for such problems, though, so of course I hit the books as soon as I’d hobbled home. What I found reinforced my still only half-formed conviction that some things, like calomel and the bombard, are obsolete for good reasons.  

Medlars, Melaspilas germanica, are indeed roses, related to loquats (which get called “Japanese medlars”) and hawthorns. They have a feature in common with persimmons, though: the fruit isn’t ready to eat until it’s been hit hard by frost, or has been allowed to soften—“bletted”—in cool storage. For medlars, a pile of moist sawdust or bran in the cellar is classic. Some people eat the finished product by poking a hole in the skin and sucking out the pulp.  

I’m disposed to like this idea, as I love soft Hachiya persimmons. But when people from Chaucer to Shakespeare keep calling medlars “rotten,” and D.H. Lawrence goes on about “… autumnal excrementa” and “… an exquisite odour of leave taking,” I find the idea less appealing somehow.  

Then again, I do like durian. A controversial fruit with a custardy texture might be right up my alley. Unfortunately, the single pome I was bold enough to ask for got lost in the shuffle when I brought it to Stew Winchester’s taxonomy class for show-and-tell. Stew himself was less than impressed, telling me that he’s used to bigger medlars. Hmph.  

But I never got to take it home and stash it under the bed until it got wrinkly and edible, or, more likely, forgotten until it was moldy. So I still don’t know what it tastes like, and the usual descriptions don’t help much. 

Stew’s larger fruit likely came from medlar scions grafted onto some related rootstock; reputedly, Crataegus, i.e. whitethorn or hawthorn, stock yields the biggest fruit. If the little tree I met was grafted, I’m not sure what its roots are; it’s multistemmed and not much more than a shrub. 

The Victorians supposedly relished medlars, but they were typically fond of odd fiddly things. Think of all those ferns and Gondwanalandish araucarias. Think of the silverware.  

Medieval Europeans liked them because they were among the few fruits available in winter. I wonder if their edibility was discovered by someone who thought she was storing ugly apples and never got around to throwing them all onto the compost after biting into a few.  

If you want one, nag your local nursery or ask the California Rare Fruit Growers. Their local scion exchange happens Saturday, January 19, noon to 3 p.m at the UCSF Mission Center, 1855 Folsom St., San Francisco. See the Golden Gate Chapter page of http://www.crfg for details. 

Here’s an oddity: a new species—not variety; whole species—of medlar, Mespilus canescens, was discovered in 1990 in the flat eastern third of Arkansas. It’s the only other species in the genus. There are about 25 individuals in the “wild,” that is, in the 22-acre conservation easement on private land. They’re reluctant to reproduce on their own, though they flower and bear shiny red fruit. Some suspect it’s of hybrid origin; unlike animals, plants have been known to speciate that way.  

Whatever’s happening, conservationists are grafting the new medlar onto Crataegus wood with some success. We don’t know what’s we’re messing with, so save all the parts! 

 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan 

Medlar fruit and leaves. These, about poolball-sized, are apparently some puny medlars. 

 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Green Neighbors” column appears every other Tuesday in the Berkeley Daily Planet, alternating with Joe Eaton’s “Wild Neighbors” column. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section.


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday January 08, 2008

TUESDAY, JAN. 8 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Baby-friendly Book Club meets to discuss “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson at 10 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. Toys and board books are available for the babies. 524-3043. 

“Banished” A documentary by Marco Williams on the history of three towns that forcefully banished African-American families at 6:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., Oakland. www.pbs.org/ 

independentlens/banished 

Native Hawaiian Independence with Lynette Hi’ilani Cruz with Hawaiian music, crafts and food, at 7 p.m. at Redwood Gardens Community Room, 2951 Derby St. 548-6310. 

The Adoptee’s Challenge A 6-week Albany Adult School class open to everyone who is interested in adoption. Tuesdays from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Cost is $30 for the entire six weeks. www.albanyadultschool.org 

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. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 9 

Pacific Steel Health Risk Community Meeting at 6 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 6th St. westberkeleyalliance.org 

Civilian War Victim Series “Beyond Borders” A film about the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and discussion with Dr. Brian Gluss at 1 p.m. at Emeryville Senior Center, 4321 Salem, Emeryville. 596-3730. 

