Posted Wed., April 16—A Berkeley woman who admitted murdering her 9-year-old son will spend at least eight years in prison under terms of a plea bargain announced Wednesday. 

Misti Mina Hassan had acknowledged killing her son, Amir, a student at Emerson Elementary School at the time his death on Oct. 10. 

Police learned of the death after Hassan called a friend in San Jose to say that her son was dead and she had been injured. 

The friend called San Jose Police, who in turn notified officers in Berkeley, who found Hassan and the body of her son in their apartment at 3011 Shattuck Ave. 

Hassan was suffering superficial self-inflicted wounds to her wrists and neck when police found her. 

Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Venus Johnson said Hassan had agreed to the plea bargain, which was approved by Superior County Judge Edward Sarkisian, Jr. last Friday. 

Johnson said Amir Hassan died of multiple drug toxicity, but declined to identify which drugs were involved, except to note that they did not include Klonopin, the powerful anti-convulsant medication Misti Hassan had told her friend that she had used to kill her son, along with an antidepressant. 

Hassan had initially pleaded no guilty to the murder, but withdrew her plea before agreeing to the sentence handed down, which was to serve at least 85 percent of an 11-year sentence. 

She made no effort to enter a plea based on mental impairment, Johnson said. 

The youth’s death had sent shockwaves through his classmates at school and through the South Berkeley neighborhood where he was well-known to local merchants, whom he often assisted in their chores.

Posted Wed., April 16—The Berkeley Unified School District rescinded 38 of the 60 potential layoff notices it sent out to teachers and counselors last month in response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to cut $4.8 billion from the state education budget. 

District spokesperson Mark Coplan told the Planet Tuesday that 31 multi-credentialed teachers and seven counselors had been brought back to the district. 

“It’s great news,” said Berkeley Board of Education President John Selawsky. “Hopefully we will be able to remove more people from the list of layoffs. We are not going to know anything more about the state education budget until the governor’s May revise [of the budget], so we are working on this end to minimize layoffs.” 

A layoff hearing is scheduled to take place over the next few days for the 22 teachers still with pink slips, Selawsky said. It will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Berkeley Technology Academy, 2701 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

An independent administrative law judge will preside over the hearings to determine the order of seniority for the teachers who are in danger of losing their jobs. 

“The whole point is to provide teachers with due process as mandated in the state Education Code,” said Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT) President Cathy Campbell. “The district starts by presenting the layoffs and explaining the reasons behind them. BFT’s lawyer will question any discrepancy between the teacher’s employment history and the district’s personnel records.” 

Campbell said she was hopeful the district would be able to rescind all the potential layoff notices. 

“While it’s encouraging and very thrilling that the district was able to bring back so many teachers, the fact remains that we are in this position because we have a governor who is willing to sacrifice teachers, students and education to balance our budget,” she said. “For every teacher the district brings back, it means something else will not be funded. It’s not like new money is being brought in. Our kids are going to be paying the price for these choices.” 

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 certain advanced degrees.  

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.  

A list of classified employees who will receive potential layoff notices is to be delivered to the school board on April 23. 

While laughter at a funeral might seem incongruous, then so was Jay Walter. Speaker after speaker described a man both outrageously public and exceedingly private. 

The Berkeley firefighter and paramedic remembered in an extraordinary gathering at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church was recalled as a sharp but gentle wit who could walk up to strangers and utter outrageous remarks. 

Yet he was also a man so private that even his closest friends knew almost nothing about his childhood, nor that he had won one of the nation’s highest military honors for gallantry in combat, the Silver Star. 

Firefighters from Fresno to Santa Rosa converged on Berkeley Saturday morning, marching through the city’s streets, accompanied by a pipe-and-drum team and a gleaming enameled wagon, drawn by a pair of magnificently groomed horses, which carried the flag-draped coffin. 

And as the procession neared the church, they passed beneath an arch, formed by two extended ladders from fire trucks, from which hung a massive U.S. flag. 

Walter died April 6 of pancreatic cancer, a death presumed by law to have been caused by chemical exposures incurred during his work. He had served with the Berkeley Fire Department for 15 years. 

“He was very private,” said Berkeley Fire Department Chaplain Ron Falstad, his voice breaking. 

All his close friends knew about Walter’s years before he became a firefighter was that he had been born in Westwood in 1953, and had gone to live with an uncle after his parents died when he was still a child. 

They knew he had joined the army’s Special Forces while still a teenager, and had been honorably discharged in 1974 with a Purple Heart. 

“That was all we knew until this morning,” Falstad said, when they discovered the Silver Star in his medals box. 

Walter served in the 5th Special Forces Group, the most highly decorated American unit in the Vietnam War, and Falstad said he wondered whether Walter’s reticence about his own history stemmed from the childhood trauma of losing both parents, or from things seen during his years at war. 

Falstad said Walter consistently declined opportunities for promotion and only in 2001 did he accept a step up to apparatus operator. 

While he was shy about his past, he was anything but in public. Falstad recalled times when he had variously introduced himself to unsuspecting members of the public as a ballerina, a pea farmer, a hair stylist, a private investor and a professor of law. 

Friends never quite knew when he was kidding, as when he claimed proficiency in sundry languages. So Falstad was intrigued when during a fire at Bayer’s West Berkeley headquarters a senior Bayer official muttered something that sounded like a “a very unfriendly German expression” after muttering in English about possible losses of a million dollars a day from any ensuing shutdown until the facility passed the fire inspector’s muster. 

At that point Walter stepped up and launched into a rebuttal in fluent German. 

The assembled mourners burst into laughter at the reminiscence. 

Berkeley Fire Chief Debra Pryor said her first impression on meeting Jay Walter was “Who is this guy?” And to say that Walter had a sense of humor, she said, was an understatement. 

Walter was a firefighter who often called those he had treated as a paramedic, Chief Pryor recalled. 

Dave Sprague, a colleague who also serves as president of the Berkeley Fire Fighters Association, drew laughs when he described Walter as “one of those guys who was an expert on any subject, even if he knew nothing about it,” and a master of impressions as well. 

Lt. George Fisher, a retired firefighter who had overseen Walter, drew more laughs when he said, “It was just when I wasn’t paying attention that he sometimes went astray.” 

“There were a thousand Jay stories,” Fisher said. 

After Berkeley firefighters responded to an alarm at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall law school, they found a gathering of lawyers, judges and appellate court justices had been evacuated from a meeting in progress. 

After the alarm was cleared, Walter walked into the lecture hall and called the meeting to order. 

“Then he commenced to give a speech laced with legal lingo ... the theme was that every person deserves a second chance,” Fisher said. “When it was over, they all stood up and cheered.” 

Beneath the outrageous exterior, colleagues recalled, was a firefighter dedicated to his craft. 

As a Special Forces Pathfinder, Walter had first trained as a medic, following up on his return to civilian life with paramedic training at UCLA’s Los Angeles Medical Center. 

He met his future mate Gerri Schmutz when he became her first paramedic partner in 1978, and they married four years later. 

In 1985, the couple moved to Morgan Hill, where they both volunteered for service with the fire department, which he joined full time three years later. He was hired by the Berkeley department in 1993, working as a paramedic until his promotion to apparatus operator in 2001. He served on a wide range of special teams, and worked with rescue dogs. 

Walter is survived by his spouse, a daughter, Roslyn, and a granddaughter, Addison. 

And as a packed house at a Berkeley church demonstrated Saturday, he will be sorely missed. 

When the services at the church ended, signaled by the ceremonial tolling of the last alarm—where three colleagues each rang a silver bell three times—and a final prayer, the firefighters headed to Brennan’s Irish Pub for another tradition, the wake. 

While Berkeley’s firefighters honored their fallen colleague, the city was still well protected, Mayor Tom Bates said before the procession began. Firefighters from neighboring cities, including retired brass, were staffing Berkeley’s fire stations until after the ceremonies. 

Among those present for the procession were the mayor, Assemblymember Loni Hancock and City Councilmembers Max Anderson and Darryl Moore.  

And not even the solemnity of the moment could stop the business of politics. Shortly before the march through Berkeley’s streets began, a Berkeley police sergeant walked up to Hancock to ask, “You’ll be coming to us soon for an endorsement?” 

Results from testing water collected from the Berkeley Aquatic Park last week after a sewage spill showed no contamination, city officials told the Planet Monday. 

The shoreline from Bancroft Way to Carleton Street, which was off limits to the public for a week, will be reopened today (Tuesday). 

A sewage spill discovered at Bayer Healthcare’s Berkeley campus on Monday prompted the city’s Division of Environmental Health to prohibit human contact with water in a section of the Aquatic Park.  

The city’s Environmental Health Manager Manuel Ramirez told the Planet that the city had determined the spill amount to be approximately 1,170 gallons of sewage. 

“The spill is on the small scale, when compared to the millions of [gallons of] sewage spilled in Marin County recently,” he said. “The final test results show there was no impact from the sewage, so we will be taking off the signs prohibiting contact with water Tuesday.” 

The spill, which occurred from a city-owned blocked pipe, carries human waste and clean water from Bayer's administrative buildings at 800 Dwight Way, Bayer Community Outreach Manager Trina Ostrander told the Planet. 

Bayer’s Berkeley campus, located next to Aquatic Park, is the company’s global center for hemophilia and cardiology pharmaceuticals, and manufactures Kogenate, a large protein pharmaceutical that treats hemophilia.  

Ostrander said that a couple of Bayer employees had discovered the spill and notified the campus emergency response team.  

Ramirez said that prohibiting human contact with water in the area most likely affected was a precautionary measure. Human feces can contain fecal coliform bacteria, which produce pathogens that could infect humans.

A week after the newly empowered Oakland School Board announced that they had made their choice for an interim superintendent, controversy over the move continued to simmer. 

At its April 9 meeting—a day after the signing of a memorandum of understanding with State Superintendent Jack O’Connell giving the board the power to hire a superintendent—the board announced its intention to hire Roberta Mayor, chief management analyst for the Fiscal Crisis and Management Team (FCMAT) monitors that have been overseeing the monitoring of OUSD’s finances during the five years of state control. 

The board is currently in contract negotiations with mayor who, if she takes the one-year interim position, will start employment on July 1. 

The decision was made on a 4-3 closed session vote (David Kakishiba, Alice Spearman, Gary Yee, and Greg Hodge aye, Noel Gallo, Kerry Hamill, and Chris Dobbins, no). 

At the same time, the board is moving forward with a second piece of authority handed over in the O’Connell MOU—the hiring of an independent auditor. That process is expected to begin with deliberations in the district’s audit committee within the next few weeks. 

Part of the controversy revolved around confusion over the manner in which the mayor announcement was made. 

During discussion following a report on state administrator responsibilities, Noel Gallo indicated that an interim superintendent had been hired. After one public speaker—former California Teachers Association Executive Director Ward Roundtree—indicated that the board had announced that there were no reportable actions coming out of the executive session immediately preceding Wednesday’s meeting, board President Kakishiba said that the decision had been made at a special executive session that originally convened on April 4 and was adjourned and reconvened twice in the following days. Kakishiba then went on to make the announcement of Mayor 

The question raised immediate concerns about possible notice violations under California’s Brown Act. But a review of board agendas currently available on the OUSD website shows that the matter was properly noticed and agendized, with the sole item on the April 4 closed session agenda the item of “Superintendent of Schools” listed under “Public Employee Appointment.” 

But with sensitivity over local involvement in a district that has been without local power for five years, whether or not the choice of Mayor was politically proper, rather than merely legally proper, is another matter. 

On the Oakland Public School Parents e-mail list, reaction against the appointment was swift. 

“Why is our school board going directly to the lapdog of the state (FCMAT) to choose an interim superintendent?” wrote North Oakland parent activist Christopher Waters. “This supposedly impartial third-party agency has facilitated the state takeover agenda and timeline for the past five years so that they have been expressly on Jack O’Connell’s terms, and nobody else’s. Was there not some agreement amongst Oaklanders that major reform is needed regarding the autocratic nature of the current structure for state takeovers? Why is our board putting their newly regained authority and trust right back into the hands of the state?” 

And another parent, JG, wrote, “It is a great concern that the school board did not take the time to arrive at a candidate that they could all agree upon. What’s the hurry? Is this an example of more ‘shoot from the hip’ type of decisions that we can expect from the board in the future? This was a wonderful opportunity for the school board to demonstrate to the public that they can be thoughtful about their decisions and take the time that it takes for a decision as important as this. Here we go again!” 

And Oakland Education Association President Betty Olsen-Jones, who called the mayor’s decision “truly dismaying” in a posting to the parents group e-mail list immediately after the decision, had not changed her position a week later. 

“I was disturbed by the way it came out,” Olsen-Jones said in a telephone interview. “The public perception [of hiring someone from FCMAT] is that this is like having the fox guarding the henhouse. I don’t know where they are going to find the quarter of a million dollars and benefits to hire her for one year. Something is going to have to be cut. It all feels very messy. It does not look like something done in an open, transparent process. It’s not what the board needed on its first public relations piece [after winning two more areas of local control].” 

As for Mayor herself, Olsen-Jones said, “all I know about her is seeing her at board meetings when she presented the FCMAT report. I was impressed with the fact that she is a stickler for detail. Her reports came out very hard on the state in the area of fiscal control. She personally may end up being the best person for the job. Who knows?” 

Meanwhile, in separate interviews, two of the board members who voted for the Mayor contract negotiations defended their choice. 

“I think it’s a shrewd move,” District 7 Director Alice Spearman said. “We needed somebody who knew what’s been happening in Oakland since the state takeover.”  

Spearman also said she did not believe Mayor would have allegiance to FCMAT once she comes over to the district, saying that “she’s very loyal to the board.” 

And District 4 Director Gary Yee said the decision to hire an interim superintendent was made, in part, because of the confusion that would have resulted in district operations if they had not. 

Currently, state administrator Vince Matthews runs Oakland Unified, taking orders directly from State Superintendent Jack O’Connell. Had the OUSD Board chosen not to hire an interim superintendent, Matthews would have worked under the direction of the board in the areas of community relations and governance, personnel management, and facilities management—the three areas that have been returned to local control—while continuing to work under O’Connell’s direction in the two areas still under state control—fiscal management and pupil achievement. 

Complicating the matter would be that Matthews would serve as trustee in the three areas under local control, with ultimate state-sanctioned veto power over decisions if, in his opinion, they threatened the fiscal integrity of the district. In effect, Matthews would be in a position of answering to both the state and the local board in three local governance areas. 

“I think that Matthews is an honorable person,” Yee said. “But I think it would be a difficult task—virtually impossible—for him to represent both the state and the local board at the same time. We prefer to have someone who answers only to us.” 

Yee said the decision to hire Mayor was based, in large part, that board members did not want the interim superintendent to spend much of her year in office being brought up to speed on the details and history of Oakland’s financial situation. The lack of senior staff longevity has been a particular problem in Oakland under state control, with most in senior management having only two to three years experience in the district. 

Yee said he hopes that some of the bad feeling over the manner in which the Mayor appointment was announced will be smoothed over in the search for Oakland’s permanent superintendent, which is expected to start in earnest this summer. 

“We want to have a thoughtful community engagement process in this decision,” Yee said. 

Spearman agreed, saying she expects that community members will be invited to sit on the interview team for the permanent superintendent. 

“We want to know, what does the community want in the new superintendent,” Spearman said. “It’s been so long since we’ve had to make a decision like this, we want to make sure that the community is comfortable with the decision we make.” 

A week after the newly empowered Oakland School Board announced that they had made their choice for an interim superintendent, controversy over the move continued to simmer. 

At its April 9 meeting—a day after the signing of a memorandum of understanding with State Superintendent Jack O’Connell giving the board the power to hire a superintendent—the board announced its intention to hire Roberta Mayor, chief management analyst for the Fiscal Crisis and Management Team (FCMAT) monitors that have been overseeing the monitoring of OUSD’s finances during the five years of state control. 

The board is currently in contract negotiations with mayor who, if she takes the one-year interim position, will start employment on July 1. 

The decision was made on a 4-3 closed session vote (David Kakishiba, Alice Spearman, Gary Yee, and Greg Hodge aye, Noel Gallo, Kerry Hamill, and Chris Dobbins, no). 

At the same time, the board is moving forward with a second piece of authority handed over in the O’Connell MOU—the hiring of an independent auditor. That process is expected to begin with deliberations in the district’s audit committee within the next few weeks. 

Part of the controversy revolved around confusion over the manner in which the mayor announcement was made. 

During discussion following a report on state administrator responsibilities, Noel Gallo indicated that an interim superintendent had been hired. After one public speaker—former California Teachers Association Executive Director Ward Roundtree—indicated that the board had announced that there were no reportable actions coming out of the executive session immediately preceding Wednesday’s meeting, board President Kakishiba said that the decision had been made at a special executive session that originally convened on April 4 and was adjourned and reconvened twice in the following days. Kakishiba then went on to make the announcement of Mayor 

The question raised immediate concerns about possible notice violations under California’s Brown Act. But a review of board agendas currently available on the OUSD website shows that the matter was properly noticed and agendized, with the sole item on the April 4 closed session agenda the item of “Superintendent of Schools” listed under “Public Employee Appointment.” 

But with sensitivity over local involvement in a district that has been without local power for five years, whether or not the choice of Mayor was politically proper, rather than merely legally proper, is another matter. 

On the Oakland Public School Parents e-mail list, reaction against the appointment was swift. 

“Why is our school board going directly to the lapdog of the state (FCMAT) to choose an interim superintendent?” wrote North Oakland parent activist Christopher Waters. “This supposedly impartial third-party agency has facilitated the state takeover agenda and timeline for the past five years so that they have been expressly on Jack O’Connell’s terms, and nobody else’s. Was there not some agreement amongst Oaklanders that major reform is needed regarding the autocratic nature of the current structure for state takeovers? Why is our board putting their newly regained authority and trust right back into the hands of the state?” 

And another parent, JG, wrote, “It is a great concern that the school board did not take the time to arrive at a candidate that they could all agree upon. What’s the hurry? Is this an example of more ‘shoot from the hip’ type of decisions that we can expect from the board in the future? This was a wonderful opportunity for the school board to demonstrate to the public that they can be thoughtful about their decisions and take the time that it takes for a decision as important as this. Here we go again!” 

And Oakland Education Association President Betty Olsen-Jones, who called the mayor’s decision “truly dismaying” in a posting to the parents group e-mail list immediately after the decision, had not changed her position a week later. 

“I was disturbed by the way it came out,” Olsen-Jones said in a telephone interview. “The public perception [of hiring someone from FCMAT] is that this is like having the fox guarding the henhouse. I don’t know where they are going to find the quarter of a million dollars and benefits to hire her for one year. Something is going to have to be cut. It all feels very messy. It does not look like something done in an open, transparent process. It’s not what the board needed on its first public relations piece [after winning two more areas of local control].” 

As for Mayor herself, Olsen-Jones said, “all I know about her is seeing her at board meetings when she presented the FCMAT report. I was impressed with the fact that she is a stickler for detail. Her reports came out very hard on the state in the area of fiscal control. She personally may end up being the best person for the job. Who knows?” 

Meanwhile, in separate interviews, two of the board members who voted for the Mayor contract negotiations defended their choice. 

“I think it’s a shrewd move,” District 7 Director Alice Spearman said. “We needed somebody who knew what’s been happening in Oakland since the state takeover.”  

Spearman also said she did not believe Mayor would have allegiance to FCMAT once she comes over to the district, saying that “she’s very loyal to the board.” 

And District 4 Director Gary Yee said the decision to hire an interim superintendent was made, in part, because of the confusion that would have resulted in district operations if they had not. 

Currently, state administrator Vince Matthews runs Oakland Unified, taking orders directly from State Superintendent Jack O’Connell. Had the OUSD Board chosen not to hire an interim superintendent, Matthews would have worked under the direction of the board in the areas of community relations and governance, personnel management, and facilities management—the three areas that have been returned to local control—while continuing to work under O’Connell’s direction in the two areas still under state control—fiscal management and pupil achievement. 

Complicating the matter would be that Matthews would serve as trustee in the three areas under local control, with ultimate state-sanctioned veto power over decisions if, in his opinion, they threatened the fiscal integrity of the district. In effect, Matthews would be in a position of answering to both the state and the local board in three local governance areas. 

“I think that Matthews is an honorable person,” Yee said. “But I think it would be a difficult task—virtually impossible—for him to represent both the state and the local board at the same time. We prefer to have someone who answers only to us.” 

Yee said the decision to hire Mayor was based, in large part, that board members did not want the interim superintendent to spend much of her year in office being brought up to speed on the details and history of Oakland’s financial situation. The lack of senior staff longevity has been a particular problem in Oakland under state control, with most in senior management having only two to three years experience in the district. 

Yee said he hopes that some of the bad feeling over the manner in which the Mayor appointment was announced will be smoothed over in the search for Oakland’s permanent superintendent, which is expected to start in earnest this summer. 

“We want to have a thoughtful community engagement process in this decision,” Yee said. 

Spearman agreed, saying she expects that community members will be invited to sit on the interview team for the permanent superintendent. 

“We want to know, what does the community want in the new superintendent,” Spearman said. “It’s been so long since we’ve had to make a decision like this, we want to make sure that the community is comfortable with the decision we make.” 

In the 400 years since the first slavery ships docked on the Virginia coast, the African-American Freedom Movement has raised up a continuing series of larger-than-life leaders—Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X. But arguably the most talented of that group, but perhaps the least appreciated, remembered, or studied, is the man whose 110th birthday anniversary is being celebrated this month—Paul Robeson. 

In honor of that anniversary, the City of Oakland is hosting a month-long exhibit in the rotunda of City Hall, featuring memorabilia from the diverse aspects of Robeson’s public life. 

The exhibit was developed by the Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee, which is looking for a permanent home for these artifacts. 

Included are photographs, facsimiles of album covers and theater playbills, and excerpts from Robeson speeches and letters. 

Last week, on Robeson’s April 9 birthday anniversary, the City of Oakland sponsored a two-hour reception and Robeson tribute in the rotunda, including speeches and performances by Tayo Aluko, a British actor currently touring America performing a one-man play called Call Mr. Robeson, and Vukani Mawethu, a locally based multi-racial choir specializing in South African freedom songs. 

In his speech to the gathering, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums called Robeson a “brilliant, incredible human being.” Clarence Thomas, a leader in the local International Longshore and Warehouse Union, said that Robeson “paved the way for people like Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover, who continue to protest in spite of their celebrity.” 

The son of a minister who escaped from Southern slavery into New Jersey, Robeson began his public career in 1917 and 1918 as a football star at Rutgers College. Thirty years before Jackie Robinson broke the color bar in Major League Baseball, only 50 years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, in a time when African-American athletes in white institutions were a distinct rarity, when the Ku Klux Klan marched openly down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., and when Southern lynchings of black citizens were common, Robeson won All-American honors, as well as 15 varsity letters in football, basketball, baseball, and track and field. 

But his greatest early fame came in the area of entertainment. 

The 1920s was the tail-end of America’s minstrel show era, in which African-Americans were portrayed as lip-smacking, eye-rolling, chicken-eating buffoons. Into this era came the immensely dignified Robeson, who dominated the areas of singing and acting for the next 20 years in a combination that no other American performer has ever matched.  

He was an accomplished stage actor—the first African-American to play Shakespeare’s Othello—and appeared in 11 feature films, several of them in starring roles. At 296 performances, his 1943-44 Othello was the longest-running Shakesperian production in the history of Broadway. But it was in the area of singing that Robeson showed his greatest talents. An almost stereotypical baritone, Robeson brought negro spiritual music out of the churches and shouting halls and into the concert halls, and his rendition of the song “Ol’ Man River” in the 1920s musical Showboat—later saved for posterity in the 1936 movie—is one of the greatest single musical performances in American history. 

One of the artifacts in the Oakland City Hall exhibit shows the transition of Robeson from entertainer to Freedom Movement leader. 

Reproduced is the original Oscar Hammerstein score for “Ol’ Man River,” including the following lines: “Niggers all work on de Mississippi, niggers all work while de white folks play.” Robeson sang those words in his original 1928 Showboat performance, but later objected, refusing to include them in his recorded versions, and “niggers” was eventually changed to “darkies” and then to “colored folks.” By the time Motown’s Temptations made the song as part of their 1960s performances, race was scrubbed entirely, with the group singing “Here we all work, while the rich folks play.” 

But more important, Robeson eventually changed the African-American attitude in the song from dismissive to defiant. 

Among Hammerstein’s original words are “Tote that barge! / Lift that bale! / Git a little drunk, / An’ you land in jail...” and the powerful closing lament “Ah gits weary / An’ sick of tryin’; / Ah’m tired of livin’ / An skeered of dyin’.” In his later performances, Robeson pointedly changed “git a little drunk” to “show a little grit,” and transformed the whole weary, dispirited passage to “But I keeps laffin’/ Instead of cryin’ / I must keep fightin’; / Until I’m dyin’.” 

The changes were no accident or aberration. 

Beginning in the late 1920s, Robeson became active in both the African-American freedom movement and the world labor movement, lending his presence and the power of his performance to both causes. In the midst of the Depression, fighting for progressive and radical causes drew little attention in America—there was so much of it going around—but a 1937 Robeson concert tour in the Soviet Union did. 

By 1941—in actions that prefaced the 1960s-1970s FBI “Cointelpro” program that isolated and, in some cases, eliminated African-American leaders—FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover had labeled Robeson a subversive, and had begun a campaign to discredit Robeson and remove him as an influential national and international figure. 

Ironically, Robeson was being attacked by the United States government for making friendly contact with the Soviet Union at the same time the United States government was allying itself with the Soviet Union in the war effort against Nazi Germany. 

Robeson fought back. 

In the two decades between the 1940s and the 1950s when his concerts were being canceled and he was put on the “blacklist”—the unofficial list of “radical” and “subversive” entertainers whose careers the FBI and many Congressional leaders attempted to end—Robeson turned his attention to singing almost exclusively for labor and African-American freedom causes. 

One of the photographs in the Oakland City Hall exhibit shows a 1942 singing performance to shipyard workers on the Port of Oakland docks. Robeson also gave several concerts at UC Berkeley. 

Tucked away in the Oakland City Hall exhibit is a small item, easily overlooked, which shows one of Robeson’s most important actions. The item is a reproduction of the “We Charge Genocide” petition delivered by Robeson to the United Nations in 1951, in which the United States is charged with the systematic genocide of its African-American citizens. The petition brought worldwide attention to the condition of African-Americans in a way that had not occurred since the abolitionist movement of the slavery era 100 years before, and predated by a decade the international attention to the black Cause that accompanied the civil rights movement. The editor of the pamphlet that accompanied the petition was William L. Patterson, an African-American UC Berkeley graduate whose family settled in Berkeley and other parts of the Bay Area. 

