The battle of attrition between UC Berkeley and the Memorial Stadium tree-sitters flared again Tuesday morning. -more-

Flowers, small stuffed animals and a tight cluster of votive candles offered a silent tribute to the life of a Berkeley woman killed Saturday night in a controversial police shooting. -more-

Berkeley’s Police Review Commission and Copwatch are among the groups demanding answers to why five-year Berkeley Police Officer Rashawn Cummings used deadly force on Anita Gay, a 51-year-old South Berkeley grandmother. -more-

Despite public outcry, the state agriculture department is determined to use a controversial aerial spray to eradicate the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM). -more-

Berkeley police arrested two men they say killed 23-year-old Wayne Drummond Jr. of Oakland in 2006 following a fight outside a Telegraph Avenue bar. -more-

Cody’s is leaving Fourth Street for downtown Berkeley. -more-

The Oakland City Council appeared tantalizingly close to a possible compromise on the city’s divisive affordable housing issues Tuesday night, but while the outlines for such a compromise have begun to take shape, it was unclear who would be brokering a possible agreement, or the logistics of how it would take place. -more-

Longtime Berkeley resident and business woman Mabel Bolton has left Thousand Oaks Elementary School $150,000 as part of her will. -more-

The expected and the unexpected have joined the Oakland City Council and Oakland Unified School District Board of Directors party, adding to what is looking like an increasingly crowded slate for the June 3 elections. -more-

The Planet is only printing letters from locals regarding the ruling on the Marine Recruitment Station. Some of these letters were sent prior to the Feb. 12 City Council meeting and thus do not reflect the council’s most recent ruling. -more-

SAYING THANKS -more-

My interest was piqued by the editor’s quotation from Carole Norris in a recent editorial about Nancy Skinner: “Nancy ... worked with Berkeley ZAB members to organize support and approvals for a number of infill projects facing opposition including the Berkeley Bowl, several condo projects and the proposed mixed use project that includes Trader Joe’s.” My question is where was Nancy Skinner’s ‘work’ done? -more-

For the record, I voted against the Berkeley City Council motion authorizing a letter to tell the Marines they were unwelcome and uninvited intruders in Berkeley. I also made the motion to rescind that vote and to apologize for it. Since I am a lifetime activist for peace who has been arrested and beaten up while protesting for peace, some wondered if I was caving in to the right-wing pressure. Instead I would suggest that my position offered the best chance for intelligent effective advocacy for peace. -more-

On St. Patrick’s Day 2007 my friend and I participated in a peace march in Charleston, South Carolina; it was billed on the flyer as “Introducing Code Pink Charleston.” Then on Jan. 18 there was J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s thoughtful and sensitive Undercurrents column, “Ghost of America’s Racial Past Lies Uneasy in South Carolina.” That however was followed by Senator DeMint’s not-so-sensitive response to the action of the Berkeley City Council. The Undercurrents piece should be followed with a more sensitive response to the present turn of affairs. -more-

Five members of the People’s Park Community Advisory Board resigned in January, disgusted with the University of California. In that respect, for a moment, this unrepresentative, chancellor-selected group represented the community well. -more-

In November 2000, a supermajority of Berkeley voters passed Measure R, a bond measure to “reconstruct, renovate, repair, and improve the warm water pool facilities at Berkeley High School (including restrooms and locker space) in order to prepare the facilities for greater community use by seniors, disabled adults and disabled children, some of whom use the pool for physical therapy” (to quote the description in the voter information pamphlet). -more-

While contemplating various actions of the City Council it struck me that the council is either hopelessly befuddled or dangerously devious. Either they don’t understand what they are doing or they are destroying this city on purpose. Certainly they cannot represent us, as a letter to this paper noted last week. -more-

One of the many perturbing effects of the Berkeley City Council’s colossally stupid attack on the Marines is the re-emergence of UC professor and San Francisco resident David Kirp as an apologist for Berkeley City Hall. On Feb. 18 Kirk’s provoking tribute to the city’s officialdom, “Semper Fi, Berkeley,” appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. -more-

One of the reasons that three of the most pressing issues currently on Oakland’s city agenda—crime and violence, industrial zoning preservation vs. residential or commercial development, and affordable housing—are so naggingly difficult to settle is that, while there is an underlying current that runs through all of them and ties them all together, there is reluctance to talk about them, to engage that debate in the open. -more-

Of all the architects who resided in Berkeley during the first four decades of the 20th century, the one who received the most coverage in the local press was not John Galen Howard or Bernard Maybeck but William Hatch Wharff. And only occasionally was the press coverage related to his profession. -more-

“Music will be an Old Time Music Jam, bring yer fiddle,” is what Terri Compost, the exquisitely named point person of the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library (acronym’ed, equally exquisitely, “BASIL”) replied to my query. I wanted to know who would be playing the music promised for BASIL’s Ninth Annual Seed Swap tomorrow, Saturday February 23, 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the Ecology Center. Dang, I don’t have a fiddle. Guess I’ll just send the cat. -more-

I was inspecting a house out beyond the Naugahyde Curtain the other day (Walnut Creek, if memory serves; landing strip for white flight). The house was unillustrious but amongst the artifacts that brought me sufficient intrigue to set the day aglow was a brand new fireplace. -more-