“Hidden Wars of Desert Storm” at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

Poetry Writing Workshop with Alison Seevak at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, Edith Stone Room, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720. 

“Avalanche Safety” A lecture with Dick Penniman at 6 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $20. 527-4140. 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday 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. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley BART Station. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

After-School Program Homework help for children ages 8 to 18, every Wed. from 4 to 7:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Cost is $5 per week. 845-6830. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, JAN. 10 

Berkeley Bay Docent Training Thurs. and Fri. from 9 a.m. to noon Bay Interpretive Training (Bay IT) offers fun hands-on activities train volunteer docents who can commit to 14 hours per month to learning and helping naturalists lead environmental-education programs for school-age children at Shorebird Nature Center, 160 University Ave. 981-6720. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/marina/marinaexp/volunteer.html  

Happy Hibernators Learn about the animals that hibernate during the winter to escape the cold at 10:30 a.m. at the Oakland Zoo, 9777 Golf Links Rd. Cost is $7.50-$10. Registration required. 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

“Art and History of Early California” A curator’s tour with Inez Brooks-Myers at 1:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., Oakland. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

East Bay Mac. Users Group meets to discuss iLife’08 at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound Street, Emeryville. http://ebmug.org 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

FRIDAY, JAN. 11 

Teen Playreaders meets to read “Hamlet” and other plays based on the classic, at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue at Ashby. 981-6121. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Robert DAvid Tufft, M.D. on “Hyperbaric medicine” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

Potters Council “Explore the Surface” Ceramic Workshop Listen, watch and learn from David Hendley, Gerald and Kelly Hong, Willie Hulce, Julia Kirillova, Sam Chung and Virginia Cartwright and others. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Leslie Ceramics Supply Co, Inc; 1212 San Pablo Ave. Workshop classes Sat. and Sun. from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at The Berkeley Potters Guild; 731 Jones St. Cost is $150-$380. 866-721-3322. www.potterscouncil.org/explorethesurface  

Circle Dancing in Berkeley Simple folk dancing in a circle, each dance taught before we do it. No experience or partners needed. From 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut, at University. Donation $5. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

Womansong Circle at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley Small Assembly Room, 2345 Channing at Dana. Suggested donation $15-$20. 525-7082. betsy@betsyrosemusic.org 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

SATURDAY, JAN. 12 

Weed Warriors on East Bay Shore Join Friends of Five Creeks and Building with Books removing invasive weeds and helping to establish native vegetation from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Eastshore State Park. Meet at Sea Breeze Delicatessen, south side of University Ave., just west of I-880/580. Bring lunch if you plan to stay the full four hours, but come for as long as you like. Dress in layers; we will work in a drizzle but heavy rain cancels. 848-9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

“The Fine Art of Pruning” Pruning is needed to maintain plant health, control plant growth, and encourage flowering and fruiting. Learn pruning basics with Kelley Dunn at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

“Breaking Down Big Oil: How the Industry Works and How to Stop It From Driving War, Destroying Our Planet, and Decimating Our Democracy” with Antonia Juhasz at 7 p.m. at the Alameda Free Library, Conference Room A, 1550 Oak St. at Lincoln, Alameda. www.alamedaforum.org 

The East Bay Chapter of the Great War Society meets to discuss “Refugees, Relief & Reconstruction- American Humanitarian Assistance” by Branden Little at 10:30 a.m. at the West Branch of the Berkeley Public Library, 1125 University Ave. 

Happy Hibernators Learn about the animals that hibernate during the winter to escape the cold at 10:30 a.m. at the Oakland Zoo, 9777 Golf Links Rd. Cost is $7.50-$10. Registration required. 632-9525. 

Kids Go Green Activities centered on ecology and climate change from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $9-$13. 336-7373.  

