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“Gr-rr-rah, Gr-rr-rah Gr-rr, ... rr-rah!”  A new Cal song book, Songs of California: The U.C. Berkeley Tradition, has just been published. See story, page six.
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“Gr-rr-rah, Gr-rr-rah Gr-rr, ... rr-rah!” A new Cal song book, Songs of California: The U.C. Berkeley Tradition, has just been published. See story, page six.
 

News

Mourning Cloak Mysteries: The Butterfly that Hibernates

By Joe Eaton
Friday March 07, 2008

Posted Sun., March 9—We were out at Lafayette Reservoir a couple of weeks ago, looking for the bald eagle that wasn’t there. But there was a fair amount of butterfly action: a probable echo blue, some small hyperactive orange jobs, and three or four mourning cloaks, sparring or courting—it’s hard to tell with butterflies. 

There’s no ambiguity about a mourning cloak: it is, as Roger Tory Peterson said of the adult bald eagle, “all field mark,” its deep maroon wings bordered with a broad pale band. On close inspection of the reservoir butterflies, you could see that the band had faded from yellow to bone white and that the wings were a bit ragged. These guys weren’t fresh out of the chrysalis; they had been around all winter. 

Adult hibernation is an uncommon life strategy among butterflies, but the mourning cloak, along with its close relatives the California tortoiseshell and Milbert’s tortoiseshell, does just that. Adults that emerge in midsummer or fall spend the cold wet months holed up in some sheltered place. Some have been known to winter under the eaves of houses or in cellars. Arthur Shapiro, UC Davis butterfly maven and co-author of Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions, says that whatever the weather is like, they rarely stir before January 25.  

They wake up hungry. Shapiro says local hibernators seek out willow catkins for nectar. In Wisconsin, according to a 1980 study by Allen M. Young, they rely on tree sap to fuel themselves for courtship and egg-laying, frequenting sap wells drilled by the yellow-bellied sapsucker. I don’t know how important this food source would be for California populations, although our red-breasted sapsuckers winter in the coast ranges until March or April, overlapping with the overwintering mourning cloaks. And what about mourning cloaks in Europe, where there are no sapsuckers? 

British lepidopterists, who have their own nomenclature, know this species as the Camberwell beauty. It was first collected in Cool Arbor Lane near Camberwell (now a densely built-up part of London) in 1748, and has turned up periodically ever since. However, it has never bred in the British Isles. Permanent range includes temperate Eurasia east to Japan, and the mountains of Central and northern South America. Apparently temperature-limited, mourning cloaks avoid the lowland tropics and subtropics.  

California has two behaviorally distinct mourning cloak populations. In the coast ranges, they’re resident year-round, producing at least two, sometimes three broods. Elsewhere, they’re altitudinal migrants like their tortoiseshell relatives. Shapiro, who has been monitoring a series of transect points from Suisun Marsh to Castle Peak in the Sierra for over 30 years, has observed mourning cloaks flying upslope along Interstate 80 in June. Their larvae feed on mountain willows. Some of their progeny hibernate in the mountains as adults; others return to the Valley for the winter.  

Tracking migrant butterflies has its technological limitations: you can’t rig a radio transmitter on a mourning cloak. But Shapiro wonders whether some of the stable isotope techniques used with migratory birds could be applied to these fragile travelers. The ratio of hydrogen isotopes in a warbler’s feathers in winter can indicate how far north it was when it grew those feathers before migrating. A butterfly’s tissues should contain a similar latitudinal signal. 

Something happened seven years ago to disrupt the mourning cloak’s migration cycle: after a breeding failure in the Sierra, the butterflies have remained rare in the mountains and the Sacramento Valley. Shapiro found none at Donner Summit last fall, for the first time in 36 years. “The cause of all this remains a mystery,” he says, “compounded by the simultaneous regional decline of all our other willow-feeding species in the Valley,” the willow hairstreak, Lorquin’s admiral, and sheep moth. There are still plenty of willows, and the admiral and the moth are holding their own elsewhere.  

Mourning cloak females lay large batches of eggs, and the caterpillars—spiny black creatures with red spots—stick together. 

Sometimes a brood will defoliate its host tree. They also pupate in clusters. A couple of sources say the pupae twitch in unison when disturbed, which is something I would pay to see. (Shapiro’s field guide describes mass pupal twitching in the California tortoiseshell.) I’m not clear about what kind of sensory apparatus a pupa has while it’s being reorganized from a caterpillar into a butterfly, or how you would alarm one, let alone a whole clutch. 

More mysteries. 

When an adult mourning cloak emerges from its pupa, it voids—how can we put this delicately?—a drop of blood-red liquid. “In medieval Europe,” Shapiro writes, “such ‘red rain’ was taken as an omen and often stimulated civic disturbances and demonstrations of religious fanaticism.” Those were nervous times, with all the wars and plagues and crusades and massacres, and it’s understandable that people would get all wrought up about butterfly poop. Good thing we’re not that credulous anymore.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Oakland Joins Fight to Halt State Moth Spray Plan

By Judith Scherr
Friday March 07, 2008

Oakland joined a fast-growing collaboration of cities, organizations, legislators and citizens on Tuesday looking for political and legal means to force the state to back off from plans for aerial spraying of pesticide over parts of Northern California to eradicate the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM). 

The Oakland City Council unanimously approved a resolution opposing the spray, and, in closed session, it gave City Attorney John Russo direction to coordinate with other Bay Area cities “on an aggressive legal strategy” to compel the state to perform a “serious” environmental review before conducting the spray program. 

A strategy that could also include the cities of Berkeley, Albany and El Cerrito—though Russo hadn’t talked to attorneys in the other cities when interviewed on Wednesday—would bring the weight of the legal system as well as political pressure to bear on the state agency, Russo told the Planet. 

“It seems that we have to go in that direction,” he said. 

The Berkeley City Council passed a measure opposing the spray Feb. 26, but will not meet in closed session to discuss legal strategies until March 17. Albany passed a resolution opposing the spray in January. 

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) has declared an emergency in parts of Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, as well as parts of Alameda county (including Berkeley, Oakland, Piedmont and Albany) and Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties, due to the numbers of LBAMs found in these areas. 

“There’s a legal question of whether they can undertake mass spraying under an emergency,” Russo said, noting that very simple acts such as cutting down a tree require environmental review, and that the spraying of this product carries with it many complex questions. 

“We’re not saying they can’t spray,” he said. “They need to show there’s no environmental impact.” 

Having declared an emergency the state is permitted to spray the product—CheckMate, made by Suterra of Bend, Ore.—before conducting an environmental review. The state has begun the review, which will not be completed before it resumes spraying in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties June 1 and before it begins spraying in the Bay Area in August. 

The state says the infestation is an emergency because it has the potential of devastating some 250 different crops grown in California. Spray opponents argue, however, that California has suffered no crop damage from the LBAM to date and that spraying the pheromone will not eradicate the moth and so the spraying would have to be conducted forever. 

The first aerial spray of Checkmate to be conducted over an urban area was done in September in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties, after which more than 600 people reported ill effects including shortness of breath, nausea, itchy skin and more. 

Santa Cruz County has litigation pending against the state, targeting the absence of an environmental review before spraying. The case will go to court April 24. Russo said he may be directed by the Oakland City Council to join Santa Cruz in an amicus brief. 

Checkmate is a synthetic pheromone contained in microcapsules with inert ingredients for aerial spraying. Some medical professionals have said the microcapsules themselves present a danger to the respiratory tract of sensitive people and others say the inert ingredients that accompany the pheromone—only some of which are known—may be dangerous. The state says the product is safe for humans, but opponents say it has not been studied for long-term health impacts. 

A pheromone is a scent emitted by a female moth that attracts a male moth. When synthetic pheromones are introduced, males become confused and no longer mate, interrupting the reproductive cycle.  

The mayor’s office in Richmond and the public information office in El Cerrito both say they are looking at the question of the LBAM and may bring the matter to their city councils. The Fairfax Town Council passed a resolution stating its opposition to the spray Wednesday evening. 


Greenhouse Gas Session Generates Political Heat

By Richard Brenneman
Friday March 07, 2008

The draft city Climate Action Plan presented to Berkeley planning commissioners Wednesday night resembles another document in their possession: the proposed new Downtown Area Plan. 

Both documents call for concentrating new development along public transit corridors and speak to the need for inducements to stimulate bicycle and pedestrian traffic. 

But a more basic concern troubled some in the audience: the fact that Wednesday night’s meeting wasn’t announced on the city’s own website calendar or on the Planning Commission’s own web pages. 

Commissioner Susan Wengraf said she was also concerned that the period for comment on the plan closes today (Friday), only two days after the meeting. 

The meeting, the commission’s third in eight days, was devoted—with one exception—to the climate plan, the fruit of Measure G, passed by 81 percent of Berkeley voters in November 2006. 

That exception was a comment from Steve Wollmer on the density bonus ordinance proposals now before the commission. Wollmer is suing the city over its approval of the so-called Trader Joe’s project, which was granted additional size to compensate for the cost of parking spaces for the residential building’s commercial tenant. 

That lawsuit goes to trial March 21, Wollmer said. 

Wollmer urged commissioners to grant the bonus only as compensation to developers for the cost of including low-income housing in their projects, which he said is the purpose of the state density bonus law, and not to burden neighbors with buildings granted bigger size solely for the benefit of commercial tenants. 

Timothy Burroughs, who was hired as the city’s climate action director, serves on the staff of the Planning and Development Department, and he told commissioners that their concerns would include formulating ways to integrate the climate plan into the city’s general and area plans and the zoning ordinance. 

Measure G imposes a mandate that the city reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—believed the prime culprit in global warming—by 80 percent by 2050. 

Burroughs said Berkeley produced 635,000 tons of greenhouse gases in 2005, not including an additional 200,000 tons or more generated by breakdown of the city’s wastes in landfills. 

The figures also don’t include emissions from UC Berkeley, which estimated its 2006 emissions at 220,000 tons (209,000 metric tons)—also not including landfill emissions. 

To effect real reduction in emissions, he said “takes compact residential growth and development near transit,” the concept planners call transit-oriented development or smart growth. 

But a representative of Berkeley’s best-known smart growth advocacy group said the plan didn’t go far enough. 

Dorothy Walker, a retired UC Berkeley development executive, appeared on behalf of Livable Berkeley to declare that the plan didn’t go far enough, and to say that it “should unequivocally state” that development should be located near public transit. 

Commissioner David Stoloff agreed. 

Walker said the plan also falls short in providing leadership and education, “and is far less bold that the plans adopted by other cities.” 

“You have to look at intensifying housing on transit corridors,” said commission Chair James Samuels. “I’d like to propose that you focus on that. There is a very basic connection between density and where it is and vehicle miles traveled.” 

Commissioner Gene Poschman disagreed, saying evidence didn’t support the claim that living near transit reduced the use of cars, the large single source of GHGs. 

He said a statewide study showed that “90 percent of the people who lives around transit have cars, and 60 to 70 percent of them drive alone.”  

He also said that the transit-oriented development study called for a density of 15 to 25 units per acre, compared to the typical Berkeley development with a 250 unit per acre density. 

Commissioner Helen Burke, a Sierra Club activist, said the plan’s land use and transportation proposals needed to be strengthened, and should include a transportation services fee to be imposed on new projects. 

Burke also called for a carbon tax similar to that already in effect in Boulder, Colo., and for a reduction or outright elimination of parking requirements imposed on developers. 

Wengraf said the plan didn’t include preservation and adaptive reuse of existing buildings as an energy saving measure in its land use section, “and this is a very important principle to include.” 

She also said that the plan should consider the poor condition of streets, sidewalks and pathways, which discourages GHG-reducing pedestrian and bike trips. Another source of GHGs she said wasn’t considered is wildfires and the concomitant need for vegetation control. 

Another hot button issue that may play a role in climate change policies is Bus Rapid Transit, the proposal by AC Transit to run buses down dedicated lanes carved out of existing traffic lanes between Berkeley and San Leandro. 

Businesses and residents along the proposed Telegraph Avenue corridor have expressed concerns the plan will hurt businesses which lose parking along the thoroughfare and add to congestion on adjacent residential streets. 

Both friends and foes of BRT addressed the commission, with supporters saying the bus service would reduce GHGs by taking people out of their cars, with foes saying low ridership would mean the program wasted money on expensive, fuel-inefficient buses. 

Jim Bullock, a foe, said AC Transit’s most optimistic projection estimated 9,320 rider trips a day, which he said meant an actual ridership of 4,660, since almost all riders made round trips, with an estimated cost of $86,000 for each new rider. 

Len Conly of Friends of BRT said a system in a city like Berkeley could save 654,000 tons of GHGs over 20 years. 

Chris Peeples, president of the AC Transit Board of Directors, told commissioner that “a number of us worked very hard on ABAG (the Association of Bay Area Governments) to get ABAG to talk about transit corridor hot nodes.” 

Development along transit corridors is common in Europe, he said, and in the early years of the 20th century, most development in the East Bay also arose along transit corridors. 

Wengraf said many in Berkeley, especially in the hills, couldn’t use buses because there is little or no service from the hills to the bay. 

Peeples said that most homes in the hills had four and five car garages—a remark that drew a scornful laugh from the commissioner—and said that providing bus service there would mean taking it away from a poorer and more densely populated community. And if the city wants service in the hills, he said, “the city just has to pay for it.” 

Phil Morton of the Bicycle Friendly Berkeley Coalition said the plan had neglected to include young bike riders in its calculations, and also called on commissions and city staff to serve as examples by abandoning their cars and pedaling to work. 

Zachary Running Wolf, again campaigning for mayor, urged a slogan he has painted on stop signs around the East Bay: Stop Driving. 

And Merilee Mitchell, like Running Wolf a former candidate for a seat on the city council, said the plan failed to call for preservation of trees in the existing landscape.  

 


School Board Ends Investigation of Vice Principal

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday March 07, 2008

Margaret Lowry—removed from her position as Willard Middle School vice principal—was placed on special assignment Tuesday with Berkeley Unified School District’s central staff. 

The district has been investigating Lowry for the past two weeks for improper conduct involving two special education students. Parents of the students told the Planet that Lowry gave money to one of them to buy marijuana from the other, in what some district officials said might have been an attempt to set up a sting.  

“Our investigation concluded that she did not put any child in harm’s way and that the allegations of her running a sting operation are inaccurate,” said Berkeley Board of Education President John Selawsky. 

Selawsky added that district staff had determined that Lowry will be working at the district’s central office at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way for the remainder of the school year. 

“She might be working to set up summer programs,” he said. “I don’t believe she will be working with children. We want to reassure the public and parents that we are taking the allegations against her very seriously.” 

Selawsky said that the district had investigated Lowry for “heavy-handed use of authority and cutting corners on due process. 

“If a complaint was filed then the complainant will be informed of the outcome of the investigation,” Selwasky said. “If anything was determined then that would go into the employee’s personnel file.” 

District superintendent Bill Huyett did not return calls for comment. Huyett’s staff told the Planet that he was out of the district on official business and would not be available before Wednesday. 

Berkeley Adult School Vice Principal Thomas Orput—who was vice principal at Willard before Lowry took over the position in 2006—will be interim vice principal at Willard for the remainder of the school year, Selawsky said.  

Margaret Kirkpatrick, principal of the adult school, called a special meeting Friday to inform staff about the decision. 

“The adult school will be advertising for Orput’s position,” Selawsky said. “It’s possible it could be a transfer from the district but they will probably hire someone new.” 

Orput did not return calls for comment from the Planet. 

The Planet has also reported several other complaints from current and former parents. They alleged that Lowry repeatedly mistreated students, forced students to write false statements by threatening to expel them and pressured students to inform on students to provide her with information.  

The parents told the Planet that although they had filed official complaints with the district almost a year ago, they had not received any response. 

Huyett told the Planet in an earlier interview that the district would try to resolve the complaints. 

“If complaints have been filed then there will be responses,” said Selawsky Tuesday. “We have to go back and investigate if complaints were actually filed. Most of these complaints were filed at the end of summer last year. That’s the end of the school year before summer break. I am not saying this as an excuse but that might be the reason why they were never followed up.” 

He added that it would take up to two weeks to investigate the complaints. 

Both the Berkeley and Oakland Unified school districts have declined to disclose information about Lowry’s employment history or any disciplinary action taken against her, although Terry Francke, general counsel for Californians Aware and a public records expert, said this information should be open to the public.  

The Planet filed a public records act request with both Berkeley and Oakland school districts on Feb. 20 to obtain records about Lowry. The 10-day response time allowed by law expired without any answer from Oakland Unified. 

John R. Yeh, of Miller Brown Dannis, attorneys for the Berkeley Unified School District, rejected the Planet’s request to see Lowry’s resume and to be informed of any disciplinary action taken against her as "vague and ambiguous, overly broad and unduly burdensome."  

“Our lawyers have informed us that we do not have to give out that information under law,” Selawsky said. 

Yeh’s letter says that the district objects to disclosing information on the basis of legal opinions in two cases, BRV Inc. v. Superior Court, et al and Bakersfield School District v. Superior Court. But Francke told the Planet that opinions in the two cases cited are contrary to Yeh’s interpretation--that they actually hold that complaints and disciplinary information about school district employees are public information. 

 

 

 


Three Policy Victories For Dellums in Oakland

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday March 07, 2008

The administration of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums hit the trifecta on Tuesday, winning City Council passage of two major initiatives and claiming victory in contract arbitration with the powerful Oakland Police Officers Association police union. 

In a marathon session that began at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and lasted until well after midnight, Council approved—with minor modifications—Dellums’ police augmentation plan and industrial land use policy. 

 

Police augmentation 

On the police augmentation issue, the mayor had originally asked expedited approval of a plan to spend $7.7 million in Measure Y violence prevention plan money to meet his ambitious goal of reaching full staffing of the Oakland Police Department—803 total officers, including 63 Measure Y problem-solving officers—by the end of 2008. Included in the original proposal was $1.5 million for advertising and $3.3 million for a stepped-up schedule of police academies this year. 

By consensus—meaning no roll call vote was taken, but no councilmember expressed disapproval—the Council approved Councilmember Jean Quan's modified proposal that $500,000 be cut out of the advertising budget, to go, instead, to bonuses to lure veteran police officers to Oakland from other police agencies.  

With the council winning a promise from Oakland Police Chief Wayne Tucker that recruits from the first academies will go exclusively to positions specifically called for in Measure Y in 2004, councilmembers inserted a provision in the police augmentation plan, also suggested by Quan, that while the initial round of advertising and academies would be paid for by Measure Y, the city's general fund would pick up some of the future costs on a percentage basis to be determined after monitoring how many of the first officers actually go to those Measure Y positions. 

In approving the plan, the council rejected a request by Measure Y Oversight Committee Chair Maya Dillard Smith that funding for the advertising portion of the academies be held off until more study could be made on how to sustain the recruitment plan financially through 2010 if it failed to meet the recruitment mark at the end of the year. 

In statements released by the mayor's office, both Dellums and Council President De La Fuente appeared equally pleased by the compromise measure. Dellums has been under public pressure to respond to Oakland's pressing crime and violence problems, and De La Fuente is facing an electoral challenge this June for his 5th District seat that will almost certainly be based in large part on law and order issues. 

“I am optimistic that the City Council and city staff will continue to work together in the best interest of Oakland residents,” the Dellums statement read. “I appreciate the City Council's diligence over the years to address the issue of police staffing and I am confident that this plan will allow us to achieve our goal of reaching 803 police officers by the end of the year.” 

Council President De La Fuente added, “I am satisfied with the consensus reached by my distinguished colleagues on the City Council which is consistent with the mayor's plan to fully staff the police department and the expectations of Oakland residents who deserve a greater level of public safety.” 

 

Land-use policy 

On the vastly more complicated industrial land-use policy issue, the Council voted 5-3 (Councilmembers Nancy Nadel, Jean Quan, Ignacio De La Fuente, Jane Brunner, and Henry Chang voting aye, Larry Reid, Desley Brooks, and Pat Kernighan voting nay) to approve Nadel's modifications to Dellums' original plan.  

The nay vote was deceptive, however, as Brooks and Kernighan wanted no modifications to the Dellums plan, while Reid wanted to add more modifications. 

With Oakland under continuing pressure from developers and property owners to allow its dwindling parcels of industrial zoned property to be converted to residential use on a property by property basis, Dellums had proposed a policy to freeze its 17 industrially zoned sub-areas in place while adopting citywide criteria for conversions. Industries were once the backbone of Oakland's job market, but many have left the city in the last half-century, and industrial zoned land now comprises only 5 percent of Oakland under the city's land use control. 

When the issue first came before council on Feb. 19, Reid proposed carving out exceptions to industrial zoning in six of the current 17 industrial zoning sub areas. 

In a compromise plan which she said was put together in order to get the five votes necessary to win approval, Nadel—a longtime proponent of preserving Oakland industrial land—whittled those exception sub areas down from six to two. 

In one of those areas, area 4, near the High Street Bridge to Alameda, former De La Fuente chief of staff Carlos Plazola is part of a business consortium that wants to convert 2.35 acres of industrial land to condominiums, a conversion that will now be allowed under Council's action. 

But in explaining her vote for Nadel's compromise, Councilmember Brunner said, “I know that some people think we're benefiting certain people by this,” but felt it was good policy for the city.  

Explaining that Oakland historically put its industries along the waterfront, blocking public access to the estuary in a long stretch from Jack London Square south, she felt that the area should now be changed to a residential and commercial mix in order to allow the waterway to be opened up to the public. 

Reid lost a substitute motion, 2-6 (Reid and Chang voting aye) to add a third exception to Nadel's list, allowing a housing and business mix in the sub area 8, which includes property surrounding 92nd Avenue and San Leandro Street in Reid's East Oakland district. The decision means that a proposed 11-acre residential development at that site will have to be scrapped unless and until the sub-area is rezoned following the yet-to-be determined rezoning guidelines. 

An angry Reid predicted that the council would be back in ten years looking at this as a missed opportunity to “change communities that have long been suffering from neglect. … The industrial use you believe will happen along San Leandro Street ain't going to happen. I guarantee you.” 

 

Police union arbitration 

In the OPOA police union arbitration decision, Oakland city officials were claiming victory following the issuance of the independent arbitrator's preliminary decision. 

“I'm very pleased with the scope of the arbitrator's award on management rights,” Police Chief Tucker said in a prepared statement. “It will fundamentally change the rules under which we operate to the benefit of the citizens of Oakland. … I applaud the City Council and the Mayor, whose unwavering support throughout this process has made this outcome possible.” 

The City of Oakland and OPOA began negotiations in April 2006 over renewal of a contract that expired in June of that year. When negotiations broke down, the issue went to arbitration in February 2007. 

While the arbitrator has not yet issued a written opinion, city officials say the preliminary decision grants the city victories in the following areas: 

Civilianization: the department now has the right to civilianize “any position which does not require a sworn officer,” which city officials say will free up police officers from desk jobs and other non-crime prevention duties.  

Past Practices: the award allows the city to “change problematic past practices” instead of freezing in place all practices in the police department that the city had previously allowed, even if those practices had not been part of contract negotiations. Tucker had said that the “past practices” clause in the previous contract had hampered his ability to run the department.  

Responding to Changing Conditions: allows the union to challenge a change to working conditions before an arbitrator only if it can demonstrate “irreparable injury” might come from that change; previously the union could challenge any management change in working conditions, a process that tied up management decisions for months at a time.  

Side Letters: Eliminated more than 20 so-called “side letter” labor agreements with OPOA that the public has never seen, and City Council never approved. 

This is the second major victory of the Dellums administration in arbitration decisions over disagreements with the police union. Last year, an arbitrator sided with the city over OPOA's challenge to Tucker's proposed 12-hour shift deployment, opening the way to the division of the department into three geographic departments, a division Tucker had said was necessary to institute community policing in Oakland and respond to the city's crime and violence problem. 


Candidates Race for Election Cash

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday March 07, 2008

While candidates decided whether or not to put their toes in the water of several Oakland City Council and Oakland School Board races, announced candidates in the hotly contested state seats of Senate District 9 and Assembly District 14 continued to raise war chests for the June 3 election. 

In the latest reports filed with the California Secretary of State's office, 14th District Assembly-member Loni Hancock raised far more money in 2007 for Don Perata’s District 9 State Senate seat, but her opponent, former 16th District Assemblymember Wilma Chan, ended up with more cash on hand at the end of the year.  

The Hancock for Senate 2008 committee reported contributions of $500,506 last year ($270,850 for the last six months of 2007), while the Chan for State Senate committee reported $164,834 raised for the year and $88,441 in the last six months of 2007. But Chan’s committee had $526,641 on hand at the beginning of the year, while Hancock’s committee had $343,906. 

In the race for Hancock’s termed-out 14th Assembly seat, Berkeley physician Phil Polakoff led four candidates with $75,570 on hand at the end of 2007, followed by Richmond City Councilmember Tony Thurmond with $58,469 and Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthing-ton with $48,625. No campaign committee for former Berkeley City Councilmember Nancy Skinner, who is expected to run for the 14th Assembly as well, was listed on the Secretary of State’s website. 

The Polakoff For Assembly committee raised $90,635 in 2007, all in the last six months of the year. The Tony Thurmond for Assembly committee raised $84,731 in 2007 ($46,731 in the last 6 months of the year), and the Friends Of Kriss Worthington committee listed $61,112 in contributions for 2007, all between September 24th and the end of the year. 

[The Daily Planet plans to provide information on individual donations to candidates in a follow-up story.] 

Meanwhile, in Alameda County Board of Supervisors races, incumbent District 5 Supervisor Keith Carson has filed for re-election, with no challengers taking out papers as of last Friday. Incumbent Nate Miley has taken out papers for re-election to his District 4 seat, along with potential challenger Berkeley activist Steve White. Area 2 Alameda County School Board incumbent Gay Plair Cobb has a potential challenger in author and Oakland Commission on Aging member Ernest L. Hardmon III. Sixteen candidates have taken out filing papers for the vacant Alameda County Superior Court Judge seat 9, while the 20 other seats have only one potential candidate apiece. 

Only two candidates have actually completed their filings with the Oakland City Clerk’s office for Oakland races--Ignacio De La Fuente for re-election to his 5th District City Council seat, and Oakland Residents for Peaceful Neighborhoods co-founder Charles Pine for the At-Large City Council seat currently occupied by Henry Chang. 

But with the filing deadline set for today (Friday) at 5 p.m., several other candidates have taken out preliminary filing papers for council and school board races in Oakland. They include: 

City Council At Large (Henry Chang, incumbent): AC Transit Board member Rebecca Kaplan, former AC Transit Board member Clinton Killian, incumbent Henry Chang, OUSD School Board member Kerry Hamill. 

City Council District 1 (Jane Brunner, incumbent): neighborhood public safety activist Patrick McCullough, incumbent Jane Brunner. 

City Council District 3 (Nancy Nadel, incumbent): incumbent Nancy Nadel, OUSD School Board member Gregory Hodge, Covenant House Director Sean Sullivan, and West Oakland residents Alan Brown and Africa Williams. 

City Council District 5 (Ignacio De La Fuente, incumbent): Realtor Mario Juarez, David Wofford (former aid to former District 5 Councilmember Wilson Riles), NCPC leader Beverly Blythe. 

City Council District 7 (Larry Reid, incumbent): Incumbent Larry Reid, neighborhood activist Clifford Gilmore. 

School Board District 1 (Kerry Hamill, incumbent): Parent activist Jody London, education philanthropist Brian Rogers, author Tennessee Reed. 

School Board District 3 (Gregory Hodge, incumbent): Education activist Jumoke Hinton-Hodge.  

School Board District 5 (Noel Gallo, incumbent): Incumbent Noel Gallo. 

School Board District 7 (Alice Spearman, incumbent): East Oakland resident Beverly Williams, East Oakland resident Doris Limbrick, incumbent Alice Spearman. 

Incumbent City Attorney John Russo has taken out filing papers for re-election. No challenger had taken out papers as of Wednesday. 

 


ZAB Approves Center Street Restaurant Permit, BioFuels Station

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday March 07, 2008

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) gave nods to three big projects last week, which propose to add a restaurant downtown, build a bio fuels station in South Berkeley and permit a child care center for Pixar employees in West Berkeley. 

 

Restaurant at 2130 Center St. 

Despite concerns regarding noise and parking from a few neighboring businesses and restaurants, ZAB approved Berkeley developer Patrick Kennedy’s request for a blanket use permit to establish a 13,974-square-foot full-service upscale restaurant and bar at the former location of the Act 1&2 Theatre. 

Kennedy has yet to name a tenant for the proposed project, which his firm, Panoramic Interests, said has potential for a Spanish or Latin restaurant with live entertainment. 

“We wanted to have the full-service restaurant necessary to attract a good reputable high end name to Berkeley,” said Niloo Nouri, who addressed the board on behalf of Kennedy. 

Nouri added that the restaurant would adhere to the city’s noise ordinance and that it was leaning more toward a “Spanish guitar type music” and not loud rock bands. 

The restaurant’s sidewalk seating would leave 10 feet of open space for the pedestrian right of way, in accordance with every other restaurant on the 2100 block of Center Street. 

Board members Sarah Shumer and Jesse Arreguin—who voted against the project—expressed concerns regarding approving a blanket use permit. 

“I am concerned about parking,” said Shumer. “If we have a large restaurant there, parking will be a problem.” 

“If we are not going to allow this type of a development, what use can we allow downtown?” asked board vice chair Bob Allen. “Do we want more of a ghost town than we have now? We are scratching for reasons not to develop the site. Bless us if we can have 14,000 square feet of restaurant full of people on this block.” 

The proposed restaurant, located close to UC Berkeley, Berkeley City College and a large number of downtown offices, will be able to sell alcohol independent of selling food. 

Future developments proposed for the 2100 block of Center Street include the Berkeley Charles Hotel and Convention Center and the Berkeley Art Museum and Film Archive.  

“I agree with Bob we need a more vibrant downtown but the lack of specificity concerns me,” said Arreguin.  

In a letter to the zoning board, Doug Hambleton, Berkeley police chief, expressed concern about the project’s blanket use permit, noise and supervision issues. 

 

BioFuels Oasis at 1441 Ashby Ave. 

ZAB approved a permit for the all-women cooperative BioFuels Oasis to operate a fueling station at 1441 Ashby Ave., the former site of Kandy’s Detail, a black-owned car wash business. 

Members of South Berkeley’s African American community have vociferously opposed the proposed project, contending that it shows the city’s planning department’s prejudice against blacks and the city’s lack of support for black-owned businesses. 

On Nov. 26, the zoning board had held a public hearing and had allowed two months for mediation between property owner Craig Hertz, BioFuels Oasis and Kandy Alford, owner of the car wash. 

According to ZAB, the mediation would “explore alternatives to the project that would allow Mr. Alford to continue operating at the site or to find another site for Mr. Alford.” 

According to a zoning staff report, Alford’s business has since then vacated the site. The report also states that Hertz had stated that “he was unwilling to engage in mediation with Mr. Alford.” 

At the last meeting, Hertz told the board that Kandy was six months behind on his rent and was facing eviction. 

“I hope the new business will thrive and become a part of the community,” said Arreguin. “This has been a very decisive hearing and I hope some of the wounds will be addressed.” 

A few members of the South Berkeley neighborhood said that they would challenge the approval in court as well as at the City Council. 

 

Pixar day care at 2600 Tenth St. 

ZAB approved a variance for a child care center for Disney Pixar employees at 2600 Tenth St.  

San Rafael-based Wareham Development proposes to convert 9,961 square feet of existing ground floor space at the Saul Zaentz Media Center—formally known as the Fantasy Records Building—at 2600 Tenth St. to serve the needs of up to 100 children whose parents work on-site or at Pixar.  

Wareham needs a variance for the proposed project since the city’s zoning ordinance specifically prohibits child care centers in the Mixed Use /Light Industrial (MULI) district.  

The MULI district’s prohibition of child care centers conflicts with the West Berkeley Plan, which allows day care centers as a conditional use in the Mixed Use/Light Industrial area, and the General Plan, which encourages improvement of the quality of life and private service availability for residents and workers.  

According to one of the findings, an employer-sponsored child care center would allow the multi-media center to effectively compete with larger and newer facilities in neighboring cities. 

The zoning staff report also stated that the facility would attract other businesses and improve the economic growth of the city. 

 


Man Fatally Shot Outside Russell Street Apartments

By Richard Brenneman
Friday March 07, 2008

A San Leandro man was fatally shot Monday night on California Street, just seven blocks north of the scene of another murder eight days earlier. 

Ceron Burns, 25, was gunned down as he stood outside near Rosewood Manor apartments at 1615 Russell St. 

Seven blocks to the south, Brandon Terrell Jones was shot down on Harmon Street near the corner of California on Feb. 24, just 18 minutes less than eight days before the Burns shooting. That murder remains unsolved, and Berkeley police are offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. 

The city’s emergency switchboard logged the first of several calls reporting the shooting at 11:32 p.m., according to Berkeley police spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss. 

Arriving at the apartment building, officers found Burns lying beside a parked car, bleeding from several gunshot wounds. 

Berkeley Fire Department paramedics rushed the injured man to the Highland Hospital Trauma Center, where doctors pronounced him dead at 12:04 a.m. 

Sgt. Kusmiss asked anyone with information about either murder to call the BPD Homicide Detail at 981-5741, or the department’s non-emergency line at 981-5900. 

Burns’s death marks the city’s fourth homicide of the year.  

Kent Washington Evans died Jan. 13, 12 days after he was stabbed outside a bar at 3212 Adeline St. Police arrested a suspect in that incident, Roy Smith Jr., 71, of Oakland. 

The stabbing followed a confrontation between the two after Smith allegedly insulted a woman who had accompanied Evans to the bar. 

Police have listed those three deaths as murders, but not the year’s fourth fatality, Anita Gay, who was shot by a Berkeley police officer outside her apartment in the 1700 block of Ward Street Feb. 16. Police said the woman was shot in the back after she approached relatives with a large kitchen knife.  

Conflicting reports about the shooting have led to an investigation by the Berkeley Police Review Commission. The incident is also being reviewed by the BPD’s Homicide and Internal Affairs units and by the Alameda County District Attorney’s office.


Alta Bates Nurses Vote for Strike

By Richard Brenneman
Friday March 07, 2008

Registered Nurses at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center have voted to call for a 10-day strike, along with nurses at 10 other Sutter Health facilities. 

The ongoing struggle between the California Nurses Association (CNA) and Sutter, which has already brought two short walkouts to Berkeley’s only hospitals could now be headed to a full-fledged strike. 

Meanwhile, labor talks have opened with another major Berkeley employer, the University of California. 

Bargaining talks began in Berkeley Thursday between the university and members of the University Professional and Technical Employees (UPTE), which represents 10,000 researchers and technicians in the UC system. 

CNA has called two previous two-day walkouts at Sutter hospitals since its last major strike, leading to five-day lockouts by the Sacamento-based hospital chain. 

The vote at Alta Bates followed similar votes at California Pacific Medical Center and Sutter Solano, with votes held during the remainder of the week at the remainder of the 11 Bay Area Sutter facilities employing 5,000 CNA members. 

Among the issues in dispute are changes in healthcare benefits and costs for current employees, retirees and patient care issues. 

No date was announced for the walkout, which must be preceded by a 10-day notice to the hospitals. 

Tanya Smith, a UC Berkeley editor and president of union Local 1, said the issues for her members are fair pay and stronger benefits protections. 

Jelger Kalmjin, the union’s national president, said wages for UC members have fallen more then 10 percent behind the Consumer Price Index during over past 15 years.


SF Bay Guardian Wins Big, Heads Back to Court

By Judith Scherr
Friday March 07, 2008

The San Francisco Bay Guardian won a $15.6 million judgment Wednesday against the San Francisco Weekly and its parent company, the 16-paper Village Voice Media, for predatory business practices—but the Guardian’s not counting the big bills yet, says Executive Editor Tim Redmond.  

The question could be tied up in appeals for four years or more, Redmond told the Planet in a phone interview Thursday. 

However, Redmond said he believes that in a couple of weeks, the Bay Guardian will be able to go back to court to ask Superior Court Judge Marla Miller for an injunction against the Weekly’s practice of selling advertising below cost, a practice already established by the courts. 

“We don’t mind competition,” Redmond said. “But they’ve got to play fair.” 

All the 12 jurors agreed that the Weekly deliberately undercut Bay Guardian advertising rates, Redmond said. Bay Guardian attorneys showed that the paper lost money every year since the chain bought it in 1995, losses mounting to $25 million, according to Redmond. 

Eleven of the 12 jurors agreed that the practice was a deliberate attempt to injure the Bay Guardian to the extent that it would be put out of business, Redmond said. 

Stephen Buel, editor and co-owner of The East Bay Express—bought from New Times (now Village Voice Media)—said he was “very surprised that they won, and that they won this big.” He said he had followed a similar case in Arkansas where the plaintiff had lost.  

Buel said that when he and his partners had bought the Express from New Times, the advertising rates had been extremely low. “We had to adjust to get on sound economic footing,” Buel said. 

He wondered how the BG had been able to show solidly that the Weekly’s intent was to hurt the BG, since the low advertising rates hurt all the competitors, including the Express.  

Buel clarified that that the corporation that currently owns his newspaper was not a party in the lawsuit. One of the named defendants on the losing side was “East Bay Express Publishing LP,” a holding company which had been controlled by Village Voice Media. 

The decision should be seen as a victory not only for the BG, but for all small businesses facing large chains that come into town with huge resources used to undercut them, Redmond told the Planet. 

Lowering costs to lower prices is legal, but “you cannot use all your resources you have against a less-funded competitor, with the intent to harm the competitor,” Redmond said. 

The Weekly wasn’t shy about responding to the decision. In its on-line column, the Snitch columnist wrote: 

“Like Ralph Nader, (Bay Guardian publisher) Bruce Brugmann is out of touch with reality. Feigning obliviousness to the Internet, the dot-com bust, 9/11, the Bush economy—and the $330 million lost by the San Francisco Chronicle to these very factors—Brugmann insisted in court that only SF Weekly threatened his wallet.”


Local Newspaper Group Avoids Layoffs, for Now

By Judith Scherr
Friday March 07, 2008

The menace of layoffs at Bay Area News Group [BANG] newspapers—which now include the Contra Costa Times, the West County Times, the Berkeley Voice, the East Bay Daily News and the Oakland Tribune, among others—has passed for the moment. 

A sufficient number of BANG employees accepted buyouts for management to say that no layoffs would be necessary at this time. 

At around 2 p.m. Thursday, BANG staff got an e-mail from management saying it would accept buyouts from the 107 individuals who had applied. “It doesn’t look like we’re having layoffs right now,” Karl Fisher, West County Times police reporter, told the Planet on Thursday. The buyouts “affect every division and management,” he said. 

Fisher said while he doesn’t know the numbers of cuts in editorial staff, he thinks the buyouts will reduce BANG staffing by about 10 percent.  

Some people taking the buyouts are in key reporting positions, Fisher said, noting there will be shifts in newsroom staffing: “This will have a major effect on how we cover local news,” he said. 

Sara Steffens, a regional reporter at the Walnut Creek newspaper, spoke to the Planet by phone Thursday just minutes before news of the buyouts went out to reporters.  

“It’s been hard on us,” she said. “None of us got into this profession because of money. We are all afraid of what is going to happen in the newsroom. There’s a lot of uncertainty.” 

Over at the Oakland Tribune, Josh Richman, Tribune reporter for a decade and active with the Newspaper Guild, said Wednesday that the Tribune newsroom is already “cut to the bone.”  

He said he feared what would happen to the quality of news coverage after the cuts. 

Newsroom reductions will be devastating to the newspaper consumer, said Linda Jue, president of the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists in a written statement. 

"We aren't simply talking about saving jobs,” she said. “We're talking about how business decisions are narrowing the choices reporters and editors make about which stories to pursue. This is of special concern during an election year, when keeping the public informed about fast-changing economic, political and social issues is essential to the democratic process."  

Meanwhile, there is a union organizing drive going on at the various BANG papers. The Alameda Newspaper Group, the previous owner of the Oakland Tribune, had been affiliated with the Newspaper Guild, but, in 2006, when MediaNews purchased the papers, it decertified the union, saying that the majority of employees—those at the Contra Costa Times papers—were not unionized. 

Walnut Creek reporter Steffens, the mother of a 19-month old, covers a social service beat. “It’s sort of ironic,” she said, explaining that she covered the downturn in the mortgage industry and the layoffs there. 

West County Times’ Fisher and Steffens are active in rallying fellow reporters to sign cards for a “card check,” which entitles workers to unionize by signing cards. (The employer must agree to unionization by cardcheck.)  

“We’re feeling good about the way it’s going. We’ve been gathering support,” Steffens said, noting that after the mid-February announcement of the buyouts and possible layoffs, they put organizing efforts temporarily on hold. 

“People are starting to see why we have to stand up for each other,” Steffens said. “We want to be a voice for quality, for everything that brought us to the profession. It’s such a tough time in the industry.” 

Calls to BANG publisher John Armstrong were not returned before deadline. In a written statement, quoted in Editor and Publisher Feb. 19, Armstrong laid out the reason for asking staff for the buyouts.  

"Almost without exception, real estate forecasters believe the Bay Area will be saddled with a housing slump for 12 to 18 months, and talk of a recession is now commonplace. We have concluded we must reduce our operating expenses quickly, and we cannot get where we need to be without reducing the size of the workforce." 

In his e-mail statement to staff on Thursday, Armstrong wrote: “While I recognize that uncertainty during the buyout period caused anxiety, it pleases me to report that participation in the program was so widespread that we can avoid involuntary layoffs at this time. Given the uncertainties of the marketplace, I cannot make guarantees for the future.  

“These job eliminations through voluntary buyouts no doubt will require shuffling and sharing of work and may result in new assignments and work locations for some employees. We hope all of you will understand and be flexible.