The Paul Robeson exhibit in the Oakland City Hall rotunda continues through April 30. 

Jupiter Beerhouse and Restaurant’s proposed expansion into adjacent Café Panini would replace the cafe, zoning officials told the Planet Monday. 

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) unanimously approved the expansion permit last week to extend Jupiter’s operations into the exterior and interior space of Café Panini at 2115 Allston Way. 

Jupiter owner John Martin purchased Café Panini from its previous owner. Martin also owns the Triple Rock Brewery in North Berkeley and operates the Bear’s Lair Pub at UC Berkeley. 

Café Panini and Jupiter share a common entrance on Trumpetvine Court, a commercial courtyard and passageway accessible from both Shattuck Avenue and Allston Way.  

ZAB secretary Steve Ross said the new permit would apply Jupiter’s existing conditions to its new space, including an extension of its alcohol license and hours of operation. 

According to the zoning staff report, the proposed expansion area has never been open for dinner or sold alcohol in the past. 

Panini, which is open from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. for lunch everyday, allows customers use of its garden courtyard. Jupiter’s current hours of operation are from 11:30 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. 

The staff report also states that the project would expand an “existing, marginal business” by extending its food and drink offerings and making its hours consistent with that of Jupiter. 

The report cites Martin as saying that the cafe had four owners in the last 16 years and provided minimal economic return for all of them. 

Calls to Martin for comment were not returned. 

City Economic Development Director Dave Fogarty confirmed that the cafe would close after Jupiter expands into its space. 

“It won’t be a separate cafe anymore,” he said. “It wasn’t doing very well. It did well 10 years ago under one of the managers. It became a hot spot and then slowly dwindled.” 

The staff report says Jupiter has shared access and patio seating with the site of the proposed project for many years. 

The development involves interior modifications to the expanded space, including the construction of a bar and reconfigured interior seating.  

The proposed project site consists of two parcels of land—2181 Shattuck Ave. and 2115 Allston Way—which were developed to make Trumpetvine Court suitable for outdoor dining and small musical performances.  

The one- and two-story buildings on the property cover less than 75 percent of the combined lot area, and the outdoor space has been developed into an outdoor dining area with arbors, decks and patios furnished with tables and chairs. 

Right across Allston Way from Cafe Panini is the Gaia building, which includes Anna’s Jazz Island. 

Although zoning staff has not received any letters of objection for this project, there are several objections from neighbors about noise for a pending application for legalizing outdoor music at the site.  

Martin is working with the city and an acoustical engineer to address these concerns, and this application is scheduled to appear before the board in the next two to three months.  

Although the Berkeley Police Department supports Jupiter’s expansion, it has discouraged an increase in outdoor amplified music at Jupiter in response to multiple noise complaints from a neighbor regarding the musical performances in the patio at night. 

Berkeley’s City Council Monday spurned a Planning Commission proposal to have a city density bonus law in place in the event Proposition 98 passes in the statewide June 3 election. 

Planning Commissioners voted 5-4 last Tuesday to send the council a recommendation that it pass a proposal developed by members of three city commissions so the city would have a measure in place in case the statewide initiative passes. 

The council had passed a staff-recommended counterproposal before the November 2006 election when a similar statewide measure was on the ballot. 

Housing Advisory Commission Chair Jesse Arreguin said Mayor Tom Bates told the other four councilmembers present at Monday’s agenda committee meeting that no ordinance was needed because polls showed that Proposition 98 was likely to fail. 

None of the councilmembers present—Linda Maio, Laurie Capitelli, Max Anderson and Gordon Wozniak—spoke up for the ordinance, so it wasn’t given a place on the agenda for the April 22 council meeting. 

That effectively killed any chance of putting a new measure in place before the election, since passage of an ordinance requires two public hearings, said Arreguin. 

While Proposition 98 ostensibly limits eminent domain actions and would end the last vestiges of rent control in the state, critics say it could effectively end most efforts at regulating development in California. 

The density bonus, mandated by state law, allows developers to expand their projects by 35 percent over local limits in exchange for providing affordable housing to low-income tenants. 

Concerns over the scale of projects prompted Zoning Adjustments Board members form a subcommittee to draft a proposed measure that would given them some control over projects, and the City Council subsequently expanded it to include members of the Housing Advisory and Planning commissions. 

The council’s action doesn’t forestall its direction to the Planning Commission to come up with a city density bonus ordinance, the subject of ongoing discussions by that body. But should Proposition 98 pass, the existing policies criticized by ZAB members would remain in place until the full implications of Proposition 98 become clear, something that may require courtroom action and appeals before the dust finally settles.

Construction begins Wednesday on the new guest house at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

The announcement came in Monday’s edition of “Today at Berkeley Lab,” the facilities daily online newsletter. 

The 25,000-square-foot, 60-bedroom, four-story guest house will house up to 73 researchers and students working on projects at the lab. 

The facility will have a permanent staff of eight. 

The three-story structure would house 44 “standard” bedrooms, 12 larger rooms and four “studio suites.” 

While the structure’s overall height is officially listed as four stories, plans reveal that most of the structure is only three floors, with a small raised section in the middle of the building. 

The $10.9 million structure is being built under provisions of the lab’s 1987 Long Range Development Plan, rather than the current plan.

Berkeley Technology Academy’s (B-Tech) hour-long discussion on youth violence with Barrios Unidos co-founder Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez Friday was the first of many events the school hopes to host for its Latino students, who make up 45 percent of the school’s population.  

“We want to show these kids that there are people out there just like them,” said B-Tech principal Victor Diaz. “Like Nane said, there’s nothing our kids are going to say that he hasn’t experienced.” 

Alejandrez, who has lost 14 family members to what he described as “the madness of inner-city America,” also co-chairs the Urban Peace and Justice Summit, a national organization that works to unite African-American and Latino gangs. 

A national urban peace organization based in Santa Cruz, Barrios Unidos arose from the Mexican-American civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and ‘70s. It is also home to the Cesar E. Chavez School for Social Change—an alternative school for at-risk youth modeled on the principles of its namesake. 

A small group of B-Tech students listened intently as Alejandrez recounted his story on Friday. 

“I am the son of migrant farm workers, born in a cotton field in Merigold, Mississippi,” he began. “I stabbed the first kid when I was 13 years old. I shot another guy when I was 15. I almost killed a guy when I was 17 ... And it went on and on and on. In the late 1960s, I was sent to Vietnam to fight a war I knew nothing about. None of the people there called me a ‘dirty Mexican’ I realized all these brown people looked like me. There were so many similarities.” 

Like many young men of his generation, Alejandrez came back from the Vietnam War addicted to heroin. 

“I assaulted a man and almost killed him when I was 27 and I went to prison for 7 years,” he said. “I called out to Cesar Chavez to put me back in university. With the help of someone who believed in me, I was able to return to UC Santa Cruz. I left the violence in 1977 but couldn’t shake off the drugs.” 

Today Alejandrez is a changed man, and it is a transformation he wants to inculcate in the lives of those around him. 

“We need more people like Nane out there,” said Santiago Casal, who helped organize the event as a member of the Berkeley Cesar Chavez Commemoration Committee. “People who are championing social justice and challenging the powers that be.” 

The Berkeley Cesar Chavez Commemoration Committee invited Alejandrez to speak at B-Tech as part of this year’s Cesar Chavez commemoration period celebrations, which begins with the Spring Equinox and continues until the anniversary of his death on April 23. 

B-Tech seniors Jose Franco and Cassandra Perez said they had been inspired by Alejandrez’s speech. 

“There’s not a whole lot of Latino speakers at our school,” said Cassandra. “This is the first time for me. It’s like they are considering us more. Most of the speakers are African-American. It’s cool to learn about other people’s history, but we are like, ‘What about us?’ And now it is “Yeh! it’s about us.” 

Both students said they had encountered violence firsthand. When asked about their role models, Jose and Cassandra named their parents. 

“I grew up feeling really alienated from Berkeley High School,” Jose said. “They think we are juvenile delinquents, but we are not. We are just like them. We just get more help here.” 

B-Tech student support services staff Ariana Casanova said the school was gradually helping Latino students get their lives back together. 

“There’s definitely a larger number of Latino students here this year,” Casanova, who works with 25 Latino students, said. “These are students who left Berkeley High because they didn’t like the environment there or had behavioral problems. Most of them had given up on life, but now 90 percent of them are talking about going to college. We definitely need more resources, especially in mental health to deal with drug and alcohol use, and more after-school programs.” 

A prosecutor told jurors today that they should convict Christopher Hollis of murder for firing shots that killed his close friend Meleia Willis-Starbuck, a popular Berkeley High School graduate and Dartmouth College student. 

In his opening statement in Hollis’s trial, prosecutor Elgin Lowe said Hollis acted with conscious disregard for human life when he fired multiple shots and wound up killing Willis-Starbuck, who was 19 at the time, near the intersection of College Avenue and Dwight Way in the early morning hours of July 17, 2005. 

Lowe said Hollis, a 25-year-old Hayward man, and two other men responded to her call for help after she and several women friends were confronted by several UC Berkeley football players. 

Hollis’s attorney, Greg Syren, admitted that Hollis fired the shots that took Willis-Starbuck’s life, but he told jurors that Hollis should only be convicted of manslaughter. 

Syren said Willis-Starbuck’s death was “the kind of tragedy that occurs when someone makes a rash, stupid decision while in possession of a gun.” 

Syren said the incident was “a tragedy of immeasurable perceptions and elevated this case to Shakespearean proportions.” 

He said the incident was “like a Greek tragedy played out on the streets of Berkeley.” 

Hollis attended Berkeley High School with Willis-Starbuck and the two were such close friends that they called each other “brother” and “sister.” 

A red Pontiac Firebird collided head on with a Berkeley public school bus carrying five students from John Muir Elementary School at 3:50 p.m. Friday. 

According to a Berkeley Police Department report, the Firebird was headed southbound on California at Stuart streets and had a young girl riding on the hood of the car. 

The school bus was north bound on California at Stuart. 

When the Firebird’s driver turned left to head east, the car struck the bus on its front left and became stuck under it. 

Berkeley Fire Department paramedics, five Berkeley police officers, two Berkeley traffic control officers and three California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers responded to the accident. 

Berkeley police rescued the driver. No one in the car was injured. None of the five students on the bus was injured. 

Although the bus driver suffered an injury to his lower back, he denied medical transportation. He was later sent to Kaiser’s emergency department. 

Campus evacuation 

Smoke pouring from the heating system ducts at UC Berkeley’s University Hall forced evacuation of the building Monday morning, reports Berkeley Fire Department Deputy Chief Gil Dong. 

And while no one was injured in the incident, which resulted from burning insulation after a fan motor burned out, an ambulance trip did result from the call that firefighters answered at 8:44 a.m. 

Just after the first engine arrived, a van pulled up with an another kind of emergency: A woman inside was in labor and about to give birth. 

“An ambulance took the woman to the hospital, and she gave birth before they could get her to the birthing room,” said the deputy chief. “I don’t know if it was a boy or a girl,” he added. 

Staff and students were allowed back into University Hall after a floor-by-floor search determined the cause of the smoke and the smoking motor was neutralized. 

Station blaze 

Firefighters had been summoned to the vacant gas station at the southeast corner of the intersection of Ashby and Telegraph avenues four hours earlier Monday, where they found a fire burning inside the building, as well as sleeping bags and other possessions belonging to homeless folk who had been camping within. 

No estimate of building damage was made since the structure has already been slated for demolition, while Dong said a value of $2,500 has been placed on the possessions burned up in the fire. Their owners were nowhere around by the time the engines arrived.

Robbery 

On April 7 at 9:10 p.m., a 50-year-old Berkeley man was walking home alone in the area of Woolsey and Claremont when three or four young men robbed him. An older light brown Sedan drove by him slowly, stopped and a man got out and walked towards him. Then, he said that the robbers rushed him, with one man grabbing him around his neck and the rest pushing him to the ground. They took a backpack with a laptop computer and a silver iPod. The men ran off westbound on Woolsey. The man suffered an injury to his left foot and had to limp home to call police. He was treated at a local ER.  

Another robbery: 

On April 8 at 7:49 p.m., a 23-year-old El Cerrito man was walking east on Channing from MLK Jr. Way when two men robbed him. One had his hand in his jacket pocket and pointed it towards the man’s stomach as if there was a gun in the pocket. The El Cerrito man tried to walk away, but one of the perpetrators followed him and tried to take his wallet out of his back pocket. He ran, trying to get away from the men who were chasing him. As he ran, he called 911 on his cell phone and gave his location to police. Officers arrived as the suspects fled into the 1900 block of Channing Way and they caught one 20-year-old Oakland man, arrested him and charged him with robbery. The second man escaped. 

Purse thief 

On April 7, at 9:10 p.m., a 29-year-old Berkeley woman was walking southbound on Piedmont near Stuart when two men stole her purse, which contained an Italian passport, credit cards, two cell phones, and some cash. She said she noticed two male suspects in their late teens approaching her. One man walked up to her and grabbed her purse, which she was carrying on her right shoulder. The other suspect stood and watched. The man pushed her to the ground and pulled her purse away, causing the strap to break. Both men walked south and got into a dark car.  

Posted Sun., April 13—Preliminary results from testing water collected from the Berkeley Aquatic Park last week after a sewage spill showed no contamination, city officials told the Planet on Friday, but a section of the lagoon remained closed to the public throughout the weekend. 

A sewage spill discovered at Bayer Healthcare’s Berkeley campus on Monday prompted the city’s Division of Environmental Health to prohibit human contact with water in a section of the Aquatic Park.  

The city’s Environmental Health Manager Manuel Ramirez told the Planet Friday that the city had determined the spill amount to be approximately 1,170 gallons of sewage. 

He added that the shoreline from Bancroft Way to Carleton Street would be off limits until Monday, when the final test results will be available. 

“The spill is on the small scale, when compared to the millions of [gallons of ] sewage spilled in Marin County recently,” he said. “The preliminary results show there was no impact from the sewage, but we will need final test results to confirm that.” 

The spill, which occurred from a city-owned blocked pipe, carries human waste and clean water from Bayer’s administrative buildings at 800 Dwight Way, Bayer’s Community Outreach Manager Trina Ostrander told the Planet. 

Bayer’s Berkeley campus, located next to Aquatic Park, is the company’s global center for hemophilia and cardiology pharmaceuticals, and manufactures Kogenate, a large protein pharmaceutical that treats hemophilia.  

Ostrander said that a couple of Bayer employees had discovered the spill and notified the campus emergency response team.  

Ramirez said that prohibiting human contact with water in the area most likely affected was a precautionary measure. The human feces found in sewage can contain fecal coliform bacteria, which produce pathogens which could infect humans with diseases.  

The UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Christopher Edley Jr. came to the defense this week of law professor John Yoo, author of one of the "torture memos” for the Bush administration, and said the controversial professor could not be fired.  

Yoo, who was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2001 to 2003, helped establish an interrogation policy towards terrorism suspects for the Bush administration that many have decried as harsh and inhumane. 

While Edley said that he disagreed with Yoo's legal analysis of how prisoners could be treated, he nonetheless defended Yoo’s position as a tenured professor. Edley’s comments were posted Thursday on the school's website at www.law.berkeley.edu/news/2008/edley041008.html 

Calling Yoo “a very successful teacher,” Edley wrote, “Assuming one believes as I do that Professor Yoo offered bad ideas and even worse advice during his government service, that judgment alone would not warrant dismissal or even a potentially chilling inquiry.” 

Edley’s remarks came as a response to the urging of the National Lawyers Guild earlier this week calling for the dismissal of Yoo from the UC Berkeley law school. 

"John Yoo's complicity in establishing the policy that led to the torture of prisoners constitutes a war crime under the U.S. War Crimes Act," National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn was quoted as saying. 

Yoo is scheduled to speak on Monday at the Bancroft Hotel, 2680 Bancroft Way, as part of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology’s 2008 Privacy Lecture, focusing on the intersection between privacy and national security law. Yoo will be responding to remarks by keynote speaker David Cole, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. The lecture will begin at 4 p.m. 

Posted Fri., April 11—Tomorrow (Saturday) will be a day unlike the usual Saturday in Berkeley. Throngs will be headed for the UC Berkeley campus, but not for classes or football games. 

They’re taking part in Cal Day, and you can join them on this once-a-year opportunity to explore the university in Berkeley’s backyard. 

Cal Day started out years ago as something of an annual public open house, but now has the added character of an event to specially showcase the campus for prospective and newly admitted students.  

So if you have younger children pointed towards college, it can be a particularly enlightening experience. But the open house for all theme still pertains. 

Four years ago I wrote about Cal Day for the Planet. A generation of students has come and gone, and the event seems even bigger and even more interesting now. It’s an occasion when even the most staid-sounding academic departments have come up with fun and fascinating things to show and tell the public. 

The program alone—with just a few short paragraph for each activity-runs to nearly 60 pages. An estimated 30,000 visitors are expected to take part. The event starts at 9:00 am and wraps up by 4:00. 

There will be scores of tables and displays at the central “Information Marketplace” in Dwinelle Plaza, and orientation information available at several other campus gateways. 

Cal’s massive and multitudinous museums star this particular day. Admission is free to the Berkeley Art Museum, Hearst Museum of Anthropology, and tours are available at largely behind-the-scenes collections like the University Herbaria and the Museum of Paleontology.  

Live anthropods will be on view at the Essing Museum on the second floor of Wellman Hall, along with stuck-up preserved specimens from the insect world. “Live marine animals” will be on hand with “beach-bucket science” students as guides at the entrance to McCone Hall 

The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology housed in the Valley Life Sciences Building is turning 100 this year, and celebrates with “live animals, play games, a puppet show” as well as more adult seminars and tours. 

You can throw a pot—not at someone, but for your shelf—at the hands-on ASUC Art Studio near Sather Gate, or “Play With Clay” in the Archaeological Research Facility at 2251 College Ave., where the whys and hows of ancient ceramic-making will be taught. 

If you’d rather watch then participate, there’s lots of entertainment to take in. From 10 a.m.-2 p.m., student groups will perform “traditional and cultural dances, songs, and skits” on Sproul Plaza, or you can watch dance performances-ballet, modern, lyrical jazz, and other styles-in the Department of Physical Education in historic Hearst Gymnasium. 

Several of the campus theaters and dance studios will be showcased on a 12-1 tour hosted by the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. And from 2-4 pm in the Chavez Student center students stage “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: The Musical.”  

The University Baroque Ensemble performs in Hertz Hall, as does the University Symphony Orchestra. Taiko drumming reverberates outside Kroeber Hall, and the Campanile carillion will be played on the hour, starting at noon.  

At 1:30 p.m. at Hertz Hall you can hear the winner of the first Berkeley Piano Competition perform; he’ll go home with a Steinway grand. 

The “Bug Doctor” helps identify insects and spiders and diagnoses your “bug-riddled plants” at Wellman Hall and if you have a mysterious fossil in the attic, bring it by the “Fossil Roadshow” at the Life Sciences Building for an educated guess as to what it is. 

In Memorial Glade, north of Doe Library, the popular Army ROTC rock climbing wall will be open for business, and just uphill from Sproul Plaza UC Police will showcase their patrol cars, Segways, bomb disposal unit and (one hopes) cute bomb sniffing dogs. 

Down in Edwards Stadium a track and field showdown with Stanford will take place (there’s a ticket charge, but children under 12 are free) next to a free tennis match, Cal verses Washington, while the Golden Bears football team will have their final spring scrimmage in Memorial Stadium. 

Food is in abundance-there are 18 university run or related dining facilities open for the day on and off-campus. Rides to the top of the Campanile are free for the day, as are many University parking lots (through 5:00 PM) although use of public transportation is encouraged. 

Even “Curious George” will appear. Wait, don’t get out the Code Pink protest signs! It’s the fictional character—not the where-did-the-WMD’s go President—coming to the annual Celebration of Children’s Literature on the second floor of Tolman Hall. The simple simian will be joined by several children’s authors and illustrators including Thatcher Hurd. 

A potpourri of other offerings. Tour many of the campus residence halls, including historic Bowles Hall and the Clark Kerr Campus, and the Global Environment Green Suite where students demonstrate sustainable living. 

Walk the “Campus Tree Trail” (get a guidebook at Table 25 in the Information Marketplace). Hear a talk on “Cal 101: A Bear’s Necessities,” covering the basics a prospective student should know. Have tea with members of the Society of Women Engineers, explore the machine shop for Mechanical Engineering students in Etcheverry Hall, tour KALX, the student radio station, in Barrows Hall or visit the offices of the Daily Californian newspaper in Eshleman Hall.  

Parents can drop by the Cal Parents Hospitality Tent (Table 77) or nibble and chat at the Parents Reception at Alumni House, open to the proud progenitors of current and newly admitted students. 

Faculty and student insights, research, and opinion will be presented in a wide variety of talks and programs. 

Cal’s vaulted-and deserved-reputation for intellectual diversity and creativity is displayed in lectures on biofuels, “marking nuclear waste sites forever,” “Fact and Fiction of Immigration in the United States,” “Physics for Future Presidents,” “What’s the Good of the Liberal Arts?,” “How the Vikings Told Stories,” “Can Worms Teach Us About Our Immune System?,” “Blood, Guts, Bones, and Flesh Eating Beetles,” and “Better Living Through Economics.” 

Over in Davis Hall Professor Hassan Astaneh will demonstrate-no doubt with shattering results-the breaking points of various construction materials starting with steel (2 p.m.), timber (2:30 p.m.), and concluding with concrete (3 p.m.).  

In the Embedded Systems Design Laboratory in Cory Hall “students show off their latest and greatest projects, including a climbing Roomba,” while in Etcheverry Hall you can help set up obstacle courses for experimental robots, or observe how projectiles slam into various sorts of objects in the Ballistic Materials Testing Lab. 

If you haven’t been on campus in a while and want to know about new buildings, you can peek inside the recently opened C.V. Starr East Asian Library, take a “virtual walkthrough” of the CITRIS project (under construction on Hearst Avenue, above Euclid), tour the recently completed Stanley Hall (adjacent to Mining Circle), or explore the green slate-shingled Hargrove Music Library. 

Or, if you want to benefit from Cal Day but don’t want to join the crowds on the campus proper, the Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Botanical Garden, and Blake Garden in Kensington are open for free, with special programs. 

Download the Cal Day program from the campus website at.http://calday.berkeley.edu/ or pick up a printed program from one of the information tables as you enter campus. The program includes a handy guide for what starts when so you can plan out a sensible schedule. 

A hybrid car will chauffer visitors around campus, as will motorized cable cars, and there are electrical carts to carry the mobility impaired.  

Posted Fri., April 11—Is the Hayward Fault, which runs diagonally through Berkeley, a “tectonic time bomb in our back yard”?  

Although he’s a scientist not given to hyperbole, the answer is essentially “Yes” says Professor Roland Bürgmann, a researcher at the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, who delivered that sobering conclusion in the annual Lawson Lecture Wednesday, April 9, on the UC Berkeley campus. 

The Lawson Lecture series was started several years ago during the build-up to the centennial commemoration of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The lecture will be reprised for the public on Cal Day tomorrow (Saturday). 

Bürgmann led his audiences through both scientific analysis and a layperson’s layout of how the Hayward Fault acts and what impends for local communities in coming years. 

The Hayward Fault runs northwest to southeast along the base of the Berkeley Hills. In most places it “represents the topographic front of the hills,” where the steeper sections give way to the much gentler incline of the misnamed “flatlands” of Berkeley and neighboring communities. 

In 1868, the southern section of the Hayward Fault delivered what Bürgmann notes was called The Great San Francisco Earthquake for nearly 40 years, “until the 1906 earthquake stole its name.”  

1868 was the year the University of California was chartered. There were barely a quarter million residents in the Bay Area at the time, and most of the East Bay, including the future Berkeley, was very sparsely populated.  

Still, 30 people died and the quake’s namesake community of Hayward and other villages in southern Alameda County were wrecked, along with many buildings in San Francisco and elsewhere. 

Geological studies focusing on the UC Berkeley campus area have shown that the west side of the Fault has moved at least 335 meters north, relative to the east side, over millions of years, at a rate of about 10 millimeters per year.  

Strawberry Creek is offset considerably from its westward course when it hits the Fault at the mouth of Strawberry Canyon. Memorial Stadium is now constructed on this site, but the creek used to make a distinctive jog to the northwest, tumbling down a series of cascades and pools, before resuming its westward flow through the lower campus. 

The Hayward Fault, Bürgmann noted, has had a typical “creep” of several millimeters a year, documented in features like the creek displacement but also, today, in offset curbs and broken paving up and down the East Bay, and the slow shift northwards of the western half of Memorial Stadium.  

It’s not the creep that’s the problem, however, but when the Fault “locks” deep below the surface, building up strain that is then periodically and violently released in earthquakes. 

Since the early 1300s there have been at least five major earthquakes on the Hayward Fault, at intervals estimated to be approximately 155, 160, 95 and 143 years. Since the 1868 event it has been “139 years and counting,” Bürgmann noted. 

Thus 2008 takes on symbolic significance-it’s marks the end of the average 140 year interval between Hayward Fault earthquakes during the past several hundred years. 

That doesn’t mean that an earthquake will occur this year. But it does mean that the next Hayward Fault earthquake is coming ever closer, no longer a remote possibility but a projected likelihood within decades, if not years.  

Drawing data from several research approaches, “the Hayward Fault is ready today” for an earthquake, Bürgmann concluded.  

His lecture was supplemented by an elegant combination of graphics-both still and moving-showing the wide range of tools seismologists can employ today to map and analyze the Hayward Fault. 

Even if the subject weren’t so close to home for those of us in Berkeley, this was a fascinating lecture. The explanations of both traditional and revolutionary new research techniques were clear and intriguing. 

There were aerial photos and computer generated topographic images showing fault strain from above and the side. These were as vivid as if the fault was a living organism subjected to an MRI. 

One aerial showed hundreds of points in Berkeley where movement caused by fault creep or slow-moving landslides could be documented by satellite. Other images expanded out to the regional scale, documenting how the Pacific Plate beneath the ocean is moving north, relative to the North American Plate beneath most of the Bay Area. 

As the Pacific Plate moves north, it is pulling part of central and southern California along with it. “Ultimately, Los Angeles will be ruining our views” to the west, Bürgmann joked. 

However, even with all the detailed study of the Hayward Fault, “the earth doesn’t really behave the way we think it should,” Bürgmann notes. Earthquakes don’t come like clockwork. 