Potters Council “Explore the Surface” Ceramic Workshop Listen, watch and learn from David Hendley, Gerald and Kelly Hong, Willie Hulce, Julia Kirillova, Sam Chung and Virginia Cartwright and others. Workshop classes Sat. and Sun. from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at The Berkeley Potters Guild; 731 Jones St. Cost is $150-$380. 866-721-3322. www.potterscouncil.org/explorethesurface  

Health Screenings including blood pressure, cholesterol and blood glucose from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

“Be a Savvy Healthcare Consumer” with author Christine Larson at 3:30 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

“Have I Got a Story to Tell” A storytelling circle with Diane Ferlatte at 2 p.m. at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. 532-9142. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

SUNDAY, JAN. 13 

Golden Gate Audubon Society Field Trip “Tilden Regional Park” with Della Dash. Meet at 9 a.m. at the parking lot at north end of Central Park Drive near the Little Farm for a 4 mile hike to look at wintering birds. 843-2222. 

Golden Gate Audubon Society Field Trip “Albany Mudflats” with Oliver James. Meet at 8 a.m. at the raised platform located on the access road to the Albany Bulb to look at wintering birds. 843-2222. 

Friends of the Alameda Wildlife Refuge Workday Help prepare habitat for California Least Terns. Meet at 9 a.m. at main refuge gate, northwest corner of former Alameda Naval Air Station, Alameda. For more information and directions, contact Golden Gate Audubon volunteer coordinator, 843-2222. jrobinson@goldengateaudubon.org  

El Cerrito Historical Society meets to discuss “Images of America: Albany” with author Karen Sorenson at 1 p.m. at the El Cerrito Senior Center, behind the El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. 526-7507. 

“Will Annapolis Lead to Israeli-Palestinian Peace?” with Marcia Freedman and Ruth Atkin at 2 p.m. at Cafe Leila, 1724 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5-$15. RSVP to 524-1993, sf-bayarea@btvshalom.org 

“Who Killed the Electric Car?” Documentary showing at 1:15 p.m. at Parkway Theater, 1834 Park Blvd., Oakland. 834-7640 

Cool Schools Global Warming Campaign meets to discuss Transportation and Climate Change from 2 to 4 p.m. RSVP for location. 704-4030. chicory@earthteam.net  

Grandmothers for the Oaks Celebration Bring aorm clothes to donate, hot food and songs of solidarity at 2 p.m. at Memorial Oak Grove, on Piedmont, just north of Bancroft. www.saveoaks.com 

Cheri Lovre, Director of Crisis Management Institute, Salem, Oregon at 11:20 a.m. at Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 526-9146. 

Mantras of Henry Marshall, led by Marcia Emery, PhD. at 2 p.m. at Peralta Community Garden, Hopkins and Peralta. If by chance it rains, we will postpone until the following month. 526-5510. 

“Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement” with Shira Miller at 3 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

MONDAY, JAN. 14 

Berkeley Green Mondays with Diane Beeson, PhD and Tina Stevens, PhD, Co-founders of Alliance for Humane Biotechnology on “The human egg trade, cloning, and market eugenics” at 7:30 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 848-4681. www.berkeleygreens.org 

“Eat at Bill’s: Life in the Monterey Market” a film by Lisa Brenneis, followed by a discusssion with the market’s owner, Bill Fujimoto at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Contra Costa Chorale rehearsal at 7:15 p.m. at Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navallier St., El Cerrito. New singers welcome. 527-2026. www.ccchorale.org 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

Dragonboating Year round classes at the Berkeley Marina, Dock M. Meets Mon, Wed., Thurs. at 6 p.m. Sat. at 10:30 a.m. For details see www.dragonmax.org 

ONGOING 

E-Waste Recycling St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County accepts electronic waste including computers, dvd players, cell phones, fax machines and many other ewaste products for disposal free of charge at many of its locations throughout Alameda County. Make a tax-deductible donation while disposing of your ewaste appropriately and helping those in need. Free bulk pick-up available. 638-7600. www.svdp-alameda.org 

Help a Newt Cross the Road Every year newts migrate across Hillside Drive to reach their breeding pools in Castro Creek. Volunteers prevent many of these creatures from being crushed by cars. We need volunteers every evening during January and February in El Sobrante. The newts are most active on rainy nights. annabelle11_3@yahoo.com 

Free Tax Help If your 2007 household income was less than $42,000, you are eligible for free tax preparation from United Way's Earn it! Keep It! Save It! Sites are open now through April 15 in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. To find a site near you, call 800-358-8832. www.EarnItKeepItSaveIt.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Jan. 9 at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6346. TDD: 981-6345.  