News Analysis: Guardian Editor Views Court Victory

By Tim Redmond, Special to the Planet
Friday March 07, 2008

A San Francisco jury found the San Francisco Weekly and its corporate parent guilty Wednesday of illegal predatory pricing and awarded us $6.39 million. 

Under state law, part of that verdict is subject to treble damages, bringing the total award to $15.6 million. 

The battle isn’t over; Rod Kerr, attorney for the Weekly, told me immediately afterward that the 16-paper chain intends to appeal. 

But the verdict sends a clear signal to small businesses, independent newspapers and the alternative press that a locally owned publication has the right to a level playing field and that a chain can’t intentionally cut prices and sell below cost to injure a smaller competitor. 

The trial had been underway for more than five weeks. The Guardian charged the Weekly with violating the state’s Unfair Practices Act, a Progressive-era law that bars a company from selling a product below cost for the purpose of destroying competition. 

Evidence produced in the trial showed clearly that the Weekly had been selling ads below cost. In fact, the paper had lost money every year since the New Times chain, now known as Village Voice Media, bought it in 1995. 

The Guardian produced extensive evidence that the Weekly and VVM were trying to injury the local competitor, including three witnesses who testified that the heard Mike Lacey, one of the two principals of New Times, vow to put the Guardian out of business. 

The evidence produced also showed numerous internal e-mails discussing the Weekly’s battle plans to take ads away from the Guardian. 

The Weekly’s lawyers ultimately admitted to below-cost sales, but said they had no intent to harm a competitor. However, members of the jury interviewed after the case believed otherwise. 

Kerstin Sjoquist, a local business owner and graduate student, said in an interview that “it felt overly predatory on the part of the Weekly” and that “the predatory intent trickled down from the top.” 

Juror Dan Babin said he found the testimony of the Guardian’s co-owners “very, very trustworthy. I found them very honest in their approach.” 

A juror who didn’t want to be named said there was little disagreement among the panel members over the question of intent. 

By all accounts, the jurors carefully weighed all the evidence in the case, deliberating for more than three days and going through what one juror described as “unraveling an onion.” 

In the end, there was unanimous agreement that the Weekly had sold below cost, and 11 or the 12 jurors agreed that the paper had intended to harm competition. 

The jury ruled that New Times/VVM and the East Bay Express, which until recently was owned by VVM, were equally culpable in aiding the predatory sales. 

The Express is now an independent paper, and VVM is liable for any damages assessed against that publication. 

The jury foreperson handed the verdict to the court bailiff at 12:30 p.m., and the clerk read the results to a packed and silent courtoom. As the various parts of the verdict were read, and it became obvious that the Weekly and VVM were liable for significant damages, Lacey could be heard mumbling “shit” over and over again. 

Lacey would not comment outside the courtroom and didn’t return our phone calls. But Kerr, in a brief interview, said he was “disappointed” with the jury decision. “We don’t believe the evidence supported the verdict,” he said, and vowed to file an appeal. 

The Guardian will now ask Judge Marla Miller to issue an injunction barring the Weekly from continued below-cost sales. 

VVM posted a lengthy statement on the web almost immediately after the verdict was announced, arguing that the Unfair Practices Act is flawed. The chain promised to seek to challenge the validity of that law on appeal. 

The process of appealing a case such as this can take years. But in the meantime, a San Francisco jury has sent a powerful message: Local businesses and local independent media matter—and big chains that try to use their deep pockets to squeeze the locals can be held to account.


Berkeley Schools Plan to Hand Out Layoff Notices

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday March 07, 2008

The Berkeley Unified School district will be sending out possible layoff notices to its certified staff by March 15 in the face of the proposed $4.6 billion state education budget cut crisis, district officials confirmed Monday. 

At a special meeting Monday, the Berkeley Board of Education discussed the criteria for determining order of seniority for employees with the same first date of paid probationary service. It will determine whether to approve it Wednesday. 

“The notices that will be sent out by mid-March is not the final list,” said school board President John Selawsky. “We notify more people than who are going to be laid off.” 

Final layoff notices are expected to be sent out around the first week of May. 

“The district is confronted with budgetary problems that reduce its ability to provide the same type of services at the same level and in the same manner as provided in previous years,” Lisa Udell, assistant superintendent, human resources, said in a report to the board. “The board has the authority to determine the order of seniority.” 

The state Education Code mandates that the district retain certain positions, including those with credentials pertaining to Bilingual Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development, Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English and the number of advanced degrees held. 

Special education and single subject credentialed teachers—including those teaching math and science—will be retained in the 2008-2009 school year regardless of their seniority, Selawsky said. 

“It’s very difficult to fill some of these positions ... Subjects such as math and science are unique,” he said. “Teachers with multiple subject credentials who have taught for only two to three years are probably going to be noticed.” 

The board will vote Wednesday to approve a resolution to reduce particular kinds of services and to initiate the layoff process for affected certified employees. 

According to the resolution, the “district will no longer employ all current temporary and substitute employees after June 30, 2008.” 

 

Berkeley Unified Protests In Sacramento  

At a meeting with the California School Board Association (CSBA) in Sacramento last week, district superintendent Bill Huyett said that he wanted to minimize lay-offs as much as possible. 

A group of 20 district officials, principals, parents and a Berkeley High School student protested the governors proposed budget cuts at meetings with state officials and Assemblymember Loni Hancock during their trip to the state capital. 

Berkeley Unified—which has 9,000 students—could lose $5 million from the cuts. 

“We want to be effective and ask the legislature to save Prop. 98,” Huyett told Hancock.  

Prop 98 is a voter-approved statute that establishes a minimum level of funding for California schools—which the governor proposes to suspend.  

“The legislature has to look at all of our options, including new revenues or taxes that will substantially address state priorities,” Hancock, one of the five assembly members to vote against the proposed cuts, said. “Something has to give if we want to avoid Draconian cuts to our schools and social services.” 

Rick Pratt, CSBA’s assistant executive director, described the cuts as “the worst crisis to have hit public education in years.” 

County superintendent Sheila Jordan told Pratt that 15 of the 18 school districts in Alameda County faced negative certification if the cuts were approved. 

“Right now we have only one negative certification,” she said. 

Pratt said that the alternative proposal by the governor’s legislative analyst to his proposed across the board 10 percent cut would still lead to cuts and suspension of Prop 98. 

“However it might help to change the nature of conversation across the street,” he said. “But CSBA thinks that revenue increases is part of the solution. Right now the districts need to identify what kind of cuts would be the least harmful. The reality is no cuts are acceptable to us.” 

“Fight, fight, fight and contact your legislator,” said Karen Stapf-Walters, assistant executive director for the Association of California School Administrators. “We are under assault. We are always fighting for survival but this time the number is really big.” 

She added that writing letters to the local media and encouraging school districts to adopt resolutions to protest the cuts was a good way to send a message to the legislators. 

“Loni Hancock and Don Perata are both being timed out,” she said. “We don’t have any friends in the legislature. They will stab us in the back in a heartbeat ... When push comes to shove and they have to cut, they will cut in the dead of the night.” 

Mark Van Krieken, president of the Berkeley High Parent Teacher Student Council, pointed out that Education Week recently gave California a D+ for public school funding efforts. 

According to county officials, the state—which currently spends $2,000 less per student than the national average and ranks 46th nationally in school funding—ranks behind less prosperous states such as Louisiana and Mississippi.  

 

 


BUSD Mulls Fate of 6th Street Site

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday March 07, 2008

More than 50 seniors, parents with toddlers and teenage moms crammed inside a Berkeley Unified School District conference room Tuesday to voice their support for the LifeLong Health Center at 2031 Sixth St. 

The district is weighing options to surplus the Sixth Street property—which houses LifeLong’s West Berkeley Family Practice Center. The district lent the city the site in exchange for use of the Old City Hall Building at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way under a 20-year lease agreement that expires in 2009. 

The city then subleased the Sixth Street property to LifeLong, which provides low-cost medical services to the uninsured and the sick. Now, with the city hall lease about to expire and the district administration moving to West Campus, the Sixth Street property is about to revert back to school district ownership. For LifeLong to remain at the site, the school board must declare the site not needed for school use. 

The district, which has never used the site for teaching, has said that “the enrollment patterns and existing school buildings” indicate that the Sixth Street facility does not have to be used as a public school. 

“For LifeLong to go on a long-term lease, Berkeley Unified has to deem the property surplus,” said John Selawsky, school board president. 

Robert Jackson, chair of the Sixth Street Surplus Committee, said, “The board should ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that LifeLong Medical Care’s community health center facilities be retained at the site and that its historic landmark status be preserved and enhanced,” he said. 

The committee also recommended that the district work with the city to sell or lease the property for less than “fair market value.” 

“It’s essential to keep LifeLong as it is,” said Bruce Dixon, who has lived in Berkeley since 1980. “I work for a local painting contractor and I don’t get health insurance ... I really depend on the people there for my health care.” 

The City of Berkeley subsidized the clinic’s current lease payments and building maintenance in recognition of the services provided to the community and its non-profit status. 

The committee has recommended that adjusting the current lease payments to market-rate levels—“which would reflect the ‘highest and best use’ of the property in real estate terms—would prove incompatible with the clinic’s operations. 

Councilmembers Darryl Moore, Max Anderson, Kriss Worthington and Gordon Wozniak also spoke in favor of retaining the clinic. 

“Couple of months ago I took a tour of Lifelong and was very impressed,” Wozniak said to applause. “I will work with Berkeley Unified and the City Council to keep this vital service here.” 

Immigrant families and day-laborers without MediCal or Medicare thanked doctors at LifeLong. The clinic, one of the few community medical centers in the city,treated about 2,300 patients a month last year, according to staff. 

“We are using every inch of that space,” said Dr. Amy Gordon, who works at the family practice clinic. “We now have weight loss groups, smokeless groups and acupuncture ... We are also providing books to six-month-olds.” 

Julie Sinai, chief of staff to Mayor Tom Bates, spoke of the need for such a clinic in the otherwise underserved area of West Berkeley. 

“The stability of the family practice center is very important,” she said. “Healthy kids and healthy moms, dads and grandparents make for a healthy school system.” 

 

 

 

 

 


‘The Songs of California: The UC Berkeley Traditon’

By Zelda Bronstein, Special to the Planet
Friday March 07, 2008
“Gr-rr-rah, Gr-rr-rah Gr-rr, ... rr-rah!”  A new Cal song book, Songs of California: The U.C. Berkeley Tradition, has just been published. See story, page six.
Contributed photo
“Gr-rr-rah, Gr-rr-rah Gr-rr, ... rr-rah!” A new Cal song book, Songs of California: The U.C. Berkeley Tradition, has just been published. See story, page six.

What venerable UC Berkeley tradition, having fallen onto hard times, has its fans hoping that it’s on the verge of a comeback? 

The likeliest answer is of course Cal football. 

Since last October, however, the question has had a less predictable but perhaps equally plausible reply: the Cal song tradition. 

What’s that, you ask? 

From the 1890s until the 1940s, Berkeley students—not just members of organized performing groups, but Berkeley students at large—knew a sizable repertoire of distinctively Cal songs and sang those songs at all manner of occasions: at athletic events, class gatherings, university events and any time they pleased. 

During World War II, many male students were in the armed forces and many students had come to Cal from other schools. Worried about a falling-off of school spirit, President Robert Gordon Sproul, himself a former Cal Band drum major, commissioned the Glee Club and Treble Clef director, Roschelle Paul, to create a portable song book. Songs of California, edited by Ms. Paul and Professor of Music Albert I. Elkus, appeared in 1944. The book guided noontime student singing by the Campanile and later on Faculty Glade. 

In the 1960s the song tradition, like many other campus traditions, waned. The repertoire was regularly performed by the Cal Band, along with the Glee Club, Treble Clef and other student singing groups. But your typical student no longer knew how to sing most of these songs or was even aware of their existence. 

Now a new era of campus vocal literacy may be about to dawn, thanks to the publication of a new edition of the Cal song book, Songs of California: The U.C. Berkeley Tradition. Published by the Class of 1957 and compiled by the Cal Song Book Committee under the leadership of attorney and Kensington resident John Vlahos ’57, Songs of California brings together in a handsome format twenty-one pieces. 

Each song is accompanied by a brief account of its origins, which in some cases lie outside California and collegiate culture—and its career at Berkeley, as well as an evocative photograph or other illustration. “California, We’re For You” (1919) is prefaced by the most intriguing photo in the book, which shows the 1921 Senior Women’s Pilgrimage: young women garbed in floaty, calf-length white dresses and holding white parasols parade against a backdrop of trees, while in the foreground Cal bandsmen march off in another direction. 

But the bulk of the illustrations depict sporting events and associated activities. That’s because the major inspiration for most of the songs was school athletics—above all support for Cal athletes competing against their Stanford rivals. Some of these tunes will be immediately recognizable to anyone who has attended, watched or listened to Cal football or basketball games, because they are regularly played by the Cal Band. “’Big C” is traditionally the first song the band plays at football games as it marches onto the field; “Fight for California” is struck up after every Cal score. 

Others are far less familiar. The newest song is “California Triumph,” its music written in 2004 by a four-year Cal Band trombone player, Hiro Hiraiwa, and its lyrics written in 2005 by fifth-year percussion player Aaron Alcala-Mosley. 

One piece, California Indian Song,” is still played by the band but no longer sung—at least not at official events—due to its lyrics’ politically incorrect references to scalping and tomahawks. Song book editor Vlahos says that the decision to include even the score came after much debate. Vlahos wanted to include the music and the lyrics. “This is history,” he says. “It may have been wrong, but that’s what it was.” Other members of the Cal Song Book Committee wanted to cut the song entirely. “Nuts to that,” says Vlahos. “The band still plays the music.” The compromise was to print the score but not the words. 

The song book also reflects another new attitude: a critical approach to the student consumption of alcohol. The University insisted that “California (The Drinking Song)” be prefaced by a substantial disclaimer that emphasized the “historical” character of the piece, marked the school’s “multiple efforts to shift the college drinking culture and address problems as serious issues rather than as a harmless ‘rite of passage,’ ” and noted that neither UC, the alumni association nor the class of 1957 “intends that publication [of the song] condones the improper use of alcohol.” A glance at the lyrics, which, unlike the words to the “California Indian Song,” made it into the song book, indicates why the UC administration would want to clarify its policies. “The Drinking Song” is about getting plastered (“One keg o’beer for the four of us”). The irony, says Vlahos, is that “if there is one song that is known today and still sung, it’s that song.” 

If Vlahos gets his wish, that will change. He hopes the new song book will be “the inspiration for young people” at Cal to sing. To that end, he’d like all student living groups to receive copies and singing instruction. Recent observation suggests that the book should be made available at athletic events as well. At the February 23 game at Haas Pavilion between the Cal and Stanford women’s basketball teams, with over 10,500 people in attendance, the crowd seemed to know only one line of “Big ‘C’”: “Gr-rr-rah, Gr-rr-rah Gr-rr,__rr-rah!” 

Songs of California is the work of many hands. Vlahos gives special credit to Class of 1957 President John Edginton, who provided legal and technical expertise, taking the lead in securing financial support from the Class of 1957. The Class Council donated about $38,000 toward the publication of the song book—$8,000 from the class treasury, which has since been repaid, and $30,000 in special fundraising from the class. 

But the chief impetus for the project came from Vlahos. The new edition was his idea—no surprise, perhaps, considering how Cal athletics and vocal music have both played a central role in his own life. Since the mid-Sixties, Vlahos has called Cal football games in the press box. He’s also president of the Lamplighters Musical Theatre, which he joined in 1963. He started working on the song book in 1992, dropped it due to other commitments, and then “got cracking again” in late 2005, determined to have the book ready for the Class of 1957’s fiftieth reunion. He made his deadline. 

Songs of California can be purchased for $20, including tax, from the California Alumni Association.


Flash: Bay Guardian Wins $15.6 Million Verdict In Predatory Pricing Suit Against SF Weekly

By Tim Redmond Special to The Planet
Tuesday March 04, 2008

Posted Wed., March 5—A San Francisco jury this afternoon found the San Francisco Weekly and its corporate parent guilty of illegal predatory pricing and awarded us $6.39 million. 

Under state law, part of that verdict is subject to treble damages, bringing the total award to $15.6 million.  

The battle isn’t over; Rod Kerr, attorney for the Weekly, told me immediately afterward that the 16-paper chain intends to appeal.  

But the verdict sends a clear signal to small businesses, independent newspapers and the alternative press that a locally owned publication has the right to a level playing field and that a chain can’t intentionally cut prices and sell below cost to injure a smaller competitor.  

The trial had been underway for more than five weeks. The Guardian charged the Weekly with violating the state’s Unfair Practices Act, a Progressive-era law that bars a company from selling a product below cost for the purpose of destroying competition.  

Evidence produced in the trial showed clearly that the Weekly had been selling ads below cost. In fact, the paper had lost money every year since the New Times chain, now known as Village Voice Media, bought it in 1995.  

The Guardian produced extensive evidence that the Weekly and VVM were trying to injury the local competitor, including three witnesses who testified that they heard Mike Lacey, one of the two principals of New Times, vow to put the Guardian out of business.  

The evidence produced also showed numerous internal emails discussing the Weekly’s battle plans to take ads away from the Guardian.  

The Weekly’s lawyers ultimately admitted to below-cost sales, but said they had no intent to harm a competitor. However, members of the jury interviewed after the case believed otherwise. Kerstin Sjoquist, a local business owner and graduate student, said in an interview that “it felt overly predatory on the part of the Weekly” and that “the predatory intent trickled down from the top.”  

Juror Dan Babin said he found the testimony of the Guardian’s co-owners “very, very trustworthy. I found them very honest in their approach.”  

A juror who didn’t want to be named said there was little disagreement among the panel members over the question of intent.  

By all accounts, the jurors carefully weighed all the evidence in the case, deliberating for more than three days and going through what one juror described as “unraveling an onion.”  

In the end, there was unanimous agreement that the Weekly had sold below cost, and 11 or the 12 jurors agreed that the paper had intended to harm competition.  

The jury ruled that New Times/VVM and the East Bay Express, which until recently was owned by VVM, were equally culpable in aiding the predatory sales.  

The Express is now an independent paper, and VVM is liable for any damages assessed against that publication.  

The jury foreperson handed the verdict to the court bailiff at 12:30 pm, and the clerk read the results to a packed and silent courtoom. As the various parts of the verdict were read, and it became obvious that the Weekly and VVM were liable for significant damages, Lacey could be heard mumbling “shit” over and over again.  

Lacey would not comment outside the courtroom and didn’t return our phone calls. But Kerr, in a brief interview, said he was “disappointed” with the jury decision. “We don’t believe the evidence supported the verdict,” he said, and vowed to file an appeal.  

The Guardian will now ask Judge Marla Miller to issue an injunction barring the Weekly from continued below-cost sales.  

VVM posted a lengthy statement on the web almost immediately after the verdict was announced, arguing that the Unfair Practices Act is flawed. The chain promised to seek to challenge the validity of that law on appeal.  

The process of appealing a case such as this can take years. But in the meantime, a San Francisco jury has sent a powerful message: Local businesses and local independent media matter – and big chains that try to use their deep pockets to squeeze the locals can be held to account. 

---------------------- 

Tim Redmond is the executive editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian


Man Fatally Shot Outside Russell Street Apartment

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday March 04, 2008

Posted Wed., March 5—A San Leandro man was fatally shot Monday night on California Street, just seven blocks north from the scene of another murder eight days earlier. 

Ceron Burns, 25, was gunned down as he stood near outside Rosewood Manor apartments at 1615 Russell St. 

Seven blocks to the south, Brandon Terrell Jones was shot down on Harmon Street near the corner of California on Feb. 24, just 18 minutes less than eight days before the Burns shooting. That murder remains unsolved, and Berkeley police are offering a $15,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. 

The city’s emergency switchboard logged the first of several calls reporting the shooting at 11:32 p.m., according to Berkeley police spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss. 

Arriving at the apartment building, officers found Burns lying beside a parked car, bleeding from several gunshot wounds. 

Berkeley Fire Department paramedics rushed the injured man to the Highland Hospital Trauma Center, where doctors pronounced him dead at 12:04 a.m. 

Sgt. Kusmiss asked anyone with information about either murder to call the BPD Homicide Detail at 981-5741, or the department’s non-emergency line at 981-5900. 

Burns’s death marks the city’s fourth homicide of the year.  

Kent Washington Evans died Jan. 13, 12 days after he was stabbed outside a bar at 3212 Adeline St. Police arrested a suspect in that incident, Roy Smith Jr., 71, of Oakland. 

The stabbing followed a confrontation between the two after Smith allegedly insulted a woman who had accompanied Evans to the bar. 

Police have listed those three death as murders, but not the year’s fourth fatality, Anita Gay, who was shot by a Berkeley police officer outside her apartment in the 1700 block of Ward Street Feb. 16. Police said the woman was shot in the back after she approached relatives with a large kitchen knife.  

Conflicting reports about the shooting have led to an investigation by the Berkeley Police Review Commission. The incident is also being reviewed by the BPD’s Homicide and Internal Affairs units and by the Alameda County District Attorney’s office.


Oakland Weighs Legal Options to Stop State Plans to Spray Moths

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday March 04, 2008

Posted Wed., March 5—On Tuesday, Oakland joined a growing movement to force the state, through political and legal means, to back off from plans for the aerial spraying of a pesticide over parts of Northern California intended to eradicate the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM). 

In open session the council unanimously approved a resolution opposing the spray and in closed session it gave City Attorney John Russo direction to coordinate with other Bay Area cities “on an aggressive legal strategy” to compel the state to perform a “serious” environmental review before conducting the spray program. 

A strategy that could also include the cities of Berkeley, Albany and El Cerrito—Russo hadn't talked to attorneys in the other cities yet—would bring the weight of the legal system as well as political pressure to bear on the state agency, Russo told the Planet in a phone interview Wednesday.  

“It seems that we have to go in that direction,” he said. 

In the regular Tuesday evening council meeting that followed the closed session, the Oakland City Council unanimously approved a resolution opposing the spray. Berkeley passed a measure opposing the spray at its Feb. 26 meeting and will meet in closed session to discuss legal strategies March 17. Albany passed a resolution opposing the spray in January. 

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) has declared an emergency in parts of Santa Cruz and Monterey counties as well as parts of Alameda (including Berkeley, Oakland, Piedmont and Albany), Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties due to the numbers of LBAMs found in these areas. 

“There's a legal question of whether they can undertake mass spraying under an emergency,” Russo said, noting that very simple acts require environmental review, such as cutting down a tree, and that the spraying of this product carries with it many complex questions. 

“We're not saying they can't spray,” he said. “They need to show there's no environmental impact.” 

Having declared an emergency, the state is permitted to spray the product—CheckMate made by Suterra of Bend, Ore.—before conducting an environmental review. The state has begun the review, which will not be complete before it resumes spraying in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties June 1 and in the Bay Area in August. 

The state says the infestation is an emergency because it could devastate 250 different crops grown in California. Spray opponents point out that California has suffered no crop damage from the LBAM to date. 

The first aerial spray to be conducted over an urban area was done in September in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties, after which more than 600 people reported ill effects including shortness of breath, nausea, itchy skin and more. 

Santa Cruz County has litigation pending against the state, targeting the absence of an environmental review before spraying. The case will go to court April 24. Russo said he may be directed by the City Council to join Santa Cruz in an amicus brief. 

Checkmate is a synthetic pheromone contained in microcapsules with inert ingredients for aerial spraying. Some medical professionals have said the microcapsules themselves present a danger to the respiratory tract of sensitive people and others say the inert ingredients that accompany the pheromone may be dangerous. The state says the product is safe for humans, but opponents say it has not been studied for long-term health impacts. 

A pheromone is a scent emitted by a female moth that attracts a male moth. When synthetic pheromones are introduced, males become confused and no longer mate, interrupting the reproductive cycle.


West Berkeley Zoning Tour Reveals Land-Use Tensions

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday March 04, 2008
John Curl, a West Berkeley woodworker and land use activist (right), leads planning commissioners on a tour of the Sawtooth Building during Saturday’s “West Berkeley Zoning Flexibility” tour.
By Richard Brenneman
John Curl, a West Berkeley woodworker and land use activist (right), leads planning commissioners on a tour of the Sawtooth Building during Saturday’s “West Berkeley Zoning Flexibility” tour.

Crammed into two standing-room-only buses, planning commissioners, city staff, business owners and interested citizens set out for a five-hour tour of West Berkeley Saturday. 

Designed by city staff, the outing was crafted to highlight the need for zoning ordinance changes supposed to ease the way for new businesses to set up shop in the city’s only industrial and manufacturing zones. 

Among the participants were City Councilmember Darryl Moore, whose district includes all of West Berkeley south of University Avenue, Calvin Fong, chief of staff for Mayor Bates, Planning and Development Director Dan Marks and a host of city staff. 

The only planning commissioner missing was Gene Poschman, away on a previously scheduled vacation. 

The outcome of the tour and subsequent hearings and discussions by the Planning Commission will be a set of zoning change proposals that some feel could threaten the city’s last redoubt of small manufacturers and artisans. 

By the end of the day, divisions were clearly drawn between a city staff and council intent on attracting high technology jobs and smaller businesses concerned that the resulting pressure would destroy a delicate economic ecology and an area plan they want to protect. 

The majority of questions from planning commissioners seemed sympathetic to the proposed changes, and the tour was heavily weighted towards companies seeking change. 

It began inside a building owned by West Berkeley’s increasingly dominant landlord, Wareham Development. 

As commission chair James Samuels convened the meeting inside the lobby of 717 Potter St., one Wareham tenant briefly listened in. Jay Keasling, a UC Berkeley/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist, lingered a few minutes before walking up to his own private genetic engineering company, Amyris Technologies, which has a lab on the building’s second floor. 

Keasling was also a major figure in landing UC Berkeley its $500 million research program funded by BP, the British oil giant, and currently heads the federally funded Joint BioEnergy Institute, which is housed in another Wareham property in Emeryville—where Amyris is also relocating. 

Wareham owns more than 16.5 acres of property in West Berkeley, which houses 530,000 square feet of building floor space. The company specializes in rentals to companies in the life sciences industries and is currently in the market for more properties in West Berkeley.  

Asked by commissioner Harry Pollack where Wareham is looking, Barlow replied, “Anything from University Avenue to Ashby.”  

Barlow said Wareham’s issue with city zoning codes didn’t involve the overall zoning—Wareham’s local properties are in the MULI (manufacturing and light industrial) zone, which exists only in West Berkeley. 

The problems arise more with specifics of the code governing integration of streets, utilities and other infrastructure into a single industrial park setting. 

Zelda Bronstein, a former mayoral candidate who has been active in challenging proposed changes in West Berkeley zoning, was successful in persuading Samuels to allow public questions during the tour, rather than only at the end as city staff had proposed. 

Her first question focused on rents Wareham charged, and Barlow responded that the company charged $850 a month to artists in the live/work units of the Durkee Building. 

Rents at buildings with biotech labs were higher because of the high costs of building improvements, including air filtration systems, and depending on how much of the costs for improvements tenants were will to pay themselves. 

 

Marchant Building 

After a few minutes on an AC Transit bus, tour participants arrived at the second stop, Sun Light and Power, which is located across Folger Avenue from the Marchant Building, recently purchased by Redico, a Michigan-based real estate development and management firm. 

Craig Willian said his firm had purchased the Marchant Building from UC Berkeley, which still runs its printing plant inside the 6701 San Pablo Ave. building, along with an adjacent parking lot. 

Ownership of the property poses unique problems, since the building itself straddles the Berkeley/Oakland city line, which divides the structure almost in half. The adjacent land Redico bought falls within a third jurisdiction, Emeryville. 

Willian said the building is solid, but “25 years behind the times.” Redico plans to spend millions on renovations to bring the interior up to contemporary lab and office standards, while maintaining street frontage commercial uses. 

Commissioner Roia Ferrazares asked if the university will continue as a tenant, and Willian responded, “We hope so.” 

Jerry Gerber of Sun Light and Power started his business in 1975 in Point Richmond and moved to Berkeley in 1981, where it currently occupies sites in several buildings. 

Gerber said he has faced two zoning issues. First, the limitations on office space in an industrial facility, and second, the difficulties in combining a number of different uses into a single project. 

Gerber has teamed with Oakland real estate broker Paul Valva to develop a proposal for a green business park, which would combine a range of enterprises operating in an environmentally sustainable way. 

However, he said, current regulations would bar some types of business because they are not permitted in the MULI zone. 

“What you’re envisioning would be a mixture of retail, offices, manufacturing, processing and warehouse uses,” said commissioner Larry Gurley. 

“But 25 years ago Berkeley already had an eco-park,” said public participant Fred Dodsworth. “It’s now called Fourth Street.” 

 

Machine tools 

The next stop, at 2629 Seventh St., brought the tour to the plant where Swerve manufactures high-tech office equipment, using the latest in Japanese machine tool technology to create unique parts for the biotech industry while its software specialists create programs to run the high-tech hardware. 

Michael and Steven Goldin converted the old Berkeley Brass Foundry building into a state-of-the-art plant, and Michael Goldin said they “lost more than a year” going through the Landmarks Preservation Commission and Zoning Adjustments Board. 

They had bought the building in 1999 and obtained permission to convert the property into office uses, which was the key to their success later when they opted for manufacturing and were able to provide mitigations in exchange for the change of use. 

“Working with the city scares a lot of people in the business community,” said Steven Goldin, who also criticized “the craziness of our zoning regulations.” 

Peter Histed, vice president and general manager of Ellison Technologies, which is located in the same building and distributes machine tools, said companies were attracted to Berkeley because the university “probably leads the world in technology.” 

Eric Taylor, president of Integrated Analytical Solutions which performs testing services for biotech firms, said “West Berkeley has lots of space” but that regulations prevent its conversion, “which takes most possibilities off the table.” 

Taylor’s labs are located at 629 Bancroft Way. 

 

Sawtooth Building 

It was at the fourth stop, Berkeley’s venerable Sawtooth Building at Dwight Way and Eighth Street, where John Curl and Rick Auerbach of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC) were given a chance to raise their concerns. 

Curl, a woodworker, was one of the building’s first tenants, and he had high praise for owner Mel Dagovitz, who bought the distinctive landmark in 2001 and has been fighting to keep artists in residence. 

“I’m making every effort to make space available for artists,” Dagovitz said. “I am a real estate developer, but I would like to keep the building intact for artists.” 

Curl said West Berkeley’s success as a mixed community for large and small companies resulted in part because the city resisted pressures to convert industrial uses into offices. 

Both praised the West Berkeley Plan as the joint effort of a wide range of stakeholders, and said that problems started only after the city adopted zoning regulations five years after the plan had been approved. 

While the plan’s creators envisioned a simple process for subdividing large buildings, the subsequent ordinances “made it impossible,” Curl said, and the current code would have doomed a project like the Sawtooth, where a wide range of artists and their facilities share a common roof. 

“What we don’t want is deregulation,” he said. “From the time of Ronald Reagan we have seen the destructiveness that comes along with it.” 

Auerbach pointed to the 7,000 jobs created by West Berkeley firms, where minorities comprise 50 to 60 percent of the workforce. 

While city Land Use Manager Debra Sanderson said the city has no intention of changing the plan, others were sceptical. 

Urban Ore Operations Manager Mary Lou Van Deventer also urged preservation of the plan, adding that economic pressures were forcing her recycling business to fight simply to stay in place. 

 

Clif Bar 

The tour’s final stop was Clif Bar’s corporate headquarters at 1610 Fourth St., a site slated to be vacated unless plans for a move to Alameda fall through, said building owner Tom Graham. 

After participants dined on sandwiches, sweets, chips and bottled water paid for by the city, Graham said his own call for flexibility was spurred in part by the problems of owning a building which falls into two zones. One part falls in MULI, while another is in West Berkeley’s MUR (Mixed Use Residential) zone. As a result, some uses permitted under one part of the roof are forbidden in another. 

With the popular health snack business needing to expand, he asked, “how can we accommodate their needs when we have two zoning districts in the same building?” 

Bruce Lymburn, the firm’s legal adviser, said the company is a $200-million-a-year business with 200 employees, with offices in Berkeley and manufacturing facilities in Southern California. 

He said the company was back in the market, looking for an alternative site to the Alameda Landing project after Catellus Development Group was unable to commit to a construction starting date. 

Jessica Crow, spokesperson for Catellus, said Monday that the company was notified of the cancellation last Wednesday, in part because Catellus wasn’t able to commit to an occupany date. 

Lymburn said concerns with Berkeley zoning regulations included rules governing just what could and could not be done within the building’s theater space, which the company allows public groups to use for benefits and other meetings. While some performances are allowed, showing of films is barred. 

Another problem stemmed from the need to expand office space into areas currently limited to warehouse use, while parking was also starting to prove inadequate. 

As other problems arose and the company began to think about moving outside the city, Lymburn said Mayor Bates and Councilmember Linda Maio offered strong support, along with Dave Fogarty and Michael Caplan of the city’s economic development staff. 

But Asa Dodsworth, another community participant and Fred Dodsworth’s son, said that the same hassles cited during the tour were the reason Berkeley was able to have industrial uses. 

As for the zoning line dividing the Clif Bar building, “lines have to be drawn somewhere,” he said. 

Ted Garrett of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce said he was “looking for some flexibility so we can keep manufacturers here in the city.” 

Bernard Marszelak, the manager of Inkworks, a printing company with a union work force, urged preservation of existing businesses, whose employees are more likely to be drawn from the Berkeley community. 

Proposals for zoning changes will be heard by the Planning Commission over the next few months. 

 


School Board Removes Willard Vice Principal

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday March 04, 2008

Willard Middle School Vice Principal Margaret Lowry—under investigation by the Berkeley Board of Education for improper conduct involving two special education students—has been removed from her position and will be replaced by Thomas Orput, vice principal of the Berkeley Adult School.  

“Orput will be interim vice president,” School Board President John Selawsky said Monday. He said Orput will begin at Willard on March 11 and stay there for the remainder of the school year. 

Although some media outlets reported that Selawsky told them Friday that Lowry would be transferred to the Berkeley Adult School, he told the Daily Planet Monday that nothing had been decided. 

“She might be put on administrative leave, she might be put on special assignment or she might be transferred to the adult school,” he said. “It’s not clear at this point. It will be decided at a meeting later today.” 

District superintendent Bill Huyett told the Planet Monday that the investigation of Lowry was complete and the district would decide about her future by today (Tuesday). 

“I am not sure if she will be tranferred to the adult school,” he said. “We might very well place her in another assignment.” 

Selawsky said that the district had consulted with the Berkeley Police Department about the allegations, but Huyett said he wasn’t aware of this. 

Selawsky said that Orput’s transfer to Willard, where he served as vice principal until Lowry took over in 2006, was decided on Friday. Lowry was vice principal at Oakland’s Skyline High School before coming to Willard. 

Parents of the two special education students told the Planet that Lowry gave money to one of them to buy marijuana from the other, in what some district officials said might have been an attempt to set up a sting.  

Lowry, who has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the investigation, has not been available to be reached for comment on the matter.  

The Planet also reported on several other complaints from former and current Willard parents in a Feb. 29 article. They alleged that Lowry has repeatedly mistreated students, forced students to write false statements by threatening to expel them and pressured students to inform on students to provide her with information. 

Huyett said that the district would investigate these complaints. 

“Even if they are old, the district needs to resolve them,” he said. “We owe it to the parents. They deserve a response or some kind of a judgment. That may be something we have to do.” 

Both the Berkeley and Oakland Unified school districts have declined to disclose information about Lowry’s employment history or any disciplinary action taken against her, although Terry Francke, general counsel for Californians Aware and a public records expert, said this information should be open to the public. 

The Planet filed a public records act request with both Berkeley and Oakland school districts on Feb. 20 to obtain records about Lowry. The 10-day response time allowed by law expired without any answer from Oakland Unified. 

In a letter faxed to the Planet late Monday, John R. Yeh, of Miller Brown Dannis, attorneys for the Berkeley Unified School District, rejected the Planet’s request to see Lowry’s resume and to be informed of any disciplinary action taken against her as “vague and ambiguous, overly broad and unduly burdensome.” 

His letter says that the district objects to disclosing information on the basis of legal opinions in two cases, BRV Inc. v. Superior Court, et al and Bakersfield School District v. Superior Court. But Francke told the Planet that opinions in the two cases cited are contrary to Yeh’s interpretation—that they actually hold that complaints and disciplinary information about school district employees are a matter of public record. 

The letter further states that the district will not disclose the other records requested by the Planet—containing data on expulsions at Willard from 2004 to 2007 tallied by race without students’ names—until March 31, more than a month after the request was made. 

Stephen Rosenbaum, an attorney with Protection and Advocacy Inc., told the Planet that if parents of special education students were not satisfied by the district’s response, they could file a complaint with the state Department of Education. 

“Sacramento has very strict time limits,” he said. “If the complaints are languishing in the school district—as the parents have charged—then there are several channels. They can go to the Federal Office of Civil Rights ... There is also mediation which involves a neutral facilitator. If the allegations are true then it’s important to raise awareness about these issues, like the media has done. Hopefully it will lead to resolution.” 

Anthony Sotelo, a special education consultant at the California Department of Education, said that calls to a toll-free number (1-800-926-0648) could initiate such a complaint. 

Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, spokesperson for the Berkeley Police Department, told the Planet that the Police Department would investigate the allegations that Lowry engaged students in a drug transaction if either the parents or the school district filed a complaint with the department. 

“It is not uncommon for the school district to handle many matters internally and administratively,” she said. “What would be encouraging is for the community to be mindful of how the school district is handling the matter. We are always here to follow up and investigate. If the allegations are true, then it shows poor judgment.


Chief Wants Better Policing, New Taxes

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday March 04, 2008

Berkeley’s facing neither layoffs nor program cuts in the next fiscal year, but without taxpayers ponying up to pay for them, there will be no new services, City Manager Phil Kamlarz told the City Council last week. 

Also at the Feb. 26 meeting, in conjunction with a workshop on policing methodology and possible new taxes for police, the council heard from Rana Sampson, a consultant with the San Diego-based Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, a Department of Justice-funded organization.  

Sampson, spouse of the mayor of San Diego, has been a police officer and holds a law degree from Harvard. She discussed Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) with the council for about 50 minutes and received a consulting fee of $1,200, plus travel expenses, according to budget manager Tracy Vessely. 

With property-based revenue tanking—the number of January home sales showed a 68.9 percent drop over last year according to a Feb. 26 city manager report—only last year’s windfall $2 million in additional transfer taxes from Patrick Kennedy’s property sales has made up the difference.  

And so at midyear, the budget appears as if it will be balanced, although, according to Kamlarz, it could face a $1.6 million budget deficit by 2011. 

The city manager’s report also singled out overspending of about $600,000 in the Fire Department, primarily due to absences in 14 positions that must be covered by overtime work by other firefighters, a function of mandatory staffing ratios. The paid absences are due to workers’ compensation, family medical leave, parental leave, long-term sick leave and military leave. 

“Since a majority of these absences are on paid leave, the cost of backfilling the positions is exacerbated,” the report says. 

 

Police needs 

The council is considering a number of possible tax measures: police, fire, youth, or a combination thereof; a therapeutic warm pool; sewers and more. 

The city will contract for a taxpayer survey to be taken next month to determine how much and for what taxpayers are willing to spend their money. The scope of the survey has yet to be determined; the contract has not been let.  

Police Chief Doug Hambleton has a $5 million wish list, but has said he knows citizens may want to fund just part of it. 

At a Feb. 26 council workshop, the chief set the stage for the question of new funding with a theoretical overview of policing as some say it should be, with Sampson, the consultant, introducing the concept of Problem-Oriented Policing. 

POP is similar to what is known as community-involved policing, with “the community engaging with officers and officers engaging with the community around crime problems and looking at the community as partners,” Sampson said. 

A key element of POP is crime analysis, she said. Police need to thoroughly interview victims and perpetrators of crimes, study the location of crimes, talk to various segments of the community and look at crises to effectively reduce crime.  

One should not rely on putting people in jail, she told the council. “The criminal justice system only has a certain amount of capacity and does not turn around all crime problems,” she said. “Prevention is worth its weight in gold.” 

Calling policing “an art and not a science,” Sampson said among the most important elements to analyze is how an officer’s time is divided. Generally one-third of the time should be spent on calls for service, one-third for administration and, most important, one-third should be kept free for community work, which could include, for example, adopting a problem motel, problem bar, or a family that has long-term problems.  

That free time is lacking in Berkeley, Hambleton told the council. A remedy would be to hire non-sworn officers to do some of the paper work, which would free up the sworn officers. This is among the elements he has suggested the citizens could fund by raising taxes.  

While many merchants and councilmembers have called for increased police visibility, Sampson said visibility does not prevent crime. “Walking and talking is not sufficient,” she said. “Police visibility is not a panacea. What police do in conjunction with others is how to reduce crime.” 

That includes teaching merchants how to set up their stores or how to design public space, she said. 

When the council joined the discussion, Counilmember Kriss Worthington, who has long asked for community police to walk Telegraph Avenue, responded that he wanted to make it clear that he did not believe police officers should be walking their beats all day every day. 

“It has to do with relationship building, community building,” he said. “If you’ve created a relationship, you do not need to walk every day—you need to be acquainted with the situation.” 

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak had a different take on ideal policing. “I hope we have a goal of catching everyone who does a violent crime in Berkeley so that Berkeley gets known as a place where, if you do a violent crime, you’re going to get caught.” 

Sampson disagreed: “There aren’t nearly enough police to do this,” she said, noting, however, that Berkeley’s rate of solving crimes is good compared to neighboring cities. 

Councilmember Max Anderson concurred with the notion that crime reduction needs to go beyond solving individual crimes.  