But “we have clearly reached the stress load that was sufficient to cause the last two earthquakes on the Hayward Fault.” 

Bürgmann closed his lecture with a quotation from Andrew Lawson, the renowned Berkeley geologist who named the San Andreas Fault and founded much of the science of modern seismology. 

“The best protection against the danger of earthquakes is not the knowledge of the particular dates upon which they will occur, but the realization that they may occur at any time, and that foundations and structures should be built sufficiently strong to withstand the shocks,” Lawson wrote in 1922. 

“Preparing ourselves for earthquakes is more important than all the earthquake prediction we can do,” Bürgmann concluded.  

You can learn more about the Hayward Fault and earthquake safety at the website of the 1868 Hayward Earthquake Alliance, a consortium of organizations organized to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the 1868 earthquake, at http://1868alliance.org/ 

The Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, with a wealth of earthquake related information, can be found on-line at http://seismo.berkeley.edu/ 

As pro-Tibet groups and supporters of the Beijing Games engaged in a war of words during the Olympic Torch Relay in San Francisco Wednesday, Tibetans in Berkeley kept their businesses closed to join in a movement very close to their heart. 

A handwritten message greeted customers at Little Tibet, a curio shop at 2037 University Ave., saying, “We are closed on April 8 and 9, sorry for the inconvenience.”  

Tsewang Khangsar, who owns Little Tibet, trekked across the Himalayas to escape from the Chinese occupation 47 years ago. Khangsar was one of thousands of Tibetan refugees from India to win a green card lottery in 1995, which eventually brought him to Berkeley. 

“We were there to let the world know what China is doing to Tibet,” said Khangsar, who spent Tuesday and Wednesday in San Francisco. “China has occupied Tibet for the last five decades ... Three generations have passed. They said they would liberate us from serfdom to justify their occupation, but there has been no economic or social progress since then. After 50 years, the condition of Tibet has not changed. It is politically unstable. Tibetans are still suffering economically. There is no religious freedom, and our culture has been destroyed.” 

Next door at a shuttered Lhasa Salon, a “Why Care about Tibet” poster with saffron-robed Bud-dhist monks rallying in the background left no doubts about where its owners could be. 

Signs encouraging passers-by to join the “Global Human Rights Torch Relay” to protest China’s crimes against humanity and free Tibet were plastered all over the desolate storefronts of adjacent stores Tibet Jewels and Cafe Tibet on University Avenue. 

Dawa Lama, who owns Tibet Jewels, echoed Khangsar’s comments. 

“We don’t have human rights in Tibet,” said Lama, who crossed over the Tibetan border into Nepal to escape from the Chinese when she was six years old. “There is no good education for the younger generation. We don’t even have the right to put Dalai Lama’s picture in our homes.” 

Lama said fear of being arrested by the Chinese government for believing in democracy kept her away from visiting Tibet. 

Neither Lama nor Khangsar had any qualms about the loss to their businesses during the last couple of days. 

“People are giving their lives in Tibet, what is closing your business for two days?” said Lama. “It’s the least we can do.” 

More than 160 groups from across the Bay Area rallied against the 2008 Olympic Games in San Francisco, the only city in North America through which the torch will pass during its journey spanning six continent and 150 cities. 

Students, local businessmen and entire families from Berkeley took BART or drove to San Francisco as early as 6 a.m. to support Tibet or the Beijing Games. 

Yiining Chan, a third-year finance student from UC Berkeley, missed school to show his support for the torch relay at the Justin Herman Plaza in front of the Ferry Building. 

“It is sports for people from all over the world,” said Chan, who grew up in Hong Kong. “It’s about the Olympic spirit, there should be no relationship between the Olympics and politics.” 

Jessica Kali, who had braved the crowds on the MUNI’s underground trains disagreed. 

“I think it’s important for people of color to stand in solidarity with supporters of Tibet,” Kali, a member of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. “It’s up to us to pressure China to free Tibet. A lot of people think that China isn’t using the Olympics for political reasons, but it is. It’s using it to justify its power.” 

Yi, a Beijing Games supporter, held on tightly to a “San Francisco Welcomes Olympic Torch Flag,” on the steps of the Plaza. 

“My wife’s hometown is Beijing and we are very proud that the games are being held there,” he said. “We want to welcome this great moment. I think the protests are improper. It’s an insult to the Olympic spirit. When I read about how a protester hit a disabled torch carrier in France and grabbed the torch, I was very sad. We want this to be a peaceful event. We don’t want to talk about politics at a sports event.” 

Most Tibetans at the rally said they were not protesting the torch. 

“I did want to see the torch, and I was disappointed when they re-routed it,” said Tenzin, a sophomore at Berkeley City College who immigrated to the United State from Dharamsala, India. “What was great was we could carry our flag freely here. We can’t do it in Tibet. We want people to be safe, to be in peace, whether it is in Tibet or Burma or Darfur.” 

Groups clashed in a riot of sound and color at the Justin Herman Plaza minutes before the torch was scheduled to stop there, but it went down Van Ness Avenue instead. Edward Liu, who had mobilized hundreds of Bay Area Chinese for the relay, confronted his Tibetan opponents. 

“The Chinese community from all over the Bay Area have worked to showcase this event,” he said. “This has been destroyed by a very simple group of radicals using bull horns to get people together to bash China. With all due respect to Tibetans, the Dalai Lama’s speech about renouncing radicalism is not being followed. With all due respect to the Dalai Lama, he cannot control his own people.” 

More than 20 pro-Tibet protesters started circling him with Tibetan flags, but Liu kept on speaking. 

“When Tibetans peacefully protested, 140 Tibetans were killed,” Khangsar said. “We want China to give us the human rights it promised to the Olympics committee.”

Judging by comments at a Wednesday night hearing, Ber-keley residents like faster bus service but hate the notion of losing car lanes to bus expressways. 

AC Transit’s Jim Cunradi briefed a joint session of the city’s Planning and Transportation commissions on his agency’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) proposal. 

While a dozen speakers told the commissioners to urge the City Council to move ahead and another said BRT was fine so long as none of the controversial Van Hool buses were involved, 25 speakers said no to bus-only lanes, with many urging a no-build vote and a system redesign. 

Dean Metzger said opposition to the ACT Transit plan was strong in Berkeley neighborhoods, with polls by the Council of Neighborhood Associations and his own Claremont Elmwood Neighborhood Association running strongly against any proposal to take existing traffic lanes and convert them to bus-only use. 

Last week, Metzger said, “I initiated a measure to be on the November ballot” that would bar taking traffic lanes for BRT buses. 

BRT would link Berkeley and San Leandro with a 17-mile service that would flow in a pair of dedicated one-way bus-only lanes, except in the commercial heart of San Leandro itself, where the City Council has blocked the dedicated lanes in favor of keeping the buses in regular traffic lanes. 

The transit company is still in discussions with Oakland City Councilmember Jane Brunner about the configuration for North Oakland, Cunradi said. 

At the heart of the current AC Transit proposal for the northern leg of the system is the creation of two bus-only lanes down the center of Telegraph Avenue with stations in the middle of street which Cunradi said could also serve to promote public safety.  

In the model offered by BRT—which could change as the bus agency works with city government—the route would turn west off Telegraph, looping through downtown Berkeley, through a two lane route along Bancroft Way, then north on Oxford Street and down University Avenue to Shattuck Avenue, and looping back to Telegraph either via two-way dual BRT lanes on Bancroft or a one-line eastbound link on Durant Avenue. 

Keeping both lanes on Bancroft would result in a loss of more than 60 parking spaces on Bancroft, compared to the separated routing. 

Wednesday night’s meeting saw the forging of some unusual alliances, with individuals and organizations often opposed on other development finding common ground in opposition to BRT-only lanes. 

Thus Brendan Heafey of Ruegg & Ellsworth, the West Berkeley real estate brokerage and development firm, found himself allied with Doug Buckwald, Merilee Mitchell and others who have often occupied opposing side on development issues. 

Mark McLeod, president of the Downtown Berkeley Association, and Chamber of Commerce President Ted Garrett also called for re-evaluation of a system they feared would deter shoppers and pedestrians, as did representatives of Telegraph Avenue businesses. 

Members of Friends of BRT turned out to support the system, including Len Conly and Livable Berkeley Board Member Alan Tobey. 

Sierra Club Northern Alameda Group volunteer chair Kent Lewandowski offered support for BRT, which he said would be especially needed given the significant growth in enrollment and jobs projected in UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan through 2020. 

Jeff Ranor of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition urged commissioners to “move as soon possible, because each additional delay is putting tons more carbon into the environment.” 

Linsay Imai of Urban Habitat urged the commissions “to work with urgency to select a locally preferred alternative so AC transit can address all the impacts.” 

But judging by the volume of applause, the consensus among BRT-only lane opponents seemed to be for a system dubbed Rapid Bus Plus, similar to the that now operating along San Pablo Avenue. 

That system would incorporate BRT features, including traffic signal priority, prepaid fares and live scheduling information posted at stops, while not requiring reconfiguration of turns along the route or generating additional congestion that would divert traffic onto neighborhood streets. 

George Williams, who is filling in on the Planning Commission for David Stoloff, asked if the bus agency could compare BRT and Rapid Bus Plus. 

“We could do that, sure,” said Cunradi, offering to add the comparison to the final EIR. 

Two former city councilmembers came to speak out, one, Miriam Hawley, to support BRT, and the other, former Mayor Shirley Dean, to oppose BRT, which she had previously endorsed as mayor when the council adopted a 2001 resolution calling for a BRT route down Telegraph. 

Critics questioned the time and energy savings that AC Transit has said will be significant benefits of what has been described in the past by Cunradi and others as a $300 million to $400 million system. 

But as the meeting was nearing its end Cunradi said that while there wasn’t $400 million available, his agency had come up with a system that would do the job for $250 million instead, largely by dumping the planned concrete busways and using the existing asphalt paving instead—a remark that drew gasps of disbelief from the audience. 

Cunradi confirmed one fear of many critics—namely that creation of BRT stations at the intersections of Telegraph and Bancroft Way and Haste and Derby streets, the downtown BART station and on Shattuck at Bancroft or Durant would create the opportunity for state Transit Village designations that would pave the way for denser development that currently allowed by city plans and codes. 

The designation itself, Cunradi told Planning Commissioner Patti Dacey, would come from the city and not his agency. 

City Transportation Planner Matt Nichols said the next step is development of a work plan based on comments from commissioners and the public to determine what is needed so the planners can present the city council with a preferred alternative. 

City staff had come under fire from some of the public speakers for its failure to work with the transit agency in coming up with a city designed preference. 

“The city has a lot of say in how it looks,” Cunradi said. 

If BRT-only lanes are approved for Berkeley, their advent will also bring a new law enforcement agency to the city’s streets. Cunradi said enforcement within the BRT zone, including citation of cars that venture into the newly forbidden bus turf, will be carried out by the Alameda County Sheriff. 

NIchols said he might return to the commissions in late May or early June to present a work plan for the next stage in the process. 

The draft EIR is available online at www2.actransit.org/news/articledetail.wu?articleid=42622c20&r=n

A sewage spill discovered at Bayer Healthcare’s Berkeley campus on Monday prompted the city’s Division of Environmental Health to prohibit human contact with water in a section of Ber-keley’s Aquatic Park. 

The city’s Environmental Health Manager, Manuel Ra-mirez, described the spill, caused by a city sewer pipe blockage, as small. City officials told the Planet on Thursday that they had not yet been able to assess the size of the spill. 

The environmental health de-partment collected water samples from Aquatic Park Tuesday morning to test for fecal coliform bacteria, which are present in human feces, and carry pathogens that could infect humans. 

Bayer officials informed the city’s environmental health department about a sewer release at the campus south of Building 14, at 800 Dwight Way, at 12:40 p.m. Monday, Ramirez said, after which a team went out to the site to meet with Bayer representatives to try to eliminate the overflow and contain the spill. 

“Some of the effluent reached a storm drain that feeds a basin that enters a wetland area of Aquatic Park,” Ramirez said. “We put up signs between Bancroft Way and Carleton Street to warn people to avoid contact with water. At this point the total spill amount or that of the effluent that reached the storm drain has not been reported. I know they were able to clear the blockage and took action to contain the spill between 2 and 3 p.m.” 

The area posted by the environmental health department includes the Dreamland children’s playground and the beginning of the disc golf course, where golfers often wade through water to rescue their discs. 

Bayer’s Berkeley campus, lo-cated next to the Aquatic Park, is the company’s global center for hemophilia and cardiology pharmaceuticals, and manufactures Kogenate, a large protein pharmaceutical that treats hemophilia. 

The Bayer campus Community Relations Manager Trina Ostran-der said the size of the spill was “fairly significant.” 

“It’s hard to give an estimate because it was flowing,” she said. “But the only thing that goes into the pipe from Bayer is human waste and clean water.” 

Ostrander said that a couple of Bayer employees had discovered the spill and notified the campus emergency response team. 

“Our environmental manager contacted the city,” she said. “The pipe is under Bayer property but it’s a city pipes so both the teams worked together to contain the spill.” 

The city’s Public Works Department is investigating the layout of the blocked pipe that carries sewer from the campus, Ramirez said. 

Calls to Public Works for comment from the Planet were not returned. 

“Of course you don’t want a spill,” said the city’s Public Information Officer Mary Kay Clunies-Ross. “But the right people are on it, taking the right step.”  

The water samples will be sent to a public lab to test for possible human sewage and the results will be available by today (Friday) afternoon, Ramirez said. 

“We are monitoring to make sure that the bacteria levels are below what could affect humans,” he said. “We are advising people to stay out of the water and will keep the signs up until the testing is completed and we know it’s safe to go into the water ... Some of these underground sewer pipes are quite old, although the city has done some updates.”

After five years on the back burner, the Southside Plan is finally coming to a boil—with the Planning Commission set to discuss the document later this month. 

Commissioners will hold a hearing April 23 on the draft environmental impact report (DEIR), a document that must be adopted before the adoption of the plan itself. The review was prepared by LSA Associates, an Irvine-based consulting firm with offices in Berkeley. 

The Southside Plan covers the area south of the main UC Berkeley campus, bounded by Bancroft Way on the north, properties along the eastern side of Prospect Street to the east, properties along the southern side of Dwight Way to the south and properties along the western edge of Fulton Street to the west. 

The plan, which had originally been completed in 2001 and revised two years later, has been delayed because UC Berkeley officials requested modifications. 

The environmental impact process was begun in 2004, with a scoping session held later in the year, but the entire study was then delayed so that the plan’s transportation element could include data from AC Transit’s planned Bus Rapid Transit service in its analysis and to allow detailed study of planned conversion of some one-way streets to two-way traffic, said Jesse Arreguin, aide to City Councilmember Kris Worthington. 

“It’s been a long time coming, and I hope it’s worth all that money,” said Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, who remembers dealing with the plan when he served on the Planning Commission. 

“The plan began over a decade ago,” he said, originating in discussions between then-UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien and then-Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean. 

“Then it got hijacked by the Planning Commission, with the university relegated to being just one of the players,” Wozniak said. 

The councilmember said the environmental review was “very expensive, but why it took so long I really don’t know.” 

Worthington, whose council district includes the largest share of the planning district, said his immediate concern is public access to the draft EIR. 

While the document is posted online at the Planning Department website at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=17998, Worthington said he wants the city to provide printed copies “at least to those people who volunteered all their time” in helping to prepare the plan. 

Hard copies are available for $10 for the main document, plus an additional $30 for the accompanying technical appendices. 

“I think it should be available to everyone who needs it,” Worthington said, adding that reading a paper copy is often more convenient. 

While the transportation section is complex, Wozniak said, the land use changes are fairly simple, with upzoning along Bancroft Way and downzoning along Dwight Way. Upzoning also extends along Telegraph. 

The land use segment of the plan allows inclusion of one to two additional floors for housing projects that meet or exceed state density bonus law requirements, while calling for preservation of existing group living facilities and discouraging demolition of existing housing that meets current seismic and other safety standards, encouraging rehabilitation over demolition when financially feasible. 

The land use element calls for creation of four land use subareas within the plan’s boundaries: Residential Medium Density (R-3), Residential High Density (R-S), Residential Mixed Use (R-SMU) and Commerical (C-T). 

With the exception of the existing C-T zoning, most of the area is currently zoned R-4. 

The new R-S zone would bar office uses in new construction, while downscaling parking requirements for residences and increasing the amount of lot space a building could cover. 

University offices and facilities would be allowed in the new R-SMU zone, along with religious, social and cultural institutions and ancillary offices and facilities, recreational facilities, retail stores serving the neighborhood and parking garages, with housing listed as the preferred use. 

Construction of new infill projects on existing surface parking lots within the zone would also be encouraged. 

The plan also calls for preserving existing historic and architectural resources within the zone. 

Zoning in the C-T commercial zone would be expanded to encourage new mixed use buildings and additions to existing structures. 

The plan would allow for a 15-foot increase in maximum heights for structures in the C-T zone, from the current 50 feet to 65 feet, while eliminating setbacks for higher floors and eliminating parking requirements. 

The plan would significantly reduce the open space required for each housing unit in the new R-SMU zone from the 200 square feet required now in R-4 housing to 40 square feet. 

Heights in the R-SMU zone would increase from the current 65-foot limit to 75 feet for housing north of Durant Avenue, and in other areas would drop to 60 feet for buildings without housing.  

Heights for medium density (R-3) projects would remain the same at 35 feet while 45-foot heights would be allowed for R-S housing. 

Setbacks between buildings and lot lines would be reduced in some zones, and parking requirements generally would be reduced, with a no-parking overlay generally for housing along College Avenue between Bancroft and Haste Street west to the plan’s boundary lines, with the exception of the two-block area west of Ellsworth Street between Haste and Channing. 

Traffic changes 

The plan endorses AC Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) plan, and calls for AC Transit and other regional transportation agencies to evaluate the possibility of light rail service along College and Telegraph avenues, Bancroft Way and Durant Avenue. 

Worthington said he is concerned at the timing of the release of the document, given the simultaneous push by AC Transit for approval of a preferred route for consideration in that agency’s own final EIR on the BRT project. 

“It’s funny how they let it (the Southside Plan) sit around for so long, then they suddenly rush it through now that they need it,” he said. 

Some of the plan’s greatest changes would affect drivers who navigate the Southside’s current maze of one-way and two-way streets. 

The plan calls for conversion of Dana and Ellsworth streets from their current one-way status to two-way, and calls for consideration of conversion of Bancroft Way and Durant Avenue to two-way streets, combined with restriction of through traffic on Telegraph Avenue. 

New or changed traffic signals and stop sign configurations should be considered for intersection with high collision rates, including those of Durant Avenue, Dwight Way and Bancroft Way with Telegraph Avenue, Bancroft’s intersection with Dana and Bowditch streets and Bancroft and College Avenue, it says. 

The plan also calls for programs to reduce car trips, including encouragement of transit subsidies, increased charges for employee parking, and prohibition of surface parking lots. 

Much of the street reconfiguration is also premised on the need to make bicycle and pedestrian travel safer. 

The consultants concluded that, after appropriate mitigations, the plan will have no significant environmental impacts, beyond a long-term increase in emissions of ozone precursors that would exceed thresholds set by the Bay Area Air Quality Monitoring District. 

As a result of land use changes embodied in the plan, LSA predicts construction of 472 new housing units with 1.038 residents, along with construction of 638,290 square feet of new commercial development that would provide an additional 2,130 jobs.

By a 5-4 vote, Berkeley planning commissioners voted Tuesday night to endorse the recommendations of the Joint Density Bonus Subcommittee over a more developer-friendly staff report. 

Both documents will go to the council, which will chose what—if any—measures to enact prior to the June 3 election, when passage of Proposition 98 could impose potentially harsh penalties on new land regulations by local and state government. 

Commissioners acted to give the City Council a chance to enact a law that would give city planning staff and the Zoning Adjustments Board more control over the size and massing of large mixed-use housing projects, so that it could be in place in case the statewide ballot initiative passes. 

The measure would contain a built-in sunset clause, so the measure would expire if the ballot measure fails. If 98 passes, the commission and council could subsequently modify the law. Critics of Proposition 98 contend that it would effectively forbid any kind of downzoning, ending the ability of city, county and state government to limit such construction projects. 

In a similar action on virtually identical alternatives prior to the November 2006 election when Proposition 90, a similar statewide initiative, threatened local land use controls, the council backed the staff version, which was characterized by some commissioners who voted with Tuesday’s majority as being more favorable to developers. 

It was Planning Commissioner Susan Wengraf who swung the vote in favor of the proposals by the subcommittee she had chaired. Gene Poschman had made the motion, which was seconded by Patti Dacey and joined by Helen Burke and Roia Ferrazares. 

Poschman said that by recommending the subcommittee proposals to the council, the commissioners would be giving the city’s top elective body the most options for staving off the most adverse potential impacts of the ballot measure. 

Commission Chair James Samuels had sought unsuccessfully to divide the vote into two sections, the first on the question of sending both proposals to the council, and the second to recommend one or the other. 

One of those voting against Poschman’s recommendations was Erin Rhoades, who was filling in on the commission for Harry Pollack. She’s the spouse of former Land Use Planning Manager Mark Rhoades, the author of the original staff report in 2006. Rhoades was present in the audience during the meeting, along with his new business partner, developer Ali Kashani of Memar Properties. 

“Now maybe I can stop attending these meetings,” quipped Bob Allen, one of the two remaining Zoning Adjustments Board members who had sponsored the creation of the subcommittee, originally an adjunct of ZAB alone. A City Council directive later expanded the group to include members of the Housing Advisory and Planning commissions. 

Allen has said that he favors the subcommittee proposals because they will give the board some measure of control over the size and shape of new projects within the constraints of a state law that grants a 35 percent size increase for projects that meet affordable housing requirements. 

Whatever action the City Council takes is likely to have a sunset clause. 

Allen and fellow ZAB members had long voiced concerns that without a local law to implement the state’s density bonus law, the city had little control over the size and shape of major housing projects on the city’s main thoroughfares. 

The state law, which grants developers increased building size over and above local ordinances in exchange for creating affordable housing, has been cited as justification for projects that significantly top the city’s height and mass limits. 

Just how much control the city can exert remains an open question and a matter of contention between acting City Attorney Zach Cowan and critics like Gene Poschman, who have said the city’s legal interpretation doesn’t match those of other cities in the state, which have enacted tighter controls than Cowan contends are legal. 

Despite an effort to turn out support for the staff proposals which had been emailed by Erin Rhoades in her role as chair of the Livable Berkeley pro-development lobbying group, Tuesday night’s audience was overwhelmingly in favor of the tighter subcommittee controls. 

Also voting no were Samuels, Larry Gurley and retired San Francisco city planning official George Williams, who was filling in for David Stoloff, the only subcommittee member who had opposed the group’s recommendations. 

Of 22 speakers, only four endorsed the staff version, while 17 backed the subcommittee’s recommendations. 

The remaining speaker, Jim Hill, was concerned only if the proposals would limit his ability to rebuild the building he owns at 48 Shattuck Square, should it be destroyed by an earthquake. He was assured by Samuels that he could do so, whatever action the council took, since his property is landmarked. 

Those who appeared in support of the staff position included Kashani, Livable Berkeley board member Alan Tobey, West Berkeley broker/developer Ruegg & Ellsworth’s infill project manager Brendan Heafey and West Berkeley resident Bill Walton. 

Subcommittee supporters included Allen, Housing Advisory Committee Chair Jesse Arreguin, Barbara Gilbert, Steve Wollmer of Planberkeley.org, ZAB member Sara Shumer, Julie Dickinson, Sharon Hudson, tree-sitter Zachary Running Wolf and Merilee Mitchell. 

Just what impacts Proposition 98 could have if passed by state voters remains unclear, given the measure’s vague language. Some critics charge it could effectively end the power of governments to regulate land use by allowing property owners to sue for compensation for any government action that could be construed to reduce the maximum potential value of their property.  

The measure’s anti-rent-control provisions, designed to end the last vestiges of the statutes landlords love to hate, have drawn strong support from apartment owner lobbies. Proposition 99, an alternative choice on the same ballot, is credited by supporters with solving perceived problems with the state’s power of eminent domain stemming from a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision without adding any other undesirable provisions. 

Meanwhile, Berkeley planning commissioners will continue to grapple with the density issue in upcoming meetings, on the premise that should Proposition 98 fail at the polls, they’ll still be charged with coming up with new regulations for density in the city.  

In Los Angeles, a lawsuit filed last week is challenging that city’s new density bonus, and more suits may be in the offing, according to a Tuesday story in the Los Angeles Daily News. 

Unlike many other cities in California, Berkeley already has an inclusionary housing law that requires developers of projects with five or more dwelling units to set aside an allotment of apartments or condos at rents or sales prices affordable to those otherwise unable to rent or buy.

Solemn firefighters from Berkeley, Livermore and Pleasanton will march through the streets of Berkeley Saturday morning, honoring one of their own, Jay Walter Randall. 

The 54-year-old, 15-year B.F.D. veteran died April 6, losing his battle with cancer, a disease that strikes firefighters so frequently that such cases are ruled as a matter of law to be occupational illnesses, said Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong. 

The Saturday procession begins at 10 a.m. at Station 5 at Derby Street and Shattuck Avenue. From there, firefighters will march to Allston Way, then west to Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and then north to Addison Street and St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, 1640 Addison, where the memorial service will begin at 11 a.m. 

Born in Westwood in suburban Los Angeles, Walter lost both his parents in childhood. After attending the University of Southern California and UC Irvine, Walter joined the army, serving as a member of the elite Special Forces Pathfinders, where he was also trained as a medic. 

After two tours of duty in Vietnam, he trained as a paramedic at UCLA Medical Center and began ambulance work in 1977, where he was teamed with Gerri Schmidt on her first assignment as a paramedic. They would marry four years later. 

In 1985, the couple moved to Morgan Hill, where Walter volunteered for the fire department, working a full-time position as a firefighter/paramedic starting in 1988. Walter joined the Berkeley Fire Department in 1993, and was promoted to Apparatus Operator in 1981. 

Walter’s assignments included service as SWAT paramedic for the Berkeley Police Hostage Negotiations Team, and he served on a variety of special squads, including the Oakland-based Urban Search and Rescue Team. 

He is survived by his spouse, a daughter, Roslyn, and a granddaughter, Addison. 

“We’ll miss him a lot,” said Dong. “It’s a tragic time for the Berkeley Fire Department family. We’re all going through a healing process.” 