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed., Jan. 9, at 7 p.m. at the South Branch Library. 981-6195.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Jan. 9, at 7:30 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950. 

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Jan. 9, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. 981-6740.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Jan. 10, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5400. 


Arts Calendar

Friday January 04, 2008

FRIDAY, JAN. 4 

THEATER 

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 $20-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Big Bang: New Work at Mercury 20” Artist’s reception at 6 p.m. at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave. at Broadway, Oakland. 701-4620. 

MUSIC AND DANCE  

Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble of San Francisco at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Danny Caron Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Sukhawat Ali Khan with Sacheko Kanenobu at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Bluegrass Buffet with the Earl Brothers, The Whoreshoes, Five Dollar Suit at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mere Ours, Marianne Barlow at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Skribble Violent Insight, Beyond Oblivion at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Tamara Engle, folk, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Trainwreck Riders, Tinktures, Di Di Mao at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Valeria Troutt at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7-$15. 548-1159.  

Times 4 at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Ledisi at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, thruogh Sun.. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, JAN. 5 

CHILDREN  

“Marina’s Capoeira Countdown” with author Oscar Wolters-Duran, followed by an art activity, at 1 p.m. at The Museum of Children’s Art, 538 9th St., Oakland. 465-8770. 

Fratello Marionettes “Peter and the Wolf” at 10:30 a.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. For ages 3-8. 981-6223. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Justin Chin and Cynthia Cruz at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Bay Area Poets Coalition Open Reading from 3 to 5 p.m. at at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. Free. 527-9905. poetalk@aol.com  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mario Lavista Quinteto Latino at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com  

Alex Pfeifer-Rosenblum at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Macy Blackman & The Mighty Fines at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Lakay featuring Mystic Man, King Wawa and Alexa Weber Morales Band, Haitian and Afro-Brazilian at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Kompa dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $15-$12. 525-5054. 

Sotaque Baiano, Brazilian, at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Kate Isenberg, Golden Loom at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Caren Armstrong at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Julian Pollack Three-O “Sea of Stories” at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

7th Direction, Crooked Roads, Ten Ton Chicken at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082.  

Matt Moorish & Trinket Lover at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Dangers, Graforlock, Wait in Vain, Owne Hart at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JAN. 6 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Tree Spirit” Landscape paintings by Betsy Kendall, black-and-white and painted photographs by Gerry Keenan, and organic materials sculptures by David Turner, on display at the Community Art Gallery, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 2450 Ashby Ave. through Feb. 28. 204-1667.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Tribute to Max Roach” with young musicians performing in two groups led by drummer Kamau Seitu and by Bay Area keyboardist Rudi Mwongozi, from 4 to 7 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20. 836-4949 www.blackmusiciansforum.org 

Trio Mopmu & Brass Menagerie at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Pete Madsen at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Don Neely’s Royal Society Jazz Orchestra featuring Carla Norman at 5 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $20. 525-5054.  

Kaz George Quintet at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

Adrian Legg at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

MONDAY, JAN. 7 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Photographs of Life in Kabul, Afghanistan” by Mojhgan (Mo) Mohtashimi opens at The LightRoom, 2263 Fifth St. 649-8111. 

NIAD Faculty and Artists 25th Anniversary Show opens at the National Institute of Art & Disabilities, 551 23rd St., Richmond. 620-0290. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Actors Reading Writers “Moments of Clarity” stories by W. Somerset Maugham and Alice Munro at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 932-0214. 

Edie Meidav will read from her novel “Crawl Space” as part of the Jewish Writers in the Bay Area Series at 7 p.m. at JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. 655-8530. 