“Circumstances and conditions that breed crime don’t get much attention in the community,” he said. “If we don’t deal with what’s driving this crisis—even though we know that 50 percent of the crimes that are done in the city are done by people from outside the city—we still have conditions in the city that need addressing and need to be part of a strategy for crime prevention.” 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli said the job of police officer as described by Sampson “is almost like a social worker.” He asked whether Berkeley officers have training at the police academy in responding to domestic violence. (The Berkeley police officer who shot and killed a women Feb. 16 in South Berkeley was responding to a domestic violence call.) 

“Councilmember,” Sampson replied. “I’d like to promote you and put you on the Police Officers Standards and Training Commission. I was on that for a couple of years and tried to persuade other members of the commission that that’s one of the things we need to do.”  

Earlier, during the public speaking portion of the meeting, Michael Diehl, vice chair of the Mental Health Commission, asked for police to get crisis intervention training to work better with people experiencing mental health episodes. (Neither this nor other training appears on the chief’s list of elements proposed for a new police tax.) 

The chief told the council that Berkeley officers go through the city of Sacramento police academy, which stresses a POP approach; moreover, Berkeley generally hires officers with four-year degrees, he said. 

In-service training, however, is prohibitively expensive, as officers are paid overtime to work while others get training, the chief noted.  

 

Taxes for police services 

Hambleton’s wish list of new police services—costing $3.5-$5 million—would cost the average homeowner $90 to $125 per year. Services could include: 

• Three additional bicycle patrol officers for business districts. 

• Four additional evening and night bicycle patrol officers, two for the Telegraph area and two for downtown. 

• Three additional officers for the traffic/motorcycle unit to enforce laws relative to vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian safety. 

• Nine new non-sworn community service officers to handle non-hazardous calls such as collision reports and minor crimes, freeing up officer time for proactive enforcement and problem-solving activities. 

• Radio interoperability so that Berkeley can communicate with outside public safety agencies. (It remains a question whether the services purchased would add full operability with Oakland, which has a unique radio system.) 

• Seven additional police officers, one added to each of the seven beats to allow more time for problem-solving activities. 

 

 

 


Maneuvering Over Dellums’ Police Plan Continues

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday March 04, 2008

With the full Oakland City Council scheduled to vote on Mayor Ron Dellums’ police recruitment augmentation plan at its regular 7 p.m. meeting today (Tuesday), maneuvering over the final shape of the plan continued through the weekend. 

Measure Y Oversight Committee Chair Maya Dillard Smith called off an attempt to hold a Saturday morning summit conference of city officials to find what she called “common ground” in the discussions over the plan. A Measure Y committee member criticized Smith for not accurately presenting the view of the committee, and Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente suggested that some of the augmentation plan’s resources might be better spent on recruiting from other police agencies than on advertising for new recruits. 

In order to meet the mayor’s promise of fully staffing the Oakland Police Department by the end of the year to its authorized 803 officer strength, Dellums and Oakland Police Chief Wayne Tucker originally proposed using $7.7 million in Measure Y violence prevention bond money to run simultaneous police training academies, fund an ambitious recruitment advertising blitz, and cut red tape in the hiring approval process. 

With crime and violence a top issue in Oakland and five of eight councilmembers up for re-election this June in contested races, the city is under intense pressure to close a 75 officer “blue gap” between the number of police officers authorized in the budget and the number of officers actually hired and working. 

With committee chair Smith sharply questioning police, the mayor’s office, and city administrator staff members over the appropriateness of using Measure Y funds to finance the entire augmentation project, the committee voted 8-1 last Monday to send the proposal back to the mayor’s office to revise how it would pay for the plan. 

But a day later, City Council’s four-member Public Safety Committee voted to send the mayor’s plan on to the full council with their recommendation, suggesting that council figure out a way to balance the funding between Measure Y and the city budget’s general fund. In addition, Public Safety Committee members asked that the plan’s ambitious advertising budget be cut down and some of that money be used for paying bonuses to recruits. 

Late Thursday night, Smith sent out an e-mail to a list of council and city officials attempting to set up a “common ground discussion related to [the mayor’s] police recruitment plan.”  

Among others invited by Smith to a Saturday morning meeting were the mayor, the police chief, City Attorney John Russo, City Auditor Courtney Ruby, four members of the City Council and four members of the Measure Y Oversight Committee. 

In her e-mail, Smith said that the proposed discussion was “intended to seek common ground and commitments to work together to expand the number of police on the streets of Oakland. If the Police Recruitment Plan has any chance at success, it will come as a result of our collaboration on the issue.”  

She added that the meeting was “not geared at circumventing the public process.” 

On Monday, however, a spokesperson for Dellums said that the mayor did not attend the meeting “because of Brown Act and Sunshine Ordinance violations,” the California and Oakland laws aimed at ensuring that policy negotiations take place in the public eye. In a telephone interview, Smith said that the meeting did not take place because of possible Brown Act violations.  

Smith said the proposed meeting was “not an attempt at back-door dealing” but was proposed as a means “to bring together the stakeholders who are involved in creating, approving, and implementing this plan. They have not had a chance to come together and discuss this plan in any meaningful way.” 

In her interview, Smith gave broad guidelines as to what she thought constituted “common ground” surrounding the police recruitment plan for all the stakeholders, saying that the only current pressing matter is adding more police academies. 

“Council should immediately approve [the mayor’s proposal] for concurrent academies,” Smith said. “We could then take four to six weeks to thoroughly come up with a plan to recruit and attract candidates for these academies. That doesn’t have to be done right away.” 

Smith said that she supported the call—made by AC Transit Board member and Council-at-Large candidate Rebecca Kaplan—for an independent audit to determine how much Measure Y money spent on police recruitment eventually goes to Measure Y activities, and to ensure that Measure Y gets reimbursed from the general fund for the remainder.  

Smith said that such an audit should properly go through Oakland’s existing city auditor’s office, rather than spending the money for an outside consultant. 

Meanwhile, Council President Ignacio De La Fuente was sending out an e-mail to Oakland residents late last week indicating his support for the mayor’s proposal, with some modifications. 

“Let me be clear,” De La Fuente said in his e-mail, “I support the Mayor’s proposal for the four academies, two by OPD and two by the Alameda County Sheriffs Office and we are moving that forward as fast as we can. … I agree that we need more officers on our streets and I have always supported additional academies and will move the funding forward for the four academies as fast as possible.” 

But saying that he has “questions about why we need to spend $1.5 million dollars on advertising and marketing while spending only $100,000 to increase the success rate of police officer trainees,” the City Council president said, “We have to work on the retention and graduation of applicants through the application process, and then retention after they are hired. We have to target the two or three areas where we know that recruits are failing.” 

De La Fuente added that “the fastest way to get officers on the street is through lateral transfers. If we are going to spend millions of dollars, instead of the current proposal of $10,200 for the lateral program, why not a larger investment? Instead of spending millions of dollars on marketing, why not offer hiring bonuses of $20,000 or more per person, so we can hire immediately?” 

Also last week, Smith herself was coming under criticism from one of her own Measure Y Committee members. 

In a Friday morning e-mail sent out to oversight committee members, Donald Blevins, chief of the Alameda County Probation Department and a Dellums appointee to the Measure Y Committee, wrote that Dillard Smith was misrepresenting committee actions in her communications concerning the augmentation plan debate. 

“I honestly feel that many of the comments in the attachments [to Smith’s e-mail] are editorial comments and do not accurately reflect the discussion at Monday night’s meeting,” Blevins wrote. “At the very least, I feel that the attachments should have been reviewed by the entire committee before they were forwarded to City Council members and the City Manager. I feel very uncomfortable that my name has been attached to documents that I did not have input on prior to their release and that I do not agree with.”  

Blevins requested that the issue of committee communication be put on the Measure Y Committee agenda for its next meeting. 

One of the documents included with the Dillard Smith e-mail calling for the aborted Saturday meeting, “Measure Y Oversight Committee Action re: Mayor’s Police Recruitment Plan,” notes that “The Committee voted 8-1 not to approve the proposed request for $7.7 million of Measure Y funding associated with the PRP because the current proposal using Measure Y money is illegal and fiscally irresponsible.” 

Reporter’s notes taken at the Measure Y Committee meeting indicate that the actual motion did not mention the term “illegal and fiscally irresponsible,” which Smith herself had used in criticizing the mayor’s plan at the Oakland City Council meeting the week before. Instead, the committee only voted to reject the funding component of the mayor’s proposal, asking that the mayor’s staff throw out all Measure Y money requests that did not belong in the proposal and bring the amended request back to the committee. The committee did not vote on what part of the mayor’s proposal it thought was improper use of Measure Y funds. 


Oakland Council Asked to Reconsider Zoning Changes

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday March 04, 2008

A diverse representation of Oakland interests came out Monday morning in support of Mayor Ron Dellums’ industrial zoning plan, asking that the City Council make no changes in the proposal. 

The council is scheduled to take up final passage of the mayor’s plan at tonight’s regular council meeting (Tuesday). The plan, with modifications, was originally passed by the council on Feb. 19. 

With demands to turn the city’s scarce industrial areas into residential development, the mayor and City Administrator Deborah Edgerly are recommending that “Council adopt a policy that treats land with any of the Industrial General Plan designations as a scare resource in the City of Oakland. Conversion of land from Industrial to Residential uses should be allowed only after a carefully considered process including evaluation of the proposed project according to a set of criteria developed through a public process. These criteria would become the basis for required findings for any proposed industrial to residential conversion.” 

Only 5 percent of the city’s total land area outside of the property controlled by the Port of Oakland is zoned industrial. Including port properties in that equation brings the total industrial zoned land in Oakland up to 19 percent. 

When the mayor’s plan first came before the council on Feb. 19, members passed Councilmember Larry Reid’s motion to carve out a number of exceptions to the policy. In a follow-up report, Edgerly asked the council to reconsider using those exceptions, calling it zoning on “an ad hoc basis.” 

On Monday, supporters of the mayor’s original proposal held a City Hall steps press conference to explain their views and also urge Council to reconsider, and drop the exceptions amendment. 

Saying that his organization has been “consistent over the years in support of retaining Oakland’s industrial land,” Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce Public Policy Director Scott Peterson said that what was at stake was 200 acres with 350 existing industries providing 4,000 jobs in land currently zoned industrial in Oakland.  

“We need to have these livelihoods protected,” Peterson said. “Oakland needs a diverse land use policy that clearly designates the area zone for industrial use and that stays that way, without incursion by residential development.” 

That view was echoed by Sharon Cornu, secretary-treasurer of the Alameda County Central Labor Council, who said, “You should mark this moment, I think it’s a first that [the Central Labor Council is] in agreement with the Chamber.” 

Cornu said she wanted to dispel “three myths” about Oakland’s industrial land. “One myth is that it’s only connected to Oakland’s past,” she said. “It’s not. It’s about the future, and taking advantage of emerging technologies such as green industry that can employ Oakland workers.”  

Cornu said that a second myth was that “Oakland can survive as a bedroom community with people living here and working in other areas. It cannot.”  

A third myth, she said, is that City Council can “wholesale rezone 250 acres” as in the passage of the Reid amendment at the Feb. 19 meeting “and get the community benefits later. We need to set our policy in such a way that we get the community benefits from developers up front, before the deals are made. Otherwise, we’ll be letting the horse out of the barn, and we’ll never catch up.” 

Another supporter of the mayor’s plan at Monday’s press conference was Geoffrey Pete, chair of the Oakland Black Caucus and a longtime Oakland nightclub owner. Pete said he was supporting the mayor’s industrial use policy “because of my position as an Oakland businessman, the other because of my longtime role as a leader of and an advocate for Oakland’s African-American community. … Business investment is always uncertain, because of financial and market factors. If there is uncertainty about a city’s zoning laws as well, it makes it almost impossible to make business investment in that city.” 

Under Dellums’ plan, Pete said that “developers, business owners, residents, and city officials will all know what will go where, with no surprises. That will make it easier and better to do business in Oakland.” 

Pete added that he was supporting the plan in order to “help halt the exodus of African-Americans from Oakland. Many African-Americans are being forced out of this city because they cannot find jobs, or the jobs they find do not pay enough to allow them to rent or purchase homes in this city. By preserving industrial land that can be used to create jobs for Oakland residents, Mayor Dellums’ industrial land use policy will help ensure that the African-American presence in Oakland will not be reduced to a mere shadow and a memory, as it has in the neighboring city in which I grew up, Berkeley.” 

Others speaking in favor of the mayor’s plan at Monday’s press conference were George Burke of the West Oakland Commerce Association and Andy Nelson of the Urban Strategies Council. 


Option Contract Signed for Iceland

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday March 04, 2008

There is still hope for Berkeley Iceland. And it comes in the form of Tom Killilea and his non-profit Save Berkeley Iceland.  

The group signed an exclusive contract with East Bay Iceland, which owns Berkeley Iceland, Friday to purchase the 67-year-old ice skating rink, which closed down almost a year ago due to flagging business and high maintenance costs, for $6.25 million. 

The contract, which comes with a one-year deadline for Save Berkeley Iceland to purchase the historic property, also launched the organization’s capital fundraising campaign. 

“This marks a third and the latest, greatest milestone for us,” Killilea told the Planet Monday. “The first was developing the organization and acquiring non-profit status. The second was the declaration of Iceland as a historic landmark by the City of Berkeley last May, recognizing its importance both architecturally and as an important community resource. This contract will definitely make funding easier, as now people will know for sure that the money will go towards purchasing the rink. It puts us in a whole different position.” 

Killilea, president of Save Berkeley Iceland, worked with other community members to raise money for the down payment over the last year. 

“We received over 300 contributions even before we launched the capital fundraising campaign,” said Peggy Burks, development director for Save Berkeley Iceland. 

Burks is the only staff member for the non-profit, working to meet the campaign goal of $12 million. 

In the past, ice skating fans have rallied in skating gear at the City Hall to show their support. 

“The next step is called the quiet phase, in which we will raise $500,000 in funding,” Burks said. “This will help us to fast track our architectural design plans for the construction at the same time.” 

Killilea said that the targeted reopening date for the rink was 2010. 

“This is a one-time chance to save Iceland, and a potential win-win for everyone,” he said. “The long-time owners will receive a fair price and the satisfaction of seeing Iceland survive, the skating world will regain its historic rink, and, most importantly, we'll get our beloved Berkeley Iceland back where all ages can hang out in a safe, healthy environment.There’s a lot of hard work ahead but the community wants this, and, together we can make it happen.” 

Home of the largest skating rink in Northern California, Berkeley Iceland hosted the first National Championship west of the Rockies, two major championships and renowned skaters such as Kristi Yamaguchi and Brian Boitano. The rink was also used by the UC Berkeley Ice Hockey Club and the Berkeley Bulldogs. 

Burks said a multipurpose sports facility and a cafe were on top of the wish list. 

“You know, a place where there can be gymnastics,” she said.  

“An exercise studio alongside a dance studio to complement the rink,” Killilea said. “A lot of parents like coffee when they come to drop their kids early in the morning, so we definitely want to have a cafe.” 

He added that upgrades included restoring the rink’s lobby and ice surfacing using the latest energy efficient technology. 

If Save Berkeley Iceland ends up buying the rink, then the Bay Area Blades Inc.—the parent organization for the group—will become the new owners. 

“Our first step is to select an architect,” said Burks. “Then we want to hold some public meetings. We really want to be good neighbors because it’s one of the few places in Berkeley where everyone from the age of 2 to 80 can come.” 

Killilea said that the group was also working with the Berkeley Unified School District to create a plan that would allow students to use the skating rink. The district is currently constructing the King Child Development Center across the street from the rink 

“We are really grateful for all the community support,” he said. “We are getting a lot of encouragement from the City of Berkeley although we haven’t discussed anything in the form of monetary support. Our hope is to fund everything privately so that we can be independent.” 

For more information on the campaign go to: www.saveberkeleyiceland.org.


Chamber PAC Must File Retroactively

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday March 04, 2008

Berkeley’s Fair Campaign Practices Commission decided Thursday that Business for Better Government, the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee, must file campaign contribution statements for 2004 and 2006 retroactively with the city.  

“It is the intent of the committee to file with Berkeley,” Commission Chair Eric Weaver told the Daily Planet Monday, adding that if it did not, the commission would get the filings from the county and ask the city clerk to post them on the city’s website. 

The PAC, which decided in January to dissolve itself, was originally formed as a city committee in 1998, but changed to a county committee in 2001 and has filed all of its campaign statements with the county since that time, despite the fact that over the past five years—the period when records are kept at the Alameda County Registrar of Voters—all of its campaign contributions were directed to city races, except one contribution given to a candidate for State Assembly. The PAC made no county contributions during that time. 

The California Fair Political Practices Commission advised the city that the Berkeley Chamber PAC should file locally. While this opinion was initially disputed by Chamber PAC attorneys, the PAC decided to abide by the state advice. 

At around the same time, the PAC decided to terminate itself. 

Termination has taken some time, as the PAC had a $5,000 debt—owed mostly to its attorneys—which it had to pay before dissolving itself. According to Assistant City Clerk Mark Numainville, the PAC was to have formally dissolved itself Monday or today (Tuesday).  

The Berkeley FCPC raised a more general question with its staff relative to independent committees. It wanted to know if it could amend Berkeley election laws to put limits on independent committees’ campaign expenditures.  

Individual donors face $250 limits for candidate expenditures, but committees have no spending limits. 

Deputy City Attorney Kristy van Herick answered the question in a written Feb. 28 report to the commission, saying the question is currently tied up in the Ninth Circuit Court. 

The case is the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce PAC v. City of San Jose, where a judge invalidated San Jose’s campaign ordinance, which limited to $250 an overall expenditure for a candidate for a particular office, whether the expenditure came through the individual or through an independent committee. 

”The Silicon Valley PAC used funds from contributors, some in excess of $250, to fund mailers and telephone messages referencing a mayoral candidate, and was found by the local election commission to have violated the ordinance,” van Herick wrote in a report to the commission.  

The court found, however, that the ordinance regulated “more speech than is necessary to advance the government interest of preventing corruption and the appearance thereof.” 

San Jose has appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court. 


Oakland Schools Face a Rough Road Back to Local Control

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday March 04, 2008

In December 2007, State Superintendent Jack O’Connell came to Oakland to announce that he was turning over two more areas of control to the state-operated Oakland Unified School District: personnel and facilities management.  

The Daily Planet reported that during his December visit, “O’Connell also announced that once a memorandum of understanding (MOU) is signed between his office and local district officials concerning the power transfer, the OUSD board can begin the selection and hiring of a new school superintendent.” 

Three months later, the MOUs have not been signed, the district has not moved forward with the superintendent hiring process, and the OUSD board president is now throwing cold water on the superintendent hiring plan for the near future. In addition, during O’Connell’s visit to Oakland this month to highlight the superintendent’s disagreement with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s education budget cuts, local board members and teachers union officials were reportedly left out of the visit planning and not notified until the last minute. 

All of this points out the rocky road Oakland Unified is facing coming back from full state seizure in 2002. 

OUSD Board President David Kakishiba, who appeared eager to move forward with the hiring of a new superintendent when announcing the personnel and facilities management turnovers three months ago, now says he is having second thoughts, and believes that the hiring should take place only after all five areas of authority have been returned by the state to the board, including finances and pupil achievement. 

“I’ve had second thoughts since then, and I’m concerned with our ability to attract the best candidates to Oakland given the present uncertainties,” Kakishiba said. “With only three of the five operational areas under local control, there is quite a bit of unknown territory involved in what is to be controlled by the local district and what is to be controlled by the state. We could easily get mired down in disagreement. I think it’s better to wait and have a clean transition.” 

Meanwhile, last Friday O’Connell held a press conference at Prescott Elementary in West Oakland, part of a three-city tour that day to denounce Schwarzenegger’s budget plans. Calling the education budget cuts a “hostile act,” O’Connell said, “This was supposed to be the year of education. I fear this will be the year of education evisceration.” 

But the night before, the events surrounding the O’Connell Oakland visit were themselves being denounced. 

In an e-mail sent to OUSD state administrator Vincent Matthews, OUSD board member Greg Hodge, who represents the district in which the O’Connell visit took place, said that he had only been informed about the press conference the night before, adding, “I am writing this note to express my view about the lack of meaningful notice to myself and other OUSD board members on this important issue. Superintendent O’Connell seems to believe that Oakland schools can serve as a convenient backdrop for press conferences inasmuch as he has used our facilities in the past to make various announcements, most notably the return of local control in at least three content areas, one being public relations. It seems clear from the content of the release that OUSD board members are not invited or included as participants though the event is happening in Oakland. There is a utter lack of respect for our schedules when this type of event is planned. We are not given any real opportunity to participate nor are our constituents—parents, teachers, local union officials and others. I would hope that in the future that the Board would actually be included in authorizing the planning and implementation of significant press events which are held on our school campuses, that we would be included as the hosts and that the State Superintendent would respect the role that, by state law, we are responsible for discharging.” 

In his response, Matthews formally apologized, telling Hodge that he was “correct.” “You should have received prior notice regarding a press conference being held at a school in your district,” Matthews wrote, adding that “we are continually attempting to get better at informing board members of events that are occurring in your districts or incidents that have occurred ... However we still make mistakes and this was one.” 

In a telephone interview, Kakishiba agreed with Hodge’s complaint, saying that “it is completely appropriate to have the board president or board members notified early on to be a participant” in such press events. “Now, more than ever, the Superintendent should be giving the message that he’s giving transitioning authority to the local district. This could have been an oversight. Or it could be construed as sending out a different message.” 

The Hodge notification oversight was apparently not the only one made during O’Connell’s visit, however. Oakland Education Association teachers’ union president Betty Olson-Jones said in a telephone interview that her organization was not informed of the press conference until Thursday night as well.  

In his e-mail to Matthews, Hodge also noted that “it is peculiar that we have not finalized the Memorandum of Understanding for the return of local authority over personnel and facilities, the substance of the last press conference the State Superintendent had on one of our campuses.” 

Kakishiba confirmed that the MOUs were still under negotiation, and he had met with a representative of O’Connell’s staff as late as last Wednesday. Kakishiba could give no details on the negotiations themselves or what might be holding up the agreements. A spokesperson in State Superintendent O’Connell’s office would only say that the MOUs were “still being negotiated.”


Council Postpones Several Items, Approves Blood House Move

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday March 04, 2008

Tuesday’s City Council meeting, which was mainly devoted to a discussion of the light brown apple moth, ended in a surprise finale, with an 11:30 p.m. vote to extend the meeting until midnight falling short of the needed two-thirds approval. The council had been in session since 5 p.m. 

That meant that the Condominium Conversion Ordinance discussion and vote, which 10 or so people had been waiting to discuss until that time, would not take place until the council’s March 11 meeting. Public comment speakers, waiting since 7 p.m. to address the council on items not on the agenda, were also unable to speak to the council. 

The council also delayed discussion on retroactive houseboat billing. 

The appellant did not appear at council to argue against adopting the zoning board decision to allow the move of the Blood House from 2526 Durant Ave. to another location, pending appropriate approvals. 

A five-story building with 44 apartments including seven affordable units is to be constructed on the site. The vote to affirm the zoning board approval was 8-1, with Councilmember Kriss Worthington in opposition. 

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak withdrew an item which would have mandated two votes by the City Council on measures brought to it by the Peace and Justice Commission. In its place, Wozniak is proposing an item that will be on the March 11 agenda, asking that all commissions post not only their agendas, but, when they do, also post on the city’s website, the background information on the items. 

On an item condemning the construction of a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, the council gave a 7-0-2 approval, with Councilmembers Laurie Capitelli and Gordon Wozniak abstaining. 

 


Protesters Shine Light on U.S. Marines in Haiti

By Judith Scherr
Tuesday March 04, 2008

The four dozen protesters picketing the downtown Marine Recruiting Center early Friday morning had a different message than the anti-Iraq War/anti-military recruiting demonstrators seen there almost daily since September.  

“Shine a light on the role of the U.S. Marines in Haiti,” a banner said. 

A large afternoon protest that police told reporters to expect later in the day failed to materialize, however. It was supposed to have spread to the four blocks surrounding the Marine Recruiting Center. The Berkeley Police Department Crowd Management Team was to monitor the protest, according to information e-mailed to reporters by the BPD public information officer. 

The e-mail cited a San Francisco Indybay website listing the event without a sponsor’s name and calling for a celebration “in festivity to confuse the masses.” It was to take place from 12 p.m. to 12 p.m., leading some to believe the posting could be hoax and stated: “Let’s throw a massive party [in] a four-block radius around the station; everyone is welcome, this is the peace revolution!” 

Lt. Andrew Greenwood, police spokesperson, said the department “had resources” available, but did not reveal how many officers were on hand for eventual protests. He said the preparations were not only due to the Indybay announcement, but were based on other factors such as regular Friday afternoon protests at the center. 

The Haiti demonstration was part of a 56-city protest on four continents, memorializing the four-year anniversary of the Feb. 29, 2004 ouster of Haiti’s elected government. 

Four years ago, with U.S. Marines standing by, U.S. government officials went to the home of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and told him he had no choice but to board a U.S. plane and leave Haiti, Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee told the crowd that gathered at the locked Marine Recruiting office at 64 Shattuck Square. 

The U.S. government has made it clear to this day that Aristide, exiled in South Africa, cannot go home, despite calls for his return by the Haitian masses, Labossiere said. 

After two years of rule by a U.S.-appointed government and policing by the United Nations military, which took over the occupation of Haiti from the Marines, the United States allowed elections without allowing Aristide’s return. 

Voters elected President Rene Preval, who is controlled to a great degree by the U.S. government, Labossiere said, pointing to policies of structural adjustment that include flooding Haiti with subsidized U.S. products like rice, which has decimated Haiti’s rice production. 

“Haiti’s a robbed state, not a failed state,” Labossiere said. 

Former Marine Willie Thompson participated in the picket. He is an emeritus professor of sociology at City College of San Francisco and organizer of the Organization of African North Americans in Solidarity with African Latinos.  

He said he was protesting in solidarity with his friend Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, a Haitian human rights advocate who spoke out for the return of Aristide and for the freedom of political prisoners who remain jailed under the Preval government. Pierre-Antoine was kidnapped in Haiti on Aug. 12.  

Thompson carried a sign saying “Accomplishments of U.S. Marines: 2004 occupy Haiti, stifle dissent.” 

“The Marines were not organized to oppress the poor,” he told the Planet. “I want my fellow Marines to know it is inappropriate to occupy another country.”


BHS Girls Basketball Takes Title Again

Tuesday March 04, 2008

The Berkeley High School Girls Basketball team won the North Coast Section Division I Championship for the second year in a row on Saturday at the Oracle Arena.  

They defeated Deer Valley High School of Antioch by a score of 62-45.  

Team co-captian Tiffany Hamasaki said that after Coach Gene Nakamura retired after winning the championship last year, the players worked hard to maintain the level of play he instilled.  

“They didn’t think we could do it, but we proved to our audience that we can do it without him, we proved it to our coaches, and most of all we proved it to ourselves,” Tiffany said. “The NCS championship game against Deer Valley was more on a personal level for the team because we lost to them earlier in the season. After being down the whole first half and an inspirational half-time talk, we knew we couldn’t lose this one. We’ve made it this far despite the doubt in us, and we weren’t going home without the win.”  

She credited new Head Coach Cheryl Draper and assistant coaches Anna Johnson and Leroy Hurt for keeping up the intensity all season.


Planning Commission to Hear Climate Plan

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday March 04, 2008

Berkeley’s Planning Commission meets Wednesday night to focus on a single issue, the city’s Draft Climate Action Plan. 

The session, which begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave., will take comments on the plan after a presentation by Timothy Burroughs, of the Office of Energy and Sustainable Development. 

Public comments on the plan, which must be submitted by Friday, will be included in the plan’s final draft. 

Wednesday night’s meeting is the commission’s third since its regular meeting last Wednesday. Commissioners also spent much of the day Wednesday touring West Berkeley, where the City Council has directed them to create proposals for increased zoning flexibility. 


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: Which of These Things Is Not Like the Other?

By Becky O'Malley
Friday March 07, 2008

There are people who can’t tell the difference between red wine and white wine if they close their eyes. Some can’t tell a pansy from a petunia. If you ask some others (perhaps mostly men) to get a blue towel off a shelf, they won’t be able to decide which is the green one and which is the blue one—and they certainly can’t distinguish between chartreuse and turquoise. Many people think Debussy and Mantovani sound pretty much alike. Half the world, perhaps, would say confidently that Andrea Bocelli is as good as Placido Domingo. And they’d be wrong. 

I myself confuse whole genres of post-1965 pop music, and often can’t tell one band from another. All movie stars from about 1985 on look alike to me. But I’m not proud of it. 

Having a virtual tin ear seems to be viewed as a mark of distinction in some political circles, however. There are those—many of them in Northern California or New York City—who have been so coddled by living in areas represented overwhelmingly by liberal Democrats that they imagine Democrats and Republicans to be almost alike. Such tone-deaf individuals should be sentenced to six months in Indiana or rural Michigan or even Arkansas if they really think they can’t tell the two major parties apart. 

It would be an eye-opening trip. And they should take Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzales along with them for the experience.  

I went to bed last night fully expecting to lambast poor old Ralph today for his transparently stupid (yes, and egotistical too) crusade to become the Harold Stassen of the left, but I made the mistake of taking my new Nation to bed with me. If anyone wants to see Nader well and truly skewered, they should check out Katha Pollitt’s column on him in that magazine: a virtuoso performance by a true artist that I can’t hope to compete with.  

So I’ll just concentrate on Matt Gonzalez, who’s so obscure he’s beneath Katha’s radar. Last week a friend sent me an opus which Gonzalez had crafted which purported to expose the real Barack Obama. The bottom line: “The principal conclusion I draw about ‘change’ and Barack Obama is that Obama needs to change his voting habits and stop pandering to win votes. If he does this he might someday make a decent candidate who could earn my support.” Well, whoop-de-do.  

This just in: Winning votes is what government’s all about. This includes winning votes in primaries, general elections and in legislatures. If a bolt of lightning struck down all other candidates and Ralph Nader was only one left standing and became president, it wouldn’t make a dime’s worth of difference if he couldn’t win votes in the Senate and Congress for his oh-so-pure political positions. But of course he’d have Matt Gonzalez’s vote. 

The reason Matt Gonzalez is not mayor of San Francisco today is that he wasn’t willing to do what it took to earn enough votes. And rather than facing this reality and trying again, he took his marbles and went home. Like Achilles in the Trojan War, he preferred to sulk in his tent rather than enter the fray by running again. And now he’s back on the field, but in a sham battle where he’s guaranteed to lose everything but his political virginity. 

His “arguments” against Obama, which he disingenuously suckered BeyondChron.org into publishing the day before announcing his own candidacy, are thin at best, based on characterizing this or that Obama vote as “wrong” without giving the whole background. They’re like the arguments a lawyer might make in court where his job is to represent one and only one side in a contest.  

In the real world outside a courtroom everything’s not black or white (even Barack Obama). Shades of grey (or brown) are much more prevalent. The only Gonzalez charge which had a bit of traction with me was Obama’s reported support of the smarmy and odious Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, but I bet there’s more to the story even there. 

And that’s really not the point. We’ve all learned since 2000, if we didn’t know it before, that a determined Republican president embodying all the horrifying Republican ideological baggage can wreak havoc which even the most venal of Democrats never dreamed of. For all the mistakes that the Clintons and their New Democrat cohorts made, they didn’t concoct the Patriot Act. They didn’t imprison thousands of people at Guantanamo without habeas corpus. They’ve generally defended abortion rights, and mostly supported some sort of affirmative action. Most of them are now going for some kind of government-sponsored health care, even if it’s too little too late. 

Are they all we’d like them to be? No, of course not. But saying that you can’t tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans, or that it won’t make any difference if John McCain is the next president instead of Clinton or Obama, is just plain silly. The laws of probability haven’t been repealed—it’s highly and demonstrably probable that another Republican president will make things even worse than they already are. 

There are at least three kinds of voters, and maybe more. People are supposed to vote for the person they think could do the job best, and many do this. Others, a bit more sophisticated, vote for the person who could do a good or at least adequate job, AND has a chance of winning.  

As I used to tell programmers who worked for me, the best is the enemy of the good. If you hold out for perfection, you’ll never finish any job. Often second-best is better. 

The worst kind of voter is the one who regards voting as a sacramental act or a form of self-expression. They devote all of their energy to trying to figure out which candidate represents the real “me.” Each vote is a new and intriguing experiment for these people.  

Such experiments are like dropping a brick and wondering whether or not it will float away in the air. Guess what—much of the time when you drop a brick it will land on your foot, and until the law of gravity is repealed it will always go down, not up.  

If too many people vote for Republicans, things are bound to get worse. If enough of them vote for a Democrat, things just might get a bit better.  

 


Editorial: How to Live Forever

By Becky O'Malley
Tuesday March 04, 2008

When I heard last week from Ruth Rosen that Barbara Seaman had died at 72, an age that now seems much too young to me, I looked on the Internet for the many obituary reminiscences about her which I was sure to find. They were all there, some in the kind of prestigious papers that had once dismissed her work for women’s health in the most patronizing way. But the one that rang truest was on a blog devoted to feminist concerns written by Jennifer Baumgardner: “Thinking about Barbara, I realize that she was a one-woman social networking site. She remembered everyone she had ever met and tried to connect them with everybody else she had ever met. She recalled where you were from, whom you dated, your health problems, and your writings or accomplishments and then she introduced you to people you should know.” That was Barbara, all right, and I thought my experience with her was unique. It seems that she did it for everyone. 

Baumgardner met Barbara in 1993—I knew her in the early 80s. Her books about the dangers of the hormones then being prescribed for any and all women’s ailments were pathbreaking, but her longest-living contribution may well be the way she served as a mentor and role model for generations of women who went on to do all sorts of useful and sometimes wonderful things.  

I knew her at the time I was trying to run something called the Project on Science and Technology within the Center for Investigative Reporting. Reporting on women’s issues in that time and place was an uphill battle (as it still is) and I needed all the support and encouragement I could get. Long-distance and in person, Barbara bucked me up when the going got tough, and gave me many valuable tips. My memory, now failing, is that I stayed with her when I went to New York City, but perhaps she just fed me and took me to amazing parties with famous people and introduced me to agents. Under her tutelage, I did a piece for The Nation on corporate marketing of hormones to women, a topic that still has legs twenty-five years later. 

Soon thereafter, life circumstances required me to take a 20-year break from journalism, and when I got the chance to take it up again I’d lost touch with Barbara. What I do remember learning from her is that it’s not just what you do yourself, but what you make possible for others to do that adds up in the end.  

Lately several old friends have died, and others are battling serious illnesses. It’s cause for reflection on that elusive question: What’s the meaning of life? A metaphor sometimes uses by ecologists comes to mind, the web of life. In a loose sense it represents the interconnectness and also the evolution of all living beings.  

The idea can even be expressed in crass business jargon: It’s not about product, it’s about process. Journalism, particularly newspaper journalism, produces mainly ephemera, defined by the invaluable Wikipedia as “transitory written and printed matter, not intended to be retained or preserved. The word derives from the Greek, meaning things lasting no more than a day.” Books last longer, but eventually almost all words, on paper or digitized, will blow away. But the idea that what happens to ordinary people is important, that it should be taken seriously and chronicled as well as possible, is what I learned from Barbara Seaman’s life and hope to pass on. 

Case in point: The pieces the Planet’s been doing about allegations of inappropriate treatment of special education students by an administrator in a Berkeley public school have created understandable anguish in school circles. A parent called to say that she was afraid the stories would worry parents of 5th graders who might be going to Willard Middle School in the fall. Our story quoted Willard’s principal:“We all want to ensure we represent the Willard community in a positive light.”  

Well, no. That’s not the press’s job. 

Parents have the right to know everything that might be going on in the schools to which they entrust their precious children, the bad news as well as the good. We were enormously impressed by the tenacity and dedication of the two African-American mothers of special education students who showed up at the Planet office with detailed files on what they believed was prejudiced and unfair treatment of their kids. We felt that it was our duty to give their charges a thorough airing, particularly because Berkeley Unified School District officials seem to have ignored their complaints, some filed almost a year ago. 

It now appears that the district will take some long-overdue action toward removing the vice-principal in question from contact with kids pending investigation, but that may not be enough. The public deserves, and we will continue to demand, a full accounting of how this and similar cases have been handled. Even if it makes some people uncomfortable. 

In a recent Nation Victor Navasky, who was editor when I wrote for the magazine, reviewed a recent book by Anthony Lewis, a reporter who has specialized in constitutional issues, whose law school seminar on the First Amendment and the press I had the privilege of attending long ago. Navasky said that “Lewis urges the press to follow the injunction of the British columnist Bernard Levin of The Times of London, who in the 1980s dismissed the idea that the press’s obligation was to be ‘responsible’ (in the English sense of commitment to the ideas and assumptions of the ruling class). “The press,’ he wrote, ‘has no duty to be responsible at all, and it will be an ill day for freedom if it should ever acquire one.... We are and must remain vagabonds and outlaws’—we must continue ‘the pursuit of knowledge that others would like unpursued and the making of comments that others would prefer unmade.’ ”  

It’s a sentiment that Barbara Seamen would have agreed with. It’s an attitude she worked all her life to nurture in those who survive her and who hope to be considered her heirs. There are a lot of us. 

 


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Friday March 07, 2008

PESTICIDE SPRAYING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Three years ago some of us tried in vain to stop the spraying of a herbicide in the Oakland parks. Now some of us are wondering what happened to all the bees? On top of said ongoing herbicide spraying, there is now a proposed aerial pesticide spraying in the San Francisco Bay Area this summer which will continue over the next five years. Who can predict the cumulative effects this will have on our environment? How much more damage can we cause our denizens of nature? Not to mention ourselves and our loved ones? Thank you Berkeley City Council for taking steps to prevent spraying the Checkmate pesticide over our cities this summer. 

Tori Thompson 

Oakland 

 

• 

TOM BATES SPORTS COMPLEX 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Can anyone tell me what is going on with building and naming a sports complex after Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates?  

Is any of the construction being done with Berkeley and/or state monies? If so, what exactly? I have yet to read in your paper anything about the Tom Bates Sports Complex. Why? 

It is located at the southwest corner of Gilman Street and Frontage Road. 

Lisa Robyns 

 

• 

SOVIET PLANNING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Soviet Planning 

Hope to God I never live in a city which has Janet Shih as a city planner. Her assertion that BRT “forcing people out of their cars” would be worth it in the long run scares the hell out of me. So does the comment that people will become frustrated “but then eventually submit, abandon their cars and use AC transit.” Ms. Shih, this is America and the people tell the planners what they want. The planners are servants, not masters. What you describe is good old fashioned Soviet Russia. And boy did that system work well! 

Frank Greenspan 

 

• 

WRONG DATES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I fear your columnist, Bob Burnett, has his dates badly confused in Tuesday’s “The Great Debate of 2008.” First, the Great Depression is not generally thought to have occurred in 1928. Secondly, Franklin D. did not challenge Hoover that year; FDR ran for (and won) governor of New York. Hoover’s opponent was Alfred Smith, the first Catholic to head the ticket of a major party for president. 

Now, that might be an interesting theme in this year of the “first” woman, the “first” black (with due respect to the memory of Shirley Chisholm). As a minor penance, perhaps Mr. Burnett might read Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith by Robert A. Slayton (The Free Press, 2001). 

John McBride 

 

• 

FREE SPEECH ZONE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We already have a “free speech zone.” It is called the United States of America. London has the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner because Great Britain lacks the rights we have in this country. Rights are like muscles—exercise them or you’ll lose them! 

Holly Harwood 

Richmond 

 

• 

OBJECTIVE CARTOONING? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was shocked by the recent cartoons in your paper about Hillary Clinton. None of her opponents in the Democratic primaries had stooped to the level of DeFreitas. Only ultra-conservative Republicans are holding her responsible for the actions of President Clinton. For instance, what did she have to do with the tragedy in Rwanda? Like Eleanor Roosevelt, she was an active first lady interested in universal health coverage, children education and women’s rights. For the past seven years, she has been a very active and well regarded member of the U.S. Senate by the majority of her colleagues. Anybody caricaturing Barack Obama as DeFreitas is doing for Hillary Clinton would probably be called racist. Maybe DeFreitas is not sexist but, as associate editor of the Berkeley Daily Planet, he does not appear to me to be very objective.  

Gilbert Melese 

Emeryville 

 

• 

ISRAEL-PALESTINE CARTOON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. De Freitas’ March 3 cartoon is worth more than a thousand words. It depicts the status of the resilient and brave Palestinian people under the immoral Israeli occupation ably abetted by U.S. arms and our taxpayer dollars. 

Thank you. 

Andrew and  

Marina Pizzamiglio-Gutierrez 

Kensington 

 

• 

BOYCOTT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

While Becky O’Malley’s Feb. 29 editorial dismisses boycott threats, there are reports (in other papers) that Berkeley businesses are feeling some repercussion from the USMC fiasco. Whether this results from boycott action or, as O’Malley suggests, just from aversion to the general congestion and clamor surrounding the issue, we can only hope, when municipal elections next come around, that our business leaders and the Chamber of Commerce will stop sitting on the sidelines of Berkeley’s political circus and will combine their funds and advertising talents to rid us of the grandstanding cranks and crones who make up much of the City Council and replace them with rational citizens who will address Berkeley’s deteriorating economy and infrastructure. 

Jerry Landis 

 

 

• 

ICELAND STIMULUS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Iceland…heaven on earth…a great place to chill! 

For those who can, please give at least half of your $600 government bonus check to Save Iceland so we can get the party (re)started! 