“He was a great guy,” said Daily Planet Arts and Calendar Editor Anne Wagley, who recalled conversations with him at Caffe Roma.

The newly empowered school board of the Oakland Unified School District moved swiftly to exercise authority granted by California State Superintendent of Education Jack O’Connell, voting on Wednesday to hire an interim district superintendent on a one-year basis while the board looks for a permanent superintendent.  

But even more surprising than the swiftness of the OUSD Board’s actions—coming a day after the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signing ceremony at Grass Valley Elementary—was the board’s choice: Roberta Mayor, who, as chief management analyst for the Fiscal Crisis and Management Team (FCMAT), has been overseeing OUSD’s finances during the five years of state control. 

Since a massive budget shortfall led to the state takeover of OUSD in 2003, the state superintendent’s office, the state administrator hired by the state superintendent to run the Oakland schools, and FCMAT have been equally viewed by many Oakland residents as symbols of outside control of the local schools.  

Mayor, who will take office in Oakland on July 1, was hired on a 4-3 vote, reflecting the deep divisions that have emerged on the board as the district moves slowly out of state control.  

The MOU itself passed on a 5-2 vote of the board, with Director Chris Dobbins saying on Tuesday that he’d had second thoughts on voting for approval. Director Noel Gallo, who opposed the MOU, pointedly refused to go up on the Grass Valley Elementary stage with other directors and stand behind O’Connell and district officials while the MOU was being signed. 

Both Gallo and Dobbins say they are concerned that, under the MOU personnel authority transfer, the board will take over direct contract negotiations with the Oakland Education Association teachers union, even though the board has no say over the district’s fiscal matters. 

Under the MOU, the OUSD board regained control over facilities management and personnel, and with it the ability to hire a local superintendent and an independent auditor. Oakland earlier won authority over community relations and governance. Under a complicated arrangement, state administrator Vincent Matthews will have complete authority over the district’s finances and pupil achievement, and will serve as trustee—with veto power—over the three areas that have been returned to local control. 

OUSD Board President David Kakishiba said that, in the months since favorable FCMAT reports in facilities and management triggered a decision by O’Connell to take those areas out of state control and authorize the hiring of a local superintendent, board members have grappled with a decision on whether to hire a permanent superintendent, an interim superintendent, or no one until full local control had been restored.  

Kakishiba himself had originally supported hiring a superintendent, but early last month he told the Daily Planet in an interview that he was having second thoughts.  

“I’m concerned with our ability to attract the best candidates to Oakland given the present uncertainties,” Kakishiba said at that time. “I think it’s better to wait and have a clean transition.” 

By this week, however, Kakishiba had changed his mind again, and supported the interim hiring. 

“Ms. Mayor’s hiring will infuse the district with the leadership and exper 

tise needed to end the state takeover and get our finances in order,” Kakishiba said by telephone this week. “Given what we believe is needed at the present time, the board feels she is the right person at the right time.”  

In a prepared press release, the district said that Mayor “boasts 40 years’ experience as an educator, serving as a teacher, principal, deputy superintendent and superintendent in both California and Hawaii.”  

“The past five years have afforded me the opportunity to observe the inner workings of the Oakland Unified School District and to develop great affection for Oakland Public Schools,” Mayor said in a statement. “I am humbled and honored that the board has entrusted me with the task of leading the district in its return to a solid financial position and full local control.” 

Despite the fact that the SB39 state legislation authorizing the state takeover specifically called for the hiring of a state administrator with “recognized expertise in management and finance,” this is the first time since the state takeover that a fiscal expert has been hired to lead a portion of the district.  

None of the three OUSD state administrators hired by O’Connell—Randolph Ward, Kimberly Statham, and now Vince Matthews—had a background in fiscal management expertise. 

Kakishiba denied this week that there was any quid pro quo agreement with FCMAT over Mayor’s selection. 

“No, absolutely not,” he said. “I think that [the people at FCMAT] were probably shocked. But who else better to get the district focused on the FCMAT fiscal standards than the chief FCMAT investigator?” 

Under Mayor, FCMAT has written reports and recommendations that have been highly critical of the state’s management of Oakland Unified’s fiscal affairs, although the state management has received some praise from FCMAT for fiscal recovery in recent months.  

In its most recent assessment of Oakland Unified in November of last year, the assessment that led to the return of facilities and personnel management to local control, FCMAT said that “the reforms undertaken by the district [under state receivership] have not always considered fiscal recovery as the primary goal,” but that state administration was making “steady improvement” in that area. Still, of the five areas monitored by FCMAT, OUSD received its lowest marks in fiscal management.  

Fiscal recovery of the district was the sole reason the district was taken over by the state.

An Oakland education and labor attorney has filed a California Superior Court lawsuit against the City of Oakland and its recent decision to spend $7.7 million of Measure Y money on police recruitment, asking that the court immediately halt the collection of Measure Y taxes until the original community policing mandates of the bond measure are met. 

Marleen L. Sacks, an Oakland homeowner and a senior counsel with the Pleasanton Office of Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo law firm, filed the lawsuit on Tuesday on her own behalf. 

A spokesperson for the mayor’s office said they had no comment, and a spokesperson for the Oakland City Attorney’s office said the office had not yet seen a copy of the lawsuit as of Wednesday and could not comment on it. 

The first hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for May 29 in Alameda County Superior Court. 

Last month, in order to meet Mayor Ron Dellums’ ambitious State of the City promise of fully staffing the Oakland Police Department by the end of the year to its authorized 803 officer strength, the Oakland City Council approved a proposal by Dellums and Police Chief Wayne Tucker to spend $7.7 million in Measure Y violence prevention bond money to run simultaneous police training academies, fund a recruitment advertising blitz, and cut red tape in the hiring approval process. Dellums had said at the time that the police augmentation plan was the only way to fully implement the Measure Y police hiring mandates. 

But in an e-mail press release announcing her lawsuit, Sacks called the $7.7 million expenditure “ill conceived and hastily drawn” and a “raid on Measure Y funds” because it is a general police recruiting measure, and not specifically targeted to hire Measure Y police officers. Among other things, the 2004 bond measure authorized the hiring of 63 new police officers—57 of them “problem solving officers” (PSOs) to be assigned to each of Oakland’s police beats—but only 40 of those PSOs have been hired.  

The lawsuit also asks for reimbursement to Measure Y of past money taken by the city to fund police academies “that resulted in no additional Measure Y officers.” 

Sacks has been considering filing a Measure Y lawsuit for months, well before the plans were announced for the $7.7 police augmentation program. Last November, in response to a San Francisco Chronicle column by Chip Johnson about concerns by Oakland residents over crime and violence in the city, the paper printed a story of e-mail responses by Oakland citizens. 

Among them was an e-mail from Sacks that read, “I’m really starting to think that filing a lawsuit for failing to implement Measure Y may be the only way to get their attention. The city is collecting $20 million a year based on the promise that they are totally not keeping. It is outrageous that we keep having to pay the tax and are not getting any of the benefits.”

Warm-water pool users lobbied the Berkeley Board of Education to save the Berkeley High School Old Gym and warm pool right before the board discussed a report recommending the site’s adaptive reuse at the school board meeting Wednesday. 

The report outlined the outcome of a charette held last month to settle a lawsuit against the Berkeley Unified School District. Board members refrained from taking any action and asked the district’s Director of Facilities Lew Jones to provide them with a more comprehensive cost analysis of the gym’s adaptive reuse. 

Friends Protecting Berkeley’s Resources sued the school district last year for what it called an inadequate environmental impact report on the demolition of the gymnasium and warm-water pool. 

The lawsuit charged that the district had failed to consider feasible alternatives to demolition that could be developed to meet all or most of the district’s objectives and that the EIR “did not justify its findings.”  

The district’s South of Bancroft Master Plan calls for the demolition of the nationally landmarked Old Gym to make room for a stadium and 15 new classrooms, with the option of relocating the warm-water pool to a site on Milvia Street.  

Friends’ spokesperson Marie Bowman told the board that charette participants had discussed adapting the gym to meet the school’s academic and physical education needs as identified in the master plan.  

“We should build our future through adaptability,” said Bowman, stressing that state, federal and private funds were available to rehabilitate the gym, now that it’s a national landmark. 

The report includes three different concepts, with Bowman’s team proposing classrooms on the second floor and adding a basement to a piece of the Old Gym.  

Bowman quoted architect Todd Jersey—responsible for projects such as the Albany Pool and the Richmond Plunge—as saying that it was possible to preserve the pool while accommodating the school’s progress. 

The second concept—put forward by a group of people who want to maintain a league-sized softball field at the high school—would demolish a part of the building to accommodate the field and convert the north pool into a warm-water pool.  

The third plan calls for the demolition of the Donahue Gym, constructing classrooms on the first floor and converting the north pool into the warm-water pool.  

Bill Savidge, a charette participant, said that the charette had not met the goals of the school board, which he said was to create more classroom space. 

“We have 3,300 students on 17 acres. The California Department of Education requires 40 acres of space in a school of this size,” he said. “All of us support the warm water pool, but it may not be appropriate to have non-student centered services right in the campus. I recommend moving it across the street.” 

School Board President John Selawsky called the adaptive reuse plans “wonderful conceptual ideas” and asked for a comparison between rehabilitation costs and new construction. 

One Warm Pool Advocacy Group co-chair Juanita Kirby said her group was open and flexible to anything that would save the pool, including a tax measure. 

The city is discussing the possibility of putting a bond measure to build a new pool, which would come with a $15 million price tag, on the November ballot. 

The mayor’s office is also exploring ways to convert the Milvia Street tennis courts into a warm pool but have not yet reached an agreement with Berkeley Unified about its use.  

“We are a small town with limited resources and we are on the brink of a recession,” said longtime pool user Pam Scullen, who supported rehabilitating the pool. “For us, this pool has saved lives.” 

One Warm Pool chair JoAnn Cook reminded the board that her group along with several other preservationists and community members had opposed the demolition of the pool and its relocation right after the master plan was completed. 

“We are not going to go away, whichever way the board decides on the proposals before it today,” she urged the board. “We will need your help to ensure a warm water pool for Berkeley. Make the commitment needed for that to happen—provide the land and the advocacy. If you take something away from someone, I was taught that you were to give back something of equal value.” 

It wasn’t all fun and games at the Berkeley Federation of Teachers’ community rally against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed $4.8 billion state education budget cuts Wednesday, although there was some clowning around. 

Some Berkeley public school teachers masqueraded as an overzealous Schwar-zenneger trying to “pink-slip” educators.  

The teachers said it was to tell Sacramento, “It’s time to share the money.” 

And Willard Middle School math teachers sang “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Get Fired Rag” to the tune of Country Joe McDonald’s “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag”: “Hey there, governor, it seems to me, you got a big mansion, a big old moat, but remember we know how to vote!” 

Parents, teachers, students, and union members came together in front of the Berkeley Unified School District’s headquarters at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way to decry the governor’s proposal to slash public school funding and give teachers potential lay off notices. 

Berkeley Unified stands to lose up to $3.7 million from the proposed cuts, which could mean that the targeted teachers, counselors and special aid instructors will all lose their jobs after May. 

District superintendent Bill Huyett told the crowd that 12 teachers were brought back from the list of 50 who were pink slipped last month. 

“We feel terrible about laying off any teacher,” Huyett said. “It’s like eating the seed core. These teachers are among our best and our brightest. The state keeps cutting and cutting and one day there’s not going to be anything left.” 

Huyett stressed the importance of the voter-approved statute that establishes a minimum level of funding for California schools, which is under threat. 

District officials were able to salvage the 12 positions by determining school site budget and proposed budget reductions, Huyett said. 

The governor’s proposed K-12 funding would slash $400 million from the state education funds this year and take away $4.4 billion in the next fiscal year, which means $700 less for each of the approximately 6.3 million public school students in the state.  

“I am very scared for the Latino community,” said Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action lead organizer Belen Pulido-Martinez. “The programs that help our children are going to be hurt. As a result the achievement gap is going to increase.” 

Education Week 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.  

PTAs from all the Berkeley public schools are mobilizing for an April 24 rally in Sacramento to join the state PTA in the fight to defend public education. 

Students from Berkeley High and Independent Studies spoke in support of their pink-slipped college career counselors and teachers. 

“As long as I can remember, I have been hearing about cuts,” said Independent Studies student Devin Gamble. “We are going about as if this system is perfect, but it’s not. I understand we need to limit spending but there must be other ways besides cutting jobs.” 

Berkeley Board of Education member Karen Hemphill emphasized that California had a problem with revenue, and not spending. 

“It takes only one thirds vote to cut the budget but two thirds to increase the revenue,” she said. “The system is broken. We are being held hostage by Republicans who have taken a pledge not to increase revenue and are inflicting deep cuts to education, social service and the health care system.” 

Union members called on parents to write letters to their legislators requesting them to reinstate the vehicle license fee and close loopholes such as the yacht tax to increase revenue. 

“The governor thinks you can bring the budget back in a few years,” said California Federation of Teachers (CFT) President Marty Hittelman. 

“But a kindergarten student has only one year of kindergarten. A 11th grader has only one year of 11th grade. They can’t wait for four years. It’s a disgrace to be one of the most powerful and richest states in the world and cut education.” 

Hittelman, who is scheduled to speak against the proposed cuts at the CFT convention today (Friday) in Oakland, encouraged community members to organize. 

“We have plenty of money in California, It’s just in the wrong pockets,” he said to loud cheers. “When someone says to you, ‘let’s cut taxes,’ you should say to them, taxation is what you have to live in a civilized country. It’s the way we invest in our future.”  

For information about joining the BUSD trip to Sacramento on April 24 contact BUSD Public Information Officer Mark Coplan at Mark_Coplan@berkeley.k12.ca.us.  

SIRs are due May 1. What are SIRs, you might ask? The answer: a Student’s Intent to Register at a college. In the next several weeks, Berkeley High School (BHS) college-bound seniors will be deciding where to spend the next four years of their life.  

May 1 is the last day that you can tell a college that you will be attending their college. You also are supposed to send in a deposit for your chosen college by that date. 

“I think that I’m going to University of Oregon,” said BHS senior Calvin Young, 17. “It has a really great psychology program and a lot of people from BHS are going there. I’ve visited the campus. Sending my SIR in is going to be a breeze. I’ve already made my decision.” 

While Young knows where he wants to go, many do not and are having trouble deciding where they should register. Luckily, many colleges and universities are hosting Admitted Student Days, where kids admitted to their college can take classes, meet administrators, talk to counselors, and even spend a day overnight in the dorms, to find out if that college is right for them.  

For example, the University of California at Santa Cruz is hosting these Admitted Student Days from April 5 through April 19. Most colleges make it easy to RSVP for these events on their website. 

“It’s really exciting,” said senior Keenan Nelson-Barer, 17. “I’ve narrowed down my choices to UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis. I am probably going to visit there the next two weekends. It’s going to be a tough choice but both are great schools.” 

Ilene Abrams, college advisor at Berkeley High School, remarks to students that this time of the year, while most stressful, can also be very exciting. 

This part of the year can also be very confusing for seniors. Typically it’s the prime time for “senioritis,” when many students slack off on their schoolwork, since they have already been accepted into their school of choice. When senioritis occurs, grades drop and attendance usually does too. However, every year colleges are rescinding offers of admission because of significant drops in academic performance, in addition to disciplinary action. Students should contact schools to check their policy regarding rescinding of admissions. 

So, parents, make sure your kids don’t fall into the trap of senioritis, and help guide them so that they make a good decision come May 1. If you have any questions about the college admissions process for your student at Berkeley High School, contact Ilene Abrams at 644-6804 or Angela Price at 644-4576.

Tuesday's story on the light brown apple moth should have differentiated the roles of the United States Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The USDA is responsible for the New Zealand testing of a new product to eradicate the moth, USDA named the Technical Working Group on the moth and the April 1 telephone press conference included experts from both the CDFA and the USDA.

Larry Bensky was kind enough to forward to us an article by Dan Eggen, from Sunday’s Washington Post. The headline is “Permissible Assaults Cited in Graphic Detail.” 

He suggested that we should reprint the whole piece, which we’re not legally entitled to do. But we can direct your attention to the story on the paper’s web site. It’s an excellent parsing of a truly appalling document, a memo on the legal boundaries governing interrogation by members of the U.S. military forces which was written by John C. Yoo, then a U.S. Justice Department lawyer, and now a faculty member at the local law school formerly known as Boalt Hall, which is part of the University of California.  

His memo functions as a justification for a variety of forms of physical torture. The article reports that the memo claims that “federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes by military interrogators are trumped by the president’s ultimate authority as commander in chief.” 

It was taken as the law of the land for eight months, until it was overruled by Jack Goldsmith, Yoo’s boss at the Office of Legal Counsel, who was later quoted as calling some of his memos “deeply flawed: sloppily reasoned, overbroad, and incautious in asserting extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the President.” Well, yes, that’s obvious, even to non-lawyers. 

We asked Larry, KPFA’s longtime national repor-ter, to write a commentary for the Planet on the topic. “What is there to say? It speaks for itself, alas,” he replied. 

That’s true, as far as it goes, and everyone should certainly read the Post piece or even, if you have the stomach for it, the whole memo. 

Brad DeLong, ace blogger and Econ Prof, is one of the few UC faculty members whose moral compass seems to be relatively intact. He’s been hosting online discussions of how Yoo might be sent packing. 

His own first take on the topic: “I should write to Professor William Drummond, Chair of the Berkeley Division of the University of California Senate, stating that in my opinion it is time for him to convene a committee to examine whether John Yoo’s appointment to the University of California faculty should be revoked for moral turpitude.” But that’s followed by a lengthy exchange about the propriety of such an action. 

Yes, yes, we know the whole academic freedom routine. We’re reluctant to suggest that Yoo be fired just because some would describe his work product as sadomasochistic with fascist tendencies.  

But here’s another question: Who hired this jerk to work at the Law School? It’s the “sloppily reasoned” part that should have kept him from getting the job in the first place. Yoo’s “faculty profile” says he’s been at U.C. since 1993. Why? 

If the Planet had a huge investigative staff, that might make an interesting inquiry. But we have our hands full reporting on U.C.’s sweetheart deals with major petroleum companies, and the hiring halls of academia are traditionally shrouded in mystery and cloaked in enigma.  

This is a job for an insider. We know that a number of past and current law school faculty members read the Planet, because they’ve told us that they do, and we know that they’re just as disgusted as we are by Yoo’s presence among them.  

We’re also aware that a few doughty souls at UCB have staged demonstrations and teach-ins against Yoo for years. We’ve encountered several law students who seem to have ethics and energy.  

Forget about moral turpitude. Some of these people should inquire delicately but forcefully why their school has a faculty member whose work is notoriously shoddy. 

Of course, Yoo’s not the only UC faculty member who does some mediocre work from time to time. This could be a slippery slope—it might make some of his colleagues very nervous. 

Even though the subject matter is deadly serious, some observers have half-jokingly suggested taking direct action to shame Yoo. Two respectable Berkeley matrons were overheard fantasizing about donning burqas and smacking him with pies in front of his classes.  

On Brad DeLong’s blog, one Kate G. says that it’s not a question of academic freedom exactly, and proposes a more Draconian alternative: “Yoo’s briefs on torture, especially the infamous observation that the president could, if he choose, legally ‘crush the testicles’ of an innocent child if he thought that would advance an American agenda, is more like a form of reckless endangerment of the country and of its citizens and their morality. But I’d settle for a controlling legal and political authority crushing Mr. Yoo’s testicles and then asking to have their case heard by a higher court. I don’t think he has to be fired from Berkeley to make the point.”  

Bloggers are chewing over these alternatives as we speak, and perhaps someone over at the law school might actually do something. The latest dialogue on the topic as of this writing, from posters to Brad DeLong’s site: 

“I think a complaint should be filed but it’s largely symbolic. I do not believe that the University should be pressured into firing Yoo, though I am personally appalled by his directives to the government. Tenure protects academics’ rights to hold and voice unpopular opinions. I am not interested in silencing those I disagree with, but rather in engaging in public debate with them. Anything else smacks of liberal facism.” 

And the response to this post, from someone signing on as A. Citizen: 

“‘Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.’—Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I am no liberal, sir, and it is an attitude such as you voice here which has brought our nation to the precipice. Let me be clear. Your failure to speak out, to take action, against Yoo and his vile ilk makes you no better than they.”  

History, if not God, will judge who’s right. Meanwhile, it’s up to the faculty and students of the law school of the University of California at Berkeley to figure out, at least, who saddled their institution with this infamous character in the first place.  

CORRECTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

At the Jan. 29 Berkeley City Council meeting, Judith Scherr heard me start a sentence with, “As a former GI Rights counselor on the GI Rights hotline,...” Judith then wrote in the Feb. 1 issue of the Daily Planet, “Bob Meola, a veteran who has staffed hotlines for military personnel trying to leave the service, told the council that use of the parking space will help the demonstrators deliver the truth to possible recruits.” The word “veteran” was not spoken by me. 

I am not now and never have been a veteran of any military organization. I am a veteran of the anti-war movement since 1967. I have also been a veterans’ counselor, assisting veterans with obtaining discharge upgrades at discharge upgrade hearings and at a hearing of the Board of Veterans’ Appeals. Please either publish this letter or make it clear that you mistakenly labeled me as a veteran. 

Bob Meola 

• 

NOVEMBER TAX INCREASES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The City of Berkeley is in the process of surveying voters on their attitudes toward increased property taxes. The poll is supposed to give the mayor and City Council an objective view of whether or not their initiatives are likely to succeed in November. 

The problem is that the questions aren’t objective at all. On Monday, I got a call from the professional poll takers. Everything was designed to make me say I would vote for higher taxes. To paraphrase: “Wouldn’t you like to have access for the handicapped to the libraries?” “Wouldn’t it be nice for our kids to have a place to go after school? “You don’t want your fire protection to go away, do you?” “Shouldn’t there be a warm water pool for our disabled children?” And so it went, until at the very end that the real point came out, and I was asked if I would be willing to pay just a few more dollars for these wonderful things. 

At no time did the surveyor ask whether I thought the city was spending its current revenues wisely. Or tell me what my total bill might be if all of these programs were adopted. There were no questions about how I thought the city might economize, or raise revenues in ways that would be more fair to young families who now must pay over $10,000 a year in taxes on small starter bungalows, while 60 percent of the population would be exempt from any property tax increase. 

I’m not saying we should never consider new taxes. All I’m saying is that when the city spends my money on an “impartial survey,” it should not load the results in advance. 

The last time the city cooked the books to justify a tax increase was in 2004. We all know how that turned out. 

Miriam Wilson 

• 

SEATTLE STREETCARS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am just back from Seattle, a town that overcame the moniker “the least worst place.” It overcame being built on mudflats and sawdust, burning down from a glue factory, being watered down by hydraulic sluicing and erecting walls around hollowed out streets only poets write about. (Be sure to go on the Underground Tour if you go to Seattle.) 

If this town can run buses in bus-only lanes in rush hours, build a purple streetcar line you can walk onto and have proof of payment, a ticket you can show or glide through a slide, and be OK with avoiding congestion that way, what is wrong with a lucky town like Berkeley, built on halcyon oak woodland with a history of the key system streetcar? 

The Seattle Streetcar is a 2.6-mile loop with 11 stops that shares the road with traffic. It was funded by hospitals, banks, construction companies, research centers, hotels, and the UW Med School. If they can do that, why can’t some of the poor-crying wealthy companies around the East Bay care more about global warming than driving an SUV to the grocery store or the symphony. It is embarrassing to go to a place like cold Seattle, and find people more committed to the environment than we are. Are the waves from the melting arctic ice floes going to hit them sooner than they hit us? 

Claire Risley 

• 

TIMELY LETTERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

AC Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit is a poorly designed and expensive transit system that would not serve the needs of neighbors, students, or businesses in Berkeley—and studies show that its huge, diesel-powered buses would not help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If you are for protecting the environment, you should be against this BRT plan. If you are for protecting the quality of life in Berkeley’s neighborhoods, you should be against this BRT plan. If you are for protecting small and large businesses in Berkeley, you should be against this BRT plan. A large and growing coalition of merchants and residents, called Berkeleyans for Better Transportation Options, recommends that other transportation measures be tried first that are a better fit for our city. 

Here are two things you need to do this week: First, call or e-mail your councilmember and tell him or her that you are in favor of a Rapid Bus Plus system, that would give us almost all of the gains of BRT without the intrusive and costly detriments of traffic lane removal. Second, sign the petition being circulated that calls for a citizen vote before any traffic lanes are given away to a transit company for their exclusive use. We should not give away part of the commons without democratic participation. 

Make your voice heard! The time is now, and I assure you, they are listening. Members of the elite consensus trying to force this system on Berkeley will be persuaded if we make them realize that they will lose their jobs if they fail to heed the community’s wishes. 

Don’t be shy. Speak up! 

Doug Buckwald 

• 

BANNING THE  

BRT BUSWAYS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After spending a few days riding great public transit in Seattle, it was quite a comedown to return to backward Berkeley and read about the opposition to dedicated lanes for the BRT. 

In Seattle, there are several streets which are bus-only during peak hours. Express buses travel in a bus-only tunnel under the city. Many of the buses are electric or hybrid. 

Berkeley once paid extra taxes to build BART underground. Could we dig a tunnel under Telegraph for the BRT—if we really can’t bear to have a dedicated bus lane? Could we have a dedicated lane for the BRT only during certain hours? Or are we going to do nothing effective to control our traffic congestion? Are we going to keep on engineering to maximize the flow of cars, instead of the flow of people? 

In January, service started on the Seattle Streetcar, running from downtown to south Lake Union, using an overhead electric wire. I wish we had a streetcar running from Shattuck and Center up to Telegraph. The Seattle Streetcar doesn’t have a dedicated lane—the tracks are embedded in the street. The stops aren’t stations; they’re similar to bus stops. One of the cars is bright red, like those of the San Diego trolley; the other is purple. There are doors on both sides. The streetcar is a joy to ride. 

What’s really awesome is that the hi-tech businesses around South Lake Union not only lobbied for the streetcar, but provided most of the funding. 

Berkeley, the former streetcar suburb, continues its single-minded dedication to the private car. 

Steve Geller 

• 

AN EXCUSE TO CUT  

BUS SERVICE? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I think Alan Tobey is being disingenuous in his April 8 commentary, “It’s Only Halftime for BRT Decision.” I’d bet he is aware that AC Transit is busy lining up the federal money for BRT now. Waiting for the environmental impact report to be completed would mean waiting until it’s too late to stop this ill-conceived scheme. 