Poetry Express with Michael Hardy at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Le Jazz Hot at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$12. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

TUESDAY, JAN. 8 

FILM 

“Banished” by Marco Williams, chronicles the history of three towns that forcefully banished African-American families at 6:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., Oakland. www.pbs.org/independentlens/banished 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Andrew Carriere & the Cajun Zydeco All Stars at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Singers’ Open Mic with Kelly Park at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Matt Moorish, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Ambrose Akinmusire Group in an Oaktown Jazz Workshops Benefit Concert at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $25. 238-9200.  

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 9 

EXHIBITIONS 

East Bay Women Artists “Begin the Beguine” Group show opens at Royal Ground Gallery, 2058 Mountain Blvd, Oakland. 841-0441. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Coast of Utopia Reading of the trilogy by Tom Stoppard “Voyage” at 7 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Other reading on Jan. 16 and Jan. 23. Tickets for all three are $150. 841-6500, ext. 303. 

Dana Frank describes “Local Girl Makes History: Exploring Northern California’s Kitsch Monuments” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

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 

Ravi Abcarian Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Bass Culture Revue at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Orquestra Sensual at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

John Richardson Band at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Margo Leverett & Friends at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Andy Bey at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$18. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, JAN. 10 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Art and History of Early California” A curator’s tour with Inez Brooks-Myers at 1:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum, 10th and Oak St 238-2022.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Susan Dinkelspiel Cerny will discuss her book “An Architectural Guidebook to San Francisco and the Bay Area” at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Cost is $8-$10. 763-9218. 

Zaid Shakir introduces his collection of essays “Scattered Pictures: Reflections of an American Muslim” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 559-9500. 

Susan Debroah (Sam) King reads from “One Breasted Woman” poetry collection at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donations accepted. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Red Hot Chachkas at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Klezmer dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $13-$15. 525-5054.  

Sourdough Slim at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Peter Anastos & Iter at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Laura Klein & Ted Wolff, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Kapakahi, The Angry Philosophers at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082  

Roy Hargrove Quintet at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$24. 238-9200. 

 

 

 

 

 

 


About the House: Getting the Real Dirt on Dirt

By Matt Cantor
Friday January 04, 2008

I have preferred over the years to confine my writing to subjects outside of my actual day-to-day vocation, but sometimes a discussion of my work helps a bit to illustrate a point. It’s not very glamorous but I spend a lot of my life in crawlspaces. The cats look at me funny, wondering what I’m doing in their bathroom. People often say, as I suit up to get sub-domestic, “Well, here’s where you earn your money!” It’s really not true, but the comment reveals how unpleasant the average person perceives this to be.  

Sadly, this pedestrian and reasonably safe activity gives rise to more understanding about houses, their life cycles and their maladies than virtually any other single procedure. No effort is made to hide any system in the construction of crawlspaces. Over time, some tasks (e.g., seismic retrofitting) result in hiding certain features, but mostly it’s Open Architecture as the I.T. folks say and one feature that is rarely hidden and so revelatory is the ground itself. 

It may seem silly or obvious to say it, but looking at the dirt below your house can be tremendously revealing and I learn so much of real concern from a simple examination of the soil in a crawlspace that it’s one of the only items that I consider absolutely requisite in the examination of a home. 

So what’s the dirt on dirt? What can we learn from looking at soil? There are at least two major areas of study that can be plumbed from a simple visual examination of the soil under your house and for this reason, it’s well worth your time and the drudge to pull on a coverall and take a crawl. 

First, look for signs of moisture. One sign that may not be obvious but is of great value is the softness of the top layer of soil. Under houses that have remained dry for many years, the soil, even clay, will tend to be broken up and powdery. Over time a range of forces including animal activity will tend to break up the soil into a powdery texture if dry conditions have prevailed. 

If the soil is all hard and caked, this shows that, at some point, and perhaps recently, the soil has been damp or wet. In houses that flood seasonally, the ground may be dry to the touch but will tend to have formed into a mud cake. This will often be cracked like a desert soil (called laterization) if there is sufficient clay content.  