Wendy Schlesinger 

 

• 

CHAVEZ’S FOOTPRINT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to respond to the commentary in the March 3-6 edition of the Berkeley Daily Planet, “Must We Stamp His Footprint into Nature to Remember Cesar Chavez?” I have been a Berkeley waterfront commissioner during all of the discussions of the off-leash area for dogs and the Solar Calendar/Cesar Chavez Memorial. For both of these proposals there was a great deal of public input that reflected a division of opinion between leaving things pretty much as they are or making changes seen by some as an “intrusion on nature.” The off-leash dog area the writer of the commentary now enjoys was opposed by many as vigorously as the writer now opposes the Solar Calendar/Cesar Chavez Memorial. It has been my experience that people on both sides of this ongoing debate between leaving things pretty much alone for the benefit of the flora and fauna or development for the primary benefit of human beings have perfectly valid opinions. It’s not that there’s a correct position; it is that each of us has an opinion based on our life’s experiences and an evaluation of the impact of the proposed change. I have supported both the off-leash area for dogs and the Solar Calendar/Cesar Chavez Memorial because all things considered, I thought they were the best use of the land. Not everyone is thrilled with the off-leash dog area as the appropriate use of the land, but, all things consider, it has worked out pretty well. (I’m not thrilled with how restricted access is to Eastshore State Park Meadow, but my point of view didn’t prevail in this instance.) In my opinion, the Solar Calendar/Cesar Chavez Memorial will be a wonderful cultural, educational, scientific, and aesthetic addition to Cesar Chavez Park that will add to the visitor’s experience of coming to the spectacular Berkeley Waterfront. I think we are most fortunate in Berkeley to have a dedicated group of citizens putting in the time and effort necessary to make this vision a reality. 

Brad Smith 

 

• 

TOLERANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Alesia Kunz is put out because nobody consulted her before engraving the words Hope, Courage, Tolerance and Determination on rocks surrounding a solar calendar on the top of the old Berkeley dump, now named Cesar Chavez Park. She thinks his spirit would be better served if we left nature alone. 

Frankly my dear, Cesar Chavez wouldn’t give a damn. He would be too busy organizing the jornaleros who stand on Hearst Street in all weather with Hope to find work and with little leverage to demand a fair wage and rest breaks. Chavez would wonder at the contrast between the Courage of these men and the leisure of shoppers on nearby Fourth Street. He would reckon that the cash a laborer earns in a day of backbreaking work, if he is lucky enough to get picked up, is less than an item on sale in the trendy stores. 

Chavez would wonder why a city known for its Tolerance hasn’t done more to fix acceptable standards for wages and working conditions for the jornaleros. 

If you need help, the Multicultural Institute has a website where you can apply for a laborer who has Determination to do a good job. The going wage is $12-15 an hour. 

Toni Mester 

 

• 

NEO-STONEHENGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Each year, at the approach of spring, there are two events that I look forwards to. 

First, is the high-noon ringing of the Peace Bell at City Hall—part of a global celebration of the Vernal Equinox—and walking up the hill at the Chavez Memorial to gather ‘round the neo-Stonehenge sundial and marvel as the sun and moon dip and rise simultaneously—a celestial curtsy to the planet’s dance. 

Gar Smith 

 

 

• 

CHAVEZ SOLAR CALENDAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In 2002 when I moved to Berkeley from Southern California, I was delighted to discover the waterfront park, but even more thrilled to stumble upon the solar calendar on a hill top. A dump transformed into a public park and a circle of stones honoring the sun and four directions?! Too good, and I praised the City of Berkeley. I also went online to learn more about the solar calendar. For some reason, unlike your March 4 opinion writer, Alesia Kunz, I didn’t find it difficult to get information, nor to be informed about upcoming meetings, which I attended, regarding the development of the monument. I stood in favor of allowing the solar calendar to become a permanent feature of the park. 

If it had been up to me, I would have left it as it was in 2002: boulders, small enclosing mounds, central stone. I would have left off the didactic words, let go the ties to a specific man. But this was a community effort and I would rather have the solar monument with qualifications than no calendar at all. 

The relationship of the sun to the earth is the primary relationship of life as we know it. To stand on a hill top and know where you stand in relation to the greater cosmos is the function of such a site, and sites like it created by humble humans throughout the ages in all cultures. It is an awe-inspiring experience made possible by thoughtful placement of markers in space and time. Nature is not willy-nilly. It has form and structure and exactitude. Yes, you can set your clock to its rhythms. The solar calendar atop Cesar Chavez park is a sacred spot, and even though I no longer live in Berkeley, I still travel to this circle on the solstices and equinoxes, to honor the forces of forces of life, forces far greater than myself. 

Carolyn Radlo 

 

 

• 

SOLAR CALENDAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Alesia Kunz commentary and the Solar Project at Cedar Chavez Park: Ms Kunz has really missed the point of the solar calendar at Cesar Chavez park. My friends and I hardly see the solar calendar as “stomping on nature,” To say, as Ms Kunz does, that these rocks lay like tombstones crowding out the natural world seems a sorry characterization. 

This is a special place indeed, visited by many and for many different reasons. I have attended several of the informal gatherings held there at sunset on special days of the year and since I was born on the autumnal equinox a visit to that spot on the hill has been a regular part of my birthday celebration for years. 

Despite the fact that it was built on a dumping ground for garbage, this is a unique and beautiful park with a stunning view of the glorious Bay Area. The addition of the solar calendar does not diminish this place but truly enhances it. The careful placement of stones aligned to mark the movement of our planet around the sun celebrates awareness, spiritual connection, and human intelligence. 

I for one, am grateful for Santiago Casal and the other tireless volunteer citizens who have taken the time to “attend those meetings” necessary to carry forth a sustained vision. This is a simple yet meaningful tribute that can be enjoyed by those who visit the area intentionally or just happen to stumble upon it by accident. The solar calendar is not complete nor even permanent. Perhaps more Berkeley residents will come forward and support the full vision of a lasting monument that honors Mr. Chavez and encourages all visitors through tolerance, courage, hope and determination to be reminded of our place in the solar system. 

Claudia Smukler 

 

• 

BRT AND THE EIR PROCESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A recent letter claims that Berkeley should not implement Bus Rapid Transit because the city already has such a shortage of parking that it cannot afford to lose more spaces. In fact, where there is a shortage of parking, AC Transit will replace parking lost to BRT. 

To confirm this fact, I contacted Jim Cunradi, AC Transit’s lead BRT planner, who said I could use this quotation from him in the Daily Planet: “In locations where BRT creates a deficit so that demand exceeds supply, we will replace lost parking.” 

Some opponents of BRT have been quoting the draft EIR to support their claim that BRT will not replace parking. But the draft EIR, as its name implies, is just a first draft, which is used to get public comments about issues that should be analyzed in the final EIR. Apparently, AC Transit learned from the comments on the DEIR that people consider loss of parking an important issue, and so the fina EIR will have plans to replace parking. 

Now that BRT is going to the Planning Commission, it is important that we understand the EIR process. The draft EIR is used to get public comments, so the final EIR can deal with problems that the public identifies. 

In its comments on the draft EIR, the Planning Commission must choose a preferred alternative for the three corridors where the DEIR provides multiple alternatives: the Telegraph/Dana corridor, the Bancroft/Durant corridor, and downtown. When Berkeley decides on its preferred alternative for each of these three corridors, AC Transit will know the exact locations where BRT would impact parking, intersections, and neighborhood streets, so it can mitigate these impacts. 

Unfortunately, some of the most extreme opponents of BRT want the Planning Commission to kill the project immediately, based on the DEIR, without even choosing a preferred alternative for AC Transit to analyze in the final EIR. They want us to make the decision about BRT before we have the facts about its impacts. They remind me of the trial in Alice in Wonderland, where the Red Queen wants to decide on the sentence and the verdict before she hears the evidence. The Planning Commission should not let them sabotage the EIR process. 

Charles Siegel 

 

• 

POLICING POLICIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Judith Scherr in her article “Chief Wants Better Policing-New Taxes” describes a new policing concept called POP. This POP concept was proposed to the City Council at its meeting of Feb. 26 by the chief and a consultant from the Center for Problem Solving Policing, a non-profit organization, as something new. 

Community-Oriented Policing (COP) has been an accepted police practice and term for at least the last 15 years. Under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 the U.S. Department of Justice has provided 11.3 billion to local law enforcement agencies for COP programs. 

The Berkeley Police Department under former Chiefs Nelson, Butler and Meisner had adopted the COP concept widely. Let me just mention a few programs: Foot patrols and bicycle patrols in the business district (including Telegraph); a joint Berkeley-UC Berkeley police task force for Telegraph Avenue alone; School Resource officers at three middle and one high school; a crime analysis unit; four area coordinators; an active Neighborhood Watch program; a dedicated Police Activities League (PAL) officer working with youth; the Billy Booster robot delivering safety messages to kids; security surveys for private homes and businesses. Emphasis was placed on prevention. 

Does the Police Department really think that changing one letter alone (from COP to POP) will solve any problem? You don’t need an expert from San Diego telling us what Community-Oriented Policing really is all about. We have these resources right here in our town.  

Another example of re-inventing the wheel are the Berkeley Guides, another program that fits the COP concept. 

In 1995 eight new social service agencies including the Berkeley Guides were funded under Measure O. The purpose of these new programs was to provide comprehensive services to homeless people. The Berkeley Guides provided excellent services from 1995 until their funding was cut in 2006.  

Now the “Public Commons for Everyone Initiative” calls for a new program called “Berkeley Host Program,” at a cost of $200,000. This new program is asked to deal with “problematic street behavior,” exactly the same wording that was used when the city hired the Berkeley Guides in 1995. Why establish a new program, which has no experience, when there is a program in Berkeley, which has 11 years experience? Where is the logic in this? 

Ove M. Wittstock 

 

• 

KLEERCUT CONCERNS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Today I was informed at a UC Berkeley event about a very important issue concerning the deforestation of our last remaining ancient forests. Right now there are only 20 percent of these forests left on our earth, a majority of which can be found in the Boreal forest of Northern Canada. The Boreal is being clear-cut at an alarming rate. To be exact, about one football field worth of old growth forest is lost every two seconds. The loss of these forests not only destroys the homes of thousands of plant and animal species, but also is a huge factor in creating global warming, causing much strain on earth’s fragile eco-system. 

After being exposed to Greenpeace’s Kleercut Campaign at Cal Berkeley, it has come to my attention that a huge contributor to this deforestation is the Kimberly-Clark Company. Greenpeace has blatantly been exposing the environmental abuses of this company to educate consumers in order to push for more sustainable forest practices. Kimberley-Clark, most widely recognized as the maker of the Kleenex brand, is the largest tissue producer in the world. Eighty percent of the fiber in most of Kimberley-Clark’s products is virgin fiber. For the Kleenex Brand, that statistic is 100 percent! 

Why are we letting companies like Kimberley-Clark destroy these irreplaceable forests to make disposable products? We are consumers and it is up to us to spread awareness and put pressure upon these companies for change. There are many ways Kimberly Clark can begin to change their practices, and it is crucial they start now before it is too late. They can first and foremost, stop clear cutting ancient forests. Also they should definitely use more recycled content, enough to meet EPA standards. By taking such steps Kimberly-Clark may be able to convert from environmental destroyer, into a new leader in the sustainable forest product movement. 

Kira Hebert 

 

• 

THE RED TELEPHONE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The following is an excerpt from a recent (fictitious) interview about foreign policy experience. 

Reporter: Thank you for joining us today, Ma’am. 

Interviewee: It’s my pleasure, as always. 

Reporter: There has been a lot of interest lately in the foreign policy experience of the candidates. Have you seen the ad that features the White House crisis line, or Red Telephone, and suggests that Senator Obama does not have the experience needed to deal with a crisis? 

Interviewee: Yes, I have. It certainly seemed to be quite effective. 

Reporter: In your time as First Lady of the United States did you see that special Red Phone? 

Interviewee: Yes, the Oval Office has one, of course, and also the White House residential quarters. 

Reporter: In general, Ma’am, who would use that phone? 

Interviewee: Oh, only the President. No one else was supposed to touch it. 

Reporter: Did you have your own phone? 

Interviewee: Yes, I did, in the Executive Residence. It wasn’t red of course, just a nice Princess phone for my calls. 

Reporter: So, you never answered the special Red Phone? 

Interviewee: Well, actually I did, just once. The President was not there and I thought it might be important. 

Reporter: Whom did you speak to? 

Interviewee: Well, they refused to tell me who they were and said to just, please, get the President. So, I went and got him. 

Reporter: What did you say to the President about the call? 

Interviewee: I said, “George, dear, it’s for you.” 

Reporter: Did you ever find out what the call was about? 

Interviewee: Yes, later the President told me that it was one of our people doing a check to see if the line was working OK. 

Reporter: When your husband was Governor and you were First Lady of the state, was there a Red Phone for him? 

Interviewee: No, indeed. That’s a rather silly idea actually. A little state like that doesn’t need a special Red Phone. 

Reporter: Well, thank you for your time, Ma’am. We appreciate speaking with you. 

Follow-up: Since this (fictitious) interview originally aired, we have heard that one of the candidates is considering a new Red Phone ad. 

The new ad is simply a large still photo of a Red Phone on a dark-colored desk in the Oval Office. Towards the bottom of the photo in large white letters are the words: “George, Dear, It’s For You.” 

Brad Belden 

 

• 

A PERSONAL  

CLIMATE ACTION PLAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Berkeley Climate Action Plan (CAP) is inspiring me to implement a personal CAP. I’m keeping my “vampire circuits” unplugged: for example, I no longer leave the charger transformer plugged in when not charging my cell phone. I turn down the thermostat and turn off the computer when I’m gone for any length of time. I’ve installed some compact fluorescent lamps (CFL). I’m thinking about cutting back the time I spend in the shower. A while back, the management of my apartment building made sure all residents have restricted-flow shower heads. 

Long before the CAP, I was riding buses and BART for most of my trips within the Bay Area. Today, as a senior citizen, I buy a $20 monthly sticker for my bus pass and get most places by bus. I think my transit riding is the most effective component of my personal CAP. 

But I am concerned that my CAP effort may turn out to be foolish and ineffective, because too many of my fellow Berkeley residents are big on CFLs and shower nozzles but reluctant to ride a bus—even the supposedly more attractive Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Some letters to the Planet say that BRT should not cause any inconvenience to car driving—no dedicated bus lane or any loss of parking spaces. This attitude is inconsistent, because the purpose of BRT is to make bus riding more attractive than car driving. To achieve that goal, BRT simply has to do things which make life inconvenient for the car drivers. 

Has there ever been a Planet letter from a Berkeley resident who now drives, but plans to use the BRT to commute to work? BRT letters I’ve seen are either from people who already ride transit or from the people who can’t abide cars making any room for better bus service. 

I’m not sure if Planet letters are a good measure of local public opinion, but if the lack of letters from potential BRT-riders really indicates that most current drivers will avoid BRT, I might as well forget about my personal CAP. My bus riding will be canceled out by the GHG spewed by all those dogged drivers. A few car trips is all it takes to cancel out the efforts of people who eliminate vampire circuits, or deploy CFLs or curtail shower time. 

As I see it, item one on Berkeley’s Climate Action Plan should be to make sure we get BRT deployed and get plenty of people to ride it. The rest of the CAP isn’t very important. 

Steve Geller 

 

• 

COMPARING COSTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

So, the city spent $93,000 and change for the privilege of permitting the Code Pink bullhorns to blast away, and the ensuing confrontations involving added police. His rationalization for this expenditure is that it was a good price to pay for the national exposure it gives Berkeley for being against the war in Iraq. I have just one question for Mr. Bates: How many potholes can you fix with $93,000? 

Tim Cannon 

 

• 

BREAKING THE LAW ON CAMPUS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

When I signed up for a Lifelong Learning Class at UC, it was scheduled to be help in the Berkeley Art Museum Theater, a location which is available to me and others like me who have walking problems. However, the class was deemed too large for that site, and it was moved to the Pacific Film Archive Theater, which does not have handicapped access. 

At the first class meeting at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday, I parked my car in the garage at Telegraph and Durant, knowing there would be no affordable parking closer to the theater—even for those like me with handicapped placards. 

Arriving at the stairs to the theater, I searched for a ramp or elevator, but there was none, so I wheeled my walker around the three long blocks to the entrance on the upper level. A few cars were parked up there in spaces designated “Reserved.” Taking the bus would not have helped with the stairs problem. 

By the fourth class, when it had started raining, I was getting very tired of that (for me) long painful walk dodging oblivious students. So I asked the woman in charge of the Lifelong Learning class if she thought I could park just outside the theater entrance, across from there a few other cars were parked. I would display my handicapped placard and this woman thought that would be fine, and promised to put a Pacific Film Archive notice on the windshield and keep an eye on my car. 

When I came out of the class two hours later, however, I had a yellow citation between the blue placard and the PFA sign. The citation from the campus police stated that I had parked in an “unmarked space” and that I owed them $40. 

The theater manager was very sympathetic, promised to call and e-mail the campus police for me, but warned that the university police are implacable about their rules. She stated that the theater has asked repeatedly for a ramp up from the street and a couple of parking spots for handicapped, but has been refused every time. After I pled my case to the appeal officer at Campus Citations, she excused me from paying the fine “in the interest of justice and courtesy” but warned me three times never to park illegally again. 

How is it that the University of California is exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act at this theater? I want an explanation. 

Rosalie Dwyer 

 

• 

PHONIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If there were any Christians in America, they wouldn’t have let the cities go downhill. 

This country is as phony as a $3 bill. Americans are mostly indifferent to each other, and don’t want to know anything. 

Funds for education and social services should be increased, not cut, especially in California. 

John Madonna 

Oakland 

 

• 

PROPERTY TRADE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Parks can be fenced in to generate income for the city drained by Bush spending; start with Milvia-MLK City Hall park where lunchers from the high school crowd out others. A single entrance at the center of the north fence would decrease damage to grass by excess user access. Two dollars per hour should help the City of Berkeley pay for needed services and repairs city-wide. 

The capitalist, industrialist Republicans’ rising sea level may force the 80-880 freeways to be rebuilt further eastward, inland. The City of Berkeley can begin to plan now for changes in the shoreline of coming decades. Will the West Campus school property be demolished for such a needed relocated freeway? Should Berkeley spend millions to move the warm pool there with an expensive new building if it will be demolished in coming decades? 

Berkeley could easily take over janitorial and maintenance and maybe even new construction of/on school property, freeing BUSD to focus on education rather than contracts and construction. BUSD can only afford half the janitors required by the state. 

BUSD and the City of Berkeley could trade property so the city can remodel the warm pool without endless interference and meddling by the district. Ten thousand square feet for the warm pool, existing, to remain as is, to the city for the same area from the city hall park, fenced in for student lunchers, should be a fair trade. Say 10-15 thousand square feet to be safe, fair and balanced. 

Terry Cochrell 

 

• 

TAX FOOLISHNESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Since a budget requires a two-thirds legislative majority and the Republicans refuse to agree to any tax increase, they are basically holding the state of California hostage. How can our state provide services if the Republicans prevent the taxpayers from paying for these services? With inflation, which is always present, the cost of government must go up. With the constant increase in state population, more state funded services are necessary. How can we continue to pay for vital state services such as education, police and fire protection, road repair and construction, all necessary infrastructure, the court systems, the national guard, California Highway Patrol, etc. without a state tax increase?  

What on earth are the Republicans thinking of when they bury their heads in the sand and keep repeating the mantra, no tax increases? 

Let’s face reality and fund this state in a quality manner. Being cheap and deferring the acquisition of needed funds only costs us far more in the future. If one defers maintenance on your house, it costs far more in the future to make up for the deferred maintenance. The same simple guideline applies to state assets and infrastructure. It also applies to hiring and keeping employed the highest qualified employees at all levels of government. 

If the Republicans continue to refuse to face economic reality, I suggest the state withdraw state services from those Republicans’ districts. The party in power can dictate where state offices and services are located. In other words, close their courthouses, remove their DMV offices, don’t fund their schools, don’t repair their roads. If they have to drive further to obtain state services, too bad. If there are not enough funds to go around, only spend those funds in districts whose representatives support funding the state’s services. If a district starts to receive decreased state funding and services, maybe that district’s constituents will wise up and vote for a state representative who truly has their interests at heart. If you want services, it costs to have those services. If your district’s elected representative is unwilling to vote to pay for state services, your district should suffer the repercussions. 

When I was a student at UCLA, both undergraduate and law school, there was no tuition. Higher education was free. The taxpayers of this state valued education and made it affordable to me and others like me who came from economically poor families. The state tax rate was at least 2 to 4 percent higher than it is at present. If we fund our K-12 schools, universities and state colleges at a quality level, the state will actually realize more tax income from higher earning individuals, and more competitive businesses.  

A simple state tax rate increase would get rid of any deficit. Since income taxes are progressive, what difference does it make to wealthy individuals if some of their money actually goes to creating and maintaining a quality state. How many toys, cars, yachts, and homes do they need? Talk about greed. Let’s start looking out for our fellow human beings. Everybody’s lives, including small minded don’t tax us Republicans, become improved and enriched by making California a quality environment for all of us.  

Paul M. Schwartz 

 

• 

GAY WEDDINGS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve been to lots and lots of weddings through the years; none of them solemn, all of them gay. Why then suddenly are nasty, mean-hearted people objecting to gay marriages?  

Roseanne Roseannadanna  

aka Robert Blau 

 

• 

NORTH BERKELEY  

SENIOR CENTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As a self-ordained one-woman Chamber of Commerce seeking recognition and promotion of Berkeley’s finer institutions, I point with admiration to the North Berkeley Senior Center, located at 1901 Hearst Ave. Opening in late April, 1979, this striking redwood building (which garnered several Architectural Awards), constructed with $1.13 million in federal funds, has provided seniors with low-cost lunches, free local transportation, legal advice and classes in a wide range of subjects—Spanish Conversation, T’ai Chi, Parkinson’s Exercises, Drama Workshops, World Art History, Living Philosophers, tap dancing—the list goes on and on. 

While the daily noon lunch program offers no threat to Alice Waters or Wolfgang Puck, the meals are wholesome, nutritious and easy on limited budgets. More important than the menu itself is the friendly, light-hearted ambiance in the large dining room, where people meet and socialize before going off to class. 

Another notable attraction offered by the center are the eagerly awaited day trips to art museums in San Francisco at a minimal cost—$1 for van transportation. In the March list of events, trips are featured at the DeYoung Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Legion of Honor, and, perhaps most exciting of all, the Cantor Art Museum in Palo Alto! What a glorious opportunity this affords seniors with limited incomes to absorb the rich culture on display in these marvelous museums. (This past Tuesday, for example, they viewed the amazing Annie Leibovitz photography exhibit, “A Photographer’s Life,” at the Legion of Honor, followed by lunch in the lively, sunny cafe.) 

Among the more practical, but equally valued service, are the trips to Berkeley Bowl, Trader Joe’s, Cosco, and Safeway, where seniors can load up on groceries and heavy household items, therefore not be dependent on buses and taxis for their weekly shopping. 

Mention should be made of other Berkeley Senior Centers—the South Berkeley and West Berkeley Centers who offer their own very stimulating programs. I personally have not availed myself of these programs because the Centers are not in my area. 

In summing up the wide-ranging benefits offered by the North Berkeley Senior Center under the able direction of Patricia Thomas, I can only say that this wonderful building extends to hundreds of seniors a warm, inviting, almost home-like atmosphere. You sense that warmth and intimacy the moment you step through the front door. This may sound like a wildly exaggerated description, but for the thousands of seniors who have enjoyed the North Berkeley Senior Center over the past decades, it might very well be thought of as a Treasure Palace! 

Dorothy Snodgrass 


Commentary: Barack and Hillary Vs. King Crab

By Winston Burton
Friday March 07, 2008

I agree with J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s (does he have a shorter name ?) recent column that progressives are left with an embarrassment of riches—two credible, serious candidates, either of whom would be a good choice for president. We are in a win-win position having two Democrats running for office against an opponent, John McCain, who has little or nothing compelling, professionally or personally, that would make someone vote for him besides his service in Vietnam. What might derail a Democratic victory would be unfair and untrue attacks on the part of the candidates and the unspoken competition that exists between different classes and groups in our society.  

A current example of this may be the overwhelming support from the Hispanic/Latino community for Hillary Clinton, which may actually reflect not their love for Hillary, but that the Hispanic community finds it difficult to support an African American for president. On the other side, the African American community, which has come out strongly in support of Barack Obama, were not avid supporters of Antonio Villaraigosa in his mayoral victory in Los Angeles. One would think that so-called minorities and similarly oppressed people would support each other more, but actually and historically this is not the case. It’s not the type of animosity that is exhibited in racial hatred where various groups are depicted as subhuman or unfit to rule. We find it OK to hang with each other, and to marry each other, but not to vote for each other. It’s more of an extension of conflicts where poor people find themselves competing in the same ghettos, over the same crumbs that may fall from the table. We should realize that at this time if we unite and play our cards right, we could have not only the food, but the table and chairs that go with it. But first we have to stop pulling each other back into the bucket.  

My father used to say that you can put a bunch of crabs in a bucket without a lid and none of them will escape because once one gets close to the top another crab will pull him back in while trying to make its own escape. I’m reminded of slaves telling on one other, American Indians recruited to hunt other Indians who otherwise were untrackable, and the early conflicts between the Irish and Italians in America. 

I’m hoping that, even if our favored Democratic candidate doesn’t emerge victorious in the primaries we will still come out to vote against the Republican challenger. I can’t believe that disgruntled African Americans, Independents, or Hispanics would vote for McCain, but they might stay home. Or would they be tempted to vote for Ralph Nader who cost Al Gore the election? The King Crab has emerged from the past to try once again to keep his brothers and sisters in the bucket. Please! If you are someone who thinks that Nader is a viable candidate or that McCain is our future, stay home, or better still, wake up and repeat after me: Si, si puede! — Yes we can! Vote for change! I’m not sure if we’ve turned the corner on gender and race relations in America, but I think I can see the intersection, if we can only boost one another out of the bucket. 

 

Winston Burton is a Berkeley resident. 


Commentary: An Update on Nutrition, Gardens and Compost

By Beebo Turman
Friday March 07, 2008

March is “National Nutrition Month” in our schools. The city of Berkeley has long been committed to fitness and nutrition education as chronic disease prevention, and in September the council members kicked off a nine-month campaign to engage the community with their goals, calling it “Be Fit Berkeley.” For the past six years a group of gardeners, Farmers’ Market people, school nutrition advocates, and city staff have met to coordinate various nutrition-education activities. March 8, this Saturday, will be “Be Fit Berkeley Day!” with health screening activities at the Farmers’ Market. Later this month there will be cooking demonstrations at the Tuesday Markets with Kirk Lumpkin, as well as a special Berkeley High School lunch event on March 20th. Certain schools with grants from “Network for a Healthy California” will have events at their schools; for instance Malcolm X will have a Health Fair, LeConte will have a Spring Fair, and there will be mini-farmers’ markets at John Muir, Emerson, and Rosa Parks. Since I am a garden advocate (I run the “Berkeley Community Gardening Collaborative”) I want to encourage people to grow their own vegetables, and one way to help gardeners out is to give away city compost on Sat. March 29 at the Farmers’ Market (bring two buckets or one large bag). 

Where does this compost come from, and why are we giving it away? It comes from our green carts. Grover Landscaping Company in Modesto, takes our plant debris (and now our kitchen scraps), and grinds it, screens it, piles it in long windrows, turns it every three days, gives it a sprinkling of water, and lets the sun “cook” it into rich, fine compost in ten weeks. Ninety percent is sold to farms and ranches in the central valley, and 10 percent is given back to Berkeley to be used by the Parks Department and the school and community gardens. 

Since last September the city has begun to collect food scraps from households, in their green debris carts. People have been encouraged to put such vegetable matter as orange peels, onion skins, stale bread, even meat bones, and kitchen papers (paper towels and paper napkins) with their garden greens for pick-up once a week. Berkeley residents started participating immediately, and are already among the best in the County. As you might expect, the collection of green waste has gone up dramatically from 650 tons per month last year to 900 tons per month since the weekly program started. On average, the city is collecting over 250 tons per month more than it was six months ago, or a 40 percent increase in residential organics. Conversely, the amount of trash that the city picks up in our grey carts has gone down. On average, the city is collecting over 170 tons per month less than it did 6 months ago. When I take my cart out to the street for collection I am amazed to see only half of it filled with trash, because I have either recycled or composted so much that used to go in my cart! Every pound of food waste you compost instead of landfill reduces greenhouse gas emissions. 

We, people in the Bay Area, are very conscious of the global warming trend, and all of us try to do our part in the greening of our city, our state, and our country. It can seem overwhelming at times. Just as it can seem rather daunting to follow the current trends in nutrition advice. Michael Pollan has given us a short sentence which can help us remember what is important: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” We can buy our foods at the Farmers’ Market or other stores that have fresh, local, and mostly organic items. But an even more direct way to ensure that your family has fresh vegetables is to grow your own! And at the end of this month, come to pick up your free compost at the Farmers’ Market, to get your garden off to a great start. 

 

Beebo Turman is a Berkeley resident. 


Commentary: The Real Facts About Apple Moth Spraying

By Robert Lieber
Friday March 07, 2008

California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Secretary Kawamura’s recent dog and pony show that he has been trotting out before many city councils and commissions promoting the light brown apple moth (LBAM) aerial pesticide spraying of the Bay Area relies on blatant misrepresentations of the truth, fear-mongering and outright lies. The spray program he defends imperils California’s families, children, pets, and the environment, based on no real science and no solid facts. 

The real facts are simple. CDFA sprayed Monterey and Santa Cruz counties, and at least 643 people got sick. They reported their illnesses although the State made no infrastructure available. The state only accepted health complaints signed by a physician, but physicians were not trained to assess the toxic exposure associated with the spray. Anyone without insurance or access to a physician could not “officially” report health problems. Secretary Kawamura’s assertion that there were no adverse reactions to the spray is an outrageous bureaucratic determination, not a true health assessment. 

And that is only the beginning of the secretary’s swift-boating. He has the audacity to imply wide support for the spraying from environmental organizations. In fact, the Sierra Club is on record, along with 25 other health and environmental groups, opposing the aerial spraying. 

Make no mistake about it, the chemical used last year, Checkmate, is a pesticide despite Secretary Kawamura’s white-washing talk of harmless pheromones. The facts: Checkmate is made up of three components that have either not been tested or are known to be dangerous: 

1) The synthetic moth pheromone: not tested for long-term human exposure risk. The State’s own health Consensus Document includes a disclaimer that it is based on studies that assume the pesticide will be sprayed over unpopulated agricultural areas. 

2) The so-called inert ingredients (not inert meaning inactive; “inert” only means they do not target the pest): carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive effectors, liver toxins, skin irritants, and unsafe to inhale. 

3) The microscopic plastic capsules in which the pesticide is sprayed, which time-release over 30 days: Inhalation risk is unknown, but UC Davis scientists found some particles are small enough to be inhaled into the deep lung where they cannot be expelled. It doesn’t take a scientist to know that can’t be good. 

Secretary Kawamura focuses only on the LBAM aerial spraying, ignoring the program’s other toxic and questionable practices, including requiring wholesale nurseries to use the organophosphate pesticide chlorpyrifos, employing state personnel to install traps and use pesticides in private yards that are toxic, especially to cats, honeybees, and the beneficial predators that naturally keep pests in the environment—including LBAM—in check. 

Secretary Kawamura’s fear-mongering comments that, if left unchecked, LBAM will destroy every green plant in the state and possibly the country is contradicted by facts: Even CDFA says there has been no crop damage attributable to LBAM in California. Professional biologists testify that LBAM is a minor pest in New Zealand where it is also an introduced exotic species. New Zealand’s biggest LBAM problems are from a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) quarantine, not from actual damage. In addition, entomologists agree that LBAM has likely been in California for 10 years, so if there was going to be crop damage, wouldn’t we have seen it by now? 

So now we come to the Big Lie about the “pest that was never a pest.” Decades ago, LBAM made it onto a USDA list of supposedly voracious invasive species. To date, I have been unable to find this original designation. The main goal was, I believe, to protect powerful U.S. agriculture interests from competition from crops from New Zealand and similar areas. As a result, today we have the “Light Brown Apple Moth Emergency.” 

Secretary Kawamura expresses concern that other states and countries might ban California produce because of LBAM— even though those countries’ quarantine restrictions were adopted to mimic the United States’. Note that Europe does not quarantine for LBAM. 

So the plot sickens. It’s all about money. Big money. Rather than admit that LBAM is not the threat that’s been claimed and request that LBAM’s USDA classification be revised based on up-to-date science, Secretary Kawamura is willing to poison us and our environment. And to spend $500,000 on a public relations firm to help “sell” this charade to us. 

I am ashamed of Secretary Kawamura’s disgraceful public deception campaign to sell a hopeless, dangerous and likely unneeded “eradication” program to the people. He should immediately call an end to the plans to give us time to make rational decisions based on sustainable, integrated pest management principles. Short of calling off the spray and undertaking sound pest management, he should resign. 

 

Robert Lieber is a registered nurse and the mayor of Albany. Join him in Sacramento Monday, March 10 for an 11 a.m. press conference opposing the spray on the Capitol steps with Senator Carole Migden and afternoon visits to educate legislators about the dangers of aerial spraying. www.PesticideWatch.org. 


Letters to the Editor

Tuesday March 04, 2008

 

 

 

 

 

BLAME THE POOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington’s thoughtful observations on the City Council’s attack on the Marines leaves out a larger irony. 

Berkeley spent many, many months and half a million dollars of taxpayers’ money supposedly trying to make Berkeley streets friendlier to shoppers through the “Public Commons for Everyone Initiative,” which makes life even harder for the poor, and then in one moment splashed the usual “Berkeley Equals Riot Police” publicity across the nation’s headlines. 

Rest assured, however, that when revenues fall short, they will, as tradition dictates, blame the poor. 

Carol Denney 

 

• 

LETTER TO RALPH NADER, MATT GONZALEZ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

To Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez: Now that you are both running on the same Independent ticket for the Presidency, I want to welcome your voices. 

Barack Obama, whom I support because I believe the Republicans need to be ousted not just debated, said today that no party has a monopoly on the truth. And that certainly goes for the Democratic Party, which needs constant, active intervention for it to be an effective force against the Republicans. Surely, the Democratic Party alone is not the answer. 

But, I will watch what you two say closely. I will engage it in good faith. And I hope to hear you at the debates. 

I encourage both of you, however, to concentrate your energies on the relationship between American corporations and war-making. You cannot merely assault Fortress Corporate America without elucidating how far its privatized-militarized tentacles reach—especially into Asia. You both have an obligation to show the public connections between corporate capitalism and warfare in the United States. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are failures—one million dead, one trillion spent. Why they are failures, how they continue to be ignored as failures, are central questions the public needs to examine. Your work will greatly help turn things around. 

Moreover, I encourage you both to talk openly and frankly about two countries which do not get enough critical examination in the press: Israel and Mexico. Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza is a nightmare, sustained by Israeli theft of Gazan natural gas reserves—one trillion cubic meters. Mexico’s current government is a right-wing, anti-human rights haven that has made racist public comments about African-Americans competing for employment with immigrants from Mexico. 

If both of you start going after the Democratic Party, without first talking about the Republican corporate boondoggle of post-9/11 America, and how Israel and Mexico have fully participated in it, then it will be hard for me to resist the media hype, which will undoubtedly portray your candidacies as much about your egos as legacies. 

Congratulations again. 

Louis Anthes 

Oakland 

 

• 

THE SPOILER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ralph Nader running for president helps Republicans. Ross Perot running for president helped Democrats. How is John McCain as president going to help conservationists, Greens and Ralph Nader’s VP running mate Matt Gonzalez? 

The League of Conservation Voter’s ranked senators on their environmental votes last year. Sen. McCain got zero percent, Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama had voting records of 73 percent and 67 percent respectively. 

Nader says he’s no spoiler, and cows jump over the moon. 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

 

• 

BHS REUNION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The 11th annual Berkeley High School Red & Golden Girls reunion luncheon will be held on Thursday, April 17 at the venerable Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Women who graduated from BHS 50 or more years ago are eligible to attend. Special parking arrangements have been made for guests. Honored guest will be Belva Davis, Bay Area journalist and television personality, Class of 1952. Festivities begin at 11 a.m. Tickets are $35. Reservations are necessary and must be made by April 3. Call Virginia Branco, Class of 1944, for reservations, at (510) 582-2478. 

Jeanne Loughman 

 

• 

BUCKLEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In regards to William F. Buckley: I know it’s improper to speak ill of the recently dead (no one else has, so here goes): After all, let’s face it, in an ad hominem way, wasn’t he an incredibly strange, grinning, facial-spastic guy, who was a Harvard type, egg-head, right-wing effeminate extremist, who just freaked and weirded us all out? Do I hear applause?  

Robert Blau  

 

• 

WHAT TO DO ABOUT OAKLAND? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

So, J. Douglas Allen-Taylor, what should Oakland do? The city is broken. It’s jammed full of parolees and probationers. The police department is completely overwhelmed. The command staff gets heat from city officials and the press. They have to come up with something. It’s a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. We have it good here in Berkeley. The ratio of crooks to cops is probably about 10 to 1. In Oakland? A thousand to one? It must be really high. Oakland can’t afford to pay for 2,000 cops. There is no easy solution. 

Peter Bjeldanes 

 

• 

FREEDOM OF SPEECH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Both sides of the Marine recruiting center debate seem to be unclear on the concept of freedom of speech. On the one hand are the Republican sponsors of the Semper Fi Act, who wish to punish anyone living or working in Berkeley for the City Council’s opposition to the center. On the other hand, though, are those who try to prevent the Marine recruiting center from functioning, and obstruct entering the center. Allowing Code Pink to have a weekly parking space and demonstration permit in front of the center, with the use of bullhorns, is not free speech. Nor is your proposal to establish a “free speech zone” in front of this center. Both are attempts to harass and prevent the center from operating. Not everyone agrees with your views on the Iraq war, or on serving in the Marines or other U.S. armed forces. That is a choice for the individual to make, not for the city of Berkeley or a group of activists to impose upon others. 

Stephen Denney 

El Cerrito 

 

• 

RECRUITING OFFICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As I’ve been saying to friends since the recruiting office was set up on ShatShattuck Square, the USMC advertising arm must have been saying “what’s taken Berkeley so long?” 

By the way, is there a record of production at the recruiting office: bodies enlisted per square footage rented? Or bodies enlisted/total rent. Maybe there’s someone at Haas who’s keeping track. 

Peter Kleinman 

Oakland 

 

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Bus Rapid Transit project proposed by AC Transit contains numerous flaws in regards to the public interest of the citizens of Berkeley. As a whole, the idea of a faster bus system is appealing to get people out of their cars and into more eco-friendly buses. But with the manner in which Berkeley was originally designed, implementing the BRT would be detrimental to businesses and residents.  

As the entire Bay Area knows, parking in Berkeley is a nightmare and even if one is lucky enough to find a spot within a mile of his or her destination, parking tickets seem to outnumber citizens in the city. Taking away a single lane of traffic on busy streets like Telegraph will only aggravate the problem. People are already less likely to drive their cars into Berkeley because of the difficulty of finding parking, but the few that do drive most likely have a legitimate reason to brave the parking meters. Eliminating even more parking will deter many from even visiting Berkeley, especially with the increased hostility against the city of Berkeley because of the Marine Recruiting Center issue. Businesses will falter and resentment among citizens will flourish in areas where parking is already tight. Cars will be forced to park in extremely expensive parking garages, no matter if they are staying for just five minutes. Even worse, the rates are confusing and one can end up spending over $50 to stay overnight from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m. Car drivers will alternatively park in residential areas, which will contradict the goal that the original planners had for Berkeley residents. All traffic is directed to bigger streets (such as College and Telegraph) using dead ends and one way streets so as to leave the residential areas quieter and safer. William Fulton concludes that “as with other aspects of public infrastructure, such as parks and schools, transportation systems should be designed in concert with the communities they are supposed to serve” (Fulton, Guide to California Planning, 3rd Edition).  

In this case, the community will not benefit from having a lane of traffic devoted to buses only. Citizens and officials need to think clearly about the effects and perhaps use a different city as the guinea pig. Berkeley has a reputation of having virtually no parking and before we take it one step further, consequences need to seriously be put on the table. 

Cassie Mullendore 

 

• 

BUSH-CLINTON PARALLELS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The following is a somewhat surprising result from comparing the records and approaches to political life of President Bush and Sen. Clinton. 

President Bush and Sen. Clinton have, of course, many differences: chiefly, he would like to limit the role of government; she seeks to use government to solve our problems. 

Where there seem to be unanticipated parallels between them is in areas of negotiating style and maintaining relationships with those whose support they might need. 

President Bush has shown a tendency to demonize those whose views he dislikes, as in his Axis of Evil speech. He prefers to have no dialogue with nations he does not care for. He tends to go it alone in international affairs, without getting the support of other members of the world community. 

This my way or nothing approach is seen in President Bush’s current approach to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, where apparently no compromise with Congress is possible. 

Regarding Sen. Clinton’s approach, the failure of First Lady Clinton’s 1993 health care plan has been attributed to her presenting an unworkable plan, then refusing to make any changes. She is said to have demonized those in her own party who proposed alternatives, making negotiation impossible. 

More recently, the Clinton campaign last year said those who would support her candidacy should do so very early. Those who also supported opposing candidates could expect to not receive the benefits of being her supporter. 

Sen. Clinton describes herself as a fighter but does not say how that will lead to crafting workable solutions in a two-party system where politics is described as the art of the possible. 

President Bush could be characterized as a fighter in his approach to Congress and international relationships, but that does not seem to have helped us very much. 

It appears then, surprisingly, that both President Bush and Sen. Clinton have a similar history of a draconian approach to politics, tend to rigidly demonize opponents, and have little taste for compromise in the service of higher goals. (Ralph Nader may be a third example.) 

If Sen. Clinton were to be our next president, does the record suggest that we would have four more years of a president who follows a my way or nothing approach, calls those who hold divergent views enemies, and is indifferent to the possibility of working with others to craft viable solutions to our nation’s problems? 

Brad Belden 

 

• 

HR 5224 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I think we’re all tired of the rich getting richer. Even the very rich. 