The 1R articulated VanHool buses, with the same infrequent stops that BRT would have, are very poorly utilized in Berkeley, while the local buses are still heavily used (they are relatively comfortable and they stop near people’s homes). 

I have just learned that AC Transit’s current plan is to “combine” BRT with the local line 1, in other words, to eliminate the local buses on Telegraph Avenue. 

If true, AC Transit would be shafting its loyal riders for the benefit of imaginary future commuters from San Leandro who happen to prefer a wild ride on a lurching diesel behemoth—rather than a smooth, fast train ride on BART. 

Gale Garcia 

• 

HANCOCK FINANCES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was not surprised to read in the April 8 Daily Planet that Loni Hancock has been charged with a misuse of campaign funds. 

Loni seems to have moved away from the neighborhood-based politics that launched her political career and into the realm of corporate politics. I was surprised to see that she has raised thousands of dollars for her state Senate race against Wilma Chan from big corporations like Bayer, Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb, Abbot Laboratories, Chevron, AT&T, Owens Illinois General, PG&E, Pacific Racing, Golden Gate Fields, the Pt. Molate Casino interests, and the Union Pacific and Santa Fe railroads. 

She has also accepted many thousands of dollars from local real estate developers like Wareham Development, EMG Properties, Madison Marquette Property Development, Seagate Properties, Laurie Capitelli, John Gordon, Felicia Woytak and Sohel Mondarressi. Plus large sums from a variety of construction industry unions including the State Building and Construction Trades Council, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors Association. 

It seems to me that with this list of major contributors, the concerns and interests of Berkeley neighborhoods will not be uppermost in her mind.  

And I can’t think of a single piece of legislation she got passed during her six years in the Assembly that would justify her elevation to the state Senate. 

Art Goldberg 

• 

MISOGYNIST CARTOONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Although we are Obama supporters, we have not been amused by the recent spate of political cartoons in your newspaper. They are neither clever nor particularly well-drawn and certainly not up to the usual quality of Mr. DeFreitas’ work. These cartoons seem quite misogynistic and when satire sinks to cruelty it is neither funny nor enlightening. 

Charles and Ellen Robinson 

• 

UC STORAGE ANTENNAS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A week ago, I had surgery to remove a tumor from my brain. From my living room window I can see the top of UC Storage where the proposed antennas are supposed to go. I do not think that the radiation from these towers will be good for my health. I oppose them with all the vigor I can manage. 

Arthur Carson  

• 

BEATING McCAIN? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Either Obama or Clinton should easily win in a huge landslide over McCain in November. Except that he is a Republican war candidate. GOP war candidates win. Consider General Grant: a drunk and a political incompetent. He won two terms. His Civil War record was only part of his success. His campaigners were the original “red baiters.” At promo stops they would hold up a bloody shirt from the war and say, “See these holes, they were put there by a Democrat.” 

In 1840, before the GOP even existed, their predecessor party, the Whigs, used a military hero to upset the favored Democrats (popular for inaugurating public schools and help for small business). The Whigs propagandized for “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too,” a reference to Indian fighter William Harrison and running mate John Tyler. 

At the turn of the 20th Century the Robber Barons were hated by a wide majority of the American people. But the darling of the plutocrats William McKinley won in 1900 because he was the war president who led the 1898 capture of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. 

In 1948 the GOP expected to win with governor Thomas Dewey, but the electorate rejected him. So, in 1952 the Republicans ran “the general,” Dwight Eisenhower, who had his two terms. 

After Bush stole the 2000 election he became a war president, and although he probably stole 2004, too, he wouldn’t have been close if not for the Iraq war. 

Now we get McCain: He has one war in process, and before November, Bush will probably add for him a hot new war, ensuring that the public will vote for the GOP, even if all the airlines are out of business, hospitals and schools are closing in droves, bridges are falling down, milk and gas are selling for $10 a gallon and millions are living on the street. Then again, if the price of Viagra goes to $100 a pill the war candidate just might lose enough of his base for a Democrat to squeak through. 

Ted Vincent 

• 

CAL DAY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If there’s a single event in Berkeley reflecting the exuberant, joie de vivre spirit of its citizens, that event has to be the annual Cal Day celebration, which was held on the UC campus this past weekend. Thousands of people throughout the Bay Area descended on Telegraph Avenue to soak in the glorious sunshine and to enjoy the mind-boggling number of free musical performances, research discoveries, dramatic presentations, African Drumming, and, of course, the adrenaline charged Cal Band, to name only a few of the widely varying activities. 

Before entering Sather Gate for the official program, people were entertained by a familiar group, the 1929 Depression Band, playing their toe-tapping Dixieland favorites in front of the Student Union. I could have happily spent the whole afternoon there, but, no—there was too much to see and do after entering Sather Gate. 

So, the big question: just where to begin? Picking up a thick Cal Day program, I immediately suffered an anxiety attack trying to decide which event to take in first. Joining the huge crowd of spectators, babies in strollers, and skate boarders, I head for Dwinelle Hall for a lecture on “Film Making in Berkeley.” After that came a performance by the University Symphony in Hertz Hall. Next, rushing over to the Art Museum, I had a guided tour of their current exhibit: “Enrique Chgoya: Borderlandia,” a show not to be missed. 

Aware that I was attending purely arts and entertainment exhibits, nothing cerebral, I decided I would take in shows that would exercise my mind even though some were clearly above my limited intellectual level. Since Science and Natural History have never been high on my list of interests, I popped over to the Valley Life Science Building for a staggering array of exhibits—one, an awesome display of Fossils, clearly a favorite of small children. Next I ventured into a seminar on Vertebrate Zoology, followed by a demonstration of Molecular & Cell Biology (all in the Life Sciences Building). 

I’m afraid my eyes glazed over at some of the above activities, so I then settled on a discussion of the 2008 presidential election offered by the Political Science Department in Stanley Hall. 

My energy having dropped to a low level by this time, I concluded my Cal Day adventure by sitting on a bench outside Sproul Hall, sipping a cool drink and watching the unending procession of people headed for Sather Gate. I was heartened by the great number of parents bringing their children to this challenging program of educational exhibits, hands-on work shops and nature shows. What better way, I thought, to celebrate all that this world premier university gives to our community. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

SUMMER OLYMPICS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I suggest that the United States boycott the Summer 2008 Olympics to let the whole world know that it is occupying Iraq for five years and also supporting Israel that has been occupying Palestine for 60 years. Only then the world would know how evil occupation is.  

Mina Davenport 

• 

ISRAEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Anne White writes that Gaza is under siege by Israel, but does not want to admit that the Israeli cities, Sderot and Ashkelon, and all Israeli villages within their range are under siege by Gaza’s duly elected government, Hamas. In fact, it is only because of the Gazan siege of Israel, that Israel has felt the need to take counter measures. White feels that Israel is “collectively punishing” Gazans when it does not deliver food or health services to them. Israel actually delivers both in abundance, though Lord knows why. Israel is under no more obligation to trade with a neighboring country, Gaza, with which it is at war, than the United States had responsibility for the humanitarian needs of the Germans during World War II. The moral is, as it should be, that if you willfully wage war on your neighbor, you shall suffer the inevitable consequences. If Gazans want to trade with Israel, and receive the benefits of Israeli fuel, medicine, food, and water, it might behoove them to stop “collectively punishing” Israelis with incessant rocket and terror attacks. Most recently, Gazans killed the drivers of two Israeli fuel trucks that were merely trying to deliver fuel to them. What were they thinking? Only the rabid bite the hand that feeds them. Gaza has two borders, one with Israel and the other with Egypt. However, White neglects to mention the Egyptian “collective punishment” of Gaza. That border, though recently breached for a few days, is now once again hermetically sealed, with no fuel, food, or medicine going through it. Apparently, Egyptians feel no need to offer Gazans much of anything, and White feels no need to protest. No propaganda points there for White. The commodities that flow freely through the Egypt-Gaza border are arms and explosives, which traverse beneath that border in Hamas’ extensive system of smuggling tunnels. White no doubt rejoices at that free trade. 

John Gertz 

• 

THE STATIST MIND 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The recent rant of Mr. Smith from Jersey is a good illustration of the statist mind (?) at work. Eighteen-year-olds can go to war and can vote but they shouldn’t be allowed to drink or purchase firearms ? By what crazy paternalistic nonlogic? I’ve researched the laws in the major urban areas where most of the crime occurs and of course it is not as easy to acquire a gun as the Smith ilk would have us believe. Furthermore guns are most often used to prevent crime which includes killing. John R. Lott’s book More Guns, Less Crime documents this in copious detail. 

As for hunting, the alternative is large scale animal starvation and animal predation against each other. That is usually a far more horrible, drawn out death than that which occurs by hunters. This is a hard fact for the animal “rights” crowd to swallow but it’s true. Raw nature is not a wonderful place. 

Speaking of less than wonderful places, Mr. Smith’s New Jersey is so hated by its own residents that 49 percent would like to move out according to a recent Harper’s Index. Another statist high-tax hellhole. 

Michael P. Hardesty 

Oakland 

• 

OAKLAND CULTURE WARS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to a recent Undercurrents column by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor: 

Firstly, the concept that the laws of a city should be ignored simply because these laws either do not exist or were not enforced in the country from which one comes, is absurd! Whether this is given the okay by the current mayor or chief of police is immaterial. If those in this “culture” wish the laws changed, then go through the proper procedures to get the laws altered for everyone in the city, not just those in some special culture. 

One of the byproducts of the hip-hop culture is the contagious concept that no one should “snitch” to the police. Do you support that concept as well? 

The laws of the City of Oakland should be applied equally to all. You are apparently implying that each cultural area within the city should have its own independent set of laws. I consider this inherently ridiculous! 

Oakland police officers have long been trained in the various cultures (which I support). However, requesting that any officers working in one specific cultural area must speak another language not realistic. This would result in a separate little police department and definitely would not contribute to the assimilation of this culture into the overall American culture. English is the spoken language in the United States, like it or not. 

Lastly, regardless of the language, shaking a knife of any kind in the face of any police officer in any country will no doubt bring negative results to the knife bearer. 

Dave Hunter 

Sergeant of Police (retired)  

Oakland 

• 

IT’S NOT ABOUT RESPECT,  

IT’S ABOUT CULTURE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your columnist J. Douglas Allen-Taylor justifies thug disrespect by trying to frame it as a “culture war.” Since he caricatured my campaign for City Council, let me correct his misrepresentations when he writes: 

“In a recent League of Women Voters forum with candidates for Oakland City Council’s at-large seat, for example, candidate Charles Pine—who is campaigning on a law-and-order platform—talked of how crime and violence are ruining Oakland, mentioning the problems of ‘sideshow culture’ and ‘boom boxes’ in the same breath. Boom boxes?” (April 11) 

First of all, I am not a law-and-order ideologue. I do call for increasing Oakland’s police force, currently half the size of most major cities, to a modest 1,100. This is not a program of “law and order” at all times and in all places. Would Mr. Allen-Taylor tell Atlanta, Boston, St. Louis and all those other cities to cut their police forces in half? Then their residents could live and die as we do in Oakland. All we want in Oakland is the relative peace of an average American city. 

Second, I referred not to boom boxes but to boom cars, vehicles equipped with speakers that blast hundreds of watts of pounding bass. “Boom car” is a street term; perhaps Mr. Allen-Taylor would like to get out of his office more often. 

Like thousands of Oakland residents, I need relief. One supporter of my candidacy, Louis Hagler, M.D., has published in medical journals on the health problems that noise pollution exacerbates, from stress to heart attacks. (See www.orpn.org for his reports.) For my part, I want to sit in my living room without boom car after boom car causing stomach pain and making it impossible to enjoy an hour of peace. These vehicles, besides violating California law, are an instrument of the culture of disrespect, which is very different from a “culture war.” 

Basically, Mr. Allen-Taylor fails to realize that no cultural tradition makes it OK to punch other people, whether with fist or sonic sledgehammer. 

Charles Pine 

Oakland 

• 

WEDGE ISSUE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is no fan of the latest anti-gay initiative; the real fans and promoters of this measure are Republicans and social conservatives ("Governor to oppose amendment to ban same-sex marriage,” April 12). 

The Republican National Committee is pumping money into California, backing a voter initiative confronting same-sex marriage, figuring this hot-button issue will stoke the fires of unrest in the GOP base and entice moderates and independents to go to the polls, and while they’re at it they’ll vote for John McCain. 

The ballot measure is another wedge issue being used by the election savvy GOP to short-change and confuse Californians and promote their presidential candidate. 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley 

The Berkeley Daily Planet accepts letters to the editor and commentary page submissions at opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com and at 3023A Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705. Letters should be no more than 400 words in length; commentaries should be no more than 1,000 words in length. Deadline for Tuesday edition is 5 p.m. Sunday; deadline for Friday edition is 5 p.m. Wednesday. Please include name, address and phone number for contact purposes. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

The recent disclosure of a memo by Boalt Law School faculty member John Yoo has given that school and the University of California itself a long overdue public relations nightmare. “Overdue” because quite enough was known about Yoo’s role in justifying the Bush regime’s claims to the dictatorial powers it has taken that a small group of concerned citizens held a weekly vigil outside his class several years ago. That vigil was almost entirely ignored by faculty and students too hurried or plugged in to their iPods to pause or take a leaflet let alone join. When Fernando Botero’s horrific paintings of torture came to Doe Library, few faculty members on panels organized to discuss them mentioned that the man largely responsible for the atrocities Botero depicted is a campus colleague. But when the New York Times published an editorial (reprinted in the International Herald Tribune on April 5) with the clause “Yoo, who inexplicably teaches law at the University of California,” mud finally stuck to Alma Mater’s teflon robes, and the administration had to act.  

Boalt Dean Christopher Edley, Jr. wrote a position paper posted prominently on the University’s home page that I consider a masterpiece of judicious temporizing, concluding that “Absent [commission of a criminal act which has led to conviction in a court of law and which clearly demonstrates unfitness to continue as a member of the faculty] no university worthy of distinction should even contemplate dismissing a faculty member. That standard has not been met.”  

I am no expert on the Nuremberg Tribunals and the international criminal laws formulated to ensure that atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis and Japanese would never happen again, but surely there must be someone on the besmirched Boalt Hall faculty or one of its sister institutions who could pass such judgment. That Professor Yoo has not yet been convicted of criminal acts is no reason to remain silent on the possibility of his having done so. Academic freedom cuts both ways: faculty bloggers may debate among themselves what should be done about their infamous colleague, but they have been impressively discrete about publicly criticizing him until the latest memo and a clause in the New York Times forced the point.  

That succinct clause bears more consideration than Dean Edley’s voluminous rationale for letting sleeping dogs lie: why is a person whose legal opinions have subverted the U.S. Constitution teaching constitutional law at the University of California? Do his colleagues share culpability? In her April 11 editorial, Becky O’Malley asks the kind of question that Edley and other faculty need to answer: “who saddled their institution with this infamous character in the first place?” Furthermore, how did he get tenure? Is a university with such a professor “worthy of distinction?” 

I understand the reluctance of faculty to wake the mastiff of the California Loyalty Oath once used by reactionaries to maul liberals, but John Yoo presumably signed it to obtain his job. The signers of that oath vow to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Such enemies include those in the executive branch, including themselves. To recommend or teach the Constitution’s subversion in the name of a “unitary executive” violates that oath. 

Gray Brechin received his bachelor’s, master’s degree and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and is a visiting scholar in the Geography Department.

The small number of Bus Rapid Transit supporters (one third or less of those who spoke) who showed up at the Planning Commission public hearing on BRT on April 9 spent much of their time urging the commission to endorse a “preferred alternative” route for BRT so AC Transit can move ahead with finalizing the environmental impact report on the project. 

AC Transit has indeed proposed several actual “alternatives” for BRT routing in the Southside, north of Dwight Way, and in the downtown. It is important for the city to scrutinize those options and, at least, determine which ones are less workable and should definitely be taken off the table as discussion continues. 

However, the larger issue that went completely unaddressed at the meeting is the fact that AC Transit has proposed no “alternatives” for the longest stretch of the proposed BRT route through Berkeley, Telegraph Avenue south of Dwight. 

From Dwight Way into Oakland, all of the BRT “alternatives” assume that Telegraph Avenue should become a two-lane street, with the center of the roadway given over to buses only.  

(A further assumption is that all un-signalized cross streets along Telegraph—including several in Berkeley—should either get full signals, or be closed to cross traffic and left-turns.) 

In essence, planning commissioners should understand that selecting any of the north of Dwight alignments for further study also entails selecting as the city’s “preferred alternative” narrowing Telegraph to two lanes and disruptively packing every intersection with either unneeded new signals, or traffic barriers. 

BRT-as-is supporters and AC Transit will seize on the city action as a de facto endorsement of bus-only lanes along Telegraph, whether the Berkeley policy makers intend that or not. 

If city councilmembers and planning commissioners want to retain the flexibility of saying no to the presumption of bus-only lanes on Telegraph—as two thirds of the speakers at the public hearing urged them to do—they need to make it clear to AC Transit that the selection of a preferred alternative route for BRT north of Dwight is explicitly not a blanket endorsement of narrowing Telegraph south of Dwight. 

There’s another issue worth considering in the BRT debate; the lesson of BART planning from the 1960s.  

In the early 1960s BART presented East Bay communities with its construction plan. In Berkeley, there would be a BART line along the present day route, three stations—two of them “elevated”—and a stingy three-quarters-of-a-mile of subway beneath downtown Berkeley. 

Elsewhere, both in north Berkeley and along south Shattuck, the BART tracks would be obtrusively “elevated” as they are indeed today in Albany, El Cerrito, and most of Oakland. 

Berkeley officials and citizens welcomed the concept of BART, but objected to the elevated subways and huge above-ground stations, quite correctly worrying they would be a detriment to the town, particularly the adjacent neighborhoods and businesses. 

But according to Berkeley’s mayor at the time, “it was not clear whether BART’s organization was adequate for its assignment…by the spring of 1964 it had become evident that BART held the single-minded attitude of the construction engineer with a job to do. Individuals and cities affected…appealed to BART to modify its plans or consider a new idea. Almost invariably the BART staff response was polite but negative, followed by a corresponding decision of the board of directors.” 

Berkeley’s leaders persisted, and after prolonged negotiation and struggle—and one successful citizen lawsuit—they were able to achieve the current BART arrangement, with the tracks underground from one end of the town to the other.  

Berkeley's underground subway, with costs scrutinized every step of the way by Berkeley officials, even proved much less expensive to construct than BART had projected, while in other communities that had accepted BART promises and plans without question, facilities went way over budget. 

Berkeley’s insistence on a better plan for BART meant that places like Ohlone Park, the Karl Linn Garden, and the North Berkeley Senior Center—where, ironically, last week’s BRT hearing was held—could be created in the long term. 

No Berkeley residential neighborhoods and business blocks were blighted by the rumble and screech of BART trains passing by overhead.  

In sum, the transportation objectives of BART were achieved and the system works well in and through Berkeley. But, thanks to Berkeley, and no thanks to the intransigent and hidebound transit agency, the design of the transit infrastructure through town was modified and gave Berkeley a better result. 

Forty years later that is, in essence, what BRT critics envision. 

A more sensible, vastly less expensive, and less disruptive public transportation system that meets community goals without making the community a less livable place. 

It remains to be seen whether a habitually inflexible regional transit agency—this time AC Transit—will continue to block the way to a better solution and whether, in response, Berkeley officials have the fortitude of their 1960s predecessors to act to improve transit while also protecting our community’s streets, neighborhoods, and businesses. 

Steven Finacom is a Berkeley resident. 

No matter how you look at it, Barak Obama’s March 18 speech on race was a Category 5 news event; it did for political reporting what Katrina did for disaster reporting. It lacked the ugly pictures but it generated a comparable multitude of comments buoyed by passion and collectively covering every conceivable aspect, from the super-sublime to the hyper-ridiculous. On the left it was rated breathtaking, historic, momentous, from the center it was deemed provocative, memorable, moving and conservatives tagged it hypocritical, duplicitous, deceptive. Titled “A More Perfect Union,” the speech arrived in the aftermath of a hurricane of publicity about the passionate preachments of a man of God, Obama’s pastor, but the devastation that came later was entirely an act of man, as was Katrina’s.  

I read the text the day after Obama delivered it. I have since read or viewed several dozen reports and commentaries in print and on TV but to my surprise none noticed the simple fact that Obama himself was not the subject of his speech and he was not talking directly about race. (Disclosure: As best I can tell I am one-sixteenth African which does not make me an Obama fan perhaps because up to now I have managed to ignore everything in this obscenely elongated presidential campaign.) 

Reading the speech left me impressed. A few days later a friend forwarded the YouTube video of the speech and I was startled and excited seeing and listening to Obama’s mastery of rhetoric and oratory. Since then, provoked by afore mentioned Katrina-like coverage, I’ve examined what he said more closely. 

The manner of his opening words suggested to me that, although he was dead serious, he would rather not have been obliged to speak on the subject of race. I think that’s why he started by restating his reason for entering the campaign which was “…to continue the long march [toward] a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous nation.” Then, acknowledging the extraordinary intelligence and the astounding ignorance of Americans, he proceeded to cite the need for unity and justice using the best available evidence, himself. Thus, he saw in himself the personification of America’s yearning to be united, just, equal, free and prosperous. 

That he was not talking about race was implied by a self-revelatory statement that came a little later: “I have brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, uncles and cousins of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents…” In other words, he is less a black American than a representative American. “…and for as long as I live I will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible.” In other words, his story is America’s story. 

It took a little over 37 minutes, applauses included, for Barak Obama to scan centuries of North American history, highlight certain socio-economic hurts and make his points. To extract deeper meaning from oratorical flourishes, one must disregard the worn out language of journalists and pundits: It’s time to close the racial divide, time for a national conversation on race, etc. Instead, review the historical context of Obama’s subject and place his points in perspective. 

Imagine a tapestry representing three millennia of western history in which is interwoven throughout a thread showing a few haves exploiting masses of have-nots: slaves preparing dinner parties so their Greek masters could engage in all-night philosophical disputations (symposia), Greeks in turn being enslaved by Romans, indigenous American tribes enslaving individuals from other indigenous tribes, Africans bartering for Africans to be shipped across the Atlantic where they are unloaded and sold as chattel to European colonizers.  

From this perspective, the American portion of the larger historical tapestry shows its original sin, legalized injustice and the unfulfilled promise of equality. Briefly stated, an America in which one class has more (today by a factor greater than ten) is neither just nor united. 

From the perspective of his African-American persona Obama observed in detail how “…black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations”. He then stepped into the persona of his white heritage and acknowledged that black anger was met by well-founded white resentment. Oscillating between the black and the white perspectives he moved to a position above the racially dividing crevasse. 

We can accept the political landscape: let racism distract us and halt our advance toward a more perfect and more just union. Or we can with an all-out effort move to provide for our common needs; this time, we need a united effort.  

We can accept current economic policy that “…favors the few over the many…” Or we can work together to create government policies freed from corporate control and unshackled by lobbyists and special interests. 

In the end Obama’s speech may or may not help him achieve his goal; it has, nevertheless, helped reshape the political landscape; it replaces the old story with a new one, his. 

Marvin Chachere is a San Pablo resident. 

NEWS BLACKOUT IN GAZA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There’s a news blackout about the siege of Gaza in the United States. I am writing you to request a more critical, in-depth coverage of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. 

Since 2006, Israel has controlled the flow of goods, food and fuel, access to health care, and freedom of movement of all 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In the past four months, Israel has intensified this siege by reducing imports of food and medicine to a trickle. Despite the lack of clean water for the people of Gaza to drink, Israel bars the delivery of water filters. 

Half of the people of Gaza are children under the age of 18. Growing up in this environment, they must be “shocked by the miserable things” they see, as UN humanitarian affairs official John Holmes said he was. Holmes also blamed the siege for the collapse of Gaza’s economy, which has left 80 percent of the population dependent on international food aid. 

Since 2000, over 2,680 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli violence. While Palestinian militants have been illegally firing rockets into southern Israel, killing 11 people since 2000, collective punishment of the Palestinians by Israel will neither bring about an end to the rockets, improve the security of ordinary Israelis, nor open the path to a viable and just peace. Water filters, food, medicine, and clean drinking water in the hands of Gazans are not security threats. 

The United States, which provides Israel with the economic, military and diplomatic support that makes Israel’s history of violating the human rights of Gazans possible, has a moral responsibility to use its influence to stop Israel’s siege of the Gazan people. Instead, it is currently pursuing a policy of fomenting civil war in Gaza, as recently revealed by a groundbreaking report in Vanity Fair. 

Anne White 

Alameda 

• 

SIMPLISTIC THINKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Jim Harris’ op-ed piece (Planet, 4/4/08) equates the war and U.S. occupation of Iraq with the Israeli occupation of the west bank, and calls on Barbara Boxer to condition aid to Israel on its immediate withdrawal. While I’m sure he has his followers, this kind of simplistic thinking in support of a political agenda can get us into trouble (as if we need more). Anyone possessed of reasonable analytical ability and a rudimentary knowledge of history can see the situations are not remotely comparable, as Ms. Boxer well knows. For Harris, history conveniently begins forty years ago; had he chosen to go back a little farther he would have understood that from its inception Israel has been engaged in a war for survival among hostile governments that have included at one time or another Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria and Iran. Israel occupies the west bank as a result of its victory in the six-day war, a war it did not seek, at the end of which it also found itself in possession of the Sinai peninsula. Perhaps Harris’ selective view of history does not permit him to recall that Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for a peace treaty that has more or less held up. Unfortunately, other governments in the region continue to maintain the objective, by whatever means necessary, of the complete destruction of Israel. Or, as it is called by the current gang that passes for a government in the west bank, “the struggle.” 

Evelyn Giardina 

Walnut Creek 

• 

FRAUDULENT TITLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Pardon me all to hell. I was naively of the opinion that the title of a piece should bear a relationship to its substance. Instead, we readers were confronted with a bait-and-switch. Regardless of whether we saw Mr. Sapir’s original title, or the truncated DP title, we could correctly call the title a fraud.  

I have the quaint notion that if we waited for the troops to rebel before the war can be ended, we will be waiting till judgment day, will have gone to heaven, and St. Peter’ll be the straw boss then (to borrow a phrase or two from “Talking Union”). Instead, some of us (including the Progressive Caucus of the CDP) have been striving to use political pressure to end the war—and we seem to have convinced several candidates to take that position. If Sapir wants to propose programs to KPFA, let him do so without involving the rest of us in his attempt. I have no dog in that fight. But I for one am tired of Sapir’s faction in KPFA taking its fight public—and seeking to use adherence to it to be the test of political orthodoxy. Give it a rest, please. 