Here in Berkeley, where we live on a clay bed, the soil will commonly be seen in this state when it has been seasonally wetted. If you take a screwdriver and dig down a few inches, you can often see that the soil is slightly damp. Pinch the soil and see if it sticks together. This helps determine if it’s damp. Dry clay will crumble apart. Think about the time of year. If this is August, you may expect things to be really dry and if you discover that things are damp, you may be able to discern the presence of a subterranean source of water.  

Don’t forget to consider plumbing leaks and excessive watering, although these will not have a uniform or homogenous effect. They’ll form a pattern that coincides with the activity or source. A leak around a sewer pipe that might be invisible can produce localized soil conditions such as these but will not do so a few yards away. When the entire crawlspace shows a similar condition, that ain’t no leak. 

All properties are in some sort of drainage plain and the condition of soil relates to those conditions so it’s worthwhile to think about the slope of the ground, the proximity to nearby creeks and the local geography while looking at the soil. 

Look at the color of the soil. Dry soils are lighter in color, as a rule and dark areas may be damp areas. A low-lying portion of the crawlspace that is also darker in color may be a place that is currently damp or at least damper than the rest.  

Both concrete and soil will exhibit an effect called efflorescence in which evaporative salts such as bromide or chloride are driven to the surface along with water as it escapes to the surface seeking equilibrium. The depots are usually white and on soil can leave small white dotted peaks on the surface. Sometimes the whitish depots are more widespread but this is less common. In any event, this is a sure sign of significant moisture in the crawlspace. 

Many houses will display this effect on the surface of concrete in the crawlspace. As water travels through the foundation, it will pull this salts to the surface leaving a fluffy crystalline formation much like sea foam on the surface of the concrete. This can be easily brushed away and is not harmful in and of itself but tells of water flow through these hard but porous structures. Over time, this can weaken concrete but in the overall scheme of things, it’s not significant. What is significant is that water facilitates soil migration and soil migration cracks, rotates and maligns foundations, SO, dry soils below your house are a darned good idea.  

If the soil appears to be puffy and soft on the surface, you may be looking at a very high clay content and possibly a clay with a high expansion potential. 

Clay soils push houses up when they get wet and then drop them back down as they dry. Keeping this kind of soil dry can be the difference between a house that is being slowly misshapen and one that stays in a nice rectilinear shape (assuming it started out that way). 

Also, as we’ve discussed on many other occasions, damp below the house can and does create damp inside the house (even when imperceptible) and this grows tiny forests of fungi (including mold) that can affect our health. Keeping low humidity levels is extremely important and damp crawlspaces are primary culprits in cases of mold. 

Looking at soil may relate to science but you don’t have to be a scientist to do it. I’ve found that taking the time to touch and look and ponder in the monastery of mice can teach quite a lot. That and the use of a really bright flashlight. By the way, don’t use one of those million candlepower torches. They’ll just blind you. A high quality flashlight of 25,000-50,000 candlepower is perfect. An automotive trouble-light works pretty well too but you may want a 100 watt bulb. Be sure to compare the appearance of soil across the entire tire crawlspace so that you can discern patterns of dampness.  

If you choose to explore your crawlspace, the only safety warning I’ll offer is a strong admonition to wear a respirator. Not a dust mask but a real respirator, like painters wear. 

Now, this is a fairly broad look at a complex science but I firmly believe that some simple triage can be incredibly informative and of enormous financial benefit. Just don’t expect your results to make the scientific journals. They may tell you that it’s good garage science but it won’t qualify as “ground-breaking” (Sorry, couldn’t help myself). 

 


Berkeley This Week

Friday January 04, 2008

FRIDAY, JAN. 4 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

Circle Dancing in Berkeley Simple folk dancing in a circle, each dance taught before we do it. No experience or partners needed. From 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut, at University. Donation $5. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

SATURDAY, JAN. 5 

New Year Waterfront Walk Join Berkeley Path Wanderers and Friends of Five Creeks on an easy, level walk exploring waterfront history, effects of the recent oil spill, and possibilities and plans for the future. Meet at 10 a.m. at Shorebird Nature Center, 160 University Ave., south side of University west of Adventure Playground; AC Transit 9. Dress in layers. 848-9358. www.berkeleypaths.org 

Explore Bird Songs with Steve Beck from noon to 1:30 p.m. at Lawrence Hall of Science, Centennial Drive. Cost is $8-$10. 642-5132. 