It must take a lot of time, resetting credit card interest rates each month, harassing working people at home at inconvenient times. 

That’s why banks and credit card companies should get behind Ohio Congressman Charles Saunders’ HR 5244, the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights Act. 

It’s not just about giving working consumers a break. It’s about letting the super-rich, super-powerful take a break from all their arm-twisting and pocketbook wringing. 

Stephen Shea 

Albany 

 

• 

LETTER TO THE BERKELEY VOICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the Berkeley Voice’s lead article Feb. 29 (“Downtown businesses feel pinch of protests), the writer presented no evidence, other than hearsay, that “people who are angry at city leaders for their anti-military stance are taking it out on businesses—canceling hotel and restaurant reservations as well as theater tickets.” 

The Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Business Association are quoted as “hearing” of cancellations, but the Voice’s reporters didn’t get any details. A fast-food establishment and a hardware store say that business is down somewhat due to the protests themselves, but didn’t cite any of the “punishment” of Berkeley asserted by the Chamber of Commerce representative. (It’s doubtful that a fast-food restaurant would be taking reservations, in any case.) The director of Berkeley Rep said that the noise is “off-putting” but again the Berkeley Voice’s reporters failed to get any evidence that theater reservations had actually been canceled.  

The Voice’s reporters need to do a better job in presenting their case before making such a strong and controversial assertion.  

Chris Gilbert 

 

• 

BIG OIL ON WELFARE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Gasoline prices, we are told, like all consumer products rise and fall largely as a result of supply and demand, a law articulated by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations (1776) and reverently associated with the economy’s Invisible Hand.  

We the tax payers gave the oil industry $1.7 billion in tax breaks in 2007—a pittance compared to the industry’s combined profits of $145 billion (New York Times editorial, March 3).  

Question: What happens when our government gives tax breaks to the oil and gas industry? 

Answer: Government subsidies subvert the law of supply and demand. 

Conclusion: We the people must pay more at the gas pump so that Big Oil can maintain the profits to which it has become accustomed. 

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 


Commentary: A Way Out of the Spoiler Dilemma

By Steven Hill
Tuesday March 04, 2008

With the Academy Awards over, it’s time for a new year of thrilling cinematic chills. How about: “Spoiler Dilemma, Take Three,” starring Ralph Nader? 

It’s like a horror movie that keeps coming back. Once again, the audience is on edge. Democrats are fuming, no doubt preparing to use the same legal tricks they used in 2004 to keep Nader off the ballot in many states. Meanwhile, Republicans are cackling with glee. 

But Republicans shouldn’t cackle too loudly. They also have been hurt by the spoiler dilemma. In fact, the GOP lost control of the U.S. Senate due to Libertarian Party candidates in the states of Montana, Washington and South Dakota spoiling Republicans. Many observers believe that Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush in 1992 only because Ross Perot drained away enough votes from Bush. 

The problem is that the winners of our highest offices are not required to win a majority of the vote, either nationwide or in each state. Without a majority requirement, we can’t be certain in a multi-candidate field that the winner will be the one preferred by the most voters. That’s the premise for this horror movie repeat. 

A lot is at stake to make sure that the winner in November can legitimately claim the presidency and try and heal a polarized nation. Yet despite the spoiler problem playing out in the 2000 presidential election and in various Senate races, neither Democratic nor Republican Party leaders have done anything to fix this defect of our electoral system. So our movie is a tragedy besides. 

Fortunately, it’s not too late to fix this problem. Since the U.S. Constitution delegates to states the method of choosing its Electoral College electors, each state legislature could pass into law—right now—a majority requirement for their state to ensure that whichever candidate wins, she or he will command support from a majority of that state’s voters. 

We don’t even need to do it in every state, since the race will boil down to a half dozen battleground states, including the perennials Ohio and Florida. Rather than asking Nader or any candidate to forego his democratic right to run for political office, the Democratic and Republican leaders could become heroes in this unfolding tragic movie. What are they waiting for? 

Time is growing short, but it’s in the public interest to protect majority rule. One approach would be to adopt a two-round runoff system similar to that used in most presidential elections around the world and many primaries and local elections in the U.S. A first round with all candidates would take place in mid-October. The top two finishers would face off in November, with the winner certain to have a majority. 

But two elections would be expensive and time-consuming, both for taxpayers and candidates. So a better way would be for each state to adopt instant runoff voting (IRV), which accomplishes the goal of electing a winner with majority support, but getting it over in a single election. IRV allows voters to pick not only your first choice but also to rank a second and third choice at the same time, 1, 2, 3. If your first choice can’t win, your vote goes to your second choice. The runoff rankings are used to determine a majority winner in one election. Nader or Perot-type voters are liberated to vote for their favorite candidate without helping to elect their least favorite. 

IRV is used in Ireland and Australia for national elections, in San Francisco, Cary, North Carolina and elsewhere for local elections, and in South Carolina, Arkansas and Louisiana for overseas voters. Interestingly, IRV is supported by John McCain, Barack Obama and Ralph Nader. 

Many people are criticizing Ralph Nader for risking a repeat of 2000, but only Democrats and Republicans have the power to change the rules of the game. We’ve seen this movie before and don’t like how it might turn out. It’s time for the Democrats and Republicans to produce a new ending by fashioning a fair, majoritarian system for electing our nation’s highest offices. 

 

Steven Hill is director of the Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation and author of 10 Steps to Repair American Democracy (www.10steps.net).


Commentary: Some Planners Believe That BRT Will Work

By Erina Hong
Tuesday March 04, 2008

Imagine a bus route so fast that it’s like a vehicle free of tracks. It would be 10 times cheaper and ride along a 15-mile stretch from Bay Fair BART station in San Leandro to Downtown Berkeley. Each stop would be about half mile apart and bus drivers would have the ability to turn stoplights green using GPS technology and have an electronic sign informing riders when the next bus was scheduled to arrive. This $400 million budgeted project would provide elevated stops in the middle of the street and dedicated lanes free of cars. While the city of Berkeley does have a toned down version of rapid transit systems, they still have to drive alongside the traffic of regular cars.  

Does this sound too good to be true?  

I’m afraid it does. 

While the city of Berkeley has proposed and shown interest this multi-million-dollar investment, the residents of Berkeley have vocally expressed dislike for it. However, I, also a Berkeley resident and a UC Berkeley student, am representing one of few proponents for this plan. 

I felt much opposition for the BRT at the Feb. 13 planning meeting in North Berkeley. Scott Coleman, a Berkeley resident had conducted a mini-survey about the BRT asking ten residents if they’ve even heard of the BRT plan. They all replied no. His concern was that if so few residents who would be directly affected by the plan even knew about the BRT, there wouldn’t be enough voices to oppose it. Bruce Caplin, an owner of a small store on Telegraph and Delaware street resident in Berkeley was concerned about the green house gases emitted by the buses and the possibility of the transit system in mitigating merchant activity along Telegraph. I feel that although these claims made at the meeting were valid, they do not override the progressive action this plan will eventually bring. While facing much opposition, the meeting has given the BRT planners an opportunity to fix the issues that were being raised. Further notification of the plan to the local residents will ensure greater proponents for the Rapid Transit System. As for the issue of greenhouse gases, driving less and taking the transit more occasionally will eventually reduce transportations’ effect on the environment. In addition, I feel that this high speed pathway alongside Telegraph will promote, rather than mitigate, merchant activity. More people will be encouraged to travel along the long stretch of Telegraph Avenue.  

For a green-minded, progressive city such as Berkeley, it was surprising to learn much opposition for this project. In an article called “Comprehensive Planning” by Altshuler, p. 112, he says “the planner may learn which issues are the relevant ones so far as the people are concerned, what terms are meaningful to them, and which alternatives make sense as they view them. The education of the planning board and staff is crucial for any plan to survive.” Looking at past examples of successful planning agendas can help us see the good in this project. Wachs reports in an article called “Transportation,” p. 206, that in recent years, the public in large cities and metropolitan areas has generally been more favorably disposed to transit improvements than to the building of new high ways. They say that improving transit tends to decongest the streets by reducing automobile travel. 

While technologies that improve the speed, safety, and fuel efficiency of the automobile are desirable, obviously not everyone will be happy about it. In a past example in Berkeley, Carolyn Jones of the San Francisco Chronicle reports in her article “Bus rapid transit project could hit roadblock in Berkeley” that 95% of motorists opposed dedicated bike lanes when they were first unveiled, but now the lanes are accepted as part of the streetscape. Remembering this will help us move forward and foresee the positive outcomes that BRT could bring. 

 

Erina Hong is a UC Berkeley student. This commentary was part of a class assignment for City Planning 110 and is one of several student submissions received by the Daily Planet.


Commentary: Clinton’s Duplicity On Michigan, Florida Delegates

By Paul Rockwell
Tuesday March 04, 2008

A spectre is haunting the Democratic Party, the spectre of an ugly—albeit unnecessary—floor-fight over Florida and Michigan delegates at the national convention in August. 

When Susan Keeler, a registered voter from a small township in Michigan, opened her absentee ballot last January, she expected to vote for Obama. Suddenly she discovered that his name was not on the ballot. In an interview with the Flint Journal, she expressed her feelings: “There is something wrong with this. People don’t even have a choice to vote for the person we want to vote for. The only name I even recognize here is Hillary Clinton. It appears people are trying to control how to vote.” 

Thousands of Michigan voters now feel disenfranchised.  

Like Michigan, Florida held a “beauty contest” in January before the official primaries began, and thousands of voters were upset and confused. Florida is the same state that illegally purged thousands of African-American voters from its rolls in 2000.  

How did the Florida-Michigan debacle come to pass? And by what means can the mishaps of the Democratic National Committee and state party officials be rectified before the Democratic party convention in August in Denver, Colorado? 

One hundred and eighty-five delegates from Florida, 128 from Michigan, are at stake. 

The Michigan-Florida delegate controversy began to percolate in December 2007, when state party officials announced their intentions to hold early primaries in direct violation of Democratic National Committee agreements and rules. The DNC took a hard line, telling state officials that rebel primaries were ceremonial and would not be counted at the convention. Both states disregarded the DNC position and held maverick primaries in January. Eager to please the superdelegates on the DNC, both Clinton and Obama agreed with the rules, and both signed pledges not to campaign in either state. “You know,” Senator Clinton remarked, “it’s clear the election they’re having isn’t going to count for anything.” Obama’s name did not even appear on the ballot in Michigan. (Obama was not allowed to withdraw his name in Florida.) 

Clinton, however, hedged her bets. Though she vowed not to campaign—a vow that implies rejection of the election—she kept her name in the running in Michigan. She won the “contest” easily because Obama’ s name was kept off the ballot.(Jesse Jackson won the Michigan primary in 1984.) Then coincidentally she arrived at the Miami airport “for a fundraiser” on the eve of the Florida vote.  

As momentum for Obama’s nomination swelled, Clinton reversed her position on the DNC rules and decisions. She now demands that the results of the ceremonial contests be made official. And she is pressuring the credentials committee to reverse itself. She is also encouraging superdelegates to overrule the voters. The Clintons have huge clout in Washington, where favors have been exchanged for many years.  

Of course it is hypocritical to oppose a half-election before it takes place, only to accept the results when they appear favorable. 

What can be done to resolve a crisis that could destroy the chance for Democratic victory in November? 

There are three approaches to the Party debacle, and two of them are faulty.  

The first approach makes a big deal about the DNC rules. It goes like this: both states violated the rules, so to hell with them. No Florida or Michigan delegates at the convention. That’s that. Here is a dangerous position. Left out, disgruntled voters in Michigan and Florida may well turn to McCain in November. Democrats have an obligation to end the insider fighting between DNC members and the states’ Democratic party officials. 

The second approach—a solution that Clinton is prepared to force on the Party regardless of the consequences—is also faulty. Clinton now claims she deserves the delegates from Michigan and Florida. Yes, Obama played by the rules. Tough on him. 

She is dead wrong, and we should set the record straight. The DNC did not strip Michigan and Florida of its delegates. The Democratic party is quite willing to welcome all duly elected delegates from both states. However, Michigan and Florida have yet to produce any duly elected delegates—delegates chosen by voters in a fair election. Only a genuine election, where the voters are able to hear both sides, where the names of all contenders appear on the ballot, can produce legitimate delegates at the convention. No real election took place in January. That is the crux of the issue. Clinton may claim that she is defending the voters, but she is actually manufacturing delegates out of a beauty contest that turned ugly. Her plan disenfranchises voters in both states. Thousands and thousands of voters, who would have voted for Obama in an official election, stayed home. If only one name appears on the ballot in a communist country, it’s called a dictatorship. 

Susan Parnes in Flint, Michigan, planned to vote for Obama. When she realized his name was missing from the ballot, she said: “It gives me a very nasty taste in my mouth. I’ve begged people to go vote in the primary, and then this crap comes up.” 

There is a solution, a third approach that is practical and clear. Hold new elections or caucuses in both states. There’s plenty of time left before the convention. The DNC, which bears some responsibility for the crisis, is in a position to pay the costs. Let the candidates campaign. Make sure all of the candidates’ names are on the ballots. If a flood, a hurricane, or any natural disaster destroyed half the ballots in an election, the election would be held again. 

Respect for principles of democracy is a precondition of Democratic victory in November. 

 

Paul Rockwell is a writer who lives in Oakland. 


Commentary: Must We Stamp His Footprint Into Nature to Remember Cesar Chavez?

By Alesia Kunz
Tuesday March 04, 2008

I’ve been walking at the Marina and Cesar Chavez Park for 14 years. My dog Grace loved our walks and runs around the perimeter and in the center where it was pure nature. In the early 1920’s the area was the city municipal dump and in the 1990s it was landscaped and converted to a public park, North Waterfront Park. Now, Cesar Chavez Park, it has become a beautiful haven for all manner of nature beings with a Wildlife Sanctuary at the northern end. Red tail hawks, black shouldered kites, hummingbirds, finches, crows, ravens, pelicans, burrowing owls, ground squirrels, rabbits, feral cats, gopher snakes, great blue herons, snowy egrets, Northern Harriers, sea gulls and more. There are beautiful native plants, sages, fennel, pampas grass, purple and white statice, pine trees, purple thistle plants, matilija, or, “fried-egg” poppies, and crimson clover. It’s wild with nature. I walk there every day to enjoy the sounds, scents and sights.  

About 10 years ago, after a long period of public hearings and a lot of debate, the Berkeley City Council created seventeen acres in the northernmost section as off-leash area for dogs. The problem of unleashed dogs bothering people who were walking around the perimeter was solved.  

So, Grace and I left the perimeter, tromped up to the top and made the middle our new home. She and I had a great time pretending we were in the wild. She ran around sniffing, chasing rabbits, playing with dogs while I enjoyed the plants, animals, and birds. We’d walk up to the crest of the hill and look out at the bay. Twirling around 360 degrees I could see water everywhere. It was quiet and private—a place many of us went to watch the sunset or just sit quietly on the earth, look out at the bay, watch plant and bird life change with the seasons, and marvel at the beauty. 

On the bluff of this hill, which borders the off-leash space, humans are making our mark. Now, there is a Solar Calendar Project, which has been burgeoning over the past few years. It’s meant to honor the life and legacy of Cesar Chavez, a great person. A person who, according to the project’s website, was a “devout man, spiritually attuned to the earth and sky,” who “regularly climbed a small hill to observe and meditate on the rising sun,” a person who traveled “to the ocean’s edge to be reminded of the vastness of an awesome nature.” 

These words also accurately describe the area in our park before the Solar Calendar Project was installed. Now there is a four-foot tall stone, which has been cemented into the earth; and five multicolored plaques cemented down, which explain how to use the stone, and the rest of the installation. Large rocks were placed in all the directions, mounds of earth piled up, and more rocks laid in a circle around the Coit Tower-like monument.  

Recently five tombstone-type stones have been placed around the circle, each with a different word stamped/carved into it in capital letters: TOLERANCE, COURAGE, HOPE, DETERMINATION.  

While I’m being quiet in nature I don’t want someone telling me what values or qualities Mr. Chavez possessed, or what words or concepts I should be thinking about. I don’t need someone telling me how to enjoy nature and I wonder if Cesar Chavez did either.  

It’s astounding that even though we have so little of the natural world left to enjoy, we can’t leave it alone. Nature is not about reading words stamped into a stone. This beautiful wild place has been changed, stamped with a human footprint. Developed. Is it in our DNA that we must dominate, remove, change, elaborate on nature? For what purpose? 

Yes, the Solar Project, which people are enjoying, is a beautiful concept and tribute to Cesar Chavez, but the installation is also an unnecessary intrusion on nature, on personal ways we have of enjoying the wild, of being quiet in the world. When I walk at the crest of the hill now, regardless of what path I take, I see the cemented protruding stone and I know everything there is “arranged.”  

No longer is this exclusively a beautiful public place for people to go and enjoy nature in a quiet personal way. It has become a public place where people come to read and discuss how to decipher the instructions. Surrounded by words, cement, plaques explaining how to use the calendar, how to interact with things, how to read the words on the tombstones and appreciate them. It’s a left-brain experience.  

The other troubling aspect of the Solar Project is that no one asked the people who have been walking there everyday for years, what we thought about changing the landscape. I went to the Marina Office to investigate and talk with someone. A man there gave me the name and number of a woman at the Waterfront Commission to call. She told me, “these things get decided at meetings,” and that the meetings are posted in areas near the boats. I said that people who walk in the off-leash and nature area don’t go anywhere near the boats, so how would we know? We could have gone to the meetings. 

The Waterfront woman gave me the name of another employee to call. He didn’t respond to my requests for information and to talk on the phone. Perhaps he’s using the don’t-respond-and-the-problem-will-go-away strategy. 

But I’m not going away. I live here. This is my community. I don’t appreciate what the City Council did, how they did it, and how they’re removing themselves from dialogue. Why did they choose to stamp nature with a human footprint? 

Is it that somewhere below our consciousness we’re afraid that unless we dominate nature, we’ll be lost in her, unacknowledged and forgotten? Perhaps we can dive deeper and find a cellular memory, a collective unconscious memory of a time when we experienced a more compassionate collaborative relationship with nature. A time when we made different choices. 

Our options are not limited to either dominate or be dominated. But, it takes effort, consciousness, compassion, responsibility and the knowledge that we’re in relationship with nature to find other choices.  

Maybe the real issue is that we want to stay connected to someone we knew, loved, and admired, and we don’t know how to do that without constructing material images. Perhaps we can take time to find other ways to keep connected to a person’s spirit and to honor it. 

In naming the park after Mr. Chavez we honor and appreciate his work; we can think of him and connect with his spirit as we walk in nature. In leaving nature to flourish we honor and appreciate it and our relationship with it; we connect with the spirit of nature. In doing this we honor both Cesar Chavez and the natural world as great gifts. Perhaps the spirit of Cesar Chavez lives in the natural world he so enjoyed.  

 

Alesia Kunz is a Berkeley resident. 


Commentary: The Danny Hoch Incident

By Jean Stewart
Tuesday March 04, 2008

I’m standing at my desk as I type this; I’ve tilted the keyboard and nestled it inside a cardboard box, next to the mouse, which I’ve precariously propped at a steep angle on various piled-up objects. I’ve done this because of the pain I experience when I sit, but in fact standing seems only incrementally better than sitting. So I don’t know how long I’ll last before I give up and go back to bed. 

After 27 years of frequently unbearable, undiagnosed pain, I finally have a name for it: Piriformis Syndrome, a neuromuscular disorder, an unfortunate sequela to my long-ago surgeries. (Back in 1978, doctors removed nearly all my right hip muscle, to rid me of a tumor.) Apparently the piriformis muscle (in my bottom) is scraping against and abrading the sciatic nerve, thus causing extreme, sciatica-like pain, especially brought on by sitting. Sometimes the pain dissipates when I stand, sometimes not. Today, and last night, not. Usually, though not always, it subsides if I lie down. Hope springs eternal.  

So does despair. They do battle in me daily, hope and despair. I cross my fingers, and then glare at the crossings. Things get very dark indeed when I look ahead, so I try to avert my eyes. 

Recently my friend Laura treated me to a play in Berkeley. The play—Taking Over, a one-man show exploring gentrification by Danny Hoch, a brilliant dude from Brooklyn—had garnered rave reviews. I’d heard him interviewed on the radio and—as one who harbors her own passionate aversion to the taking over of neighborhoods or countries—I liked his sensibilities, the brash outrage that feeds his politics. So my dread (of pain) and my excitement counterbalanced each other. 

I decided to transfer into a theatre seat for the show, because the pain is worse when I sit in my scooter. Fortunately my seat location, at the far right side near the exit, offered an easy solution; I figured when things got bad, I could discreetly slip out of my seat and stand by the exit well, without obstructing anyone’s view. Pre-show, I tried to postpone sitting until the last minute, but the house manager descended on me and said, in a drill-sergeant’s tone of voice: YOU need to SIT! I smiled pleasantly: I’m about to do that. Drill Sergeant: I NEED YOU TO SIT DOWN NOW!! So I sat, and it began to dawn on me that perhaps my plan to take one or two standing breaks during the show would not be a big hit with this manager. The more I thought about it, the more I worried: how would I get through a 90-minute no-intermission show without taking at least one standing break? 

Telling myself that a terrific performance by a genius actor would provide plenty of distraction, I made it through the first hour. But the pain was building; by 9:30 I knew I’d have to take my chances. Quickly and unobtrusively, I slipped over to the exit well and stood clinging to its railing for support. I hoped a five-minute break might do the trick, after which I’d return to my seat.  

The play consists of Hoch portraying various Brooklyn characters who are vectors, or victims, of gentrification, including a couple of extremely hyper, aggressive, angry men, alternating with a few less ferocious characters. When I took my break, he was in the middle of one of the hyper-aggressive characters, a foulmouthed guy who frequently interacted with imaginary people in the audience. So when Hoch’s gaze fell on me, standing by the exit, and he unleashed sarcastic invective—“Siddown, what are you, scared, you gettin’ ready to run outa here?”—I assumed it was part of the show. He went on with his character’s rant, but a few seconds later his eyes returned to me and he snarled “I SAID SIDDOWN!”  

By this time I’d begun to falter. Was this really just a part of the script, or was he directly addressing me? Should I sit down? Everyone was laughing. I grinned, awkward, self-conscious, nervous, feeling like the high school loner who doesn’t get the joke but suspects she’s the butt of it. If I sat down, wouldn’t that draw further attention to me? Would it spur him to mock me further? Certainly it would worsen the pain in my bottom. If his remarks were really just a part of the monologue, I’d look pretty silly sitting down. At other points in the script, he had exhorted the audience, “Go fuck yerselves!” I didn’t see a mass movement of audience members complying with that order.  

In the middle of this inward struggle, I saw his eyes land on me again, and this time something in them stopped my breath. “I’M NOT KIDDIN’! SIT. THE. FUCK. DOWN!!!” he roared, at the top of his lungs.  

I froze, my foolish grin scattering. Some audience members were still laughing, but their laughter seemed nervous now, though perhaps some still believed him to be in character. I couldn’t move, his fury (with its implicit threat) so naked as to embarrass. I felt a beam of hate emanate from his eyes and bore into me, pinning me to the spot. If a moment ago I was confusedly trying to sort out what to do, now there was no more sorting, nary a rational thought in my brain, just deer-in-headlights panic. Memories of abuse and public humiliation unmoored themselves and banged around in my gut. All the while, the pain in my bottom, brought on by seventy minutes of sitting, offered a relentless undertow.  

At length, my pride assayed to clamber out of this scalding heap of misery. I NEED to stand, I’m not doing it to annoy! This is not about YOU!, I was inwardly struggling to articulate to him, to the roomful of people I imagined were staring at me with accusatory eyes. This is about a disability—  

Just then, the Drill Sergeant appeared at my side. “You need to sit down,” she whispered.  

I whispered back: “I have a disability that makes long stretches of sitting extremely painful. I need to take short breaks.” 

“Then you should leave the theatre and stand in the lobby,” said she.  

“I’m watching the show!” I hissed, very quietly.  

She paused and then whispered: “I’ve been told to ask you to sit down. You’re bothering him. Please stand out in the lobby.”  

Ah, so I was bothering him. I returned to my seat and sat down, eyes stinging, the public shaming now complete. Though Danny Hoch’s play continued for another 15 minutes, I could no longer see it, nor hear a word. I felt dizzy and slightly nauseous, my heart about to leap out of its chest cavity.  

A performer myself (veteran of countless bookstore and theatrical readings), I recognize how interruptions can utterly discompose and inflict havoc on carefully wrought artistic momentum. Perhaps if my disability had been more visible to Hoch, he might have reacted differently. Perhaps he’d have cut me some slack if he’d seen me standing next to my empty scooter. To him I looked like any other member of the audience, one who perversely chose to stand instead of sit.  

But the Drill Sergeant’s behavior is harder to explain. She knew of my disability; it was she who took my ticket at the door and, when I told her I planned to transfer to a theatre seat, declared that I would have to leave my scooter in the lobby (I’m accustomed to this policy), and showed me where to park it. When Danny aimed his vitriol at me, she could have suggested that I retreat into the shadows of the exit well, from which vantage point I’d be able to see him but he wouldn’t see me. (I of course wish I’d thought of this at the time.)  

Interestingly, I remember her from my last Berkeley Rep outing. Having arrived at the theatre early, I was steered into the lobby by a friendly Berkeley Rep volunteer. Since the weather was bad, I took up her suggestion and piloted my scooter indoors, where DS was conducting a pre-show usher briefing. Though my presence was quiet and discreet, DS broke off her spiel and glared at me. “Yes?” she inquired. “I’m sorry, I was directed to come into the lobby by a volunteer staffer,” I murmured. “You need to leave!” she snapped, and leave I did, returning to the cold wind outdoors, which at the moment seemed far more welcoming than the air inside that lobby. 

In my experience, Berkeley Rep ushers have responded to the Drill Sergeant’s behavior with uniform embarrassment. Last year, two gentle souls separately sought me out to offer their apologies for the lobby incident. One of them felt so ashamed, he offered to buy me a compensatory treat at the snack bar! (I accepted; hey, what the hell. Those chocolate-dipped macaroons stick to the ribs.) And last night, pre-show, when DS ordered me to sit, a kindly usher winced, patted my arm and whispered into my ear, “Don’t take it personally, she just wants to seat the ushers.”  

Aside from stirring ghosts related to abuse and public shaming, the Danny Hoch incident kicked up other dust as well, dust that gets in my throat and eyes and makes it hard for me to breathe. Disability dust. The fact is, managing my disability has become harder and harder. Unpredictable, intractable pain causes me to venture out with friends less and less. Isolation closes in. By now I’ve accumulated an extensive collection of traumatic memories, of outings derailed by pain so intense I could only weep. Memories of being stranded in San Francisco or Berkeley or New York City, unable to drive or ride the train home. Memories of making a public spectacle of myself, in the agonal grip of pain.  

The Danny Hoch incident has now elbowed its way into this crowded closet of personal ghosts. I know it won’t stay there. It will jump out at me when I least expect it. It will kick me when I’m down.  

 

Jean Stewart is an El Sobrante resident.


Commentary: A Planning Student’s Perspective on Bus Rapid Transit

By Janet Shih
Tuesday March 04, 2008

After reading the recent article about AC Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) proposal as well as being an attendee of early February’s planning commissioning meeting for Berkeley, I would like to support the argument for a positive response towards the BRT proposal. 

I believe incorporating a Bus Rapid Transit line into Telegraph Avenue would be extremely beneficial to the planning of the city of Berkeley. The implementation of the BRT would definitely bring about a drastic change, but this change would result in a half-price reduction in bus fare, efficiency in schedule, and an increase in transit speed. As a student at UC Berkeley, and for many of my peers, these are all the factors in need of improvement that currently discourage us from using public transit. The improvements of the AC Transit system by the BRT will definitely give heavy incentive for many car owners to choose public transportation over private transportation. 

If this proposal will turn out to be as successful as it is proposed to be, the sacrifice of, as one planning commissioning meeting attendee put it, “forcing people out of their cars,” would be worth it in the long run. Forcing people out of their cars and into public transportation would decrease congestion and be environmentally promising for air quality. I believe that this process will be rough in the beginning and that automobile owners will voice their stubborn concerns, but progressively as the AC Transit begins to take a larger presence in main streets (in this instance, Telegraph Avenue), the routine of abandoning car use and using bus lines will grow to be a very sustainable alternative. 

The city of Berkeley is only increasing in population. It is a city with a prestigious public university and inhabitants will only increase. In John Levy’s book Contemporary Urban Planning, he states that public transportation is only successful when it is geared towards cities of large population densities. As the Berkeley population increases, the problems of congestion increase along with it and unless action is taken for transportation, the matter will only grow worse and worse. An alternative must be considered. 

Levy refers to this as “compact planning,” which is very favorable to city planners. Public transportation is meant to decrease congestion and lead to a pedestrian friendly land-use pattern. I see the BRT installment as an attempt to be the main source of transportation in a currently congested street in order for people to initially become frustrated, but then eventually submit, abandon their cars, and use the AC Transit. 

In William Fulton’s book Guide to California Planning he mentions that a community has four options to mitigate congestion due to population growth and the least expensive and most practical of those options is to “try to reduce vehicle trips or shift travelers to other modes". However because of the influence of suburban land use, the idea of using public transit is not at all appealing. BRT is a great opportunity for the city of Berkeley to redefine its land-use and to reject it reliance on private automobiles. 

Very much of city planning is focused on preventing future municipal problems. The BRT is a smart move in order to do that and is a strategic tactic for sustainable living. 

 

Janet Shih is a UC Berkeley student. This commentary was part of a class assignment for City Planning 110.


Commentary: Another Planning Student’s Perspective on Bus Rapid Transit

By Juju Wang
Tuesday March 04, 2008

I am a senior major in Civil Engineering and City Planning at UC Berkeley. I am very interested in transportation planning, especially parking policies. Recently, I came across a parking study "The Smart Parking Seminar" conducted by the Metropolitan Transportation Committee (MTC.) The allocation, use of limited on and off street parking resources, and parking policies continue to be highly debated issues both locally and nationally. The MTC's parking study identifies some local parking policies, requirements, and recommendations to "managing constrained parking conditions with smart growth and Transit Oriented Development (TOD) policies and programs." Here's my thought on the parking study. 

Out of the ten cities that the MTC chose to do this study on, I am mainly interested in parking requirements and reformation in the city of Berkeley. Although the parking study provided useful method to promote smart growth, they are all long range plans. More immediate policies should be applied to regulate parking turnover, spillover, and vehicle cursing. For example, in the city of Berkeley, the meter rate has not been raised since 1992 (City of Berkeley). In most of the areas of the city, the rate still sits at one dollar per hour; whereas in San Francisco, the on street parking rates varies from one dollar and fifty cents near the edge of the city to three dollars in the financial district (SFMTA.) The under-priced parking meters have attracted many tourists and shoppers to hunt for on street parking spots; this directly leads to the reason of underutilized off street parking garages. On a good day, according to the garage owner in Berkeley, only 70% of the garage parking spaces are full; whereas close to 90% of on street parking spaces are taken (Studio 2007.) The underutilized off street parking issue can be solved by raising the on street parking rates to the rates of garage parking or higher. The policy not only is easy to implement, but also, it will have big impacts on decrease vehicle cursing, and increase parking turnover. Because this "increase on street parking price" policy also helps to induce a more diverse travel behavior, a transit and pedestrian friendly environment can be deploy in the city of Berkeley. 

One of the suggestions that the MTC put forward is the establishment of the Parking Benefit District where money from parking meters can be earmarked specifically for benefits for the local neighborhood. However, the Parking Benefit District proposal is not recommended to Berkeley. In order to fully achieve smart growth and TOD, a parking benefit district should be introduced to downtown Berkeley. In addition, the money generated from the meter should not only be used towards transportation related issue; they should also be used towards components of smart growth such as street cleaning, tree planting, and security enforcing at night. Some of the revenues should be allocate to parking enforcement. 

Of all the recommendations MTC made, one issue that has not been addressed, yet has a huge impact on transit efficiency and safety is the issue of delivery vehicles double parked in the middle of a busy traffic lane. A doubled parked delivery truck can block bus from pulling into the bus stop. Most bus drivers have no choice but to let their passengers get off in the middle of the street. Alternatively, a policy such as designate parking spots in the front of shops for delivery trucks can be sought (SFMTA.) More loading and unloading zone can push the on street to off street parking as private vehicles parked in violation of the restriction will be towed; and thus reinforcing the benefits that were previously stated. This policy is adopted by the city of San Francisco; it has been working effectively. 

The last immediate policy that can be adopted by the city business shops is the Parking Cash Out program. This program allows employers to give workers an option to take cash equivalent of parking subsidy offered. According to one of Shoup's study, when the parking cash out program is implemented, the number of cars that driven to work decreased by 33% (Shoup.) As more employees convert to transit users, and carpoolers, more parking spaces are left to the customers and visitors. 

Although the Smart Parking Seminar initiates many parking problems in the selected cities, and offers solutions to address such problems, it fails to provide transportation alternatives that can make the cities more multimodal. Overall, it is unclear to reader if the parking policies introduced in the Smart Parking document is guided by the TOD policy – i.e. to encourage alternatives to single occupancy vehicles. In order to achieve Smart Growth, parking supply in city downtown area must be limited. As an alternative, new, fast, and convenient transportation modes such as BRT can be introduced. One way to achieve TOD is to start with small pilot projects where proposals can be evaluated prior to their full implementation. 

 

Juju Wang is a UC Berkeley student. This commentary was part of a class assignment for City Planning 110. 


Columns

Column: Undercurrents: Time to Revise Those Judgments of Dellums

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday March 07, 2008

Two of the problems with some of the early scathing criticisms of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums—specifically the charge that he was a “do nothing” mayor—were that they were highly premature, at the very least, and failed to take into account Mr. Dellums' particular operating style. 

After a string of major policy victories and announcements in recent weeks, presumably the mayor's loud gaggle of critics will soon be doing a quick pivot and changing their charge from “Mr. Dellums ain't doing nothing” to “okay, he's doing something, but I don't happen to like the things he's doing.”  

Or maybe not.  

Some of Mr. Dellums' critics—NovoMetro's Echa Schneider (VSmoothe) comes quickest to mind—study the data and present detailed policy analyses to back up their positions. I rarely agree with Ms. Schneider/Smoothe's conclusions, but I admire and respect the work she puts in, and learn a lot of things from the data she collects. That's responsible criticism. But others—they shall remain nameless for now, but I'll call out their names if they keep it up—seem to believe that because they do not actually see the mayor “doing” things during the course of the day, it must be proof that nothing is being done. Thus did the men sitting at the corner table in the bar prove conclusively that air does not exist, since, after all, it has never been seen. 

Evaluating mayoral work styles--as opposed to policy initiatives or results--is made difficult in Oakland because we are still new to this full-time mayor thing. Up until the Jerry Brown era, mayors in Oakland served on City Council, where their involvement and political positions were easy to judge. Under the strong-mayor initiative that immediately preceded the inauguration of Mr. Brown, the mayor was removed from the council and, for all intents and purposes, from public sight. That initiative gave broad guidelines as to the mayor's responsibilities, but few or no guidelines as to how the mayor should carry them out. And there is no record in the possession of the City of Oakland of the day-to-day activities of the Brown Administration, those records never having been turned over to the City Clerk by Mr. Brown on his way out the door, as they were supposed to have been. 

And although Council President Ignacio De La Fuente famously proclaimed during the 2006 campaign that he would be a “24/7” mayor if elected, a standard by which some people have judged Mr. Dellums, we have no way to know how, exactly, Mr. De La Fuente himself would have carried out that pledge if it had been he whom Oakland elected instead. 

That has left us with insufficient evidence in order to judge Mr. Dellums' day-to-day activities or his style of governance, as opposed to judging his policy initiatives or his results. 

But clues are slowly emerging, for those who wish to look. 

During his eight years in office, Jerry Brown called upon the city bureaucracy to carry out certain initiatives. Most famously, he mobilized the office of then-City Administrator Robert Bobb to promote Mr. Brown's two charter school proposals. For weeks during the beginning of the Brown Administration, Mr. Bobb and several staff members trotted from meeting to meeting, week after week, between the city, county, and local school boards to try to win board sponsorship charters, and after Brown's charter Oakland Military Institute opened up shop at the Army Base, assistant administrator Simón Bryce moved his office to the facility and spent considerable time working on charter business.  

Mr. Brown later fired Mr. Bobb and replaced him with current City Administrator Deborah Edgerly, reportedly because Mr. Bobb favored a uptown ballpark for the Oakland A's over Mr. Brown's uptown development proposal, a proposal that eventually became the Forest City project. 

But even while replacing Mr. Bobb with Ms. Edgerly, Mr. Brown appeared to leave the day-to-day workings of the city bureaucracy alone, so that the bureaucracy continued to operate much as it had under the old Council-City Manager form of government. 

Mr. Dellums has taken a decidedly different tack. He has pointedly stayed out of City Council policy-making business, declaring that the mayor's job is to run the city, and that the city staff--the entire city staff, not just his own personal staff--was the vehicle with which he intended to get that done. 

In one of the most important, but little noted, passages in his recent State of the City address, the mayor declared that “I have changed the culture at City Hall and joined the mayor's office with city administration. It's no longer the mayor over here and the City Administrator over there.” 

Insiders familiar with the Dellums Administration say that the mayor has spent considerable time with top city administrative officials, trying to put together an executive team that functions together on the administration's policy goals. How well has that been working? The mayor's recent victories in Council in passing his police augmentation plan and his industrial zoning policy provide some insight, but there are serious budget and policy battles left ahead, and so the jury is still out. 

Another difficulty in analyzing the Dellums Administration is that unlike most politicians, Mr. Dellums feels that the secret to winning policy battles or getting resources for the city is to spread the credit around, rather than trying to take all or most of it for himself. 

Thus at a recent Oakland High School press conference to announce a joint city-county-school district-Kaiser Permanente initiative to put five public health clinics in Oakland high schools and middle schools in the next two years, Mr. Dellums decidedly downplayed his own involvement in bringing the process together, saying only that it was an “extraordinary day that typifies the type of collaboration we want with public and private entities.” 

It took Kaiser representative Bernard Tyson to reveal to the press that it was Mr. Dellums who kickstarted the process that led, eventually, to a $3 million Kaiser donation to help move the health clinic initiative forward. Mr. Tyson said that Kaiser had been talking about funding some sort of health activity in Oakland, but had put those plans aside until Mr. Dellums asked Mr. Tyson to set up a meeting with Kaiser officials to talk over public health care concerns. 

“I thought we were going to meet in the mayor's office,” Mr. Tyson said. “Instead, he came over to my office at Kaiser to talk with several of us for a few hours. We were surprised to see how many of our plans and interests overlapped with his.” 

The school health clinic initiative is probably the best clue as to how Mr. Dellums operates, cobbling together smaller, ongoing initiatives into a larger, more productive one while letting the original operations get the lion's share of the credit. In this case, Alameda County officials had money to operate the clinics once they are built, but no money to build them. The Oakland Unified School District has money under its facilities bond to turn existing school facilities into health clinic sites--the Oakland High clinic will be housed in an old shop classroom--but no money to operate them. Kaiser had money to help the process get started. Mr. Dellums helped bring them together and got the beginning of the school-based health clinics that are a major part of his model city program. In reporting on the Oakland High press conference, for example, CBS5 television station headlined its story with “Kaiser Provides $3 Million Grant For School Health Centers,” the first paragraph of the story noting that “Kaiser Permanente announced today it is providing a $3 million grant to fund school-based health centers at one middle school and four high schools in Oakland to provide comprehensive clinical and social services to children.” Mr. Dellums was mentioned, but only after Kaiser got its props, and with no mention of the mayor's role in putting the entire initiative together. 

Another key to understanding Mr. Dellums' day-to-day involvement in his administration and policy initiatives is listening to him speak. 

At his State of the City address, Mr. Dellums spoke for an hour and eight minutes, without notes, in detail, on both conditions in Oakland and his administration's efforts and activities. None of the facts and figures the mayor gave seemed put out by someone who had crammed for the speech, but instead were presented in a way that demonstrated that the mayor had a familiarity with the issues that could only come from working with them, seriously and intimately, over a considerable period of time. But the mayor's State of the City performance is no aberration, and in speaking to or answering questions at various public forums around the city, Mr. Dellums demonstrates that same grasp of detail in looking at Oakland policy questions. If the mayor is sleeping at his desk for good portions of the day--as some of his more outrageous critics have most famously charged--he must be doing it with one of those tapes on that allows you to take in information while you're unconscious. 

So where does that leave us in judging the success or failure of the Dellums Administration? Right where it ought to be, in that constant tension between what has been promised, and what is being fulfilled. In that regard, there is more than enough solid information to work with, without having to resort to the silly and superfluous. 

 


East Bay Then and Now: Telegraph and Durant: From Ritzy Enclave to Commercial Hub

By Daniella Thompson
Friday March 07, 2008
Hotel Carlton was built in 1906-07 on the site previously occupied by the Knowles mansion.
Daniella Thompson
Hotel Carlton was built in 1906-07 on the site previously occupied by the Knowles mansion.

Teeming with pizza, bagel, and t-shirt outlets, surrounded by ethnic-food courts and cheap retail arcades, the intersection of Telegraph and Durant Avenues is inconceivable as an exclusive residential enclave reserved for millionaires' mansions set amidst spacious gardens and fronted by orderly rows of palm trees. 

Yet this was exactly how Telegraph Avenue looked in the first decade of the 20th century, when the street extended to Allston Way, meeting the UC campus at Strawberry Creek.  

In 1903, the south side of Bancroft Way contained more empty lots than houses. The west side of Telegraph Avenue between Bancroft and Durant was divided into two enormous lots, of which only the southern one—measuring 200 by 200 feet and extending from the middle of the block to the Durant Ave. corner—was occupied. On this lot, at 2318 Telegraph Avenue, stood the imposing Classic Revival mansion of William E. Knowles. 