For the record, my name is spelled as below, and I am only the co-chair of the Progressive Caucus. The caucus is a home for many progressives inside the California Democratic Party; it is not an attempt to appropriate to ourselves the exclusive use of the term “progressive.” Organized in 2005, we have put into the platform of the CDP single payer health insurance, out of Iraq, public financing of elections, and other progressive measures. We are proud of our accomplishments in a few short years, but realize we have a long way to go. If the DP were less fixated on Berkeley land use, KPFA and Bates-bashing, it might have noticed the caucus. 

Mal Burnstein 

• 

BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Looking at the packet for this week’s joint Planning-Transportation Commission meeting about Bus Rapid Transit, I see eight letters from the public supporting BRT and a grand total of three letters opposing BRT. 

A few opponents have claimed that there is widespread opposition to BRT in Berkeley. The tiny number of opposing letters in the packet of this major commission workshop shows that the opposition is just inches deep. 

There are a few people who are fiercely opposed to BRT, but the great majority of the criticism that we hear is just the usual negativism and kvetching that is the inevitable response to any proposed change in Berkeley, however small or however beneficial the change may be. 

Charles Siegel 

• 

RAPID BUS PLUS 

Editors, Daily Planet: Berkeley’s April 9 Planning and Transportation Commission hearing seemed like a turning point in discussion of AC Transit’s misnamed Bus “Rapid” Transit (BRT) proposal. 

Speakers opposed bus-only lanes by about a 2:1 ratio. And several BRT opponents spoke on behalf of whole neighborhood associations or merchants’ groups. 

Some 20 BRT opponents signed a letter offering two pages of alternatives to AC Transit’s plan. 

Apparently, opponents were heard. AC Transit’s Jim Cunradi said the agency would be willing to study a “Rapid Bus Plus” package like the one presented in that letter. 

Perhaps this bus has turned a corner. We may no longer be reacting to a plan solely of, by, and for AC Transit. We may instead have an chance to shape a broader transit plan that will really serve Berkeley’s goals over the next generation. 

Michael Katz 

• 

RELIGIOUS SECT? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

None dare call it what it is! Texas state troopers have rescued 400 children, mostly girls, from the compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. Where are all the boys and what is so saintly about this religious sect?  

Why is this End Times sect popping out so many children when they believe an Apocalypse is right around the corner? Could it be this was more of a ranch of prostitution to satisfy the pent-up sexual desires of male egos? 

And what really boggles the mind is why Republicans, including John McCain, continue to pay homage and pander to fundamentalists who have infiltrated, hijacked and found a comfortable home in the GOP? 

Rob Lowe 

Grass Valley 

• 

FOLLOWING HESTON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What did Charleton Heston always say? “From my cold, dead hands...!” Well, it’s time. Time to enact some real gun control so an 18-year-old can’t buy a gun from K-Mart like bubble-gum, with no background check, fingerprinting or anything. Guns are for only two things, killing and practising killing, so convenience must step way back for safety. To idiots parroting “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” I say: No, stupid, the police will too, whom you support, and who always advise against taking the law into your own hands! And to sicko hunters I say: Where’s the thrill in shooting an unarmed animal? Be men: hunt each other! 

J. Andrew Smith 

Bloomfield, NJ 

• 

POSTER CHILD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Many people want to demonstrate against China at the Olympic Torch run in SF because of its policies re: Tibet and Darfur. But who are we to protest? Here are some posters I would love to see at the demonstrations: 

“China! Stage your own ‘free’ controlled elections on Tibet with proven voting machines of Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia and Hart. Remember, bad exit polls only prove election fraud in OTHER countries.” 

“China! Create your own 9/11 psy-ops event as we did to then ‘bring democracy’ to any oil country you choose!” 

“China! Trouble controlling your people? Create your own 9/11 event as we did! Then you can start your own phony ‘war on terror’ and use it to suppress dissent!” 

“China! Problems with Tibet? Have you tried the humane American approach of waterboarding and renditions!” 

“Free Tibet! Free Darfur! Free U.S. from lying election thieves! Free Guantanamo! Free our good young boys from learning how to torture. Free our press!” 

“FREE America! Impeach Bush and Cheney!” 

Richard Tamm 

• 

FREE TIBET, FREE CHINA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I stood on the Embarcadero for four hours, immersed in a crowd of Chinese Americans waiving flags of China as we waited for the Olympic torch. My “Free and Independent Tibet” sign jostled with their flags as we tried to position ourselves for maximum media exposure when the torch would pass us by. 

After half an hour of this low-grade competition, we started to talk, and more importantly, to listen to each other. I learned they felt “Tibetan independence” was an insult to China’s national pride. Several people told me stories they believed about Tibetan slavery, ignorance and poverty. I told them the stories I’ve heard from my Tibetan friends, stories of Chinese oppression, repression, and brutality. We agreed that most news outlets were untrustworthy. 

We didn’t change each other’s minds, but we did hear each other, respect each other, and we did deeply appreciate this country, in which people with opposing politics can stand peacefully alongside one another. 

Was I disappointed that the torch was rerouted? Not really. It was four hours well spent. The way I see it, the torch ran away from the people who were all gathered at the appointed place. The Chinese government wants everyone to follow the Olympics, but today, the Olympics evaded the people. 

Bruce Joffe 

Piedmont 

• 

OLYMPIC IDEAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We are inspired by the tremendous international dialogue taking place regarding the spread of democracy, protection of human rights and the Olympic Ideal as the theme of the 2008 Olympics: 

“Reaffirming that the Olympic ideal promotes international understanding, particularly among the youth of the world, through sport and culture in order to advance the harmonious development of humankind ... Noting with satisfaction the increasing number of joint endeavors of the International Olympic Committee and the United Nations system, for example in the fields of development, humanitarian assistance, protection of the environment, health promotion and education, in which the United Nations Development Programme, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization have participated ... —Building a peaceful and better world through sport and the Olympic ideal.” United Nations General Assembly, 25 November 1997: 52/21. 

As the host country, China, in recognition of the Dalai Lama being honored with the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal (The White House, Oct. 17, 2007), is enhancing global education initiatives about the plight of Tibet and this global leader who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1989. 

Stephen Michael Apatow 

• 

SUSPICIOUS LOOKS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If Senator Obama were to visit North Berkeley unannounced, sans retinue and in street clothes, I’m sure he would enjoy the same suspicious, scrutinizing glowers that I have since purchasing property here a few years back. 

Zac Morrison 

• 

XXXXXXXXXX 

• 

SKATE PARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

So, the five-year-old city skateboard park “that was to cost $200,000 and ended up costing four times that amount is splitting at the seams.” (Judith Scherr, Berkeley Daily Planet, April 8–10) 

Reportedly, cracking was noticed at least two years ago. That suggests that the skateboard park was showing problems a mere three years after being constructed. 

Now, in addition to the original cost of $800,000, plus on-going weekly repairs, and a scheduled $40,000 “facelift” planned for the end of the month, Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna contends that “It is not out of line to ask voters to rebuild the park” ... to the tune of another $2.2 million via a bond issue on the November ballot. 

Ms. Caronna justifies this expense as, “This is our reality. It meets the needs of small and big kids and adults. We can’t walk away from something so popular.” And she disingenuously asks, “If there were errors, should the city not be able to have a skate park?” 

Just a moment! Whether or not a skateboard park is popular, Berkeley taxpayers are in NO way responsible for the faulty design, materials and/or construction that appear to be causing the cracking. Ms. Caronna and the city need to drop any idea of socking it to Berkeley taxpayers and hold accountable the original engineers and contractors. It is their responsibility—not the taxpayers—to make the necessary repairs or re-construct to acceptable standards. 

Rather than inappropriately using her current office to lobby for taxpayer money to fix this fiasco, Ms. Caronna might accept responsibility for her own part in it. After all, as reported in that same article, she was head of the parks department when the project was built. 

Barbara Witte 

• 

NORTH SHATTUCK PLAZA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Is anyone besides me upset about the proposed North Shattuck Plaza Plan as describd recently in The Planet? 

Less parking, which would hurt businesses like Black Oak Books. A lovely place for people to sit, like anybody has time or inclincation besides the old timers now content to sit before the French Laundry.  

The planners want to goad us to walking. Have they seen some of us using canes these days? I’m counting the days until I get mine. 

Block off parts of Vine? Ugh. 

It’s a beautiful architect’s dream, just like some of Adolf Speer’s and Adolf Hitler’s for a coming paradise that somehow didn’t come off. 

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This is one of the few areas of Berkeley now working. 

Avis Worthington  

• 

PAYPAL BOTS? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am wondering whether PayPal is managed by humans or whether the robots have taken over. I am being held hostage from using PayPal’s much vaunted online payment system which is preventing me to pay for pre-booked holiday accommodation in Europe. I am compelled to use PayPal because it is the only system of payment used by the accommodation agency. PayPal’s payment website every time pops up an an error message that claims that my password or email address is incorrect.  

I am totally unable to get any human to respond to my request that I be contacted to sort out the problem. My guess is that there are many equally frustrated persons among your readers because of PayPals automated responses, promising that someone will respond, but no one ever does. How can an organization like PayPal that has a major impact on people’s ability to do online transactions refuse to communicate in person with the public. If there is a human among the robots at PayPal, please, please please contact me! 

Rembrandt Klopper 

Gillitts, South Africa 

• 

ZAPATISTA WOMEN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

People from Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Rosa and Chico, California attended the Comandanta Ramona Gathering of Zapatista Women with the Women of the World in the Lacandón Jungle of Chiapas, Mexico during the last week of December 2007. A report on this amazing experience will be presented to residents of the Strawberry Creek Lodge on April 17, 2008 at 7:30 p.m.  

Some 3,000 people from around the world attended this gathering dedicated exclusively to the Zapatista women and their experience and struggle for equality within their own revolutionary organization, the Zapatista National Liberation Army. They discussed their history as serfs on plantations and their coming to voice in women’s collectives after the 1994 Zapatista Uprising. They also explained their roles in the civilian self-governing (autonomous) structures.  

The Zapatistas rose up in arms on January 1, 1994, the day that NAFTA went into effect, and declared a truce 13 days later. That truce has held for 14 years as the movement declared itself nonviolent, while maintaining its weapons only for self defense. Since the 1994 Uprising, the Zapatistas became known all over the world for their analysis of neoliberalism (corporate globalization) and for their construction of a civilan alternative to big government and political parties.  

We invite you to join us on Thursday, April 17 at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison Street , Berkeley, 7:30 p.m. for this report and slide show 

Mary Ann Tenuto Sánchez. 

• 

PEACE WITHIN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We need peace within to enable peace in the wider world. All our efforts to bring forced friendliness and democracy will not have a positive outcome. I hear how we have lost international standing because of our style of dealings with other nations. I don’t believe in forced understanding. I like to talk things over with the people involved and wait patiently for good results to emerge. War creates fear and leads inevitably to retaliation. We should devote our attention instead to learning about other people’s thought process. Let us also practice staying centered in our own lives and resolving our personal problems with patience. The influence of our peaceful way of resolving small conflicts is bound to ripple out to the wider human community. 

Romila Khanna 

Albany 

The one thing that was clear at last night’s joint Planning and Transit Commission workshop was that not much is really known about AC Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit proposal. That may surprise many people after the multitude of public hearings and thousands of pages of material written by AC Transit, BRT supporters and those who support better public transit but are opposed to dedicating public roadways to busses that will come once every 10 minutes. 

So where do we start first to try to get solid information about the effects of Bus Rapid Transit on Berkeley?  

One place could be the Draft Environ-mental Impact Statement/Report published last May but proponents of BRT, and AC Transit, say it’s just the draft and should not be taken seriously. For those of us trying to understand BRT’s impact, it is the only source of information and facts about the project. 

Here’s what AC Transit does say about automobile congestion: BRT could mean longer drive times on Telegraph Ave. BRT requires a transitway for safe and efficient operations. This means that the length of time driving along the route is expected to increase due to congestion and delay when a traffic lane in each direction is converted to BRT. 

How bad will that congestion be? The draft is clear that it’s not just Telegraph where congestion will worsen. A significant number of auto trips will divert onto College Avenue and Shattuck Avenue. AC Transit doesn’t use the term gridlock, but they do say that unsatisfactory conditions will occur at a number of local intersections. 

Will there be other impacts to the surrounding neighborhoods due to the added congestion on the major roadways? Neigh-borhood cut-through traffic is dismissed in the draft. AC Transit’s traffic analysis shows that they did not model many of the smaller residential streets. AC Transit’s vision of the shortest time path across Berkeley is at odds with what those of us who live and, yes, drive here everyday know. 

We are currently in the process of defining the Locally Preferred Alternative route. That’s what the joint Planning and Transportation Commission workshop was all about. What they got instead was an outpouring of community sentiment believing that we just don’t know enough yet to decide if we want dedicated lanes for buses, let alone where we might want them. 

So where does that leave us when looking for real answers to the question of traffic impacts to Berkeley? 

AC Transit and the City of Berkeley should implement a “Real World Test” of the lane closures on Telegraph to get some real data about the impacts on congestion, travel time, cut-through traffic and many other variables about which we currently can only conjecture. Here are questions that should be examined: 

1. Will the neighborhood concern that we will see a big increase in cut-through traffic become a reality?  

2. Will there be gridlock along Telegraph Ave., like that which exists today on College Ave. in Elmwood? 

3. Will the restriction of left turns from Telegraph Avenue add much additional local traffic to residential streets? 

4. Will the reduction in parking greatly impact many of the businesses on Telegraph Ave., as owners fear? 

5. Will the imposition of metered parking in residential areas further restrict residents’ ability to find parking near their houses? 

6. Will the interruption of bike lanes in the vicinity of the BRT stations put cyclists at greater risk? 

AC Transit has produced their proposal for the lane configuration and traffic flow on Telegraph Ave. with BRT in place. We should use their plan as the basis for any test of the impacts of BRT. The test should cover the area from Dwight Way to the Berkeley/Oakland border and should examine: 

• Blocking off lanes of traffic with cones or other temporary but effective barriers to traffic (consistent with public safety needs). 

• The restrictions on turns both onto and off of Telegraph Ave. 

• The reduction of parking around stations and left turns. 

• The removal of bike lanes in the vicinity of stations and left turn lanes. 

• Appropriate signage to make sure motorists, pedestrians and cyclists understand the reconfigured roadway. 

The following should be measured before and during the test: 

• Traffic volume on Telegraph Ave. and on each of the cross-streets at which traffic will be allowed to cross Telegraph Ave. 

• Traffic volume where neighborhood streets exit onto adjacent arterials of College, Shattuck, Dwight, Ashby and Alcatraz and at major intersections on those arterials. 

• Congestion delay at each intersection that is measured for traffic volume. 

• Public transit ridership on all of the AC Transit routes adjacent to and crossing the test area. 

• Business activity along Telegraph Ave. based on sales tax revenue. 

A post-test neighborhood resident survey covering qualitative and quantitative measures of the impact the test had on their daily lives should also be made. 

When and for how long should the test be conducted: 

• The test should last long enough for ingrained travel patterns to adjust to the new roadway configuration. It’s clear than a few days, or even a few weeks will not give people enough time to actually find the path that best fits their particular travel needs. 

• The test should take place during the peak travel season. 

The following process could be followed: 

• Request the City Manager to produce a plan, based on the above request with projection of costs and potential sources of funding for such a test. Also, an analysis of how neighborhood volunteers could be used to help reduce the funding costs of such a test. 

• Request the City Manager to produce a projected implementation timeline for such a test. 

Opposed to BRT” does not fairly describe my position. We citizens have been offered a bad choice: accept BRT in roughly its present form or oppose BRT. Given these lousy choices, I choose to oppose. 

In my view AC transit is doing its job responsibly. Our own city is failing to serve its citizens. This is an embarrassingly poor performance by the city of Berkeley. The city’s failure to spend any money to author its own BRT alternatives has brought us to this point of no good choices. 

Three years ago when the lines where still drawn in pencil, Jim Cunradi of AC transit and the Downtown Berkeley Asso-ciation tried to get city staff to engage in co-planning this system. AC transit could get no ears at the city. “Everyone is over-worked. There’s a hiring freeze,” was the excuse heard from city staff.  

Regardless of the fact that this plan will impose drastic alterations on the street infrastructure that will persist for 25 years, no one in the city had time for it. The city did not see it as sufficiently important to hire its own draftsman and veteran designer to work with AC and with its citizens in order to devise a good design. 

The city said DAPAC will figure this out, even though the design of alternatives requires skills far beyond the means of citizen volunteers. The city said the “Transit Zone Urban Design Plan” will figure this out, though fleshing out alternatives was far beyond the scope of that competent but stingily-funded study—commissioned by Berkeley but NOT funded by Berkeley. The city refused to spend a dime or an hour on this when it was in a state begging for collaborative design and Jim Cunradi was pleading for the city’s input. 

The city now says, “make AC transit pay for additional design in Berkeley.” He who pays the piper calls the tune! 

In the ’60s occurred the last comparable change to the city’s infrastructure, the construction of BART. The following can be found at BART.GOV regarding the events of 1963-66. 

“Prime examples of how public pressures escalated the cost of the system are the Berkeley subway and the Ashby Station. After originally approving a combination aerial and subway line through Berkeley, that city later came to oppose the plan in favor of a subway-only line, which was much more expensive. The new plan necessitated redesign of the Ashby Station from an aerial to a subway facility. Extensive controversy and hearings ensued for the next two-and-a-half years, finally to be resolved by Berkeley residents voting to tax themselves additionally to finance the changes they wanted. Next, a Berkeley City Councilman filed a successful suit to redesign the Ashby Station, yet a second time, asserting the use of skylights in the original plans was not a true subway design. 

“The Berkeley situation resulted in a two-and-a-half year delay in subway construction, a 17-month delay in starting Ashby Station construction, and additional costs of $18 million.” 

Those Berkeleyans paid heed. They had courage. They shouldered the cost. We can learn from our brave and farsighted forebears. 

Bruce Wicinas is a Berkeley citizen.

Using its absurd draconian police powers embedded in its Blight Ordinances, the City of Oakland has fined a woman resident of Oakland the amount of $951.00 as a penalty for leaving her garbage can on the street curb for a couple of days. 

This morning’s Contra Costa Times reported an outrageous story of bullying by the City of Oakland, “Woman fined $951 for leaving garbage can out,” (The Contra Costa Times, April 4, 2008). It seems that this woman, who had been away from home for three days, had left her garbage can on the curb to be picked up and some anonymous busybody neighbor had reported it to the Oakland Blight Police. (Back in the good ole days, the garbage collectors used to walk up to each home, press on a cover lever, lift out a small cylindrical garbage can from its hole and carry it back to the garbage truck. They then returned the can to its hole and closed the cover...). 

Oakland needs to completely scrap its over-reaching heavy-handed Blight laws and start over with some open public hearings on this subject and related subjects: flowers, grasses, shrubs, trees, vines and perennials grown on private property. Oakland residents have had their private properties raided and devastated by over-zealous and untrained and ignorant contractors in past years. 

Blight exists in the mind of the beholder. One person’s “blight” may be another person’s picturesque or natural-looking. We need to end this present abusive system of secret spying and reporting by neighbors on other neighbors to the Blight Police bureaucracy, which then does selective enforcement of their overly-broad and unconstitutionally-vague rules. Selective enforcement is both arbitrary and discriminatory. 

This Oakland system is an echo of the former communist East German government system of neighbor spying on neighbor and then reporting their observations to the secret police. The Sixth Amendment to our Constitution, requires that we be allowed to publicly confront our accusers in open hearings in court. We are tired of the spying and secrecy of the Bush regime in Washington, DC. We don’t need to have these same governmental bullying tactics applied to us in Oakland. We should not have to live in fear of our neighbors who may not care for the cut of our shrubs to be able to secretly and anonymously report us to the Oakland Blight Police for persecution and prosecution. 

The Oakland City Council should immediately repeal its present bullying “blight” laws and should start from scratch and hold open public hearings on any future laws attempting to regulate garbage cans left on the street and the state of flowers, grasses, shrubs, trees, vines and perennials grown on private property. 

James K. Sayre is an Oakland resident.

Ask the average American to name a famous war-tax resister and most folks would probably cite Henry David Thoreau. But how about Joan Baez, Noam Chomsky, Gloria Steinem and Julia Butterfly Hill? 

The author of Walden Pond was an anomaly in 1846 when he served time in a Massachusetts jail for refusing to finance the Mexican-American War but, 120 years later, Baez, Chomsky and Steinem—and more than 500,000 fellow Americans— openly resisted paying taxes to support the war in Vietnam. 

Following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Baez, Chomsky and Steinem issued a new Appeal to Conscience proclaiming that citizens had a “moral duty” to oppose Bush’s aggression by refusing “to pay taxes used to finance unjust wars.” Today, as the Iraq occupation enters its sixth year, war-tax resistance is gaining new converts. 

In 2004, Julia Butterfly Hill refused to pay her Federal taxes to protest spending on killing. She redirected her withheld taxes to fund conservation and social justice programs. As Hill explained, “Every time I pass a newspaper stand and see a headline about the war, it’s good to know I’m contributing to a different headline.” 

Pulitzer-prizewinning New York Times reporter Chris Hedges recently declared his intention to refuse paying taxes if the U.S. attacks Iran, and prompting others to make similar pledges. 

The link between taxpayers and warmongers was underscored during the Vietnam War when Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State Alexander Haig dismissed anti-war protesters with the comment: “Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.” 

“Taxation is the closest war-making link between the government and most citizens,” the War Resisters League (WRL) notes. “The maintenance of [America’s] arsenal depends upon the willingness of the American people ... to finance it.” 

The Pentagon spent $1.6 trillion on weapons in 2007—double the billions spent in 2000—and the Center for Defense Information estimates “national defense” now consumes more than half (51 percent) of all discretionary spending in the federal budget. The true impact is obscured by accounting tricks like the “Unified Budget,” which includes Trust Funds such as Social Security to make the military portion of the budget appear smaller than it actually is. 

A Short History of Taxation and  

Resistance 

Until the outbreak of WWII, war-tax resistance was largely limited to a few religious communities—notably the Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren. The rise of a US “War Economy” in 1943, saw the introduction of employee withholding—a preemptive seizure of earnings designed to conscript the wages of working Americans. 

In April 1948, American pacifist A. J. Muste responded by creating a tax-resistance group called the Peacemakers. As Muste memorably observed: “People are drafted through the Selective Service System and money is drafted through the Internal Revenue Service.” 

In 1964, singer Joan Baez made war-tax resistance a national issue when she vowed to withhold 60 percent of her taxes to protest the Vietnam War. A tax-resistance statement authored by Muste was signed by Baez, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, ‘Catholic Worker’ founder Dorothy Day, professor Noam Chomsky, publisher Lyle Stuart, Nobel Prizewinner Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and thousands of others. 

When Washington imposed a 10-percent surcharge on phone use to cover the escalating costs of the Vietnam War, Gore Vidal, Gloria Steinem, Kirkpatrick Sale and 528 colleagues announced a Writers and Editors War Tax Protest. 

The early 1970s saw more than 20,000 active federal tax resisters while phone-tax protesters swelled to an estimated 500,000. The IRS had to throw in the towel on phone-tax refuseniks because the individual amounts withheld were so small, the government actually lost money on the few cases it did pursue. 

By 1972, there were War Tax Resistance chapters in 192 US cities and churches were openly encouraging tax resistance. Then-Congressman Ronald Dellums introduced the World Peace Tax Fund Act to create a “conscientious objector” status for taxpayers. 

Resistance Strategies 

The government’s aggression in the Middle East has given tax-resisters new justification for non-cooperation. And, with Washington operating in defiance of the United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Principles, the Geneva Conventions and the US Constitution, some resisters argue that filing 1040s could render taxpayers “complicit” in the commission of war crimes. 

Resisting war-taxes can be as simple as filing a blank 1040 with a note of explanation. Some resisters fill out 1040s but refuse to pay all or a token amount of taxes owed. Some refuse to pay the percentage that goes to war while others withhold a symbolic $10.40 or underpay their tax levy by a dollar. 

Some make their 1040 checks payable to the Department of Education or the EPA while others donate the withheld portion of their taxes to organizations like the Peoples Life Fund in Berkeley. The PLF redirects liberated war dollars to peace and social justice causes. On April 14, the PLF will award $10,000 to dozens of peace organizations in a Tax Day event set for 6 PM at the Co-Housing coop at 2220 Sacramento. 

Tax resisters can face civil penalties on the amount owed (plus compound interest at a rate of around 10 percent) but One Million Taxpayers for Peace advises that the actual risk is “negligible” and resisters need not fear arrest or the loss of “one’s car, home or other assets.” Criminal prosecution is possible but uncommon. 

Such penalties would become a thing of the past under the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Act (H.R. 1921), which allows citizens to assign the “defense” portion of their taxes to a fund supporting peace work and social services. The bill, introduced by Rep. John Lewis (D. GA), now has 30 co-sponsors. 

If neither Congress nor the United Nations can prevent Washington from launching preemptive wars of occupation, a National Tax Strike may be the last, best hope for reining in this rogue administration. 

For more information, contact the War Resisters League (www.WarResisters.org), National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (www.wartaxboycott.org) and the Northern California War Tax Resistance (www.ncwtr.org). 

With the Time Magazine, April 7 issue, the BP program at Berkeley now becomes so useless that one can not find words to describe it. On March 29, the chief scientist at the United Kingdom’s Department of Environment, Farms and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Dr Bob Watson, was cited for his calling on the European Union to drop its whole bioethanol program as being a causer of increased emissions of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) not a reducer of such emissions. And a paper in ‘Nature’ has now stirred up charges that the IPCC report with various supposed control steps for global warming are basically unattainable pipedreams. 

Meanwhile back on the globe, food costs are skyrocketing, causing riots in Egypt, Haiti and now India as various food crops have been pushed off the land for biofuels, events BP appears to be unaware of. Al Gore starts a big ad campaign calling for emission cuts that will mainly do nothing to cut the 35 percent, and growing, overload of carbon dioxide already on the globe, which continues to melt the icepacks and permafrost, changing ocean acidity, which in turn causes coral deaths, and worsening weather. We have to find some way to cut into that overload and should take advantage of what nature gives us. I wonder if Mr. Gore’s attention can be directed toward the food problems, so that his Alliance for Climate Protection will call for rescinding bioethanol subsidies. 