Benefit for Revolution Newspaper’s Expansion with Larry Everest and Luciente Zamora from 2 to 5 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. Donation $10-$25. 848-1196.  

“Dafur: The Crisis and The Tragedy” A discussion of the work by Fathi M. El Fadl of the Communitst Party of Sudan at 10 a.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Libary, 6501 Telegraph Ave. 595-7417. 

Frame Your Masterpiece Workshop, Sat. and Sun. from 1 to 4 p.m. at Museum of Children’s Art, 528 9th St., Oakland. 465-8770. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755.  

SUNDAY, JAN. 6 

Berkeley Rep’s Family Series, a monthly theater workshop for the entire family at 11 a.m. at Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, Nevo Education Center, 2071 Addison St. 647-2973. 

“Birth is a Miracle” A documentary, followed by discussion, at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Old Time Radio East Bay Collectors and listeners gather to enjoy shows together at 5 p.m. at a private home in Berkeley. For more information email DavidinBerkeley at Yahoo.com 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

MONDAY, JAN. 7  

Crisis Intervention Training Task Force Meeting at 3:30 p.m. at 1947 Center St. 3rd Floor, Deodar Cedar Room. Sponsored by the Mental Health Commission. 981-5217. 

Contra Costa Chorale rehearsal at 7:15 p.m. at Hillside Community Church, 1422 Navallier St., El Cerrito. New singers welcome. 527-2026. www.ccchorale.org 

TUESDAY, JAN. 8 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Baby-friendly Book Club meets to discuss “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson at 10 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. Toys and board books are available for the babies. 524-3043. 

“Banished” A documentary by Marco Williams on the history of three towns that forcefully banished African-American families at 6:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., Oakland. www.pbs.org/ 

independentlens/banished 

The Adoptee’s Challenge A 6-week Albany Adult School class open to everyone who is interested in adoption. Tuesdays from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Cost is $30 for the entire six weeks. www.albanyadultschool.org 

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.  

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

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. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 9 

Pacific Steel Health Risk Community Meeting at 6 p.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 6th St. westberkeleyalliance.org 

Civilian War Victim Series “Beyond Borders” A film about the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and discussion with Dr. Brian Gluss at 1 p.m. at Emeryville Senior Center, 4321 Salem, Emeryville. 596-3730. 

Poetry Writing Workshop with Alison Seevak at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, Edith Stone Room, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720. 

“Avalanche Safety” A lecture with Dick Penniman at 6 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $20. 527-4140. 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday 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. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley BART Station. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

After-School Program Homework help for children ages 8 to 18, every Wed. from 4 to 7:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Cost is $5 per week. 845-6830. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, JAN. 10 

Berkeley Bay Docent Training Thurs. and Fri. from 9 a.m. to noon Bay Interpretive Training (Bay IT) offers fun hands-on activities train volunteer docents who can commit to 14 hours per month to learning and helping naturalists lead environmental-education programs for school-age children at Shorebird Nature Center, 160 University Ave. 981-6720. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/marina/marinaexp/volunteer.html  

Happy Hibernators Learn about the animals that hibernate during the winter to escape the cold at 10:30 a.m. at the Oakland Zoo, 9777 Golf Links Rd. Cost is $7.50-$10. Registration required. 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

“Art and History of Early California” A curator’s tour with Inez Brooks-Myers at 1:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St., Oakland. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

East Bay Mac. Users Group meets to discuss iLife’08 at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound Street, Emeryville. http://ebmug.org 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

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 

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Jan. 7, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Jan. 9 at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6346. TDD: 981-6345.  

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Jan. 9, at 7:30 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-4950. 

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Jan. 9, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. 981-6740.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Jan. 10, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400.