Knowles was a real estate executive who had made a fortune in Alaskan gold mining and oil. His house, built in 1900 and one of the showplaces of Berkeley, basked in lonely splendor, with nary a building across the street. 

On the southeast corner, diagonally across from the Knowles residence, stood an even more elegant mansion belonging to lawyer-capitalist Louis Titus. On the southwest corner, one could admire the very large and formal Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter house. 

Today, any mention of fraternity houses will invariably evoke visions of Animal House. Not so at the turn of the last century. In March 1900, when the San Francisco Call devoted a Sunday magazine page to fraternity life in Berkeley, only four of the 14 fraternities located here owned their chapter houses, and the photos that illustrated the article could have been published in House Beautiful. 

Delta Kappa Epsilon was one of the fraternity-owned houses, and a photo of its parlor and hall, complete with lace curtains, a horn Victrola, and the ubiquitous billiard table, made an appearance in the Call magazine. Another featured house belonged to Phi Delta Theta, Louis Titus’s fraternity. Located at 2401 Durant Ave/, on the corner of Dana Street (now a U.C. parking lot), the house boasted tastefully furnished interiors. On June 2, 1901, the Call informed, “The Phi Delta Theta boys are noted for their orderly house […] one would never dream that the house was run entirely by a lot of students. Everything is exactly so, and one could look for dust with a microscope and not have the labor rewarded.” 

In the summer of 1900, presumably while the resident students were away on vacation, the 28-year-old Titus was living in the Phi Delta Theta house with his wife Lottie, infant daughter Dorothy, sister Ethel, and the family’s servant, Minnie Loeser. Why were they living in a frat house? Probably because they awaited the completion of their new mansion a block to the east. Strangely, their deed to the land was not recorded until after the house was completed in November. 

Both Louis and Lottie Titus grew up in Liberty, San Joaquin County. His father was a prosperous farmer, hers a wagon maker and blacksmith. But the rural surface concealed a penchant for learning. Lottie’s mother would shrug off her housewifely role in middle age and begin a new career as an osteopath. Three of Louis’s uncles were school teachers in Wisconsin, and one of them, Daniel Titus, also practiced as a pharmacist before launching a lucrative law career in San Francisco. 

Lottie and Louis came to Berkeley for their schooling. He enrolled at the University of California—the 1891 Berkeley directory listed him as a resident of Phi Delta Theta Hall, at that time located on the corner of Bancroft and Audubon [College Ave.]. Lottie graduated from the Anna Head School and the Mills Seminary in Oakland. She was teaching in a private seminary in Berkeley and he was a young attorney just out of college when they decided to tie the knot in 1892. 

Louis got his introduction to big-time wheeling and dealing at his uncle’s law office and never looked back. Barely into his 30s, he was a major player in real estate development, banking, transportation, water, lumber, and oil. 

Allied with leading business figures such as Francis “Borax” Smith, Frank C. Havens, Wickham Havens, John Hopkins Spring, Allen G. Freeman, Phillip E. Bowles, Joseph Mason and Duncan McDuffie, and Perry Tompkins (the latter two Phi Delta Theta brothers), Titus served as director or officer of key enterprises including the Realty Syndicate, the Claremont Hotel Company, the Berkeley Traction Company, the University Savings Bank of Berkeley, and the Big Lagoon Lumber Company. 

From 1906 to 1910, Titus was president of the People’s Water Company—the private precursor to EBMUD—negotiating two 10% rate reductions with the Oakland city council in order to avoid litigation. Nowadays he is best remembered for having masterminded the idea to relocate the state capital to Berkeley and construct the Capitol building in Northbrae. At the time (1907), the idea was taken seriously enough to be approved by the Assembly. Happily for us, the voters of California nixed the measure. 

In addition to his far-reaching corporate activities, Titus was frequently buying and selling large tracts of land. He also headed the Berkeley Development Company, and in November 1904, the San Francisco Call announced that he was erecting a new business and apartment block on the corner of Telegraph and Bancroft. Designed by Henry Meyers and Clarence Ward, El Granada still stands. It’s been owned by the Munger family for three generations and was restored in 1995, regaining its Mission-style gables, absent since the 1950s. 

But the Granada was not the first harbinger of change on Telegraph Avenue. The initial shot across the bow was delivered by contractor John Albert Marshall, who earlier that year began building a three-story business block on the lot adjacent to the Knowles mansion. As if that weren’t enough, construction began on the Epworth Methodist Church on the northeast corner of Telegraph and Durant-directly across the street from Knowles. 

Knowles was not pleased, and on December 23, 1904, while a crowd of pedestrians watched, he had his mansion picked up and moved half a block east, to 2521 Durant. On that occasion, he predicted to the Oakland Tribune that his well-to-do neighbors, Louis Titus and Seneca Gale (the latter lived at 2251 Telegraph Avenue and Bancroft Way, future site of Sproul Plaza), would follow suit. 

Knowles did not tell the newspapers that he had already sold Gale a new lot adjoining his own on Durant Avenue. Gale was a retired Michigan capitalist who had made his money in grain. Like Knowles, he could recognize a trend when he saw it and knew how to capitalize on it. Not long after moving to Durant Avenue, both sold their previous home lots to developers. 

Knowles sold his lot in October 1905 to Carlton Hobbs Wall, a young Alameda millionaire who would gain notoriety for automobile collisions. The price was $17,500. Carlton and his brother Edward soon broke ground for an apartment and store building projected to cost $30,000, but the 1906 San Francisco earthquake made them change plans and transform the structure into a first-class hotel. 

Like Titus, the Walls called on Meyers & Ward for the design of their four-story, clinker-brick building. Named Hotel Carlton, it was leased to Mrs. W.F. Morris, whose Cecil Hotel burned in the San Francisco fire. It cost $125,000 and boasted all the latest amenities, including an elevator, telephones, and a 135-foot dining room with dance floor. 

Seneca Gale waited until September 1906 to sell his lot. The price was again $17,500, and the buyer was none other than John Marshall, who planned to build a $100,000, 125-room hotel on the site. “A roof garden and other modern hostelry features will be provided,” announced the San Francisco Call. C.M. Cook, who had designed a number of houses for Marshall, was the architect. The building that finally emerged, however, was the 5-story Alta Vista, with six storefronts on the ground floor and 23 balconied apartments above, but no roof garden. It would be razed in 1946, after the university had taken possession of the Telegraph Ave. stretch between Sather Gate and Bancroft Way. 

And what of Louis Titus? He quietly left his home in March 1906. The reason did not become apparent until Lottie Titus filed for divorce in September 1909. Then she revealed that her temperament and inclinations were out of tune with those of her husband. He was highly ambitious and liked to socialize in fashionable circles, while she was interested only in her home and children. He wanted her to entertain lavishly, she wanted to teach Sunday school. He left her twice—four and 14 years into the marriage. 

The mansion at 2500 Durant Ave. was part of Lottie’s divorce settlement, but two break-ins in March 1908 made her uneasy, and she moved to Santa Barbara, leasing the house to a Napa millionaire. By 1910, she had sold it to Duncan McDuffie, who in turn sold it back to Titus. Having remarried in 1910 and built a new mansion in Piedmont, Titus sold 2500 Durant in 1913 to J. Arthur Elston and George Clark, U.C. graduates and law partners. Elston was former executive secretary to California governor Pardee, president of the U.C. alumni association, and a future U.S. Congressman. 

Elston and Clark retained Walter H. Ratcliff, Jr. to design and manage construction of a five-story, 48-unit brick apartment building with four storefronts. When completed, it was listed in the Berkeley directory as “Cambridge Hotel Apartments, 2-, 3-, and 4-room apartments and single rooms completely furnished, thoroughly modern elevator service.” The owners lived in the building. Next door, at 2510 Durant, they had Ratcliff build a cinema. Christened the Campus Theatre, it didn’t survive long. By the late 1920s it had become a store and is serving that function until today. 

The Marshall Block that prompted William Knowles to move his house in 1904 is long since gone. So are the Delta Kappa Epsilon house and Epworth Methodist Church. Photos of these vanished buildings may be seen in the book Picturing Berkeley—A Postcard History, edited by Burl Willes and available from BAHA. 

Seneca Gale died on his yacht in 1910, and Knowles followed him three years later. A food court stands on the site of the Knowles mansion. You can catch a glimpse of the much altered Seneca Gale house behind Cafe Durant. 

 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

 


About the House: Why My Floors Are Sloped

By Matt Cantor
Friday March 07, 2008

I live in a slide zone. As I understand it, the land my house is bobbing about on is a colloid of tumbled rock and Cuisinarted soil, the remains of an avalanche, hundreds of years now past. Since this material isn’t “consolidated” or compressed by time into a hard cake, it tends to amble downhill as gravity would have it. (I’m turning 50 and, as my friend Joann would say, my local gravity is also increasing so I know how the house feels). 

Although most homes are not located in slide zones, there are still forces that move soils around on many a lot and yours is very likely included. 

Gravity plays a vital role in all of these situations, soils types in many and water in most as well. Although I’ll briefly discuss the dynamics of this movement in the following paragraphs, what I mostly want to do is to talk about the import of the resulting deviations.  

As houses “settle” (a troublesome term because it says so much less than it should) they tend to lose their regularity (their squareness, their plumb, their level). They’re also doing all sorts of other funny things that aren’t obvious as well including sinuating (forming rolling S curves), bending and pulling apart. 

While a few of the houses I’ve seen have done some part of this weirdness to a dramatic level, most have not. Most floors I see are uneven but the great majority are not so uneven that I end up being concerned. Traditionally, a drop of one inch over twenty feet was considered unacceptable but if you try to use that standard in the Berkeley or Oakland hills, you’d find an enormous number of houses that won’t pass muster.  

The question is, why would this matter? With doorways or window frames, the function of the opening can be gradually impaired and a door may not close easily at some point. This is surely important but what usually happens is that alterations are made in the door or the lock receiving plates (AKA “strike” plates). With floors, it’s harder to make the argument. While I am not a fan of a big gap along the baseboards of a living room or a hearth that is higher (or lower) than the floor, these things rarely, in and of themselves, cause other significant problems. 

Most of our houses are built on perimeter concrete footings. These are very small relative to the size of the building and quite weak when compared with the destructive force of moving earth. While today’s foundations are much heartier than those of the past, they are still, mostly, not built to resist a great deal of earth movement without some malignation. We rely, instead, on the assumption that the earth will either not move or that it will move so little that we can tolerate it. 

So we end up with deformation in the foundation as the earth moves (which varies a LOT from lot to lot) and whatever movement we have in the foundation pushes the structure above it around in both hard and easily predicted ways. In short, as the earth heaves up one part of the foundation, you’re living room floor goes up too. The deformations in the floors are simply a reflection of those movements that the foundation experiences. This is the real argument for larger and stronger foundation and most specifically for the mat or raft foundation. I like the name raft foundation because it takes us right back to my original image of us bobbing about (albeit slowly) on our slow little sea of soil. The raft is thick enough and cohesive enough so that, regardless of earth movement below it, all components above it remain pinned to a stable plane.  

Now, that plane may tilt somewhat but unlike our perimeter footing, the structure will not be pushed and pulled at from many different points so that its deformation is complex, resulting in lots of parallelograms. It will simply tilt as a whole one way or another. Further, with such a large floating plane, the tendency will be for the whole to remain fairly level as forces pushing here and there cancel out one another. 

Now, again, this isn’t an argument against perimeter foundations or in favor of raft foundations (well, maybe it is, O.K.). What I really want to say is this: 

Variation in the level or square or a building don’t matter that much and they don’t necessarily predict the really important events such as collapse in an earthquake. These things have much more to do with the way in which the building is tied together. 

A building with really uneven floors and crooked doorways that has been properly braced and bolted to its old coral reef of a foundation will very likely survive a large earthquake with manageable damage (everything will have some damage, right?) while the neat, square unbraced house next door will be a mess. That’s the message. A little out of level is not unsafe, is not a predictor of major damage and is not bad for your teeth. 

To expand the argument just a bit, a house with a dangerous electrical system may look neat, square and have a fresh coat of paint. A house with a furnace that’s leaking carbon monoxide may have lots of great IKEA lamps. Things don’t necessary connect except when they do, right? Much as I hate to say it, you can’t tell a book by its cover. 

Of course, if a house is so far out of plumb that it’s in danger of falling over, that’s another thing. I do see one of those every once in a while but it’s pretty darned rare. I DO, on the other hand, see dangerous electric conditions in lots of houses, many of which have just been painted REAL nice. 

One last thought. When looking at deviations from square, plumb and level, be sure to consider the age of the house. When I see a quarter inch crack on a house that is three years old, I just about jump out of my skin but when I see the same crack on an eighty year old house, I just go on scratching my beard and reciting Kafka aloud. Cracks and deformations are the physical artifacts of movement. That’s why they’re meaningful. They are the rings on the tree. You have to divide the measurement of movement over the time period for it to be meaningful.  

If movement is uniform over time (always a fair baseline, although rarely accurate) our three year old house is going to have one inch of movement every twelve years at the locus of that crack and possibly much more over the entire house. After eighty years, that could be several feet if we’ve had a few of these cracks. That’s wildly unacceptable. A few quarter inch cracks over eighty years is a yawn because you can expect that the next eighty years will be about the same and, more to the point, the next ten years won’t produce anything surprising. Just a few more little cracks in the plaster.


Garden Variety: Surviving Oaks Still Shade Alden Lane Nursery

By Ron Sullivan
Friday March 07, 2008
Whimsical sculpture at Alden Lane Nursery.
Ron Sullivan
Whimsical sculpture at Alden Lane Nursery.

I’ve liked Alden Lane Nursery ‘way out in Livermore since I first set foot in it over ten years ago. The big valley oaks that shade parts of the place won my splintery old heart immediately, and I saw evidence of real community involvement along with the more concrete stuff: primo nursery stock, interesting ornaments, good tools, less-toxic pest controls. 

They kept doing things I like, too. They were among the first I saw promoting small-space orchards done via multiple grafting on a single tree, pleaching, espaliering, and cordoning. They also pushed planting two or three saplings in a single hole, then pruning them so they didn’t interfere with each other-taking off the branches in the middle of the new group-and letting the various roots work it out among themselves.  

Even in the relatively spacious lots you see around Livermore, a more compact orchard is a good idea for variety and length of harvest; one household or even several can be hard-pressed to deal with 20 or 30 pounds of apples in a week. (Though a cider press does come to mind: cider is what Johnny Appleseed was thinking about, after all.) 

If you mix early- with later-ripening fruit, you solve part of that problem and you don’t get bored with a single variety.  

Along with good ideas like that, Alden Lane has a more or less perpetual canned-food drive for local relief agencies, hosts fundraisers for good causes, and has free tastings, talks, and shows several times a month.  

Alden is generous with printed information too: free handouts are in strategic spots all over the nursery and the monthly newsletter, available in newsprint or email form, has a pretty good ratio of good advice and bright ideas to in-text ads.  

Despite my respect for the institution, it had clearly been way too long since my last visit when I ventured inland last week. I’m almost used (though not reconciled) to the way the places I knew out there have been paved and built over and my landmarks have vanished, but once I’d navigated the straits of stucco and standard plantings to the front gate, I was still bewildered.  

The driveway was new. The fencing/walls/plantings around it all were new. There was a great big chateaufiquated building that I swore I’d never seen before. It wasn’t until I got inside and recognized some of the oaks that I felt oriented.  

Fortunately, most of those great old oaks are still there. They were alive with yellow-rumped warblers and other birds: I had red-shafted flicker, robins, blackbirds (probably Brewer’s), juncos, bushtits, and cormorants (OK, flying over) on the daylist; there was an Anna’s hummingbird nesting on one of the biggest oaks by the building entrance, and she came down to give me the stinkeye.  

There was a visible casualty, and it was an important one: the grand oak in the driveway had fallen in the January storm and parts of it still lay shattered in the median circle.  

It hurts to see, but, like us, trees are mortals.  

 

 

Alden Lane Nursery 

981 Alden Lane, Livermore 

(925) 447-0280  

www.aldenlane.com 

Email newsletter sign-up on website. 

Open daily 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m. 

 

 

 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Daily Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section. Her column on East Bay trees appears every other Tuesday in the Daily Planet.


Column: The Public Eye: The Great Debate of 2008

By Bob Burnett
Tuesday March 04, 2008

So far there have been many surprises in the contest for the 2008 presidential nomination. Six months ago, it appeared the probable candidates would be Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton; now it seems they will be John McCain and Barack Obama. Last year it appeared the leading issue would be the war in Iraq; now it’s likely the great debate will be about the economy. 

In 1928 there were no debates between the incumbent Republican president, Herbert Hoover, and the Democratic challenger, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Nonetheless, by the time of the election, most Americans were aware of fundamental differences in their approach to solving the Great Depression. This fall, when Senator McCain debates Senator Obama, Americans will recognize a stark reality: Republicans have learned nothing in 80 years. 

The Great Depression was fueled by a combination of irrational market exuberance, unfettered greed, and lack of governmental oversight. The current recession has been powered by the same factors. In 1928 we saw irrational exuberance in the form of a speculative investment in stocks. In recent times we’ve seen the same unwarranted enthusiasm; this time for housing. 

In both eras there was unfettered greed; the dominant morality was “what’s in it for me.” The Great Depression saw a few unscrupulous individuals get rich by peddling penny stocks and other shaky financial vehicles. The current recession saw consumers taken in by pernicious credit-card practices or by sub-prime loans with rates that unexpectedly accelerated. 

In both periods there was a woeful lack of federal oversight. The 1928 stock market abuses led to the formation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and other regulatory agencies. Unfortunately, the current recession was fueled by Bush administration policies that both fueled America’s appetite for debt and weakened financial oversight. 

In the fall there will be a series of presidential debates likely featuring Senators McCain and Obama. The dominant subject will be the recession. While Republicans have had plenty of time to learn from the mistakes that produced the Great Depression, Senator McCain is likely to reprise the rhetoric of former President Hoover; he’ll assert that, if left alone, the market will make the necessary adjustments. 

Over the past eight decades, the Republican Party has been remarkably consistent in their wrongheaded economic rhetoric: greed is good because it represents the will of the market and monopolies are even better. GOP candidates have promised to cut taxes, minimize the role of the federal government, and, more recently, reduce entitlements.  

It’s not difficult to see why Republicans favor cutting the taxes of the rich and powerful; this is a quid pro quo for the GOP’s wealthiest donors. Therefore Senator McCain follows the Bush leads and advocates tax reduction as the only way to ease the current recession. Nonetheless, based on America’s experience in the Great Depression, cutting taxes won’t pull us out of an economic downturn. Nor will the meager economic stimulus package recently passed by Congress. 

Similarly, it’s not difficult to understand why Republicans seek to minimize the role of the federal government: the rich and powerful want to have their way with the market without restrictions. But what finally pulled America out of the Great Depression was more government, not less. Republicans ignore the reality that agencies such as the FDIC have helped stabilize the economy. 

When we study the lessons of American history, it is obvious that what is needed to remedy the current recession is massive government intervention, investment on a scale that hasn’t been seen since Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives. But Senator McCain doesn’t favor this strategy; he advocates the same hands-off policies that George Bush and other Republican dinosaurs have espoused for the last 80 years. In contrast, Senator Obama understands the necessity for government intervention. 

In the coming 2008 economic debate, there will be two major points of disagreement. The first will be what to do: McCain will advocate passivity; he will take the classic Republican approach, which is to pray that the market will provide the remedy. In contrast, Obama will prescribe action; he will suggest his own version of the New Deal. 

The second point of disagreement will be how to pay for the necessary fiscal stimulus. As is the case with George Bush, McCain’s number one priority will be “winning” the war in Iraq, no matter how much time and money is involved. Senator Obama’s number one priority will be to fix the economy. He will suggest America cannot afford to continue to spend $2 billion per week in Iraq and make the common-sense argument we should shift the focus of the war to Afghanistan—a move that will reduce military expenditures and free funds for domestic programs. In addition, Obama will link “homeland security” to our domestic well-being and assert we must strengthen the average American family as an integral part of our “war” on terror. 

John McCain was born in 1936 and experienced the Great Depression. Nonetheless, he has chosen to rely upon Republican ideology rather than the hard lessons learned by his and other American families. McCain’s behavior proves the old adage: “You can’t teach an old [war] horse new tricks.” 

 

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


Green Neighbors: Pretty Good Tree with a Pretty Dumb Name

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday March 04, 2008
Casaurina in Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Park, by Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland.
By Ron Sullivan
Casaurina in Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Park, by Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland.

Trust the Aussies (“…from the Land Down Under/Where the women something and the men something-else-that-rhymes with ‘under’—maybe ‘blunder’?—but definitely not whatever the women do”) to get all weird about gender issues in the unlikeliest places. They’re blessed with several species of casuarina, a useful and engagingly weird clade of trees, and what do they call them? “She-oak.” And what do they mean by that? Why, “like oak but inferior.”  

Joke, schmoke. We get it, guys; we’re just bored already. 

Not surprisingly, we have casuarinas planted here and there in the Bay Area. Lots of Australian plants thrive here, as we share a “Mediterranean” climate with much of that continent. Casaurinas (the name still in general nursery-trade use) don’t look like oaks; the dumb name is supposedly about how their lumber performs. What they look most like is pines. 

In fact, they look so much like pines that I’ve passed casaurina plantings for years before twigging to what they were. There is a fairly simple way to tell Casaurina cunninghamiana and Allocasuarina verticillata (formerly Casaurina stricta), which as far as I know are the two most common species here, from pines. Look at the branch tips: Pines’ smallest branches’ ends are blunt and rounded; casaurinas’ sweep into a point.  

When you look more closely, you might notice that the leaves, which like pines’ are reduced to needle form, have joints like those of equisetums—the horsetails or scouring rushes that turn up in damp places. They’re not cousins, though.  

The most recent taxonomic sort-out puts casuarinas in the same order as beeches (northern and southern), birches, bayberries, and walnuts. They’re a Gondwana family, from that former supercontinent: fossils have been discovered in New Zealand and South America, where no living species survive. Australia is their center of distribution, with outliers from India to Polynesia. 

As with a lot of plants these days, there’s some confusion about the names of the different species. According to Elizabeth McClintock’s Trees of Golden Gate Park, the casuarinas planted there are C. cunninghamia, the river she-oak of northern and eastern Australia, sometimes misidentified as C. equisetifolia. At least they’re still together in the genus Casuarina, many of whose members such as the former C. stricta were recently split off into Allocasuarina, hence that name change.  

Whatever their maiden names, they’re all of a very old Australian lineage. Around thirty thousand years ago, as that continent became hotter and drier, casuarinas displaced the ancient araurcarias—primitive conifers like the bunya-bunya and the recently discovered wollemi pine. They were part of a whole flora of scleromorphs, drought- and fire-adapted plants with small scaly water-conserving leaves. Later on the casuarinas were pushed aside by the eucalypts. 

Somewhere along the line, the casuarinas formed a symbiotic partnership with a soil bacterium called Frankia. Living in nodules among the roots, Frankia fixes atmospheric nitrogen and makes it available to the host plant—the same kind of arrangement that another microorganism, Rhizobium, has with the peas and their relatives. Other strains of Frankia co-occur with our native ceanothus, mountain mahogany, and alders. 

The bacterial connection may give casuarinas a competitive edge in nutrient-poor environments. Turn them loose in a warm place and they grow like weeds. They’re a huge concern in Florida, where three species—C. equisetifolia, C. cunninghamiana, and C. glauca—thrive in the alkaline, limestone-derived soils. Originally planted as ornamentals, these Australians have overgrown the habitats of endangered American crocodiles, loggerhead turtles, and gopher tortoises. Their roots suck up disproportionate amounts of soil moisture and invade water and sewer lines, and their leaves are toxic to cattle.  

But on their native turf, casuarinas play important ecological and cultural roles. They’re associated with mycorrhizal fungi that provide food—Australian truffles—for small marsupials like bandicoots and potoroos. In this, they resemble one of California’s persistent lineages, as similar “truffles” feed the squirrels in old-growth coastal redwood forests.  

Native Australians favored casuarina wood for spears, processed and ate the red sap that exudes from the trunks, and chewed the young cones for moisture during long desert treks. Tahitians also used the wood for weapons, and considered the trees as reincarnations of warriors those weapons had killed, apparently because, like them, the trees bleed red.  

The wood tends to be red too, which is why some species are called “beefwood.” Come to think of it, a friend of mine told me he’s had main courses of what he calls the Outhouse Steakback that might as well have been lumber; maybe they were piloting a crypto-vegetarian substitute. Or maybe it was an attempt at a high-fiber diet supplement.  

I await indignant correspondence from outraged Aussies. In the meantime I’ll stick to witchetty grubs. Roasted, please, and hold the Vegemite.  

 

 

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.  

 


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Friday March 07, 2008

FRIDAY, MARCH 7 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Chicago” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through April 12. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Berkeley Rep ”Wishful Drinking” with Carrie Fisher, at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St., through March 30. Tickets are $33-$69. 647-2949. 

Central Works “Wakefield; or Hello Sophia” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through March 23.Tickets are $14-$25. 558-1381. 

The Imagination Players “Once on This Island“ A musical for the whole family Fri. at 7:30 p.m., Sat. at 1, 4 and 7:30 p.m., Sun. at 1 and 5 p.m. at Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $8-$15. 665-5565. www.berkeleyplayhouse.org 

Impact Theatre “Jukebox Stories: The Case of the Creamy Foam” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through March 22. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. http://impacttheatre.com 

UC Dept. of Theater “The Bacchae” at Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m., through March 9 at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$14. theater.berkeley.edu 

Virago Theatre Company “Candide” the comic opera at 8 p.m. Fri and Sat., 7 p.m. Sun. at Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding Ave., Alameda, through Mar. 9. Tickets are $15-$25. 865-6237. www.viragotheatre.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Pods” Paintings by Kim Thoman Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Oakopolis, 447 25th St., Oakland. Runs through March 22. 663-6920. 

Women’s History Month Works by James Gayles and Nedra T. Williams Reception at 6 p.m. at NoneSuch Space, 2865 Broadway, 2nd flr., Oakland.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jane Ganahl describes “Naked on the Page: The Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500.  

Mark Wilson on “Julia Morgan: Architect of Beauty” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Friday Noon Concert Chamber music at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

La Colectiva, cumbia Colombiana, salsa, son y mas, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568.  

Dance IS Festival at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $8-$12 at the door.  

First Fridays After Five with Purirak, the Shahrzad Dance Company, Navarrete x Kajiyama Dance Theater and more at 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022. 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$60. 642-9988.  

Fortune Smiles Quintet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Trio Garufa at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Tango dance lessons at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $20. 525-5054. 

Laurie Antonioli Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $18. 845-5373.  

Nearly Beloved, folk and country, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Ditty Bops, Jesca Hoop at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Justin Ancheta at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Josh Workman Trio, jazz, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Amanda West, Lalin St. Juste at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Deja Bryson, Ke-Shay, R&B, at 9 p.m. at Maxwell’s Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15. 839-6169. 

Imani Uzuri at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7-$10. 548-1159.  

Machina Sol at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Lizz Wright at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sat. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, MARCH 8 

CHILDREN  

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

Thomas Lynch reads from the children’s classics, Kenneth Grahame’s “Wind in the Willows” and Roald Dahl’s “Boy” at 1 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Ostracismos” Paintings and poetry by the Torres Brothers Opening reception at 6:30 p.m. at La Peña. 849-2568.  

“Capturing Landscapes through Changing Technology” Photographs by Alasdair McCondochie. Opening reception at 3 p.m. at The LightRoom, 2263 Fifth St. 649-8111. www.lightroom.com 

“Metals in Motion” Artists from the Monterey Bay Metals Arts Guild discuss their works at 1 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

FILM 

”Iron-Jawed Angels” The HBO dramatization of the last decade of the suffragettes’ campaign to gain the right to vote, in celebration of Women’s History Month at 2 p.m. at the Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave., Oakland. 

“In Vanda’s Room” with filmmaker Perdo Costa in person at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

James Scully and Peter Everwine read their poems at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Free. 981-6100. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Songs of Hope and Struggle” Strengthening Berkeley Through Organizing Benefit concert with Bruce Barthol and Francisco Herrera for Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action at 7 p.m. at St. John’s Prebyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Suggested donation $25. Reception at 5:30 p.m. 665-5821. 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 2 and 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$60. 642-9988.  

Dance IS Festival at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $8-$12 at the door. www.juliamorgan.org 

Opera Piccola “Mirrors of Mumbai” at 7:30 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourde Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$15. 658-0967. www.opera-piccola.org 

Chora Nova “Aphrodite’s Muse” Works by women composers in honor of International Womens's Day at 8 p.m., lecture at 7:15 p.m. at ;First Congregational Church, Dana and Durant. Tickets are $10-$18. www.choranova.org 

Lichi Fuentes in an International Women’s Day concert at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$14. 849-2568.  

Mal Sharpe’s Big Money in Jazz at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Baba Ken & West African Highlife Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance lesson at 9 p.m. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Jeff Rolka, Robert Heiskell at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

John Gorka with Amilia K Spicer at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Beep with Michael Coleman at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Gateswingers Jazz Band, for dancing and listening at 8 p.m. at Central Perk, 10086 San Pablo Ave., at Central, El Cerrito. 558-7375.  

Montclair Women’s Big Band celebrating International Women’s Day at 8 and 10 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Babashad Jazz at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

CV Dub at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Dave G and Andy Mason in a Tirbute to the Violent Femmes at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Lizz Wright at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200.  

SUNDAY, MARCH 9 

CHILDREN 

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia Guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

FILM 

“Down to Earth” with filmmaker Pedro Costa in person at 5 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Contemporary Art in Cuba” with Terry McClain at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

“Still Lives: The Films of Pedro Costa” Lecture by the filmmaker at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum Theater. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Quartet San Francisco “Whirled Chamber Music” at 4 p.m. at Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. Tickets are $12, free for children 18 and under. 559-2941.  

David Tanenbaumn, classical guitarist at 3 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Pre-concert talk at 2:30 p.m. Free. 415-248-1640.  

Sounds New Tenth Anniversary Concert at 7:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Suggested donation $15. 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$60. 642-9988.  

Presidio String Quartet will perform music of Bartok, Pårt, Dan Cantrell at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10-$12. 644-6893.  

Soli Deo Gloria U.S. premiere of Allan Bevan’s “Nou Goth Sonne Under Wode” at 3:30 p.m. at St. Joseph’s Basilica, 1109 Chestnut St. at Encinal, Alameda. Tickets are $20-$25. www.sdgloria.org 

Dream Kitchen in a family concert at 3 p.m. at Black Pine Circle School, 2027 7th St. Cost is $10, children free.  

Mucho Axé and TerroRitmo, salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Jazz It Up” Berkeley High Fundraiser at 3 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

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

Code Name: Jonah at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Khalil Shaheed, Gary Brown, Glen Pearson in a benefit for Babtunde Lea’s Educultural Foundation at 7 and 9 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $15-$25. 238-9200.  

MONDAY, MARCH 10 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium “Looking at Looking at Looking” with Golan Levin, artist, Carnegie Mellon Univ., at 7:30 p.m. at 160 Kroeber Hall, UC Campus. 643-9565. http://atc.berkeley.edu 

Brian Fagan describes “The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

OmniDawn Press Night with Justin Courter, Mary Mackay and Laura Moriarty at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Poetry Express with Karen Hogan at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Kurt Ribak, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100.  

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

Skyline High School Jazz Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. 

TUESDAY, MARCH 11 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ethan Rarick describes “Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Chamber Performances with the Wolford-Rosenblum Duo, saxophone and piano, at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $20. 525-5211. 

Tom Rigney & Flambeau at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

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

Midnite, roots reggae from St. Croix at 8:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $25-$30. 548-1159.  

Brian Woods Ensemble, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

John Worley & WorlView at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$12. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Protest in Paris 1968” Photographs by Serge Hambourg. Exhibition opens at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

FILM 

Film 50: History of Cinema “Late Spring” at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Michael Connery discusses “Youth to Power: How Today’s Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow’s Progressive Majority” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Roberta Maisel discusses “All Grown Up: Living Happily Ever After With Your Adult Children” at 6 p.m. at the North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library. 981-6250. 

Poetry en Español with Gladys Basagoitia and Carmen Abad at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Gina Daggett and Kathy Belge discuss their new book, “Lipstick and Dipstick’s Essential Guide to Lesbian Relationships” at 7 p.m. at Laurel Bookstore, 4100 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 531-2073. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Music for the Spirit with Ron McKean on harpsichord at 12:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555. 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with University Chamber Chorus at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864.  

Dan Stanton Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Bernard Anderson & The Old School Band at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. West coast swing danec lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $7. 525-5054.  

Saoco at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Kids and Hearts at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

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

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

THURSDAY, MARCH 13 

CHILDREN 

“Grandma’s Hands” An African American History Month celebration with a performance by Oxford Elementary’s Fifth Grade Class at 8:45 a.m. at Oxford Elementary School, 1130 Oxford St. 644-6300. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia Guided tour at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Oakland Heritage Alliance Lecture by landscape architect Chris Pattillo on the Historic Landscape Survey, a new program that recognizes and documents our nation’s historic and cultural landscapes at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Cost is $8-$10. 763-9218.  

“Focus on Contra Costa” Authors Adam Nilsen, Dean McLeod and Caroll Jensen discuss their books about Pleasant Hill, Port Chicago and the Delta at 1 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022.  

Jeffrey Harrison and Cathleen Micheaels read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Kyu Hyun Kim on “The Age of Visions and Arguments: Parliamentarianism and the National Public Sphere in Early Meiji Japan” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Symphony, Guillermo Figueroa, conductor, at 8 p.m. Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $20-$60. 841-2800.  

23rd Jewish Music Festival “Mayn Yiddishe Velt: Heather Lauren Klein sings Yiddish Art Songs” at 2 p.m. at The JCC East Bay, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237, ext. 139. 

Narada Michael Walden in a benefit for Music in the Schools at 6 p.m. at Ex'pression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound, Emeryville. Tickets are $50-$250. eventinfo@emeryed.org 

Moving Violations, Queer Contra Dance, at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Jenny Farris Quartet in a Frank Loesser Tribute Show, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

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

John Seabury at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Gonzalo Rubacaba at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

 

 

 


Berlin Film Festival: From the Stones to Abu Ghraib

By Lewis Dolinsky, Special to the Planet
Friday March 07, 2008
A scene from Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris’ film on Abu Ghraib, was part of the Berlin Film Festival.
A scene from Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris’ film on Abu Ghraib, was part of the Berlin Film Festival.

How big is big? At the 58th annual Berlin Film Festival, or Berlinale, in February, 387 movies were shown in 11 days on 38 screens in 15 theaters operating from 9 a.m. to past midnight. 

Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stones concert film Shine a Light opened; by the end, every Luis Bunuel film had been screened. In between came a “Talent Campus” for young filmmakers with panel discussions and workshops, and a parallel European Film Market of more than 700 films (some overlap), showing more than 100 a day. Even if you like movies, that’s a lot. Many of them may never see the dark of a commercial theater, not because they’re lousy but because no distributor is willing to bet that there’s an audience for them. But in Berlin, with perfect screens and perfect prints, even bad films have their moments. 

The Berlin festival is not as old as Venice, nor as big as Cannes but, uniquely, it is the only one of the Big Three that is as much for the public as for the industry. Nearly a quarter of a million tickets were sold. Unlike Cannes and Venice, Berlin is held in the worst weather, although this winter stayed above freezing much of the time. Still it is better to be indoors.  

Representing the Daily Planet, I saw 19 films, attended a dozen press conferences where one could see up close and personal Scorsese and the Stones, Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz, Scarlet Johansson and Natalie Portman, Willem Dafoe, Tilda Swinton, Daniel Day-Lewis, Madonna (she’s funny) and Errol Morris, the one-time Berkeley graduate student who changed the documentary genre. I interviewed the festival’s head of jury, the great political film maker Costa Gavras (Z, Missing, The Music Box).  

I marveled at the efficiency and good humor of a huge staff that kept the thing going. And at a city that really works (even if one bus was three minutes late). This is a place where beer is pure, restaurants exude atmosphere, the museums and galleries are world-class, and the revitalized neighborhoods of East Berlin retain a certain mystique. After 60 years of Nazi and Stasi, Berlin seems at home with itself. The center of the festival is Potsdamer Platz, a former no man’s land, now representing the best and worst of modern architecture. The Berlin Wall once ran through it.  

After screenings, L’Oreal gave mascara—to everyone. Vanity Fair had wonderful gold gift packages, of chewing gum. A movie named Bananaz provided bananas. Volkswagen poured champagne, and uncovered its new car at a party at the Berlin Academy of Art, Seal performing. There were more galas than even Leah Garchik could handle. 

After the photo shoots—herds of cameramen baying—the director and stars of films would answer standard questions: How did you happen to begin this project? What was it like working with …? (Wonderful.) A child actor was asked whether violence in his film had scared him: No. “It’s a movie.”  

Every day, Berlin papers published several pages on the festival. Three trade publications—Hollywood Reporter, Screen and Variety—put out daily glossy magazines of reviews and gossip. Forty-two hundred journalists (4,200) were said to be in attendance, but of the general interest American papers, apparently only the New York Times and the Daily Planet published.  

 

The Elephant  

Getting a handle on the Berlinale is like the blind man trying to describe an elephant. Journalists and filmmakers and civilians, looking for one great film and not finding it, asked each other: What have you liked? What do you expect to like? Conventional wisdom said that the competition section was weak this year and that more interesting things were to be found among the smaller films, or the first films, or unusual documentaries, or the “Culinary Cinema” section, or the German section, or the Rossi or Bunuel retrospectives, or the Vietnam War films. 

For those looking for a handle, festival director Dieter Kosslick suggested music. In addition to the Stones, there was a Patti Smith bio (she attended and sang). Heavy Metal in Baghdad showed a band truly on the run. CSNY Déjà Vu was directed by Bernard Shakey (who looked and sounded a lot like Neil Young). Madona made her directing debut with “Filth and Wisdom.” The late Willy Sommerfeld, last surviving silent film pianist from the 1920s, was honored.  

Some actresses gave astounding performances: Tilda Swinton in Julia, a film that, like its main character, careened out of control; Kristin Scott Thomas in “Il y a longtemps que je t’aime…” (I’ve Loved You So Long) about the readjustment to society of a child murderer; and Israeli Arab Hiam Abbass. In Lemon Tree, Abbass walks into an all-male café on the West Bank. The looks she gets are so chilling that one might suppose that the greatest divide in the Middle East is gender.  

Several films dealt with the abuse of children. Kids were forced into war, kidnapped, murdered, molested, or just bullied. Apparently, every dysfunctional family is dysfunctional in its own way.  

Among its suggestions for 10 movies to see, the German weekly Die Zeit picked RR, directed by the American James Benning. He said he wanted the title to be pronounced “railroad” rather than “ahr, ahr” (lest his film be confused with a sequel to “Treasure Island”). In 120 minutes, RR shows 43 trains. They enter a frame and they leave it—first slow trains, then fast ones. Enjoyable? One viewer said, “It depends on what the definition of enjoyable is.”  

The Stones were enjoyable, by any definition. Some critics were disappointed that there was no story line. Also no analysis, no probing. But Scorsese used 17 cameras with frequent cuts to capture the band’s incredible energy. You feel as if you are in the third row. Good choice of clips. In one, we see Jagger, young and innocent, thrilled that the group has lasted for two years and hopeful that it can last another year. Meeting former President Clinton on stage before a concert at the Beacon Theater in New York City in 2006, Keith Richards says, “Hello Clinton, I’m Bushed.” In person, the Stones were an extension of the film, poised and funny. They had their personas down pat, and reveled in their status as “co-producers” and as the “actors.” Jagger, the preeminent Alpha, was definitely in charge. 

The Stones were in the competition section but not in the competition. The Golden Bear, the top prize, was awarded to the Brazil’s The Elite Squad about the brutal police war against drug lords. Some called it a fascist film or Death Wish in Rio. Errol Morris won the Silver Bear for his Abu Ghraib story Standard Operating Procedure, the first documentary ever entered in Berlin competition. Paul Anderson was chosen best director for There Will Be Blood, which got the best notices—although some found it bombastic and over the top. Sally Hawkins won best actress for the comedy Happy-Go-Lucky, a Mike Leigh film for people who don’t like Mike Leigh films. And an Iranian, Reza Najie, not Day-Lewis, won best actor. There were audience awards, a queer award, and young filmmaker awards; it’s an endless list.  

 

My Berlinale  

Ultimately, everyone there had his or her own Berlinale.  

I liked the intimate look of Citizen Havel. A cameraman follows the then-president of the Czech Republic for years. His staff pushes and pulls, checking him for dandruff and political positions. Vaclav Havel expresses annoyance with his jacket (too tight), with American soup, and with his rival, the uptight Vaclav Klaus. Clinton plays “Summertime” on a Czech saxophone (Havel’s gift),” Yeltsin needs a beer, and Ronnie Wood wants to know whether a restaurant named Provence would be a good choice in Prague. Provence will be fine, Havel reassures him. 

Katyn, by the legendary Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda, shows the genocide within the genocide—the massacre of 20,000 Polish officers (including Wajda’s father) by the Soviet Union. The objective was to wipe out the Polish intelligentsia in order to prevent a sustainable independent Poland from re-emerging. That project turned out to be quite successful. For nearly 50 years, the Soviet Union blamed this mass murder on the Nazis, a group you’d expect to be impossible to libel—and Poles were forbidden to speak the truth. Now they can. It would be inaccurate to report that this is a perfect film as well as an important film. Still, the ending produces nightmares. 

Like I’ve Loved You So Long, the French film with Scott Thomas, Boy A, originally shown on British television, concerns a child’s killer re-entering society, but with a different result. And like the French film, Boy A is worth the pain one feels in watching. 

Johnnie To has made an homage to old Hong Kong—and to a team of pickpockets, which To says is a vanishing breed in HK. To’s film Sparrow is light and airy. It’s like dance. 