Again the program of pyrolyzing organic wastes will lead to charcoal formation that can be buried to bring about a real reduction in our carbon footprint and will also destroy problems of germs, toxims and drugs in wastes, thereby greatly cutting costs in future waste disposal programs and in water pollution problems. For faster reduction of our carbon footprint, I have pointed out before that we need a well organized tree-farming system that would supply wood for pyrolysis to get charcoal, perhaps some energy and a distillate of organic chemicals that could supply needs in drug and other chemical manufacturing. With increasing temperatures and humidity likely to increase termites and molds that feed on wood, new home construction may need to shift away from wood as global warming’s effects expand. 

So where do we go now? First order is to scream for the rescinding of bioethanol and oil subsidies. Corn farmers losing their fatted calf will quickly get wheat and rice acreages up because that is where big money will soon be gotten. I urge you to contact any fed or state official to tell him that we have to drop the bioethanol program to get farming back to growing food. 

Next we should call for no more coal plants, and tell officials such as our governor to get energy from the wind within the state, thereby creating thousands of new jobs here. Windmill-generated electricity uses some of the energy overload created by burning fossil fuels, emits no GHGs or mercury, usurps no land or water from crop production. leaves no environmental messes like those that occur with fossil fuel mining, allows farming beneath them, and requires no security costs such as those incurred with nuclear power. We may soon have hydrogen available as two catalysts to split water to hydrogen with sunlight energy have recently been reported. 

While hydrogen and wind can give us energy free of GHG emissions, we still have that overload of carbon dioxide hanging over us. So the last point is to call for the development of the pyrolysis process to be applied to organic wastes to clean up the messes, especially polluting water, that they presently are causing across the world. With that process we cut into nature’s carbon cycling process to actually reduce the overload, albeit slowly. By getting a tree-farming system to supply pyrolysis plants, we would greatly speed up the reducing of our carbon footprint by cutting into nature’s recycling of carbon dioxide and thereby getting control of global warming. 

Dr. James Singmaster, III, is a retired Environmental Toxicologist living in Fremonr.

The Governor’s proposed budget would have a devastating impact on California’s public education system, already noted for being 47th in the nation for per pupil spending. This budget does not consider the educational needs of our children or the protection that voters put in place with Proposition 98, which the Governor will have to set aside in order to slash education funding. He needs the support of two-thirds of the legislature to set aside Proposition 98. 

The current budget proposes to cut $4.4 BILLION from public education. Such a cut would come at a time when school district's budgets are already lean, (the BUSD cut $13 million over three years). In Berkeley alone, layoff notices have gone out to 55 certificated educators as a first step in the budget reductions of $3.7 million the BUSD would have to suffer under the Governor’s recommendation.  

The state PTA is mobilizing a statewide rally in Sacramento on April 24 to “Flunk the Budget”, and we hope to send five to ten buses of Berkeley parents and community members. Funds are needed to help pay for the buses the PTA Council will need to rent for this event. We would like to keep down the cost for those who are able to ride the busses to represent our community, and this is one way that those who are not able to make the trip can participate. Berkeley residents do so much to support our schools, through Measure A of 2006 continuing 20 years of BSEP funding, to incredible volunteerism in Berkeley’s classrooms. This is all the more reason that we must stand up to the Governor’s continued efforts to strip the most basic funding from California’s public schools. The Berkeley PTA Council is asking for your support, be it $10 or $100. Every penny will be used to support this and other efforts in Sacra-mento. 

We cannot let the education of our children suffer. Our children are our future, and the future of our state's economy. The public education guaranteed to all children is the cornerstone of democracy. Today’s students are tomorrow’s well-educated and highly skilled citizens who will fill more high paying jobs, create more new businesses, and cost the state less in other social services – if we support them now. 

The budget cannot be balanced at their expense. California already spends about $2,000 less per student than the national average, and is 47th in the nation in per pupil spending. Proposition 98 was passed by the voters in 1988 to guarantee a level of minimum funding for education. It was suspended four years ago, and the governor and legislature are threatening to suspend it again. 

Last year, the Republicans in Sacra-mento signed a pledge not to raise revenues by any amount, under any circumstances. This is not a responsible way to govern. A state budget process that looks at cuts alone is not a real solution, and blindly slashing 10% shows absolutely no effort on the Governor’s part. For the richest state in the nation to become the last in the nation for per pupil spending would be criminal. Prior to Proposition 13, Califor-nia proudly stood at 5th in the nation. 

The Democratic Majority of the State Legislature are committed to doing whatever is necessary to flunk this budget and not cut a dime from public education, but they need to have our support, both locally and whenever we can travel to Sacramento to lift our voices. 

To make a donation for this effort, you can give to your local PTA, or send checks to: Rebecca Abravanel, Treasurer, PTA Council, 716 the Alameda, Berkeley, 94707. 

Of course, it would be great if you could join us in Sacramento. Please contact Berk-eley PTA Council president Cathyrn Bruno at: jefcat1991@sbcglobal.net or the PTA at the school nearest you. 

Thanks for your support! 

The Berkeley PTA Council 

Cathyrn Bruno, President 

Jonathan Squire, Secretary 

Mark Coplan, VP Communication 

and the PTA Council Executive Board

Who was it who said that anyone who isn’t outraged just hasn’t been paying attention? 

A week or so ago I got mail from Berkeley naturalist/writer Phila Rogers announcing the formation of a new group called Save Strawberry Canyon. It came as something of a surprise, since I hadn’t been aware that the canyon needed saving. Boy, does it ever. 

Rogers explained in a later conversation that the impetus for Save Strawberry Canyon was UC’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in general and two new ventures in particular: the Computational Research and Theory Facility (CRT) and the Helios Energy Research Facility. Both have received little news coverage, even in the Planet. 

Both new buildings would have enormous visual and environmental impacts. The CRT would be a high-rise structure 

sited in Blackberry Canyon, just inside the Lab’s main gate. (The Lab is already building a guest house there, without an EIR.) It has been described as the engine for future lab expansion. 

Helios is in some ways even more problematic. The new building, funded in part by BP (ex British Petroleum), would be plunked down in the heart of Strawberry Canyon, across the road from the UC Botanical Garden. Its construction would require removing 18 redwoods from the Mather Grove. 

If you want an extra level of irony, the Helios Project would be dedicated to research on renewable transportation fuel. The building would, of course, be “a model of ‘green’ construction.” 

Rogers said her group coalesced out of an event last summer, organized by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, that explored Strawberry Canyon as a cultural landscape, with walking tours led by Gray Brechin and others. Rogers and others followed up by taking Robin Freeman’s Merritt College class on the creeks of the East Bay. Save Strawberry Canyon’s leadership includes 

Lesley Emmington and Janice Thomas, both associated with BAHA; former Berkeley mayor Shirley Dean; and the legendary Sylvia McLaughlin, one of the founders of Save the Bay. 

This was shortly after the UC Regents approved the LRDP (sorry, this is going to be thick with acronyms.) Last fall, Emmington, Thomas, and other plaintiffs filed suit, claiming that the EIR for the plan was deficient in addressing air and water quality, endangered-species issues, greenhouse gas emissions, and possible alternative sites, among others. They get their day in court on May 21. 

Meanwhile, UC issued draft EIRs on CRT and Helios late last year, with comment periods during the winter holidays. Neither report has been finalized yet. The regents are scheduled to vote on both at their May 16-17 meeting at UCLA. 

That’s the bare-bones version. It all comes down to conflicting visions for the Berkeley Hills: are we going to have an even denser techno-scientific complex, or can we preserve what’s left of the hills’ open space for its scenic, cultural, and wildlife values? 

Strawberry Canyon was recognized as something special as far back as 1865, when landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted described it as “a unique and most valuable appendage to the general local attractions of the neighborhood.” When the East Bay Regional Park District was carved out of surplus EBMUD lands in 1934, the canyon, although university-owned, was considered an integral part of the matrix of parklands. 

Despite the wave of construction that began with the Radiation Laboratory, the university continued to make gestures toward preservation. In 1968, prodded by UC professor Robert L. Stebbins, a renowned authority on reptiles and amphibians, UC designated portions of the Canyon as Ecological Study Areas. 

A 1976 report by Garrett Eckbo & Associates seconded Olmsted: “The varied and rugged topography of Strawberry Canyon … has favored the establishment of a rich diversity of plant and animal life, such that Strawberry Canyon today is one of the finest natural areas of comparable size in the Bay Area.” 

The Helios Building would abut one of the Ecological Study Areas, and preempt undeveloped land that has been considered for ESA status. And both projects-and whatever else the Lab has in mind, with its wooly visions of scientific “hill towns”-would eat up huge swathes of habitat that sustain the diversity that so impressed Eckbo.  

Strawberry Canyon is not Terra Nullius. It’s home to birds of prey, migratory songbirds, bats, snakes, and tiny blind invertebrates that hide under rocks. Some of these species have protected state or federal status; others should. For all of them, and for anyone who cares about biodiversity, UC’s plans would mean an irreparable loss. 

I’ll have a lot more to say about the endangered-species issues in future columns.  

For now, if you want more information, write Save Strawberry Canyon at PO Box 1234, Berkeley 94701. I understand a web site is in the works. Or email Phila Rogers: philajane6@yahoo.com. The EIRs for the LRDP, CRT, and Helios are on the lab’s site: www. lbl.gov/Community. And they make very interesting reading. 

When the Battle of Basra opened on March 25, President Bush described it as a “defining mo-ment” for the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Within days, however, the White House was scrambling to distance itself from the shellacking the Iraqi Army took at the hands of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. 

As the Iraqi Army disintegrated in Basra and Baghdad—plus Kut, Amarah, Nasiryah, and Diwaniya, the provincial capitals of four important southern provinces—the Washington Post was quoting administration officials “speaking anonymously” claiming that Maliki “decided to launch the offensive without consulting his U.S. allies.” 

But as historian and author Gareth Porter points out in the Asia Times, the claim is ludicrous. In fact, the Administration’s fingerprints were all over the operation. 

“No significant Iraqi military action can be planned without a range of military support functions being undertaken by the U.S. command,” Porter argues. When Maliki attacked Basra, U.S. military spokesman, Col. Bill Buckner, announced that “coalition forces” were “providing intelligence, surveillance and support aircraft for the operation.” 

When the Iraqi Army found itself in trouble, U.S. aircraft bombed and strafed targets in Baghdad and Basra, and U.S. Special Forces teamed up with the Iraqi Army to kill “22 suspected militants” in Basra, according to the U.S. Command. U.S. soldiers also sealed off Sadr City in Baghdad. Lastly, the U.S. military’s Transition Teams are so deeply embedded in every unit of the Iraq Army that the latter can’t spit without getting an okay. 

It is increasingly obvious that the White House planned the entire operation. The genesis of the March 25 attack goes back to last August, when Muqtada declared a unilateral ceasefire with the Americans and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) militia, the Badr Brigade. The ceasefire is a major reason why civilian and U.S. casualties have fallen over the past six months. 

Maliki’s Dawa Party and his allies in the ISCI have long been at loggerheads with Muqtada over three major issues.  

First, Muqtada is a nationalist and deeply opposed to the U.S. occupation, while Maliki and the ISCI’s leader, Abdel-aziz al-Hakim, support the presence of U.S. troops as a shield against the nationalists.  

Second, Muqtada supports a unified Iraq with a strong central government. Maliki and Hakim, on the other hand, have pushed for dismembering Iraq into separate provinces dominated by the country’s three major ethnic groups—Sunnis in the west, Kurds in the north, and Shiites in the south. Since most of the oil reserves are in the south, as is the country’s only port, whoever controls the south essentially controls 70 percent of Iraq’s economy. 

Which leads to the third point of contention, and one closely tied to the first two: Muqtada’s followers, along with most of the Sunnis and Iraq’s illegal, but still powerful, trade unions, want Iraq to keep control of its oil. Maliki, Hakim and the U.S., on the other hand, want to privatize Iraq’s enormous oil wealth and open it to exploitation by international oil cartels. 

According to Leila Fadel of the McClatchy newspaper chain, when Vice President Dick Cheney visited Iraq March 17-18, he “strong armed” Iraq’s Presidency Council into passing a provincial election law. The law sets up an October election in which the various provinces will vote on whether they want to remain a unified country or splinter into separate provinces. 

Cheney also sealed an agreement with Maliki to keep U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely, in spite of the fact that seven out of 10 Iraqis want the occupation to end. 

If the U.S. and Maliki and Hakim are to pull off dismembering Iraq and privatizing the oil, they need to win the election in the south. About 20 percent of the Middle East’s oil reserves are in Basra Province. 

But the Mahdi Army has far more support among the Shiia masses than either the Dawa Party or the ISCI. Muqtada and his family have long been associated with the poorest of the Shiia—who constitute the overwhelming bulk of the sect—while Maliki and Hakim have always been close to the Shiia merchant class. The latter has the money, the former has the numbers. 

Which is why Maliki launched the attack on Basra.  

“Separatist Shiites want to make sure the nationalist Shiites won’t win the election—by killing them,” says Raed Jarrar of the American Friends Service Committee. If Maliki can destroy the Mahdi Army or drive it out of Basra, the October elections will go to the Dawa Party and the ISCI, insuring that Iraq’s huge oil reserves would be turned over to the big oil cartels.  

A subsidiary target of the Basra attack was the oil and dock workers unions, which staunchly oppose the privatization of the industry. An oil union statement said the Basra attack was aimed at “the planned corporate takeover of the port [of Basra] … in order to facilitate the activities of the international oil companies.” 

According to Sami Ramadani, a London-based exile from the government of Saddam Hussein, “many Iraqis are linking what they regard as a premeditated and unprovoked attack on a relatively peaceful city with Cheney’s visit [and] to the fact that oil and dock workers unions, declared illegal, are fully in control of the ports and the major oil fields.”  

So how did the “defining moment” end up a debacle? 

The first reason was the absolute cluelessness of the American military, coupled with the isolation of the Maliki government.  

It now appears that both interpreted Muqtada’s August ceasefire as a sign of weakness, concluding that the Mahdi Army was no longer capable of carrying out coordinated military operations. 

Sensing an opportunity, the U.S. and Maliki began attacking Sadrist strongholds, arresting and detaining more than 2,000 of Muqtada’s followers. When the Mahdi Army did not respond, the U.S. was certain it had the militia on the ropes. “We’ve degraded their capability,” bragged General David Patraeus’ spokes-man, Rear Admiral Gregory Smith. 

According to historian Porter, when Muqtada extended the ceasefire this past February, “that apparently convinced Patraeus and the Bush White House that they could now launch a large-scale ‘cordon and search’ operation against the Mahdi Army in Basra without great risk of a military response.”  

In fact, Muqtada—a man the U.S. has constantly underestimated—used the six-month ceasefire to rearm, reorganize, and train some of his troops and commanders in Iran. 

While Tehran favors Maliki and Hakim, the Iranians have always hedged their bets by aiding Muqtada as well.  

When the Iraqi Army attacked Muqtada’s strongholds in Basra, the Americans told them they would roll right over a disorganized and demoralized Mahdi Army. A U.S. advisor told the Washington Post he thought the operation—Charge of the Knights—would take a week to 10 days. 

The isolation of the current Iraqi government also played a role in the disaster. According to Patrick Cockburn of the Independent, the Iraqi government has virtually no support outside of the American-controlled Green Zone. That isolation led Maliki to believe that his U.S.-trained army would make short work of Muqtada’s militia. 

Instead, the militia not only whipped them in Basra but also organized sympathy uprisings in every major city from Baghdad south, as well as rocketing and shelling the supposedly secure Green Zone. U.S. fighter-bombers, helicopters and Special Forces couldn’t cover up the refusal of the Iraqi Army to take on the disciplined and motivated Mahdi Army. 

“The Iraqi Army doesn’t have the ability to do much of anything,” says Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group. On the other hand, he says, Muqtada “remains undefeated and looks like the moderate.” 

According to Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail of the Inter Press Service, the Iraqi Army simply disintegrated. A Baghdad police colonel told them that the “Iraqi Army and police forces, as well as the Dawa and Badr militias, suddenly disappeared from the streets, leaving their armored vehicles for the Mahdi militia to drive around in joyful convoys.” 

Maliki was humiliated by the Battle of Basra, but there was plenty of mortification to go around. The Bush White House, for instance, had to watch as Iranian Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force—an organization the Administration has designated a “terrorist group”—pulled its chestnuts out of the fire by negotiating a ceasefire between Maliki and Muqtada. 

“This failure takes Iraq to point zero or worse,” Brigadier General Kathum Alwan told IPS. 

“Worse” is likely where things are headed. Not only has the fragile ceasefire between the Shiite groups been breached, but also there is plenty of chaos waiting in the wings. 

The Sunni “Awakening Councils” are still being frozen out of the army and the police, and many Sunnis have made it clear that they have no intention of allowing Iraq to be dismembered. A number of Sunni leaders have openly threatened civil war if they continue to be sidelined. 

And in the north, Arabs and Kurds are at each other’s throats over control of the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, while Turkey continues its cross-border attacks on Kurd- ish PKK separatists. 

As Cockburn notes, any of these issues “could ignite in a moment, and almost certainly will.” 

Since the division of the Oakland Police Department into three geographical districts late last year—a move that is key to Mayor Ron Dellums’ goal of moving OPD into a community policing model—the mayor has begun quietly going around to meetings of the city’s various Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils, trying to get a community assessment of how the new police realignment is working. 

In mid-March, the mayor spoke and was spoken to at the Chinatown NCPC, a group that conducts its meetings largely in Cantonese, and draws Cantonese-speaking members from all over the city. At the meeting, which attracted an overflow crowd of more than 200, the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce was circulating a petition calling, in part, for more bilingual officers in Chinatown. One of the meeting participants, a merchant, explained those concerns to the mayor, the chief of police, and other city officials present. 

“I hope that the patrolmen who are assigned to Chinatown understand our culture,” the merchant said. “We do a few things here that are illegal. We double-park, and we jaywalk. If the patrolmen come down hard on that, they will just drive people away, and it will hurt business in this area. Ask them to put out notices in the [Chinese language] papers, and give out warnings first. Tell them to lighten up.” 

In his remarks, translated into Cantonese as he went along, Dellums agreed that “there ought to be more Chinese-speaking police officers. That’s a policy I’m fully committed to.” 

There is every reason to see why this would be a good policy. 

In 2003, anger erupted in San Jose’s large Vietnamese-American community following the shooting death of 25-year-old Cau Thi Bich Tran, a mother of two, by San Jose Police, after the police say the woman threatened them in her home with a knife. Local Vietnamese newspapers reported that Tran had locked herself out of her bedroom and was trying to jimmy the lock with a dao bao, which they described as a common Vietnamese vegetable peeler, and was gesturing with the object to the police in an effort to explain what was happening. Both language and cultural differences between Tran and the police may have contributed to the assumption by the police officers that they were being threatened. 

And it is easy to see the cultural differences between the rest of Oakland and Oakland’s Chinatown, with Chinatown’s enormous influx of Chinese-speaking residents and an atmosphere that one imagines replicates Hong Kong or other major Chinese cities. Hiring officers who can enforce the law while understanding and appreciating those differences seems like, well, the exercise of good common sense. 

It is unfortunate that such good, common sense does not extend to another major segment of Oakland’s diverse population—African-Americans. 

Here the assumption is that because there is no new source of African-American immigration since the days of the slave trade—immigrant Africans, Jamaicans, and African-Puerto Ricans constitute a related but distinctly different group—because of years of assimilation, and because of access to political power since the civil rights era, African-Americans are different from the rest of the population, but not so different that they—we—merit special cultural consideration and treatment in the same way that, say, Chinese- or Vietnamese-Americans do. 

Unfortunately, one of the ironies of the Black Experience is that because it has had so much influence on American cultural life, there are vast numbers of non-African-American people in the United States who stubbornly insist that they have had it and that, therefore, the Black Experience is indistinguishable from the American experience. 

But this is simply not true. 

I give a small example, to make a larger point. 

In a television interview some years ago, singer-composer Billy Joel talked about growing up during the years when African-American and European-American music was strictly segregated. He recalled hearing Ray Charles’ songs on late-night radio, calling the music “wild” (his face lighting up as he said it), and saying how much it inspired and influenced him in the later creation of his own music. 

I grew up on Ray Charles’ music. He was one of my father’s favorite artists. I would describe it in many ways, but never “wild.” It reminds me of backyard gatherings with my parents’ African-American family friends, my mother’s fried chicken and potato salad, the safety of a childhood around known and friendly surroundings. When Charles’ “What’d I Say” came out, it shocked many white folks with what they believed was its reproduction of raw, “jungle” sex. To be honest, it wasn’t until the movie Ray came out a couple of years ago that I realized anyone thought the song was anything more than a jumping summer tune. I listen to it now, not to be titillated, but to be reminded of family life and people long since passed. 

Between Billy Joel and me, therefore, there is a distinct difference in the meaning of the Black Experience. 

I have heard enough and seen enough and lived long enough to have become quite comfortable in my own culture, and while I am interested in how Mr. Joel sees it, it does not have any influence over how I see myself, or in what I put on my CD or mp3 players when I get home at night. 

But there are areas where the opinions of the majority culture have a profound—and sometimes detrimental—effect on some segments of the African-American community. That is most evident with African-American youth, and in the distinct African-American-derived cultural direction that is called hip hop. 

The success of hip hop on a national media scale hides the deep suspicion and mistrust that it is greeted with by many people who meet it on the streets of a city like Oakland. Minstrel show music used to be the dominant, driving force in American culture—it is no accident, after all, that the first talking picture in America, The Jazz Singer, featured an Al Jolsen recreation of a cork-blackface, down-on-one-knee singing of “Mammy.” Hip hop has supplanted that, and it is impossible to imagine American advertising or a major American sporting event (remember when the Black-Eyed Peas’ “Let’s Get It Started” used to start every NBA game?) without hip hop’s driving beat and potent lyrics. 

But just as blues music used to be synonymous—amongst some observers—with Saturday night shootings and knife-cuttings, hip hop culture is intertwined in some people’s eyes with crime and violence. In a recent League of Women Voters forum with candidates for Oakland City Council’s at-large seat, for example, candidate Charles Pine—who is campaigning on a law and order platform—talked of how crime and violence are ruining Oakland, mentioning the problems of “sideshow culture” and “boom boxes” in the same breath. Boom boxes? 

Oakland’s war on sideshows provides probably the best example of this intermixing, in which it is difficult to see whether the actual target is violence, people doing donuts in the middle of the street with their cars, people playing loud music while driving in their cars, or simply large, unregulated crowds of African-American youth in Oakland. Oakland police and officeholders, like Mr. Pine, seem to go after all of them interchangeably. (One remembers the most infamous incident when, under California’s Oakland-inspired anti-sideshow law, an Oakland police officer once impounded the van of a coach taking basketball players back home in East Oakland because the police officer charged that the coach was playing his radio too loud.) 

This culture war—if we can call it that—has had profound repercussions on Oakland gatherings. Two of the city’s most successful festivals—Carijama and the Festival at the Lake—both went out of existence because of clashes between African-American youth and Oakland police. Oakland’s ability to successfully operate a downtown night-time entertainment district has been severely hampered by similar problems, causing the shutdown of Sweet Jimmy’s and other establishments attracting an African-American clientele, and curtailing events at Geoffrey’s. Some of these problems involved street violence, but others—how many, it is difficult to say—involved difficulties directly resulting from the way Oakland police officers have handled crowd control. 

Too often, discussions of such activities come down to a laying on of “blame.” But that may be a mistake. Sometimes it is merely a matter of handling a situation differently because of seeing the world differently, and that makes all the difference in the world. 

I once saw OPD Tactical Squad members trying to clear a block of International Boulevard between 88th and 87th Avenues of a crowd of African-American young people following an East Bay Dragons Motorcycle Club street fair on an adjoining side street. (Why the Tac Squad needed to clear the street is another matter; the young people were just standing along the storefront, talking, in their own neighborhood, and nobody seemed to be causing trouble; the Tac Squad appeared to be going on the assumption that any “unauthorized” gathering of young African-Americans in that section of Oakland constituted a problem.) In any event, a burly Tac Squad officer gave the order to disperse, but none of the young people moved. While the squad was preparing to make a sweep of the block—something that might, indeed, have caused problems—one of the East Bay Dragons officers walked down the street, quietly telling the gatherers, “All right, y’all. The fair’s over. It’s time to go.” Within moments, without grumbling, the sidewalk cleared. 

Why was a single East Bay Dragon officer able to clear the street of young African-Americans with no problem and no threats, while the OPD officers were not? Partly I just don’t know, since I didn’t talk with the individuals who dispersed, and part of it is too complicated to break down in a column. But in large part, I believe, it was because the East Bay Dragon officer was able to talk in a language that the young African-Americans understood, and by that I don’t mean he was talking a language other than English. 

That is the crux of the difficulty in understanding the similarities of the cultural needs of Oakland’s Chinatown and some of Oakland’s African-American communities. And while these cultural needs of Oakland’s African-American community in part involve the need for more African-American officers, the issue goes far beyond that. 

Does Oakland’s Chinatown need police officers who are knowledgeable of and sensitive to the culture of that community? Absolutely. The same is true for large sections of the city’s African-American community. Outside of their boundaries, those communities are not so well-known as many of us think. 

I’ve been the Mulch Queen, or at least her Majesty’s faithful herald, for years. The sight of our locally predominant clay soil lying naked to the elements upsets me. I know what happens when it gets walked on and rained on—yes, rain does compress soil over time if that soil doesn’t have nearly perfect drainage or spongelike absorption—and dried to dust by the sun.  

Besides, I’m lazy. Or I prefer to mimic natural processes when I can. Choose one; please don’t consult the editors whose deadlines I break habitually, if not merrily.  

When I want to add compost to my garden, I do it by spreading it as mulch. Then I stand back and let the worms do the work, and by gum they do it right. They don’t mess up existing root webs or useful mycorrhizae. (At least, not in my garden they don’t. What imported earthworms have done to the soil networks in some of our forests, that’s a story that can leave me catatonic.) 

And though some folks who plant the margins of apartment blocks in Berkeley seem not to believe it, we don’t have much in the way of dangerously venomous snakes here in the flatlands. The bare dirt between those wilting dwarf rosebushes and mums is just so sad and starved-looking.  

Now comes UC’s Gordon Frankie to mess with my cherished beliefs. Dang. 

We have a surprisingly large number of native bee species right here in Berkeley: at least 74. This doesn’t include the familiar honeybee or one of our leafcutter bees, which are exotics native to Eurasia. Frankie has been doing research and education on the ecosystem roles of assorted bees, especially in pollination. I’ve seen him gently catch bees in flight, hold them for a group’s appreciation, and then release them to resume their business.  