An Italian film, Quiet Chaos, was my favorite. Nanni Moretti plays an executive who comes to terms with the death of his wife, in his own time and in his own way, waiting each day in a park for his daughter’s school to let out. Each day, he plays a game with a boy who has Down syndrome and watches a beautiful woman walk her Saint Bernard. Colleagues come to discuss the problems of the office and an impending merger. And eventually, something shakes him out of his pattern and back into real life. The film is unpredictable and charming. It doesn’t hit you over the head.  

Of course, Standard Operating Procedure, Morris’ film on Abu Ghraib, does hit you over the head—with dramatic music and graphics, an almost pornographic fixation on those infamous photographs, and the kind of revealing interviews that are an Errol Morris trademark. People tell him things that they shouldn’t. All the low-level perpetrators play the victim but hang themselves with rationalizations. Lynndie Englund gives an account in which the brutalities of Abu Ghraib are less important than the fact that she got pregnant and now has a child. So if she had a chance for a do-over, she wouldn’t.  

In the press conferences after the films, there was rarely confrontation. With Morris, there was. Because many of the journalists were impressed by SOP (which Morris calls “nonfiction horror”) and grateful for what it showed, they wondered why all the bells and whistles and re-enactments. Why couldn’t the interviews have spoken for themselves? Why not “concentrate on the pure truth?” 

Morris was miffed (“With all due respect, I think this is nonsense”) but eventually gave a series of responses. You can see the whole thing on the Berlinale website www.Berlinale.de. “The human brain is not a reality recorder,” Morris said. "Reality isn’t in there somewhere and I can just recover it by thinking about it. We put the world together from bits and pieces … Consciousness is a re-enactment of the world inside our skulls. It’s all a re-enactment except the world out there. What we do is an attempt to recover that reality by thinking, by exploring, by investigating.”  

It was a good answer. It was also a valid question. 

 

Freelance journalist Lewis Dolinsky was a longtime editor and foreign affairs columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. 


Moving Pictures: Pacific Film Archive Presents the Magic of Orson Welles

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday March 07, 2008

The myth of Orson Welles has outlived its usefulness. The man has long since passed on, as have those who sought to undermine his achievements. He was jealously branded by Hollywood as the wunderkind-turned-enfant terrible of the cinema, the man who took on a media titan, and Hollywood itself, in Citizen Kane and then squandered his own career with his proclivity for self-destruction and artistic excess. The standard line on Welles was that he created just that single masterpiece before embarking on a long downward slide.  

However, reports of the artist’s slow-motion death have been greatly exaggerated. Though there’s an element of truth in the criticism of Welles—he was, by most accounts brash, difficult and at times self-destructive, yet immeasurably charming—the decline was not in his work but in his relations with those who controlled the purse strings and the means of production; artistically he remained vital until his death in 1985. 

Pacific Film Archive will present a retrospective covering all of the director’s major cinematic work, in roughly chronological order, through April 13. Citizen Kane shows tonight (Friday) at 7 p.m.; his follow-up, The Magnificent Ambersons, screens Saturday at 5 p.m. 

Much of the criticism of Welles, now as well as then, stems from a profound misunderstanding of the man and of his art. While it is true that Welles was a restless innovator, his innovations were, for the most part, at the service of a classicist’s art. He was far more conservative in his sentiments and affections than the image of the bold, relentless, iconoclastic youth of Kane would indicate.  

To begin to understand the trajectory of Welles’ career, one must keep in mind the polarities of his influences: traditional theater and magic.  

Welles was an accomplished magician, often performing tricks for cast and crew. And during World War II he traveled the country performing for the troops and sawing Marlene Dietrich in half before their very eyes. He was a consummate showman who took great pleasure in startling and dazzling an audience.  

But he was also a serious actor, writer and director, trained in the classics of literature and theater from a very young age. As the creative force behind the Mercury Theater in New York in the 1930s, he forged his reputation, at the age of 20, by reviving classic works with a bold, modernist aesthetic. And on radio, with the Mercury Theater on the Air, he focused on the same sort of material, adapting the classics to one-hour and half-hour dramas. (His groundbreaking theater career may survive only in photographs and second-hand accounts, but virtually all of Welles’ surviving radio work can be found on the Internet, cheap if not free, in MP3 format.)  

But Welles’ traditionalism was often overshadowed in the public mind by his showmanship, by his attention-getting forays into more melodramatic projects. While he established his presence on radio as the original voice of The Shadow and presented his share of thrillers on stage and on radio, the bulk of Welles’ oeuvre, in every medium in which he worked, was far more serious in intent and execution. 

It was his radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds that really launched the myth. The controversial broadcast relocated the Martian invasion from England to New Jersey and presented the drama as a series of breaking news announcements interrupting “our regularly scheduled program.” The show set off a nationwide panic that might have destroyed any other director’s career; instead it earned the Mercury a sponsor (the program would soon be renamed the Campbell Playhouse) and earned him the chance to make a movie.  

The result was Citizen Kane, a brash, bold film that featured Welles’ trademark blend of commercial entertainment, high art and sleight-of-hand chicanery. Its effrontery to everything Hollywood was evident in every shot; Welles ostentatiously brandished his mastery of the medium: unusual camera angles; dramatic visual and thematic contrasts; complex tapestries of sound; long takes followed by startling cuts and transitions; and of course Greg Toland’s deep-focus photography. For better and for worse, the film made Welles’ reputation: a showman with pretensions to Art. 

He would go on to complete just 11 more films, several of them truly great, most of them groundbreaking, and at least one or two fascinating failures. Many of them were taken away from him and re-edited without his input or consent; some were hampered from the start by low budgets and a lack of resources as a result of Welles’ self-imposed exile in Europe as an independent filmmaker. But if one fact stands out above all in PFA's restrospective, it is that Welles never stood still stylistically. Though every film is stamped with his peculiar visual style, his body of work ranges from expressionist to classical, from period pieces to modern-day noir, from Shakespeare to documentary and personal essay. 

The film that might have been his true masterpiece came immediately after Kane. The story of the making and unmaking of The Magnificent Ambersons is nearly as tragic as the film itself. Welles rather faithfully adapted Booth Tarkington’s novel, using a style much more restrained and fluid than the genre-busting flash and disjointed narrative pyrotechnics of Kane. The result, as Francois Truffaut put it, is a film “made in violent contrast to Citizen Kane, almost as if by another filmmaker who detested the first and wanted to give him a lesson in modesty.” 

Ambersons is a nostalgic dream dissolving into a jaded, weary reality check, a portrait of a vanishing epoch, of the passing of time and the coming of change. To modern eyes, it may seem like an old-fashioned Hollywood film; it is stately and somber and lavish in design. Even a film as showy as Kane may, in these times, require an educated eye to fully appreciate its innovation and audacity, but Ambersons can be even more vexing to the modern viewer, for the workings of its innovations are carefully concealed. Welles wasn’t aiming for shock and awe with this film, as he was with his War of the Worlds radio broadcast and, to some extent, with Kane; he was instead offering a beautifully crafted and seamless film, rich in novelistic detail, which employed its innovations purely in the service of the tale.  

Welles borrowed many techniques from his predecessors, including the iris—a common device from the silent era—and images burnished at the edges, like the more sentimental works of D.W. Griffith. He also incorporated much of his radio experience, narrating the film himself as he did in his Mercury broadcasts and using radio’s bridging musical cues to provide fluid transitions between scenes. Also evident are elements of classic theater, such as the gossiping townsfolk who act as a sort of Greek chorus.  

Ambersons employed Welles’ much-vaunted long takes, his camera dancing along with the guests in the ballroom scene or gazing patiently as the delicate psyche of Agnes Moorehead’s Aunt Fanny finally collapses in the kitchen scene. And Welles’ editing talents came to the fore once again, most evidently in the opening montage that establishes the setting with humor and delicate irony. As in all of Welles’ best work, he brought together a wide range of styles and influences and melded them into a personal vision of great depth and complexity, but this time the seams and stagecraft were more carefully hidden from view. 

RKO previewed the film for an audience, and though the comment cards contained many remarks that were ecstatic, many more were severely critical. It was war time, and the average moviegoer wanted escapism, not gloom. The studio panicked and, while Welles was shooting another film in Brazil, began to carve away at his most personal film. Nearly an hour’s worth of footage was scrapped; several scenes were re-shot, re-written or re-edited; and an attempt at a happy ending was tacked on. In the words of critic David Thomson, it is a film “so dark and mournful that it would not be shown properly to the American public.” It’s a testament to the power of Welles’ vision that the butchered 88-minute film is still widely considered a masterpiece.  

Shooting scripts, memos, photographs and first-hand accounts provide a fairly complete picture of what is missing from the film as it exists today. In addition to the original ending, the loss of one particular scene is especially galling: As the family’s fortunes decline, young George takes one last walk through the decaying mansion as the camera follows in one long, unbroken take. The scene goes on for several minutes, allowing the character time to mourn the passing of an era as he moves through each room, past pieces of furniture shrouded in sheets like the ghosts of ballroom dances past. It was a technical tour de force, with crew members frantically pulling apart sets and doorways and sliding others into place and laying dolly tracks just beyond the view of the camera as it traveled through the house. It is the essence of the art of Orson Welles: the magician’s hand, deft and graceful and invisible in the creation of a seamless and elegant illusion.


The Theater: Cave and Gwinn’s ‘Romeo & Juliet and Other Duets’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday March 07, 2008

“For Romeo & Juliet we're playing with no language, so we call it 'according to Shakespeare,’” said Jim Cave of his show with Deborah Gwinn, Romeo & Juliet and Other Duets, which just opened at The Marsh in San Francisco. “For The Chairs, it’s ‘after Ionesco.’ There are maybe a couple pages of text; the rest went out the window. We tell both of these stories in our own peculiar way. And as the run develops, we may add other little pieces.” 

Cave, an Oakland resident, and Gwinn, who now lives in Vermont, have been working together on and off for decades, since they “connected” during what Cave called “kind of the second generation of the Blake Street Hawkeyes, post-Bob Ernst, David Shine, John O’Keefe ...” referring to the seminal Berkeley theater group of the ‘70s and ‘80s. 

Cave has gone on to become an ubiquitous presence in Bay Area theater (including opera), a masterful jack-of-all-trades, whether as tech director, performing, or in the director’s chair. Actors, on being asked about the show they’re in, will often just describe it as “a Jim Cave thing.” 

“We connected at the Hawkeyes in the early ‘80s when Deb was artistic director,” Cave recalled, “She’d been in the Iowa Theater Workshop, which was influenced by Jerzy Grotowski’s experiments, so very movement-oriented. She came out here with others who founded the Hawkeyes. I was technical director, then directed the last piece Bob Ernst, Cynthia Moore and Whoopi [Goldberg] did, Tantrum. Then I was given a project, The Whole Hog, something different groups around the Bay Area have duplicated ... 

“Debbie’s a wonderful playwright,” Cave went on, “always fascinated with classical stories, like Alcestis, Phaedra, Medea—but they’re turned into comedies. She also worked with Merle Kessler and Duck’s Breath, and was in O’Keefe’s DISGRACE at the SF Playwrights Festival and Theatre Artaud. Then she moved back to Vermont, where every summer she puts on her Shakespeare festival in a barn. I go back for it. She and I anchor a piece, then get local people to help. There are kids in that town who’ve grown up with our idea of Shakespeare.” 

Cave endeavored to describe the style they’ve developed for their duets.  

“We both find it very difficult to talk about it,” he said. “You have to see it. This particular style pares language back. And it’s not the characters speaking. We have developed ways to deliver the language—as voice-over, or with a megaphone, or, a specialty of Deb’s, through dolls. It makes you listen in a different way. We tend to use the same music over and over in different contexts. Since we’re doing duets, we use duets for two pianos. For The Chairs, Poulenc, Gershwin, Turelli; for R & J Gershwin, Milhaud, Nina Rota and Prokofieff. An odd thing, but the Milhaud sometimes sounds exactly like Gershwin! 

“It all started in Berkeley and around Berkeley,” Cave continued. “Debbie got an old dance studio in Rockridge, where an old woman had taught ballet classes, which she called the Temple. We worked with whoever was around, with different approaches—Macbeth, but all in Lady Macbeth’s voice-over; Midsummer Night’s Dream, speaking for dolls. Then we began working with Greg Goodman, aka Woody Woodman, a pianist whose mentor was Cecil Taylor, and who collaborated with high-level improvisers like Rova, Derek Bailey ... he had musicians from all over the world in his place, really for 30 years in his Berkeley living room. We founded Woody Woodman’s Finger Palace together. He and I put on a version of Don Quixote with no language, to Richard Strauss’ ‘Sketches for Don Quixote,’ later taking it to The Marsh. All the duet work was born from that; Don Quixote inspired it.” 

So Cave and Gwinn’s show at The Marsh is something “coming full circle. Stephanie [Weissman] has been very supportive. And another full circle—Deb performed [and brilliantly] in Stephanie’s opera., Aphrodisia, the piece she founded The Marsh because of, finally played at The Marsh-Berkeley in 2006.” 

Their gestural, collaborative theater continues, an ongoing project “now at Roham’s place. [Roham Shaikani, Oakland actor, known for his work with Darvag, Shotgun and George Charback’s TheatreInSearch.] It’s the Kingdom of Mahor: Roham, backwards. We all have positions in the Ministry. We do magical stuff with very little, curtains sometimes, lights—we cram for a couple of days, invite friends and put on a show.” 

 

 

ROMEO & JULIET and OTHER DUETS 

Through March 29 

Thurs-Sat. at 8 p.m.  

The Marsh 

1062 Valencia St., San Francisco 

www.themarsh.org 

(415) 641-0235 


The Theater: ‘Jukebox Tales’ at La Val’s

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday March 07, 2008

Jukebox Tales: The Case of the Creamy Foam puts the team of Prince Gomovilas and Brandon Patten back together, alternating story and song on a messy set in the basement of La Val's Pizza, a bedroom strewn with the domestic wreckage of young bachelorhood. Sometimes Brandon, after capping off a tune, slips under the sheets and asks Prince for a bedtime story—a funny request before a roomful of spectators. 

This time the "stage” is taped off as a crime scene, with a lonely pint of stout sitting forlorn and foamy, like the subtitle. The hook, in fact, is slight, more an unhook. It’s not so much a plotless detective story (an oxymoron if there ever was one) as another, running pretext to engage the audience in interactivity, a contest to see if they’re paying attention. 

And the audience, many hovering over pizza on paper plates, wiping away their own beery foam from their lips, is rapt. In an age of distraction and oversaturated entertainment, Brandon and Prince have struck on an updated version of a few old chestnuts out of vaudeville. Next they should try their act on the apron of a movie theater stage, another dying institution. This time the live acts might save moving pictures, not the other way around as of yore. 

For those familiar with the original edition, Jukebox Tales: The Case of the Creamy Foam is an extention of what they already know and love. With the help of audience members choosing titles, often at random (though there are requests for recent old favorites), the dynamic duo maintain their usual division of labor: Prince tells his funny, acid tales, sometimes off the page, exhorting the audience’s sympathy with furrowed brow and open-handed gestures, while Brandon alternates with clever, perceptive ditties, accompanying himself on guitar.  

The stories run a familiar gamut, between frenzied episodes of Asian customs (gambling, Buddhist folk beliefs, social flaunting and inter-generational woes) distended by the uncouth sprawl of American consumerism—and Prince’s accounts of his career forays into the wilds of entertainment and The Media. Brandon’s songs are upbeat, tinged with satire, and occasionally pretty salty. One X-rated encore was requested by a woman who said she’d brought her parents to hear it—a new kind of family entertainment? 

After a string of stories like one about Prince’s refusal “to take part in the cult” of Tiger Balm, or the tempest in a styrofoam cup over what he wrote for the AOL Queer Site about High School Musical II, intercut with songs like “Ketchup & Mayo” (while Prince makes the eponymous sandwich—though the song’s not about that kind of eating) and “Ride The Green Tortoise/You’ll Have a Good Time” (“a campy counterculture horror story with a little gay bashing South of the Border”), a reenactment of a scene from The Goonies (with selected audience participation) and a movie trivia game, “the Birthday Girl on a roll” shouts “J’Accuse!” and names the murderer to wrap up Jukebox Tales: The Case of the Creamy Foam after winning two other prizes and playing a Goony ... proving Lana Turner was no anomaly—in La Val’s Subterranean, every spectator’s ripe for her/his 15 seconds of fame, eulogized on the spot by Prince and Brandon. 

 

JUKEBOX TALES: THE CASE OF THE CREAMY FOAM 

Impact Theatre 

La Val's Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave. 

Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m. 

Through March 22 

Tickets $10-$15 

464-4468, impacttheatre.com 

 


East Bay Then and Now: Telegraph and Durant: From Ritzy Enclave to Commercial Hub

By Daniella Thompson
Friday March 07, 2008
Hotel Carlton was built in 1906-07 on the site previously occupied by the Knowles mansion.
Daniella Thompson
Hotel Carlton was built in 1906-07 on the site previously occupied by the Knowles mansion.

Teeming with pizza, bagel, and t-shirt outlets, surrounded by ethnic-food courts and cheap retail arcades, the intersection of Telegraph and Durant Avenues is inconceivable as an exclusive residential enclave reserved for millionaires' mansions set amidst spacious gardens and fronted by orderly rows of palm trees. 

Yet this was exactly how Telegraph Avenue looked in the first decade of the 20th century, when the street extended to Allston Way, meeting the UC campus at Strawberry Creek.  

In 1903, the south side of Bancroft Way contained more empty lots than houses. The west side of Telegraph Avenue between Bancroft and Durant was divided into two enormous lots, of which only the southern one—measuring 200 by 200 feet and extending from the middle of the block to the Durant Ave. corner—was occupied. On this lot, at 2318 Telegraph Avenue, stood the imposing Classic Revival mansion of William E. Knowles. 

Knowles was a real estate executive who had made a fortune in Alaskan gold mining and oil. His house, built in 1900 and one of the showplaces of Berkeley, basked in lonely splendor, with nary a building across the street. 

On the southeast corner, diagonally across from the Knowles residence, stood an even more elegant mansion belonging to lawyer-capitalist Louis Titus. On the southwest corner, one could admire the very large and formal Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter house. 

Today, any mention of fraternity houses will invariably evoke visions of Animal House. Not so at the turn of the last century. In March 1900, when the San Francisco Call devoted a Sunday magazine page to fraternity life in Berkeley, only four of the 14 fraternities located here owned their chapter houses, and the photos that illustrated the article could have been published in House Beautiful. 

Delta Kappa Epsilon was one of the fraternity-owned houses, and a photo of its parlor and hall, complete with lace curtains, a horn Victrola, and the ubiquitous billiard table, made an appearance in the Call magazine. Another featured house belonged to Phi Delta Theta, Louis Titus’s fraternity. Located at 2401 Durant Ave/, on the corner of Dana Street (now a U.C. parking lot), the house boasted tastefully furnished interiors. On June 2, 1901, the Call informed, “The Phi Delta Theta boys are noted for their orderly house […] one would never dream that the house was run entirely by a lot of students. Everything is exactly so, and one could look for dust with a microscope and not have the labor rewarded.” 

In the summer of 1900, presumably while the resident students were away on vacation, the 28-year-old Titus was living in the Phi Delta Theta house with his wife Lottie, infant daughter Dorothy, sister Ethel, and the family’s servant, Minnie Loeser. Why were they living in a frat house? Probably because they awaited the completion of their new mansion a block to the east. Strangely, their deed to the land was not recorded until after the house was completed in November. 

Both Louis and Lottie Titus grew up in Liberty, San Joaquin County. His father was a prosperous farmer, hers a wagon maker and blacksmith. But the rural surface concealed a penchant for learning. Lottie’s mother would shrug off her housewifely role in middle age and begin a new career as an osteopath. Three of Louis’s uncles were school teachers in Wisconsin, and one of them, Daniel Titus, also practiced as a pharmacist before launching a lucrative law career in San Francisco. 

Lottie and Louis came to Berkeley for their schooling. He enrolled at the University of California—the 1891 Berkeley directory listed him as a resident of Phi Delta Theta Hall, at that time located on the corner of Bancroft and Audubon [College Ave.]. Lottie graduated from the Anna Head School and the Mills Seminary in Oakland. She was teaching in a private seminary in Berkeley and he was a young attorney just out of college when they decided to tie the knot in 1892. 

Louis got his introduction to big-time wheeling and dealing at his uncle’s law office and never looked back. Barely into his 30s, he was a major player in real estate development, banking, transportation, water, lumber, and oil. 

Allied with leading business figures such as Francis “Borax” Smith, Frank C. Havens, Wickham Havens, John Hopkins Spring, Allen G. Freeman, Phillip E. Bowles, Joseph Mason and Duncan McDuffie, and Perry Tompkins (the latter two Phi Delta Theta brothers), Titus served as director or officer of key enterprises including the Realty Syndicate, the Claremont Hotel Company, the Berkeley Traction Company, the University Savings Bank of Berkeley, and the Big Lagoon Lumber Company. 

From 1906 to 1910, Titus was president of the People’s Water Company—the private precursor to EBMUD—negotiating two 10% rate reductions with the Oakland city council in order to avoid litigation. Nowadays he is best remembered for having masterminded the idea to relocate the state capital to Berkeley and construct the Capitol building in Northbrae. At the time (1907), the idea was taken seriously enough to be approved by the Assembly. Happily for us, the voters of California nixed the measure. 

In addition to his far-reaching corporate activities, Titus was frequently buying and selling large tracts of land. He also headed the Berkeley Development Company, and in November 1904, the San Francisco Call announced that he was erecting a new business and apartment block on the corner of Telegraph and Bancroft. Designed by Henry Meyers and Clarence Ward, El Granada still stands. It’s been owned by the Munger family for three generations and was restored in 1995, regaining its Mission-style gables, absent since the 1950s. 

But the Granada was not the first harbinger of change on Telegraph Avenue. The initial shot across the bow was delivered by contractor John Albert Marshall, who earlier that year began building a three-story business block on the lot adjacent to the Knowles mansion. As if that weren’t enough, construction began on the Epworth Methodist Church on the northeast corner of Telegraph and Durant-directly across the street from Knowles. 

Knowles was not pleased, and on December 23, 1904, while a crowd of pedestrians watched, he had his mansion picked up and moved half a block east, to 2521 Durant. On that occasion, he predicted to the Oakland Tribune that his well-to-do neighbors, Louis Titus and Seneca Gale (the latter lived at 2251 Telegraph Avenue and Bancroft Way, future site of Sproul Plaza), would follow suit. 

Knowles did not tell the newspapers that he had already sold Gale a new lot adjoining his own on Durant Avenue. Gale was a retired Michigan capitalist who had made his money in grain. Like Knowles, he could recognize a trend when he saw it and knew how to capitalize on it. Not long after moving to Durant Avenue, both sold their previous home lots to developers. 

Knowles sold his lot in October 1905 to Carlton Hobbs Wall, a young Alameda millionaire who would gain notoriety for automobile collisions. The price was $17,500. Carlton and his brother Edward soon broke ground for an apartment and store building projected to cost $30,000, but the 1906 San Francisco earthquake made them change plans and transform the structure into a first-class hotel. 

Like Titus, the Walls called on Meyers & Ward for the design of their four-story, clinker-brick building. Named Hotel Carlton, it was leased to Mrs. W.F. Morris, whose Cecil Hotel burned in the San Francisco fire. It cost $125,000 and boasted all the latest amenities, including an elevator, telephones, and a 135-foot dining room with dance floor. 

Seneca Gale waited until September 1906 to sell his lot. The price was again $17,500, and the buyer was none other than John Marshall, who planned to build a $100,000, 125-room hotel on the site. “A roof garden and other modern hostelry features will be provided,” announced the San Francisco Call. C.M. Cook, who had designed a number of houses for Marshall, was the architect. The building that finally emerged, however, was the 5-story Alta Vista, with six storefronts on the ground floor and 23 balconied apartments above, but no roof garden. It would be razed in 1946, after the university had taken possession of the Telegraph Ave. stretch between Sather Gate and Bancroft Way. 

And what of Louis Titus? He quietly left his home in March 1906. The reason did not become apparent until Lottie Titus filed for divorce in September 1909. Then she revealed that her temperament and inclinations were out of tune with those of her husband. He was highly ambitious and liked to socialize in fashionable circles, while she was interested only in her home and children. He wanted her to entertain lavishly, she wanted to teach Sunday school. He left her twice—four and 14 years into the marriage. 

The mansion at 2500 Durant Ave. was part of Lottie’s divorce settlement, but two break-ins in March 1908 made her uneasy, and she moved to Santa Barbara, leasing the house to a Napa millionaire. By 1910, she had sold it to Duncan McDuffie, who in turn sold it back to Titus. Having remarried in 1910 and built a new mansion in Piedmont, Titus sold 2500 Durant in 1913 to J. Arthur Elston and George Clark, U.C. graduates and law partners. Elston was former executive secretary to California governor Pardee, president of the U.C. alumni association, and a future U.S. Congressman. 

Elston and Clark retained Walter H. Ratcliff, Jr. to design and manage construction of a five-story, 48-unit brick apartment building with four storefronts. When completed, it was listed in the Berkeley directory as “Cambridge Hotel Apartments, 2-, 3-, and 4-room apartments and single rooms completely furnished, thoroughly modern elevator service.” The owners lived in the building. Next door, at 2510 Durant, they had Ratcliff build a cinema. Christened the Campus Theatre, it didn’t survive long. By the late 1920s it had become a store and is serving that function until today. 

The Marshall Block that prompted William Knowles to move his house in 1904 is long since gone. So are the Delta Kappa Epsilon house and Epworth Methodist Church. Photos of these vanished buildings may be seen in the book Picturing Berkeley—A Postcard History, edited by Burl Willes and available from BAHA. 

Seneca Gale died on his yacht in 1910, and Knowles followed him three years later. A food court stands on the site of the Knowles mansion. You can catch a glimpse of the much altered Seneca Gale house behind Cafe Durant. 

 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

 


About the House: Why My Floors Are Sloped

By Matt Cantor
Friday March 07, 2008

I live in a slide zone. As I understand it, the land my house is bobbing about on is a colloid of tumbled rock and Cuisinarted soil, the remains of an avalanche, hundreds of years now past. Since this material isn’t “consolidated” or compressed by time into a hard cake, it tends to amble downhill as gravity would have it. (I’m turning 50 and, as my friend Joann would say, my local gravity is also increasing so I know how the house feels). 

Although most homes are not located in slide zones, there are still forces that move soils around on many a lot and yours is very likely included. 

Gravity plays a vital role in all of these situations, soils types in many and water in most as well. Although I’ll briefly discuss the dynamics of this movement in the following paragraphs, what I mostly want to do is to talk about the import of the resulting deviations.  

As houses “settle” (a troublesome term because it says so much less than it should) they tend to lose their regularity (their squareness, their plumb, their level). They’re also doing all sorts of other funny things that aren’t obvious as well including sinuating (forming rolling S curves), bending and pulling apart. 

While a few of the houses I’ve seen have done some part of this weirdness to a dramatic level, most have not. Most floors I see are uneven but the great majority are not so uneven that I end up being concerned. Traditionally, a drop of one inch over twenty feet was considered unacceptable but if you try to use that standard in the Berkeley or Oakland hills, you’d find an enormous number of houses that won’t pass muster.  

The question is, why would this matter? With doorways or window frames, the function of the opening can be gradually impaired and a door may not close easily at some point. This is surely important but what usually happens is that alterations are made in the door or the lock receiving plates (AKA “strike” plates). With floors, it’s harder to make the argument. While I am not a fan of a big gap along the baseboards of a living room or a hearth that is higher (or lower) than the floor, these things rarely, in and of themselves, cause other significant problems. 

Most of our houses are built on perimeter concrete footings. These are very small relative to the size of the building and quite weak when compared with the destructive force of moving earth. While today’s foundations are much heartier than those of the past, they are still, mostly, not built to resist a great deal of earth movement without some malignation. We rely, instead, on the assumption that the earth will either not move or that it will move so little that we can tolerate it. 

So we end up with deformation in the foundation as the earth moves (which varies a LOT from lot to lot) and whatever movement we have in the foundation pushes the structure above it around in both hard and easily predicted ways. In short, as the earth heaves up one part of the foundation, you’re living room floor goes up too. The deformations in the floors are simply a reflection of those movements that the foundation experiences. This is the real argument for larger and stronger foundation and most specifically for the mat or raft foundation. I like the name raft foundation because it takes us right back to my original image of us bobbing about (albeit slowly) on our slow little sea of soil. The raft is thick enough and cohesive enough so that, regardless of earth movement below it, all components above it remain pinned to a stable plane.  

Now, that plane may tilt somewhat but unlike our perimeter footing, the structure will not be pushed and pulled at from many different points so that its deformation is complex, resulting in lots of parallelograms. It will simply tilt as a whole one way or another. Further, with such a large floating plane, the tendency will be for the whole to remain fairly level as forces pushing here and there cancel out one another. 

Now, again, this isn’t an argument against perimeter foundations or in favor of raft foundations (well, maybe it is, O.K.). What I really want to say is this: 

Variation in the level or square or a building don’t matter that much and they don’t necessarily predict the really important events such as collapse in an earthquake. These things have much more to do with the way in which the building is tied together. 

A building with really uneven floors and crooked doorways that has been properly braced and bolted to its old coral reef of a foundation will very likely survive a large earthquake with manageable damage (everything will have some damage, right?) while the neat, square unbraced house next door will be a mess. That’s the message. A little out of level is not unsafe, is not a predictor of major damage and is not bad for your teeth. 

To expand the argument just a bit, a house with a dangerous electrical system may look neat, square and have a fresh coat of paint. A house with a furnace that’s leaking carbon monoxide may have lots of great IKEA lamps. Things don’t necessary connect except when they do, right? Much as I hate to say it, you can’t tell a book by its cover. 

Of course, if a house is so far out of plumb that it’s in danger of falling over, that’s another thing. I do see one of those every once in a while but it’s pretty darned rare. I DO, on the other hand, see dangerous electric conditions in lots of houses, many of which have just been painted REAL nice. 

One last thought. When looking at deviations from square, plumb and level, be sure to consider the age of the house. When I see a quarter inch crack on a house that is three years old, I just about jump out of my skin but when I see the same crack on an eighty year old house, I just go on scratching my beard and reciting Kafka aloud. Cracks and deformations are the physical artifacts of movement. That’s why they’re meaningful. They are the rings on the tree. You have to divide the measurement of movement over the time period for it to be meaningful.  

If movement is uniform over time (always a fair baseline, although rarely accurate) our three year old house is going to have one inch of movement every twelve years at the locus of that crack and possibly much more over the entire house. After eighty years, that could be several feet if we’ve had a few of these cracks. That’s wildly unacceptable. A few quarter inch cracks over eighty years is a yawn because you can expect that the next eighty years will be about the same and, more to the point, the next ten years won’t produce anything surprising. Just a few more little cracks in the plaster.


Garden Variety: Surviving Oaks Still Shade Alden Lane Nursery

By Ron Sullivan
Friday March 07, 2008
Whimsical sculpture at Alden Lane Nursery.
Ron Sullivan
Whimsical sculpture at Alden Lane Nursery.

I’ve liked Alden Lane Nursery ‘way out in Livermore since I first set foot in it over ten years ago. The big valley oaks that shade parts of the place won my splintery old heart immediately, and I saw evidence of real community involvement along with the more concrete stuff: primo nursery stock, interesting ornaments, good tools, less-toxic pest controls. 

They kept doing things I like, too. They were among the first I saw promoting small-space orchards done via multiple grafting on a single tree, pleaching, espaliering, and cordoning. They also pushed planting two or three saplings in a single hole, then pruning them so they didn’t interfere with each other-taking off the branches in the middle of the new group-and letting the various roots work it out among themselves.  

Even in the relatively spacious lots you see around Livermore, a more compact orchard is a good idea for variety and length of harvest; one household or even several can be hard-pressed to deal with 20 or 30 pounds of apples in a week. (Though a cider press does come to mind: cider is what Johnny Appleseed was thinking about, after all.) 

If you mix early- with later-ripening fruit, you solve part of that problem and you don’t get bored with a single variety.  

Along with good ideas like that, Alden Lane has a more or less perpetual canned-food drive for local relief agencies, hosts fundraisers for good causes, and has free tastings, talks, and shows several times a month.  

Alden is generous with printed information too: free handouts are in strategic spots all over the nursery and the monthly newsletter, available in newsprint or email form, has a pretty good ratio of good advice and bright ideas to in-text ads.  

Despite my respect for the institution, it had clearly been way too long since my last visit when I ventured inland last week. I’m almost used (though not reconciled) to the way the places I knew out there have been paved and built over and my landmarks have vanished, but once I’d navigated the straits of stucco and standard plantings to the front gate, I was still bewildered.  

The driveway was new. The fencing/walls/plantings around it all were new. There was a great big chateaufiquated building that I swore I’d never seen before. It wasn’t until I got inside and recognized some of the oaks that I felt oriented.  

Fortunately, most of those great old oaks are still there. They were alive with yellow-rumped warblers and other birds: I had red-shafted flicker, robins, blackbirds (probably Brewer’s), juncos, bushtits, and cormorants (OK, flying over) on the daylist; there was an Anna’s hummingbird nesting on one of the biggest oaks by the building entrance, and she came down to give me the stinkeye.  

There was a visible casualty, and it was an important one: the grand oak in the driveway had fallen in the January storm and parts of it still lay shattered in the median circle.  

It hurts to see, but, like us, trees are mortals.  

 

 

Alden Lane Nursery 

981 Alden Lane, Livermore 

(925) 447-0280  

www.aldenlane.com 

Email newsletter sign-up on website. 

Open daily 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m. 

 

 

 

Ron Sullivan is a former professional gardener and arborist. Her “Garden Variety” column appears every Friday in the Daily Planet’s East Bay Home & Real Estate section. Her column on East Bay trees appears every other Tuesday in the Daily Planet.


Berkeley This Week

Friday March 07, 2008

FRIDAY, MARCH 7 

“Art is Education” A two-day conference sponsored by the Alameda County Office of Education. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Emery Secondary School Atrium, 1100 47th St. Emeryville. Workshops on Sat. from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Malcoln X Elementary School in Berkeley. www.artiseducation.org 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Claudia Chaufan, M.D. on “A Comparison of the German Health Care System and the U.S. Health Care System” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

“I Am Not Afraid” A documentary of Rufina Amaya’s testimony as the sole survivor of the 1981 El Mozote Massacre, at the height of El Salvador's civil war, hosted by John Savant, Professor Emeritus, Dominican University, at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, directly behind SJW Church, 2125 Jefferson St. Not wheelchair accessible. 482-1062. 

“Tillie Olsen-A Heart in Action” Ann Hershey's new documentary at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar St. Part of the Conscientious Film Projector Series presented by BFUU Social Justice Committee. www.bfuu.org  

“Zen on the Street” A documentary portrait of Zen Master Roshi Bernhard Glassman and his work with the homeless and the sick, at 7 p.m. at Center for Urban Peace, 2584 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Free, donations welcome. 866-732-2320. www.newdharma.com 

UC Berkeley Energy Symposium on topics such as Bioenergy Research at Berkeley, Advances in Green Building and Development, The Future of Nuclear Power, Transportation Sector Solutions at more, rom 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, UC Campus. Cost is $75. berc. 

berkeley.edu/symposium.html 

“Weathering the Storm: Sacred Cycles of Rebirth” An all ages event celebrating International Women’s Day at 7 p.m. at the Mandela Art Center, next to the West Oakland BART at 1357 5th St. www.weekendwakeup.com 

Piedmont Yoga 21st Anniversary with sample classes throughout the weekend, at 3966 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Suggested donation $10. 652-3336. www.piedmontyoga.com 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

SATURDAY, MARCH 8 

Herstory of the Bay Hike Led by naturalist Bethany Facendini. Celebrate International Women’s Day by honoring women whose environmental and historical contributions have made a difference in our community. Walk five miles along the Bay from Point Isabel to Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park and back, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

“Art is Education” Workshops sponsored by the Alameda County Office of Education from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Malcoln X Elementary School, 1731 Prince. St. www.artiseducation.org 

Berkeley Libraries Community Discussion on improving buildings and services at 2 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue at Ashby. 981-6195. 

“Paper Story Dress” workshop to commemorate women who have influenced our lives, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the North Berkeley Branch Library. 981-6250. 

”Iron-Jawed Angels” The HBO dramatization of the last decade of the suffragettes’ campaign to gain the right to vote, in celebration of Women’s History Month at 2 p.m. at the Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave., Oakland. 

The East Bay Chapter of The Great War Society will hold its monthly meeting to discuss “George Patton: A Life” by Robert Rudolph at 10:30 p.m. at the home of Krehe Ritter, 403 Boyton, off the Arlington. 524-5762. 

Wetlands Restoration at Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline Plant native seedlings, remove nonnative species and pick up trash, from 9 a.m. to noon. Sponsored by REI and Save the Bay. Children under 18 must be accompanied by a supervising adult. To register call 527-4140, ext. 216. 

National Nutrition Month, with cooking demonstrations, free samples and free recipes, at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Center St. and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Diabetes and hypertension screening from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

“Life on the Rancho” A family event to experience life in old California, with music, crafts and games, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. Free. 532-9142. 

Educator Workshop: Groceries from the Garden Teach your students where their food comes from. Learn activities that illustrate the benefits of sustainable agriculture and locally grown food. From 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at UCB Richmond Field Station, 1327 S 46th Street, Gate #2, Richmond. Cost is $29. Reservations required. 665-3430. www.thewatershedproject.org/default 

“What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire” A documentary that looks at the current global situation and asks the most important questions of all: How did we get here? Why do we keep destroying the planet? At 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way, entrance on Dana. Free, donations welcome. 

Indoor Gardening with Succulents A workshop from 9 a.m. to noon at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. Cost is $45. For reservations call 643-2755, ext. 03. 

Strengthening Berkeley Through Organizing “Songs of Hope and Struggle” Benefit concert with Bruce Barthol and Francisco Herrera for Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action at 7 p.m. at St. John’s Prebyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Suggested donation $25. Reception at 5:30 p.m. 665-5821. 

BASIL Seed Library Organizing Meeting at 4 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 658-9178. 

Walden Center and School Benefit “Celebration of the Arts” at 7 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $45-$50. 841-7248. 

Burma Human Rights Day Benefit with a Burmese traditional dinner (vegetarian friendly), speakers, performers, film, Q&A, from 6 to 10 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, 1924 Cedar. Cost is $15-$30 sliding scale donation for BADA Children Education Fund. 220-1323. www.badasf.org  

Peet’s Coffee & Tea Tour of new roastery in Alameda to celebrate Alfred Peet’s birthday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 2001 Harbor Way Parkway. 1-800-999-2132. www.peets.com 

The Future Leaders Institute Youth in Civic Leadership Symposium FLI students pitch their project ideas to the Bay Area community from noon to 3 p.m. at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. www.thefutureleadersinstitute.org  

“Schools Funding Crisis: A Town Meeting” at the Alameda Public Affairs Forum, at 7 p.m. at the Alameda Free Library, Conference Room A, 1550 Oak St. at Lincoln, Alameda. 814-9592. www.alamedaforum.org 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Oakland Artisans Marketplace Sat. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Jack London Square. 238-4948. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 9 

Daylight Saving Time Begins Move your clocks ahead one hour. http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/b.html 

Little Farm Open House Stop by the Little Farm to meet and learn about the animals, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Do It Yourself People’s Park Anniversary Acoustic Blowout Jam and Potluck Planning Meeting at 4 p.m. at the People’s Park Stage. 658-9178. 

“Naturally Egg-Ceptional” Learn about chickens and make naturally dyed eggs, from noon to 2 p.m., or 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7. 1-888-EB-PARKS. 

Cool Schools Global Warming Campaign Meeting at 2 p.m. at Berkeley High School, 1980 Allston Way, College and Career Center. RSVP to 704-4030. chicory@earthteam.net  

Memorial Service for Dr. Stanley Splitter at 2 p.m., at the Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. Reception follows.  

“The American-Israel Relationship in the Post-Bush Era” with Shmuel Rosner, chief U.S correspondent for the Israeli daily Haaretz at 7 p.m. at Congregational Beth El, 1301 Oxford St. Donation $10. 525-3582. 

“Slingshot” Local radical newspaper volunteer meeting and article brainstorming at 4 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave.  

Party with Grandmothers for the Oaks at 2 p.m. at Memorial Oak Grove, Piedmont Ave., just north of Bancroft. Donations of food and water requested. www.saveoaks.com 

Prepare Least Tern Habitat at the Alameda Wildlife Refuge Volunteers needed to help prepare habitat for the California Least Tern nesting season. Meet at 9 a.m. at main refuge gate, northwest corner of former Alameda Naval Air Station, Alameda. Must be 12 or older. RSVP required. 522-0601. http://ggnrabigyear.org 

Cafe Night at the Long Haul Evening of conversation and food at 7:30 p.m. at 3124 Shattuck Ave.  

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. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Sun. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

Free Classes on Meditation, Dreams and Self-Knowledge at Berkeley Gnostic Center, 2510 Channing Way. For details call 1-877-GNOSIS-1. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Jared and Michelle Baird on “How to Go on a Retreat” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000 www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, MARCH 10 

An Evening with Cindy Sheehan and the El Cerrito Green Party. Peace Vigil at 5 p.m., dinner at 6:30 p.m. for $5-$10, talk at 7 p.m. at Sky Lounge, 10458 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito, just north of Stockton St. 526-0972. 

Crisis Intervention Training Task Force meeting at 3:30 p.m. at 1947 Center St., 3rd Flr., Deodar Cedar Room. Sponsored by the Mental Health Commission. 981-5217. 

Berkeley Lab Friends of Science “Saving Power at Peak Hours” with Mary Ann Piette, LBNL scientist at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, Roda Theater, 2025 Addison St. Free. 486-7292. 

Free Kaplan SAT vs ACT Workshop for high school students and parents at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. Registration required at www.kaptest.com/college (event code SKBK8009). 

TUESDAY, MARCH 11 

National Nutrition Month, with cooking demonstrations at 2:30 p.m., free samples and free recipes, at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market from 2 to 6 p.m. at Derby St. and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit the Middle Harbor Shoreline Park. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 525-2233. 

Tilden Mini-Rangers Hiking, conservation and nature-based activities for ages 8-12. Dress to ramble and get dirty. From 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

“The Mountains and Waters Sutra” with Prof. Carl Bielefeld, Religious Studies, Stanford Univ., at 5 p.m. at Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave. RSVP to 809-1444. www.shin-ibs.edu 

Magic Show by Alex for ages 3 and up at 6:30 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 3 to 4 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

“Exploring Mount Diablo and Its Surrounding Parklands” with Seth Adams, Director of Land Programs at Save Mount Diablo, at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Docent Training for Tilden Nature Area Learn to assist the naturalists in providing interpretive programs at the Little Farm and nature area gardens, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Fee is $35. Application required. For information call 544-3260. 

Berkeley High School Governance Council meets at 4:15 p.m. in the Community Theater Lobby. 644-4803. 

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. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Teen Playreaders meets to read and discuss Hamlet and related plays at 4:30 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

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 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12 

Healthy Living, Healthy Aging A free workshop series for older adults and family caregivers. Fall Prevention at 10 a.m., Transitioning Safely from Hospital to Home, at 1:30 p.m., Forgetfulness: Is It Normal Aging or Alzheimer’s? at 5 p.m. at JFCS/East Bay’s Suse Moyal Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave., Suite 104, Albany. Free, lunch provided. RSVP required. 558-7800. www.jfcs-eastbay.org 

Berkeley Retired Teachers’ Association Annual General Meeting with Virginia Johnson, CalSTRS Program Integration Manager in Client Outreach and Guidance, at 12:30 p.m. at Northbrae Church, 941 The Alameda. 524-8899. 

“Israel-Palestine Peace Prospects” with Israeli Gershon Baskin and Palestinian Hanna Siniora, authors, activists and educators at 7 p.m. at Kehilla Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave., Piedmont. Donation of $10 requested. sf-bayarea@btvshalom.org  

Sudden Oak Death Preventative Treament Training Session Meet at 1 p.m. at the Tolman Hall portico, Heast Ave. and Arch/LeConte, UC Campus for a two-hour field session, rain or shine. Pre-registration required. SODtreatment@ 

nature.berkeley.edu 

“Lead-Safety for Remodeling, Repair & Painting of Older Homes” A HUD and EPA approved one-day course from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program Main Office, 2000 Embarcadero, #300, Oakland. Free to owners, and their employed maintenance crews, of residential properties built before 1978 in Alameda, Berkeley, Emeryville or Oakland. REgistration required. 567-8280. www.aclppp.org 

Green Home Improvement 101 at 6 p.m. at the Ecohome Improvement Design Studio, 2619 San Pablo Ave. RSVP to 644-3500. 

Cycling Lecture with George Mount, 1976 Olympian, at 7 p.m. at Velo Sport Bicycles, 1615 University Ave., enter at 1989 California St. RSVP to 849-0437. 

Radical Movie Night: “Salt of the Earth” A documentary about the struggles of striking mine workers in a small town in New Mexico at 8:30 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave.  

“The Top 25 Censored Stories” with Peter Phillips on the 2008 results at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way, under Sather Gate Parking Garage. 848-1196. 

“Asia’s New Institutional Architecture: Evolving Strategies for Managing Trade, Financial, and Security Relations” at 4 p.m. at the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Floor. 642-2809.  

Poetry Writing Workshop with Alison Seevak at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

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 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. 

Theraputic Recreation at the Berkeley Warm Pool, Wed. at 3:30 p.m. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley Warm Pool, 2245 Milvia St. Cost is $4-$5. Bring a towel. 632-9369. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, MARCH 13 

Collage de Cultures Africaines “The Journey Back is the Journey Forward” Dance and drum workshops Thurs.-Sun. at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. For details call 733-1077. www.DiamanoCoura.org 

“Historic Landscape Survey” with landscape architect Chris Pattillo at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Cost is $8-$10. 763-9218. info@oaklandheritage.org 

Oxford Elementary’s Fifth Grade Class is celebrating African American History Month with a play “Grandma’s Hands” at 8:45 a.m. at Oxford Elementary School, 1130 Oxford St. 644-6300. 

“Biofuels: Energy, Food People” A panel discussion to explore the questions: What are biofuels? Will they really replace gasoline? Are they really “green”? With Tad Patzek, Professor of Geoengineering at UC Berkeley, Miguel Altieri, Professor of Agroecology at UC Berkeley, Eric Holt-Giménez, Executive Director of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, and Judith Mayer, Project Coordinator of the Borneo Project, at 7 p.m. at Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Suggested donation $20. 888-ECO-NOW2. www.econowusa.org 

“Climate Change and Our Water: Thinking Globally & Acting Locally to Protect Our Watersheds” with Bruce Riorden, at 7 p.m. at a private home in Berkeley. Suggested donation $25. Benefits the Codornices Creek Watershed Council. RSVP to Josh Brandt at 540-6669. www.codornicescreekwatershed.org 

Help Save Patagonia’s Wild Rivers A multi-media presentation with International Rivers on two rivers threatened by dam construction, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 848-1155. www.internationalrivers.org 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Fish Forever: Creating Sustainable FIsheries” with Paul Johnson at 7 p.m. at College Preparatory School, 6100 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $5-$15. http://livetalk-johnson.eventbrite.com 

Eat Bay Science Cafe with Debbie Viess, president, Bay Area Mycological Society at 7 p.m. at Au Coquelet Cafe, 2000 University Ave. 643-7265. 

“Focus on Contra Costa” Authors Adam Nilsen, Dean McLeod and Caroll Jensen discuss thier books about Pleasant Hill, Port Chicago and the Delta at 1 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

“The Truth about Cholesterol - Separating Fact from Fiction” at 7 p.m. at Acupuncture & Integrated Medicine College, 2550 Shattuck Ave., at Blake. 666-8248, ext. 106. 

Healthy Living for Seniors: Understanding and Coping with Parkinson’s Disease at 10 a.m., Understanding Long-Term Care and Medi-Cal and Avoiding Financial Abuse at 1 p.m., Financial Strategies for Older Adults at 3 p.m., Charitable Giving for Older Adults, 4:45 p.m. and Estate Planning and Power of Attorney, at 6 p.m. at JFCS/East Bay’s Suse Moyal Center for Older Adult Services, 828 San Pablo Ave., Suite 104, Albany. Free, lunch provided. RSVP required 558-7800. www.jfcs-eastbay.org 

“Focus on Contra Costa” with author Adam Nilsen on the history of Pleasant Hill at 1 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022.  

Annual Toastmasters International Speech Competition at 7:30 p.m. at The El Cerrito Community Center, 7007 Moeser Lane, at San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 799-9557.  

East Bay Mac. Users Group presents SuperSync at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound Street, Emeryville. http://ebmug.org 

Teen Book Club meets to discuss Sherlock Holmes at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Youth Commission meets Mon., Mar. 10, at 6:30 p.m., at City Council Chambers, Old City Hall. 981-6670.  

City Council meets Tues., Mar. 11, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. 

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Mar. 12, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6346. 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Mar. 12, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5426.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Mar. 12, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484. 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Mar. 12, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 981-4950.  

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. Free bulk pick-up available. 638-7600.  

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 

Donate the Excess Fruit from Your Fruit Trees I’ll gladly pick and deliver your fruit to community programs that feed school kids, the elderly, and the hungry. The fruit trees should be located in Berkeley and organic (no pesticides). This is a free volunteer/grassroots thing so join in!! To scehdule and appointment call or email 812-3369. northberkeley 

harvest@gmail.com


Arts Calendar

Tuesday March 04, 2008

TUESDAY, MARCH 4 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The RISD Northern California Alumni Biennial 2008” Design work featuring local alumni from Rhode Island School of Design. Opening reception with RISD President Roger Mandle from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Oakland Art GAllery, 199 Kahn’s Alley, Oakland. www.oaklandartgallery.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dan Ariely describes “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Peggy Levitt discusses “God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation $10. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Motordude Zydeco at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

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

Foggy Gulch Band, bluegrass, folk, country at 10 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. 451-8100.  

Vusi Mahlasela at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5 

FILM 

“Yolanda and the Thief” with a lecture by Prof. Marilyn Fabe, at 3 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Casual Labor” New work in sculpture and photography by Alex Clausen, Zachery Royer Scholz and Kirk Stoller. Gallery conversation with the artists at 7 p.m. at Kala Art Institute, 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977. 

Lou Rowan and David Meltzer read at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

François Luong, Jennifer Karmin and Michael Slosek read in celebration of the new anthology “A Sing Economy: An Anthology of Experimental Poetry” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Artist’s Talk with Xu Bing, recipient of a MacArthur “genuis” award, at 4 p.m. at Institute of east Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton St. 642-2809. 

Diana Raab reads from “Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal” at 7 p.m. at Laurel Bookstore, 4100 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 531-2073. 

Cara Black introduces her new novel “Murder on the Rue de Paradis: An Aimée Leduc Investigation” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Rebakah Ahrendt, viola de gamba, Annette Bauer, recorder, Jonathan Rhodes Lee, harpsichord, and Jennifer Paulino, soprano, at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$60. 642-9988.  

Jazz Fourtet featuring Brendan Buss at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Whiskey Brothers at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473.  

Nikolev Kolev, Balkan, Bulgarian, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12. 525-5054.  

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

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

Booker T. Jones at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$18. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, MARCH 6 

EXHIBITIONS 

Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia Guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Open Range” The art of Douglas Light, Michele Hofherr and Scott Courtenay-Smith opens at Esteban Sabar Gallery, 480 23rd St., Oakland. 444-7411. www.estebansabar.com 

FILM 

Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?” with filmmmaker Perdo Costa in person at 6 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lunch Poems with Diane Di Prima at 12:10 p.m. at the Morrison Library, inside the Doe Library, UC Campus. 642-0137. 

Speaking Fierce: Celebrate International Women’s Day with Bushra Rehman, Climbing Poetree, and Jennifer Johns at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison St. at 27th, Oakland. Tickets are $10-$25, no one turned away. 444-2700, ext. 305. www.coloredgirls.org 

“Revenge of the Illegal Alien” Poetry in celebration of César A. Cruz’s book, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$15. 849-2568.  

William Wong, author of “Angel Island (Images of America)” will give a slide talk on the island and its role in Chinese American history as an immigration station, at 7 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. 526-7512. 

Joshua Carver, poet, followed by open mic, at 7 p.m. at Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Dee Dee Myers explains “Why Women Should Rule the World” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Michelle Richmond reads from “the Year of Fog” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Dance, Sean Hodge with High Heat, Wagon, Last Legal Music with guest Buzzy Linhart at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054.  

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$60. 642-9988.  

Ditty Bops, Jesca Hoop at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Tin Cup Serenade at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Claudia Russell at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Akosua Mireku, Ghanian-American, at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Lizz Wright at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sat. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200.  

FRIDAY, MARCH 7 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Chicago” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through April 12. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Berkeley Rep ”Wishful Drinking” with Carrie Fisher, at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St., through March 30. Tickets are $33-$69. 647-2949. 

Central Works “Wakefield; or Hello Sophia” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through March 23.Tickets are $14-$25. 558-1381. 

The Imagination Players “Once on This Island“ A musical for the whole family Fri. at 7:30 p.m., Sat. at 1, 4 and 7:30 p.m., Sun. at 1 and 5 p.m. at Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $8-$15. 665-5565. www.berkeleyplayhouse.org 

Impact Theatre “Jukebox Stories: The Case of the Creamy Foam” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through March 22. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. http://impacttheatre.com 

UC Dept. of Theater “The Bacchae” at Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m., through March 9 at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$14. theater.berkeley.edu 

Virago Theatre Company “Candide” the comic opera at 8 p.m. Fri and Sat., 7 p.m. Sun. at Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding Ave., Alameda, through Mar. 9. Tickets are $15-$25. 865-6237. www.viragotheatre.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Pods” Paintings by Kim Thoman Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Oakopolis, 447 25th St., Oakland. Runs through March 22. 663-6920. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Jane Ganahl describes “Naked on the Page: The Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500.  

Mark Wilson on “Julia Morgan: Architect of Beauty” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Friday Noon Concert Chamber music at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

La Colectiva, cumbia Colombiana, salsa, son y mas, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568.  

Dance IS Festival at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $8-$12 at the door.  

First Fridays After Five with Purirak, the Shahrzad Dance Company, Navarrete x Kajiyama Dance Theater and more at 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022. 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$60. 642-9988.  

Fortune Smiles Quintet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Trio Garufa at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Tango dance lessons at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $20. 525-5054. 

Laurie Antonioli Group at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $18. 845-5373.  

Nearly Beloved, folk and country, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Ditty Bops, Jesca Hoop at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Justin Ancheta at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Josh Workman Trio, jazz, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Amanda West, Lalin St. Juste at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Deja Bryson, Ke-Shay, R&B, at 9 p.m. at Maxwell’s Lounge, 341 13th St., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15. 839-6169. 

Imani Uzuri at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7-$10. 548-1159.  

Lizz Wright at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sat. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, MARCH 8 

CHILDREN  

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

Thomas Lynch reads from the children’s classics, Kenneth Grahame’s “Wind in the Willows” and Roald Dahl’s “Boy” at 1 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Ostracismos” Paintings and poetry by the Torres Brothers Opening reception at 6:30 p.m. at La Peña. 849-2568.  

“Capturing Landscapes through Changing Technology” Photographs by Alasdair McCondochie. Opening recpetion at 3 p.m. at The LightRoom, 2263 Fifth St. 649-8111. www.lightroom.com 

“Metals in Motion” Artists from the Monterey Bay Metals Arts guild discuss their works at 1 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2022. www.museumca.org 

FILM 

”Iron-Jawed Angels” The HBO dramatization of the last decade of the suffragettes’ campaign to gain the right to vote, in celebration of Women’s History Month at 2 p.m. at the Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave., Oakland. 

“In Vanda’s Room” with filmmaker Perdo Costa in personat 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

James Scully and Peter Everwine read their poems at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Free. 981-6100. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Songs of Hope and Struggle” Strengthening Berkeley Through Organizing Benefit concert with Bruce Barthol and Francisco Herrera for Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action at 7 p.m. at St. John’s Prebyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Suggested donation $25. Reception at 5:30 p.m. 665-5821. 

Songs of Hope & Struggle A benefit for Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action with Bruce Barthol and Francisco Herrera at 7 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Reception at 5:30 p.m. Suggested donation $25. 665-5821. 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 2 and 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$60. 642-9988.  

Dance IS Festival at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $8-$12 at the door. www.juliamorgan.org 

Opera Piccola “Mirrors of Mumbai” at 7:30 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourde Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$15. 658-0967. www.opera-piccola.org 

Chora Nova “Aphrodite’s Muse” Works by women composers in honor of International Womens's Day at 8 p.m., lecture at 7:15 p.m. at ;First Congregational Church, Dana and Durant. Tickets are $10-$18. www.choranova.org 

Lichi Fuentes in an International Women’s Day concert at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$14. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Mal Sharpe’s Big Money in Jazz at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Baba Ken & West African Highlife Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance lesson at 9 p.m. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Jeff Rolka, Robert Heiskell at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

John Gorka with Amilia K Spicer at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Beep with Michael Coleman at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Montclair Women’s Big Band celebrating International Women’s Day at 8 and 10 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Babashad Jazz at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Dave G and Andy Mason in a Tirbute to the Violent Femmes at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Lizz Wright at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, MARCH 9 

CHILDREN 

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia Guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

FILM 

“Down to Earth” with filmmaker Pedro Costa in person at 5 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Contemporary Art in Cuba” with Terry McClain at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

“Still Lives: The Films of Pedro Costa” Lecture by the filmmaker at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum Theater. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Quartet San Francisco “Whirled Chamber Music” at 4 p.m. at Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. Tickets are $12, free for children 18 and under. 559-2941.  

David Tanenbaumn, classical guitarist at 3 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Pre-concert talk at 2:30 p.m. Free. 415-248-1640.  

Sounds New Tenth Anniversary Concert at 7:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Suggested donation $15. 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $34-$60. 642-9988.  

Presidio String Quartet will perform music of Bartok, Pårt, Dan Cantrell at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10-$12. 644-6893.  

Soli Deo Gloria U.S. premiere of Allan Bevan’s “Nou Goth Sonne Under Wode” at 3:30 p.m. at St. Joseph’s Basilica, 1109 Chestnut St. at Encinal, Alameda. Tickets are $20-$25. www.sdgloria.org 

Mucho Axé and TerroRitmo, salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“Jazz It Up” Berkeley High Fundraiser at 3 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

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

Code Name: Jonah at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Khalil Shaheed, Gary Brown, Glen Pearson in a benefit for Babtunde Lea’s Educultural Foundation at 7 and 9 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $15-$25. 238-9200.  

MONDAY, MARCH 10 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium “Looking at Looking at Looking” with Golan Levin, artist, Carnegie Mellon Univ., at 7:30 p.m. at 160 Kroeber Hall, UC Campus. 643-9565. http://atc.berkeley.edu 

Brian Fagan describes “The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

OmniDawn Press Night with Justin Courter, Mary Mackay and Laura Moriarty at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Poetry Express with Karen Hogan at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Kurt Ribak, jazz, at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. 849-1100.  

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

Skyline High School Jazz Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. 

 

 


Berkeley Art Museum Presents Chagoya

By Peter Selz, Special to the Planet
Tuesday March 04, 2008
Crossing I, (1994) by Enrique Chagoya. Acrylic and oil on paper.
Crossing I, (1994) by Enrique Chagoya. Acrylic and oil on paper.

In 1971 Enrique Chagoya, as an 18-year-old student in Mexico City, participated in a student demonstration against the repressive regime and barely escaped a massacre by the police which, like the mass murder of 1968, killed hundreds of students. This was near the site where human sacrifices were performed by the Aztec priests before the Spanish conquest. Chagoya, in his paintings, codices and prints, fuses the depravities of the past with those of the present and does much more. 

In 1979, after having studied political economics at the University of Mexico, he moved to Berkeley and studied art at UC. Among the earliest works in the compelling exhibition are a series of 20 intaglio prints, grisly nightmares, locating Goya’s Los Caprichos and Disasters of War in the present. In Against the Common Good (1983), for instance, we see a smirking President Reagan as King Ferdinand VII in Goya’s print. He is equipped with bat wings and reads the new constitution which was considered a dangerous canker on the body politic of Europe, not dissimilar to Reagan’s effect on American policy. In another intaglio print, entitled Goya Meets Posada, Chagoya presents his homage to two artists who inspired much of his own work.  

These prints were first exhibited in a show at the San Francisco Art Institue in a show, “Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America” in 1984. In the same year Chagoya painted Their Freedom of Expression ... The Recovery of Their Economy. Here as in many of his works, he appropriated Mickey Mouse as an ambassador of American popular culture. Reagan, sporting the Mouse’s ears, paints the message “Ruskies and Cubans out of Central America” on the wall, while Dr. Henry Kissinger, the smaller Mouse, graffities “By the Way Keep Art out of politics.” 

The exhibition is subtitled “Borderlandia,” and the logo of the show is the painting When Paradise Arrived (1989). Here the border clash looms large in a nearly seven-foot square charcoal and pastel on paper: Mickey Mouse’s gigantic thrusting hand, with “English only” written on its middle finger, is poised to flick an innocent little Latina out of the picture, out of the country. The girl with a bleeding heart evokes the image of the virgin of Guadalupe. In The Governor’s Nightmare (1994) he fuses Meso-American culture with the political situation in California during Pete Wilson’s governorship: The Aztec Lord of the Dead sits on a pyramid, sprinkles salt on a terrified Mickey Mouse and exhorts his people to cannibalism as they devour the governor’s organs. In this picture we also see devout Christians drinking the blood of their god in a reproduction of a Spanish colonial painting of the Allegory of the Sacrament. 

There is a fine sardonic series of drawings, Poor George (2004) in the show in which our current president is irreverently mocked. This group was done in respect for Philip Guston’s caricatures of Nixon in the Poor Richard series of 1971. Goya, Posada, Guston: Chagoya has a deep reverence for kindred spirits in the history of art, who, like him, commented on mankind’s atrocities and follies. During recent years the artist also produced a number of Codices. Done on amate paper, as in pre-Columbian times, and in a way similar to the ancient text of which so many were burned by the invaders, they deal with ancient, past and current history. Chagoya’s Codices are not straight narratives. They are filled with paradox and are convoluted as well as playful at times and are charged with political and visual information. 

One large painting in the show pictures an elegant black-trousered leg and well-polished shoes stepping on upside down bare red feet that emerge from a sea of blood. Taking his cue from Hegel, Chagoya named it Thesis/Antithesis (1989). In his Artist’s Statement, he writes that his art is “a product of collisions between historical visions, ancient and modern, marginal and dominant paradigms—a thesis and antithesis—in mind of the viewer. Often the result is a nonlinear narrative with many possible interpretations.” 

 

ENRIQUE CHAGOYA:  

BORDERLANDIA 

Through May 18 at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2621 Durant Ave. Open 11 a.m.- 5 p.m. Wednesday - Sunday.


The Theater: Euripides’ ‘The Bacchae’ at Zellerback Playhouse

By Ken Bullock, Special to The Planet
Tuesday March 04, 2008

“It is impossible to pin down what Euripides’ The Bacchae is about.” Barbara Oliver, who founded the Aurora Theatre and is in residency at UC’s Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies to direct this peculiarly contemporary late tragedy, opens her program notes with this statement. 

Euripides is represented by more surviving plays than his older contemporaries, Aeschylus and Sophocles, probably because of the aphoristic nature of many of his speeches, which made them popular for inclusion in courses on rhetoric. Even his seemingly most thematic works are so saturated with irony (the stock-in-trade of classical tragedians) that Aristotle called him the most properly tragic of the poets. Scene by scene, his almost Mannerist plays seem to change tack internally and contradict themselves, casting light on a whole complex of things rather than on just the edifying fate of a mythic hero. And part of what they illuminate—or cast doubt on—is the very process and perspective by which this ambiguous message is received: the mounting of a play and the audience’s response to it. 

The Bacchae and Iphigenia in Aulis were brought back to Athens and staged by Euripides’ son after his death, expatriated in Macedonia. He had been an increasingly harsh critic of Athens’ role—and defeat—in the Peloponnesian War. The Bacchae to many has seemed a summation of his ironic, ambiguous attitude to his own profession, a critique of Dionysus, from whose cult Athenian tragedy originated. Others find the culmination of what they regard as his anti-Apollonian exalting of the god of wine and the irrational. Is it a mixture of the two, or putting into perspective the extremes of revivalistic religious urges and the attempt, citing reason and law, to curb them? Antonin Artaud, the poet of modern dramaturgy (and the one who coined the Nietzche-flavored term, Theater of Cruelty), who admired The Bacchae perhaps most of any play, said “In Aeschylus, Man is very evil [“mal,” also sick], but still acts like a little god. Finally with Euripides, the floodgates are open ... we slog through all that pour out ... and we don’t know where we are.” 

The UC production is up at the Zellerbach Playhouse, one of the best theaters in the Bay Area, aesthetically and technically—and with this show, a new, upgraded lighting system is inaugurated, with David Elliott’s fine design. Robert Mark Morgan’s set is a massive Grecian civic structure topped with a frieze of figures locked in struggle with walls that move to expand the playing area, or to frame silhouetted trees against the sky at the top of several flights of marble stairs.  

There are portentious special effects: claps of thunder, reverberating voices, an earthquake that brings down the cornice and its frieze at a vertiginous diagonal, metaphor for what is happening to the very state of Thebes. 

The eight-woman chorus is deployed across the stage by assistant director Marc Boucal’s movement—and in stasis, veiled figures of the chorines sitting, outlining the action of the scenes which their dancing and chanting both forecast and react to.  

The action of those scenes builds from the arrival of a stranger, a long-locked Dionysian priest, with news of the women of Thebes dancing ecstatically on Mt. Cithaeron. Pentheus, whose name signifies grief and whose regal relations are letting down their hair as Bacchantes, moves to stop the religious frenzy. Imprisoning the stranger proves fruitless; he’s freed in a quake he claims his god caused. And in a moment of mesmerism, he suggests to young turk Pentheus that he go in disguise to watch the women dance on the mountain. 

Like Romeo and Juliet, The Bacchae takes on a different tone when the principals are young actors, as the story suggests. Pentheus and the stranger, who hints he’s really Dionysus in mortal disguise, are young cousins. And Dionysus is looking for revenge over the spurning of his divinity by the family of his mother Semele, impregnated by Zeus and burned by his lightning. 

The stranger-Dionysus, featured in the curtain call, is an excellent Carl Holvick-Thomas, whose movement, voice and fluid expressions give a sinous presence—seductive, mocking and vengeful—to his role. Only his echoing voice, coming from the skies, figures in the deus-ex-machina, following the catastrophe, perhaps the most awesome and lamentable of Greek tragedy. His presence would have been better. And Theo Black proves a game Pentheus, filled with youthful martial enthusiasm and reckless pride and scorn. But he’s not given equal footing with the young priest or disguised god; the tension is not fully brought out. His fate is rendered a bit more pathetic than tragic. And the admittedly difficult final scene, the most humane moment of all, with the bacchic revelers having to contend with the awful fruit of their violent frenzy, and the scattering of the Theban founder’s family into exile, is cut short, not catching the reverberations of suddenly all-too-human heroic figures struggling with comprehending the mystery of a mythic fate. 

But the sweep—and the arabesques—of the story and its dancing choruses come through clearly enough with Oliver’s direction and in the translation of Neil Curry, which renders the unresolved meaning best in an exchange between Dionysus (“I am a god—and you spurned me!”) and Cadmus, Thebes’ founder (Ricardo Salcido), in effect: A god should not act as mortals do. 

Barbara Oliver will direct Euripides again in a few weeks for Aurora—next time, The Trojan Women. 

 

THE BACCHAE 

8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley campus. $8-$14. theater.berkeley.edu.


Green Neighbors: Pretty Good Tree with a Pretty Dumb Name

By Ron Sullivan
Tuesday March 04, 2008
Casaurina in Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Park, by Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland.
By Ron Sullivan
Casaurina in Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Park, by Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland.

Trust the Aussies (“…from the Land Down Under/Where the women something and the men something-else-that-rhymes with ‘under’—maybe ‘blunder’?—but definitely not whatever the women do”) to get all weird about gender issues in the unlikeliest places. They’re blessed with several species of casuarina, a useful and engagingly weird clade of trees, and what do they call them? “She-oak.” And what do they mean by that? Why, “like oak but inferior.”  

Joke, schmoke. We get it, guys; we’re just bored already. 

Not surprisingly, we have casuarinas planted here and there in the Bay Area. Lots of Australian plants thrive here, as we share a “Mediterranean” climate with much of that continent. Casaurinas (the name still in general nursery-trade use) don’t look like oaks; the dumb name is supposedly about how their lumber performs. What they look most like is pines. 

In fact, they look so much like pines that I’ve passed casaurina plantings for years before twigging to what they were. There is a fairly simple way to tell Casaurina cunninghamiana and Allocasuarina verticillata (formerly Casaurina stricta), which as far as I know are the two most common species here, from pines. Look at the branch tips: Pines’ smallest branches’ ends are blunt and rounded; casaurinas’ sweep into a point.  

When you look more closely, you might notice that the leaves, which like pines’ are reduced to needle form, have joints like those of equisetums—the horsetails or scouring rushes that turn up in damp places. They’re not cousins, though.  

The most recent taxonomic sort-out puts casuarinas in the same order as beeches (northern and southern), birches, bayberries, and walnuts. They’re a Gondwana family, from that former supercontinent: fossils have been discovered in New Zealand and South America, where no living species survive. Australia is their center of distribution, with outliers from India to Polynesia. 

As with a lot of plants these days, there’s some confusion about the names of the different species. According to Elizabeth McClintock’s Trees of Golden Gate Park, the casuarinas planted there are C. cunninghamia, the river she-oak of northern and eastern Australia, sometimes misidentified as C. equisetifolia. At least they’re still together in the genus Casuarina, many of whose members such as the former C. stricta were recently split off into Allocasuarina, hence that name change.  

Whatever their maiden names, they’re all of a very old Australian lineage. Around thirty thousand years ago, as that continent became hotter and drier, casuarinas displaced the ancient araurcarias—primitive conifers like the bunya-bunya and the recently discovered wollemi pine. They were part of a whole flora of scleromorphs, drought- and fire-adapted plants with small scaly water-conserving leaves. Later on the casuarinas were pushed aside by the eucalypts. 

Somewhere along the line, the casuarinas formed a symbiotic partnership with a soil bacterium called Frankia. Living in nodules among the roots, Frankia fixes atmospheric nitrogen and makes it available to the host plant—the same kind of arrangement that another microorganism, Rhizobium, has with the peas and their relatives. Other strains of Frankia co-occur with our native ceanothus, mountain mahogany, and alders. 

The bacterial connection may give casuarinas a competitive edge in nutrient-poor environments. Turn them loose in a warm place and they grow like weeds. They’re a huge concern in Florida, where three species—C. equisetifolia, C. cunninghamiana, and C. glauca—thrive in the alkaline, limestone-derived soils. Originally planted as ornamentals, these Australians have overgrown the habitats of endangered American crocodiles, loggerhead turtles, and gopher tortoises. Their roots suck up disproportionate amounts of soil moisture and invade water and sewer lines, and their leaves are toxic to cattle.  

But on their native turf, casuarinas play important ecological and cultural roles. They’re associated with mycorrhizal fungi that provide food—Australian truffles—for small marsupials like bandicoots and potoroos. In this, they resemble one of California’s persistent lineages, as similar “truffles” feed the squirrels in old-growth coastal redwood forests.  

Native Australians favored casuarina wood for spears, processed and ate the red sap that exudes from the trunks, and chewed the young cones for moisture during long desert treks. Tahitians also used the wood for weapons, and considered the trees as reincarnations of warriors those weapons had killed, apparently because, like them, the trees bleed red.  

The wood tends to be red too, which is why some species are called “beefwood.” Come to think of it, a friend of mine told me he’s had main courses of what he calls the Outhouse Steakback that might as well have been lumber; maybe they were piloting a crypto-vegetarian substitute. Or maybe it was an attempt at a high-fiber diet supplement.  

I await indignant correspondence from outraged Aussies. In the meantime I’ll stick to witchetty grubs. Roasted, please, and hold the Vegemite.  

 

 

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 March 04, 2008

TUESDAY, MARCH 4 

Adoption Information Workshop Adopt A Special Kid will be hosting their monthly Information Workshop from 7 to 9 p.m. at 8201 Edgewater Dr. Suite 103, Oakland. Free, but RSVP to 553-1748, ext. 12. www.aask.org 

“King Corn” A documentary on raising corn at 6:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Panel discussion follows. Free. 238-2022.  

Docent Training for Tilden Nature Area Learn to assist the naturalists in providing interpretive programs at the Little Farm and narture area gardens, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Fee is $35. Application required. For information call 544-3260. 

“Yoshida Shoin’s Encounter with Commodore Perry: A Review of Cultural Interaction in the Days of Japan’s Opening” with Tao Demin at 4 p.m. at Institute of east Asian Studies, 2223 Fulton St. 642-2809. 

Writer Coach Connection Volunteers needed to help Berkeley students improve their writing and critical thinking skills from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. To register call 524-2319.  

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.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. 

Teen Playreaders meets to read and discuss Hamlet and related plays at 4:30 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

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.  

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.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5 

Berkeley’s Draft Climate Action Plan will be presented at the Planning Commission at 7 p.m. at the North berkeley Senior Center. www.BerkeleyClimateAction.org 

Berkeley Libraries Community Discussion on improving buildings and services at 6 p.m. at South Branch Library, 1901 Russell St. at MLK. 981-6195. 

“Unnatural Causes” A documentary on the socio-economic and racial inequities in health in the US, at 6 p.m. at Contra Costa College, Room LA 100. 235-2210.  

“Islam in the West” with Munir Jiwa, founding director of the Graduate Theological Union’s Center for Islamic Studies, at 7:30 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Spaghetti dinner at 6:30 for $6. 526-3805. 

“Problems in Life and the Buddhist Way of Dealing with Them” Lecture and discusstion with Bhante Sellawimala, a Theravada Buddhist monk at 7 p.m. at Jodo Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave. Free. 809-1460. 

Cycling Lecture with Gary Erikson, founder of Clif Bar, at 7 p.m. at Velo Sport Bicycles, 1615 University Ave., enter at 1989 California St. RSVP to 849-0437. 

“Learn How to Use Your GPS with Map Software” with Jeff Caulfield of National Geographic at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 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 the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www 

.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

Theraputic Recreation at the Berkeley Warm Pool, Wed. at 3:30 p.m. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley Warm Pool, 2245 Milvia St. Cost is $4-$5. Bring a towel. 632-9369. 

Morning Meditation Every Mon., Wed., and Fri. at 7:45 a.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. 486-8700. 

After-School Program Homework help, drama and music 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, MARCH 6 

Seniors Exploring Albany Bulb Walkers age 50+ will explore the wild, weedy Albany “Bulb,” where art and nature have made a strange wonderland from debris. Meet at the big heron sculpture at the foot of Buchanan St. at 9 a.m. for a two-hour walk. Wear shoes with good traction; bring water and walking sticks if you use them. Free but registration required. 524-9122, 524-9283. 

Berkeley Libraries Community Discussion on improving buildings and services at 6 p.m. at West Branch Library, 1125 University Ave. at San Pablo. 981-6195. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 4 to 5 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Teen Book Club meets to discuss short stories at 4 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

FRIDAY, MARCH 7 

“Art is Education” A two-day conference sponsored by the Alameda County Office of Education. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Emery Secondary School Atrium, 1100 47th St. Emeryville. Workshops on Sat. from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Malcoln X Elementary School in Berkeley. www.artiseducation.org 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Claudia Chaufan, M.D. on “A Comparison of the German Health Care System and the U.S. Health Care System” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.  

“I Am Not Afraid” A documentary of Rufina Amaya’s testimony as the sole survivor of the 1981 El Mozote Massacre, at the height of El Salvador's civil war, hosted by John Savant, Professor Emeritus, Dominican University, at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, directly behind SJW Church, 2125 Jefferson St. Not wheelchair accessible. 482-1062. 

“Tillie Olsen-A Heart in Action” Ann Hershey's new documentary at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar St. Part of the Conscientious Film Projector Series presented by BFUU Social Justice Committee. www.bfuu.org  

“Zen on the Street” A documentary portrait of Zen Master Roshi Bernhard Glassman and his work with the homeless and the sick, at 7 p.m. at Center for Urban Peace, 2584 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Free, donations welcome. 866-732-2320. www.newdharma.com 

UC Berkeley Energy Symposium on topics such as Bioenergy Research at Berkeley, Advances in Green Building and Development, The Future of Nuclear Power, Transportation Sector Solutions at more, rom 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, UC Campus. Cost is $75. berc.berkeley.edu/symposium.html 

“Weathering the Storm: Sacred Cycles of Rebirth” An all ages event celebrating International Women’s Day at 7 p.m. at the Mandela Art Center, next to the West Oakland BART at 1357 5th St. www.weekendwakeup.com 

Piedmont Yoga 21st Anniversary with sample classes throughout the weekend, at 3966 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Suggested donation $10. 652-3336. www.piedmontyoga.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. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

SATURDAY, MARCH 8 

Herstory of the Bay Hike Led by naturalist Bethany Facendini. Celebrate International Women’s Day by honoring women whose environmental and historical contributions have made a difference in our community. Walk five miles along the Bay from Point Isabel to Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historic Park and back, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

“Art is Education” Workshops sponsored by the Alameda County Office of Education from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Malcoln X Elementary School, 1731 Prince. St. www.artiseducation.org 

Berkeley Libraries Community Discussion on improving buildings and services at 2 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue at Ashby. 981-6195. 

“Paper Story Dress” workshop to commemorate women who have influenced our lives, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the North Berkeley Branch Library. 981-6250. 

NAACP Berkeley Branch Meeting at 1 p.m. at 2108 Russell St. 845-7416. 

”Iron-Jawed Angels” The HBO dramatization of the last decade of the suffragettes’ campaign to gain the right to vote, in celebration of Women’s History Month at 2 p.m. at the Rockridge Library, 5366 College Ave., Oakland. 

The East Bay Chapter of The Great War Society will hold its monthly meeting to discuss “George Patton: A Life” by Robert Rudolph at 10:30 p.m. at the home of Krehe Ritter, 403 Boyton, off the Arlington. 524-5762. 

Wetlands Restoration at Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline Plant native seedlings, remove nonnative species and pick up trash, from 9 a.m. to noon. Sponsored by REI and Save the Bay. Children under 18 must be accompanied by a supervising adult. To register call 527-4140, ext. 216. 

National Nutrition Month, with cooking demonstrations, free samples and free recipes, at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Center St. and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Diabetes and hypertension screening from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

“Life on the Rancho” A family event to experience life in old California, with music, crafts and games, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. Free. 532-9142. 

Strengthening Berkeley Through Organizing “Songs of Hope and Struggle” Benefit concert with Bruce Barthol and Francisco Herrera for Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action at 7 p.m. at St. John’s Prebyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Suggested donation $25. Reception at 5:30 p.m. 665-5821. 

BASIL Seed Library Organizing Meeting at 4 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 658-9178. 

Walden Center and School Benefit “Celebration of the Arts” at 7 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $45-$50. 841-7248. 

Burma Human Rights Day Benefit with a Burmese traditional dinner (vegetarian friendly), speakers, performers, film, Q&A, from 6 to 10 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, 1924 Cedar. Cost is $15-$30 sliding scale donation for BADA Children Education Fund. 220-1323. www.badasf.org  

Peet’s Coffee & Tea Tour of new roastery in Alameda to celebrate Alfred Peet’s birthday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 2001 Harbor Way Parkway. 1-800-999-2132. www.peets.com 

The Future Leaders Institute Youth in Civic Leadership Symposium FLI students pitch their project ideas to the Bay Area community from noon to 3 p.m. at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. www.thefutureleadersinstitute.org  

“Schools Funding Crisis: A Town Meeting” at the Alameda Public Affairs Forum, at 7 p.m. at the Alameda Free Library, Conference Room A, 1550 Oak St. at Lincoln, Alameda. 814-9592. www.alamedaforum.org 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Oakland Artisans Marketplace Sat. from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Jack London Square. 238-4948. 

SUNDAY, MARCH 9 

Little Farm Open House Stop by the Little Farm to meet and learn about the animals, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Do It Yourself People’s Park Anniversary Acoustic Blowout Jam and Potluck Planning Meeting at 4 p.m. at the People’s Park Stage. 658-9178. 

“Naturally Egg-Ceptional” Learn about chickens and make naturally dyed eggs, from noon to 2 p.m., or 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7. 1-888-EB-PARKS. 

Memorial Service for Dr. Stanley Splitter at 2 p.m., at the Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. Reception follows.  

“The American-Israel Relationship in the Post-Bush Era” with Shmuel Rosner, chief U.S correspondent for the Israeli daily Haaretz at 7 p.m. at Congregational Beth El, 1301 Oxford St. Donation $10. 525-3582. 

“Slingshot” Local radical newspaper volunteer meeting and article brainstorming at 4 p.m. at the Long Haul, 3124 Shattuck Ave.  

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. 

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 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Sun. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

Free Classes on Meditation, Dreams and Self-Knowledge at Berkeley Gnostic Center, 2510 Channing Way. For details call 1-877-GNOSIS-1. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Jared and Michelle Baird on “How to Go on a Retreat” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000 www.nyingmainstitute.com 

Sew Your Own Open Studio Come learn to use our industrial and domestic machines, or work on your own projects, from 4 to 8 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Also on Fri. from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Cost is $5 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

MONDAY, MARCH 10 

An Evening with Cindy Sheehan and the El Cerrito Green Party. Peace Vigil at 5 p.m., dinner at 6:30 p.m. for $5-$10, talk at 7 p.m. at Sky Lounge, 10458 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito, just north of Stockton St. 526-0972. 

Crisis Intervention Training Task Force meeting at 3:30 p.m. at 1947 Center St., 3rd Flr., Deodar Cedar Room. Sponsored by the Mental Health Commission. 981-5217. 

Berkeley Lab Friends of Science “Saving Power at Peak Hours” with Mary Ann Piette, LBNL scientist at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Rep, Roda Theater, 2025 Addison St. Free. 486-7292. 

Free Kaplan SAT vs ACT Workshop for high school students and parents at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. Registration required at www.kaptest.com/college (event code SKBK8009). 

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 

CITY MEETINGS 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Mar. 6, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7461.  

Housing Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Mar. 6, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Oscar Sung, 981-5400.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs., Mar. 6, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7419.  

Public Works Commission meets Thurs., Mar. 6, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6406.  

Youth Commission meets Mon., Mar. 10, at 6:30 p.m., at City Council Chambers, Old City Hall. 981-6670.  

City Council meets Tues., Mar. 11, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. 

Commission on Disability meets Wed., Mar. 12, at 6:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6346. 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Mar. 12, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5426.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Mar. 12, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484. 

Police Review Commission meets Wed., Mar. 12, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 981-4950.  

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. Free bulk pick-up available. 638-7600.  

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 

Donate the Excess Fruit from Your Fruit Trees I’ll gladly pick and deliver your fruit to community programs that feed school kids, the elderly, and the hungry. The fruit trees should be located in Berkeley and organic (no pesticides). This is a free volunteer/ 

grassroots thing so join in!! To scehdule and appointment call or email 812-3369. northberkeleyharvest@gmail.com