The good news is that we still have that many bee species in the city. The bad news is that, according to Frankie, some 60 to 70 percent of native bees, most of them solitary rather than colonial species, make their nests in the ground and they need access to bare dirt to do so.  

Typically, what ground-nesting bees do is dig a little hole—some line it with bits of leaf or with polyester that they manufacture themselves—lay an egg or a few eggs in it, and provision the egg with a lunchbox of pollen and maybe nectar. This takes numerous trips to each nest, and she needs more than one spot to make a season’s worth of nests.  

Frankie recommends leaving half your garden’s soil open and bare. Seems to me you’d also have to keep it undisturbed and not dig up the babies, too. I’d suggest keeping at least the spaces underneath furniture, decks, and such features bare, just mulching places that get walked on and the rootways of plants. (And keep it a foot or so away from tree trunks too!)  

Unlike barbeque, it seems gardening isn’t a place to go whole hog about anything.

TUESDAY, APRIL 15 

CHILDREN 

Walter the Giant Storyteller for ages 3 and up, at 6:30 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

FILM 

“Schindler’s Houses” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Amy Goodman introduces “Standing Up to the Madness” at 6:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. at 25th, Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. www.kpfa.org/events. 

Jack Hirschman, San Francisco Poet Laureate, reads at 7:30 p.m. at Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

LeRoy Thomas & the Zydeco Roadrunners at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $12. 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. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

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

Karen Blixt at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joshua Kryah and Alex Lemon read their poems for National Poetry Month at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Bob Barde discusses his new book “Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger Ships, Exclusion, and Angel Island” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

Priscilla Royal talks about her medieval mystery series at 2 p.m. at at West Side Library, 135 Washington Ave., Point Richmond. 620-6567. www.richmondlibrary.org 

Cafe Poetry hosted by Paradise at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Laurel Anne Hill reads from her new crossover novel “Heroes Arise” at 7 p.m. at Laurel Bookstore, 4100 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 531-2073. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Fever, swing music at noon at 555 12th St., Oakland. Part of Oakland City Center Spring Concerts.  

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Jared Redmond, piano, at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

UC Berkeley’s Cal RaijinTaiko, Taiko Drumming Concert, at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $5-$7 at the door.  

Mesut Ozgen at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Terrence Brewer Quartet with Lorca Hart at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

MIBB, University of Copenhagen Jazz Big Band in a benefit for Ashkenaz, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Whiskey Brothers, old-time and bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Benny Verde 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.  

Keith McArthur Project, funk, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Billy Cobham & Friends at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $16-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, APRIL 17 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Interplay” Works by David Kwan, Nora Pauwels, Bartosz Posacki, and Steve Reich. Artists’ reception at 6 p.m. at Kala Art Institute, 1060 Heinz Ave. 549-2977. www.kala.org 

“Here: Oakland Through the Arts” Works by Excel High School Students. Presentation by the artists at 7 p.m., performance at 5 p.m. at the Craft & Cultural Arts Gallery, State of CA Office Bldg., Atrium, 1515 CLay St., Oakland. 622-8190. 

Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia Guided tour at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

“Medea, A Tragedy by Euripides” Thurs.-Sat. at 7 p.m. at Oakland School for the Arts, 1800 San Pablo, Oakland, 1 block from 19th St BART. Tickets are $5-$10. 873 8800. www.oakarts.tix.com 

FILM 

Heinz Emigholz: Architecture as Autobiography “Sullivan’s Banks” at 7 p.m. and “Loos Ornamental” at 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Adam David Miller reads from “Ticket to Exile” at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Adam Mansbach reads from “The End of the Jews” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Doug Fine reads from “Farewell, My Subaru: An epic Adventure in Local Living” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco Chamber Jazz Quartet, live recording session at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The California Honeydrops, New Orleans blues and roots, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Bryn Terfel, bass-baritone, at 7:30 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $35-$100. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Vladimir Tarasov, Mark Dresser & Larry Ochs: Thinking About Morton Feldman at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Houston, Jones & Jacques at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Sacred Profanities at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Dietsnaks, funk, nu-jazz, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277 

FRIDAY, APRIL 18 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Uncle Vanya” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., through May 17. Tickets are $10-$12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org  

Aurora Theatre “The Trojan Women” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through May 11. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

California Conservatory Theatre “The Turn of the Screw” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at 999 East 14th St., San Leandro City Hall Complex, near BART, through April 27. Tickets are $20-$22. 632-8850. 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Foxfire” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave. at Moeser, El Cerrito, through May 11. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Masquers Playhouse “Tartuffe” Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m., some Sun. matinees at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Pt. Richmond, through April 26. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

“Medea, A Tragedy by Euripides” Fri. and Sat. at 7 p.m. at Oakland School for the Arts, 1800 San Pablo, Oakland , 1 block from 19th St BART. Tickets are $5-$10. 873 8800. www.oakarts.tix.com 

Shotgun Players “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” by George Bernard Shaw. Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m., through April 27, at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $17-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

TheatreFirst “Future Me” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through May 3. Tickets are $23-$28. 436-5085. www.theatrefirst.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Diversity in Play” Paintings by Rita Sklar. Reception at 3 p.m. at Cafe Diem, 2224 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. www.ritasklar.com 

FILM 

“The Archeology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi” about Chilean exiled musician Quique Cruz at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine & Lebanon” with readings by Elmaz Abinader, Barbara Berman, Alexis De Veaux, Kathy Engel, Sam Hamod, Jack Hirschman, James Scully, and Deema Shehabi. Recption at 5:30 p.m., readings at 7:30 p.m. at St. John's Church, 2727 College Ave. RSVP to 548-0542.  

Amy Arbus “The Fourth Wall” A multi-media presentation on the stories behind her most iconic images at 6:30 p.m. at Sibley Auditorium, UC Campus. For ticket information see www.fotovision.org/pages/home.php 

Amanda Nadelberg and John Sakkis read their poems for National Poetry month at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Ernest Bloch Lecture with Steve Mackey on “The 21st Century and the Composer/Performer” at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Jannell Moon and Jeanne Lupton, read their poetry, followed by open mic at 7 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. www.expressionsgallery.org 

Don Lee reads from his comic satire, “Wrack and Ruin” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Will Allen describes “War on Bugs” on the chemical industry’s deep roots in agriculture, at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Bruce Anderson reads from his new book, “The Mendocino Papers” at 7 p.m. at Book Zoo, 6395 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 654-2665. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Friday Noon Concert, with University Baroque Ensemble at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

April Paik, Melissa Lin, violins, Garrett McLean, viola and Ting Chin, cello, at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery 2911 Claremont Ave. Tickets are $10. 848-1228. giorgigallery.org 

Spotlight on Local Composers New Works by John Blakelock at 8 p.m. at The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $10-$15. 845-1350  

UC Berkeley’s The Movement Spring Showcase, Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $9 at the door.  

Berkeley Dance Project 2008 Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m., through April 27 at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus. Tickets are $8-$14. 642-8827. theater.berkeley.edu 

Los Boleros in a Havana Dance Party, at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

The Back Porch Pickers at 7:30 p.m. at Arlington Community Church, 52 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Tickets are $12-$15, children under 16 $5.  

Rebecca Coupe-Franks Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Youssoupha Sidibe at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$14. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Acoustic Son at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

California Guitar Trio at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Andrew Sammons Solo Guitar, jazz, swing, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Extreme Noise Terror, Stormcrow, Strong Intention at 7:30 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Pills and Jackets at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Devin the Dude, hip hop, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $15-$18. 548-1159.  

Terrence Brewer Quartet with Lorca Hart at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Billy Cobham & Friends at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $16-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, APRIL 19 

CHILDREN 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Betsy Stern, songs in Spanish, French and English, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Active Arts Theatre, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $14-$18. www.activeartstheatre.org 

THEATER 

San Leandro Players “Redwood Curtain” Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at San Leandro Museum Auditorium, Casa Peralta, 320 W. Estudillo Ave., through May 4. Tickets are $10-$15. 895-2573. www.sanleandroplayers.org 

Best of the Bay Comedy Series with Derrick Ellis, Marc Howard, John Alston, B.T. Kingsley and others at 10 p.m. at Black Repertory Theater, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $20. 652-2120.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Photographs of the West” by J. Williams, jewelry and pottery. Opening reception at 2 p.m. at Maison d’ Art Gallery, 2729 San Pablo Ave. 207-9509.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

West Coast Live with authors Patrick McGrath, Melanie Abrams, Nathanial Rich and Tin Cup Seranade at 10 a.m. at Freight & Salvage Coffee House, 1111 Addison St. Tickets are $13-$18. 415-664-9500. www.ticketweb.com 

Samantha Le reads from her novel “Little Sister Left Behind” at 4 p.m. at Eastwind Book of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. www.ewbb.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Earth Day Cultural Performances with Marcia Flores Cantillana, Shawl-Anderson Youth Ensemble, Antoine Hunter Urban Jazz Dance Company and others, from noon to 5 p.m. at Civic Center Park.  

The American Recorder Orchestra of the West “Fancy Free” a concert of American music at 8 p.m. pre-concert reception at 7 p.m. at All Souls Episcopal Church, 2220 Cedar St. Donation $10, $5 for students and children under 12. www.arrowmusic.org 

American Bach Soloists “1685 and the Art of Ian Howell” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Pre-concert lecture at 7 p.m., Tickets are $16-$42. 415-621-7900. www.americanbach.org 

African Music and Dance Ensemble, directed by C.K. Ladzekpo at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

San Francisco Renaissance Voices at 4 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $12-$15. 415-456-1102 www.sfrv.org 

Journey Into Dance at 8 p.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way, at 6th. 486-8700; www.rudramandir.com 

Vladimir Vukanovich, Peruvian guitarist, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Faye Carol at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tom Rigney & Flambeau at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun/Zydeco dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Ben Adams/Terrence Brewer Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

The Brothers Goldman, funk, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Grupo Falso Baiano, Brazilian Choro, at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Sweet Crude Bill & The Lighthouse Nautical Society at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Consider the Source, ethno-fusion, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Mike Park, Captured by Robots in a Memorial Benefit for Lynette Knackstedt at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, APRIL 20 

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 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Matt Hart, Darcie Denningan and Joseph Massey read their poems for National Poetry month at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Alonzo Addison describes in planet’s most extraordinary and endangered palces in “Disappearing World” at 4 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Patrick McGrath reads from “Trauma” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Animal Crackers! Funny Songs & Delicious Desserts, music by Gershwin, Whitacre, PDQ Bach at 1 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $15-$20; no one turned away for lack of funds. 525-0302. 

California Chamber Players in a concert of string quartets at 3 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets at the door $18-$22. 415-753-2792. www.chambermusicsundaes.org  

University of California Alumni Chorus, University Men's and Women's Chorales, and Francisco Unitarian Universalist Church Choir perform Brahms’ German Requiem with Jeffrey Fields, baritone, and Nancy Cooke Munn, soprano, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, U.C. Campus Tickets are $6-$15. 643-9645. 

Taylor Eigsti, “Solo/Duo/Trio” with bassist John Schifflet and drummer Jason Lewis at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Oakland. Tickets are $25-$50 for concert and reception. Fundraiser for the Jazzschool. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.inhousetickets.com  

Dalby-Rabin Duo on Sunday, April 20, 4:00 p.m. Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. $12 for adults and free for children 18 and under. www.crowden.org 

Sound Poems Poetry and percussion by Kirk Lumpkin, Paul Mills, guitar, Mark Wieder, double bass, at 3 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Garrett McLean, violin, Marvin Sanders, flute, perform solo works by J. S. Bach at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $10. 644-6893. berkeleyartcenter.org 

Don Neely’s Royal Society Jazz Orchestra at 5 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $17-$20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Grupo Falso Baiano with guest Carlos Oliveira at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Athena Tergis & John Doyle at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Have Heart, Blacklisted, Killing the Dream at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

MONDAY, APRIL 21 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Green Ahead of His Time?” Paintings by Alex Maldonado at The Ames Gallery, 2661 Cedar St. Hours are Mon.-Fri. 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. 845-4949. www.amesgallery.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Subterranean Shakespeare “Shakespeare Intensive” Staged reading of “Much Ado About Nothing” at 7:30 p.m. at The Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, Fireside Room, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Tickets are $5. 276-3871. 

Steve Lopez talks about “The Soloist:A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with MK Chavez at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Chabot College Jazz Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$15. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Here is the end of meaning; here is loss beyond comprehension.” A former queen—only the day before, queen of a great city—finds herself and her entourage of young women captives after their home has been overwhelmed by stealth, burned and demolished. Before they are taken away to a new life as slaves, as chattel in a foreign land, there are confrontations with other women that would seem to define, or refine, the terms of their grievous situation.  

Or are they only further twists and turns to a widening vortex of hopelessness that swallows up any personal understanding or expression? 

Aurora Theatre Co. is staging Ellen McLaughlin’s adaptation of Euripides’ tragedy, The Trojan Women, directed by Barbara Oliver, company cofounder, who also directed McLaughlin’s version of Aeschyus’ The Persians for Aurora a few years back.  

The cast of a dozen, who play the royal captives, a great beauty seemingly set free, a soldier and a god, are gathered on John Iacovelli’s set, strangely reminiscent of the Vaillancourt Fountain on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, a sprawling urban wreakage of chutes or passages that echo the outcries around them. 

Foremost among the forlorn bunch waiting to go into exile is Hecuba, played by Carla Spindt, one of the Bay Area’s finest actors, at her best in the head-on scenes with a daughter and two daughters-in-law: mad prophetess Cassandra (Sarah Nealis); brave Andromache (Emilie Talbot), Hector’s widow and mother of an infant prince; and the cause of the war, Helen (Nora el Samahy) in furs and designer sunglasses, ready to leave with her Greek husband for home after 10 years in Troy. 

The scenes revolve in mood and (not just speaking musically) attack. Cassandra is hysterically exultant, yet it is only when she approaches the others, telling them their fates in a reasonable tone, that they draw back. She calls the Trojan captives and dead happier than the Greeks, who will return home after a decade fighting as strangers to their dearest.  

In a hot debate that ends with her hazing, Helen claims she is as much at the mercy of the men who have claimed her as the new captives now are. Adventuress or canny survivor? “No scream of pain ever moved you.” Hecuba scoffs at her claims and taunts that her abandoned Greek husband will now dispose of her. “You think he will kill me? After ten years of fighting for me?” Helen shoots back. 

Andromache, the admired widow, expresses her guilt and her anger over the lost hero, her husband: “I envy him. The dead ask too much of us.” She will be the first to walk to the Greek ships, after her child is taken from her by a sympathetic but implacable Greek soldier (Matthew Purdon), tough and nice cop in one. 

“I am ... the mother of all confused and lost. It will be up to me to make order of this chaos.” Hecuba’s lines prove true of her role in Euripides’ play as well.  

Called “the most tragic of the poets” by Aristotle, Euripides ransacked the still new form of tragedy to find resonances, dissonances, contradictions and parodies—even burlesques—that would go beyond metaphor, beyond the symbolism of mythic figures to touch the deepest ambiguities of the human condition. 

The Aurora program refers to his psychological dramaturgy—the cliche since post-Romantic “well-wrought” plays became the stock-in-trade for a century of theater and film aimed at the middle class. In France, birthplace of that form, Parnassian poet Lecomte De Lisle translated Euripides in clear, resonant versions that have no parallel in English. 

As with the grand lines of Aeschylus’ Persians, Ellen McLaughlin at many points fulfills what poets like Witter Bynner (who translated Euripides at Isadora Duncan’s behest) have striven for: to “make it new,” in the words of Ezra Pound, who tried his hand at Sophocles, while his old friend H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) rendered one play and many choruses of Euripides, himself a poet of deliberate anachronisms. 

Side by side with fresh, perceptive lines that open up what the tragedian saw to us, 2,500 years later, there are the many famous rhetorical lines, those that (ironically) helped bring us more of Euripides, whole plays and fragments, than of both Aescylus and Sophocles, preserved for study by students of rhetoric, lawyers and other public speakers.  

The translator, director and actors all seem tentative at best with these passages. The best moments are in Helen’s argument with Hecuba, Andromache’s lament, the Greek soldier’s exhortations—all pretty straightforward. Like a baroque or modern dramatist, though, Euripides found a way outside of dialogue with these ambiguous statements, big (and questionable) truisms. Nobody seems to know, dramaturgically, what to do with them. 

In close dialogue, argument or some of the choral passages (choreographed by MaryBeth Cavanaugh), the Aurora production illuminates the awesome tragedy of the defeated for another audience of “the victors,” as it was in Euripides’ time. The other, more radical theatricalities of the tragedian get muffled or lost.  

Introducing the play as Poseidon, walking the ruined streets of “the only city I loved” and urging the captive women to sleep happily, is another fine actor, Julian Lopez-Morillas, though awkwardly costumed on yachting whites and braid. 

“I dreamed of a city ... my home,” intones Hecuba. “To the ships. It’s over!” barks the soldier with the sound of what’s left of Troy tumbling down.  

There’s really no conclusion, just departure from the scene. As at the end of other tragedies by this contradictory poet, as that other, modern poet and prophet of a new theater, Artaud, put it when claiming Euripides as predecessor: “We just don’t know where we are.” 

TROJAN WOMEN 

Through May 11 at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org.

Who was it who said that anyone who isn’t outraged just hasn’t been paying attention? 

A week or so ago I got mail from Berkeley naturalist/writer Phila Rogers announcing the formation of a new group called Save Strawberry Canyon. It came as something of a surprise, since I hadn’t been aware that the canyon needed saving. Boy, does it ever. 

Rogers explained in a later conversation that the impetus for Save Strawberry Canyon was UC’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in general and two new ventures in particular: the Computational Research and Theory Facility (CRT) and the Helios Energy Research Facility. Both have received little news coverage, even in the Planet. 

Both new buildings would have enormous visual and environmental impacts. The CRT would be a high-rise structure 

sited in Blackberry Canyon, just inside the Lab’s main gate. (The Lab is already building a guest house there, without an EIR.) It has been described as the engine for future lab expansion. 

Helios is in some ways even more problematic. The new building, funded in part by BP (ex British Petroleum), would be plunked down in the heart of Strawberry Canyon, across the road from the UC Botanical Garden. Its construction would require removing 18 redwoods from the Mather Grove. 

If you want an extra level of irony, the Helios Project would be dedicated to research on renewable transportation fuel. The building would, of course, be “a model of ‘green’ construction.” 

Rogers said her group coalesced out of an event last summer, organized by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, that explored Strawberry Canyon as a cultural landscape, with walking tours led by Gray Brechin and others. Rogers and others followed up by taking Robin Freeman’s Merritt College class on the creeks of the East Bay. Save Strawberry Canyon’s leadership includes 

Lesley Emmington and Janice Thomas, both associated with BAHA; former Berkeley mayor Shirley Dean; and the legendary Sylvia McLaughlin, one of the founders of Save the Bay. 

This was shortly after the UC Regents approved the LRDP (sorry, this is going to be thick with acronyms.) Last fall, Emmington, Thomas, and other plaintiffs filed suit, claiming that the EIR for the plan was deficient in addressing air and water quality, endangered-species issues, greenhouse gas emissions, and possible alternative sites, among others. They get their day in court on May 21. 

Meanwhile, UC issued draft EIRs on CRT and Helios late last year, with comment periods during the winter holidays. Neither report has been finalized yet. The regents are scheduled to vote on both at their May 16-17 meeting at UCLA. 

That’s the bare-bones version. It all comes down to conflicting visions for the Berkeley Hills: are we going to have an even denser techno-scientific complex, or can we preserve what’s left of the hills’ open space for its scenic, cultural, and wildlife values? 

Strawberry Canyon was recognized as something special as far back as 1865, when landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted described it as “a unique and most valuable appendage to the general local attractions of the neighborhood.” When the East Bay Regional Park District was carved out of surplus EBMUD lands in 1934, the canyon, although university-owned, was considered an integral part of the matrix of parklands. 

Despite the wave of construction that began with the Radiation Laboratory, the university continued to make gestures toward preservation. In 1968, prodded by UC professor Robert L. Stebbins, a renowned authority on reptiles and amphibians, UC designated portions of the Canyon as Ecological Study Areas. 

A 1976 report by Garrett Eckbo & Associates seconded Olmsted: “The varied and rugged topography of Strawberry Canyon … has favored the establishment of a rich diversity of plant and animal life, such that Strawberry Canyon today is one of the finest natural areas of comparable size in the Bay Area.” 

The Helios Building would abut one of the Ecological Study Areas, and preempt undeveloped land that has been considered for ESA status. And both projects-and whatever else the Lab has in mind, with its wooly visions of scientific “hill towns”-would eat up huge swathes of habitat that sustain the diversity that so impressed Eckbo.  

Strawberry Canyon is not Terra Nullius. It’s home to birds of prey, migratory songbirds, bats, snakes, and tiny blind invertebrates that hide under rocks. Some of these species have protected state or federal status; others should. For all of them, and for anyone who cares about biodiversity, UC’s plans would mean an irreparable loss. 

I’ll have a lot more to say about the endangered-species issues in future columns.  

For now, if you want more information, write Save Strawberry Canyon at PO Box 1234, Berkeley 94701. I understand a web site is in the works. Or email Phila Rogers: philajane6@yahoo.com. The EIRs for the LRDP, CRT, and Helios are on the lab’s site: www. lbl.gov/Community. And they make very interesting reading. 

TUESDAY, APRIL 15 

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 Crockett Hills Regional 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. 

Birds and Butterflies: Easy Garden enchantment with California Native Plants. An Audubon Nature Studies class begins at 7 p.m. at Albany Adult School. Cost is $35. For details, call 559-6580 or see www.albany.k12.ca.us/adult/birding.html 

Amy Goodman and David Goodman: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times and 6:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Tickets are $12. 444-8511. brownpapertickets.com/event/31304  

Bayview Library Grand Re-opening Party from 4 to 7 p.m. at Bayview Library, 5100 Hartnett Ave., near Carlson and Bayview, Richmond. 620-6566, www.richmondlibrary.org. 

“Texts We Wish Were Not In the Bible” with Mary A. Tolbert, Professor of Biblical Studies, at 11:10 a.m. at Pacific School of Religion Chapel, 1798 Scenic Ave. 

Climbing Mt. Shasta Tips for the novice and expert at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Teen Playreaders meets to read and discuss plays at 4:30 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

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 

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Sing-A-Long Group from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave., Albany. 524-9122. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16 

City of Oakland 14th EarthEXPO with products and tips to reduce energy use, be a greener consumer, information on bay-friendly gardening, and more, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza, 14th and Broadway. www.oaklandearthexpo.org 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will learn about plants from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m.. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

“Bush’s Brain” A documentary about Karl Rove, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy” with author Michael Klare, introductory remarks by Daniel Ellsberg, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way at Durant. Donation $10-$20, no one turned away for lack of funds. ProgressivePersp@aol.com 

“In Sickness and In Wealth” Film and discussion on how economic status, race and zip code are powerful predictors of health status and life expectancy, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. 981-5356. 

Green Chamber of Commerce “Green Industry Trends” at 5:30 p..m. at StopWaste.org, 1537 Webster St., Oakland. Cost is $20-$30, includes program and tour of LEED Platinum building. greenchamberof commerce.net 

Watch the Clinton Obama Deabte at 8 p.m. at Park Avenue Bar & Grill, across the street from Piedmont Theater, Piedmont. 

Simplicity Forum “Decluttering - physical, mental and metaphysical” at 6:30 p.m. at Claremont Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave. 

Anime in the Afternoon at Bayview Library Watch a classic Japanese animation film featuring a mysterious forest spirit who befriends two young girls at 3 p.m. at Bayview Library, 5100 Hartnett Ave., near Carlson and Bayview, Richmond. Appropriate for all ages. 620-6566. www.richmondlibrary.org. 

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 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

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, APRIL 17 

Berkeley High School Red & Golden Girls Reunion Luncheon at 11 a.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $35, reservations required. 582-2478. 

Chiapas Support Committee Report and slide show on the International Zapatista Women’s Meeting at 7:30 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. 654-9587. 

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. at the LeConte School, Russell St. entrance. If you have agenda items please forward them to karlreeh@aol.com 

“Bird Song and Coffee: A Wake-up Call” A documentary film followed by discussion on the relationship between coffee and the environment at &7:30 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Sponsored by the Golden Gate Audubon Society. 843-2222. www.goldengateaudubon.org 

Stories about Travels to Australia with Stuart Pawsey at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library North Branch, 1170 The Alameda. 981-6250. 

Brain Games at Bayview Library Exercise your brain and have fun with your neighbors at this free, casual event at 1 p.m. at 5100 Hartnett Ave., near Carlson and Bayview, Richmond. 620-6566. www.richmondlibrary.org 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. $5. 643-2755. botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

FRIDAY, APRIL 18 

Oakland Street Retreat: Bearing Witness to Homelessness Participants will live on the streets without money, bedding, change of clothing, books or watches. Participants will eat in soup kitchens and beg for money or food at times when soup kitchens are closed. Retreat lasts from Fri.-Sun. Cost is $225 to benefit service providers of the Homeless & the New Dharma Scholarship Fund. Participants urged to beg to raise the funds. For information and to register call 549 3733 ext 2. www.newdharma.com 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Dr. Harold Palmer on “Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Comparison of Democrat vs Republican Positions” 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 524-7468.  

Expo 50+ for Boomers and Beyond The public is invited to attend Expo 50+, featuring class exhibits and demonstrations, live entertainment, health screenings, vendors, musicians, a raffle and complimentary refreshments, hosted by Pleasant Valley Adult School. The Expo will be held Friday, April 18, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 4700 Lincoln Ave, in Oakland. Admission is free. For information call (510) 879-4090. 

Iraq Moratorium Day and Vigil to Protest the War from 2 to 4 p.m. at the corners of Unvirsity and Acton. 548-9696. 

Friday Films for Teens at 3:30 pm. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. For details call 981-6121. 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 19 

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour “Berkeley and the Wars: A Look Back at Local Military Sites” from 10 a.m. to noon. Cost is $8-$10. For reservations call 848-0181. 

Berkeley Earth Day 2008 with demonstrations of biodiesel and electric cars, solar power, farmers’ market, food and craft booths, from noon to 5 p.m. Civic Center Park, MLK Jr. Blvd & Allston Way. 

“Clean It, Green It, Mean It!” Help out at Peralta Hacienda HIstorical Park to remove graffiti, pick up litter, clear the creek of invasive plants, and help plant some more native species, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. 532-9142. 

Oakland Earth Day 2008 Join your neighbors and friends on Earth Da y to make a difference in our Oakland communities. Participants will receive a free event T-shirt. For featured locations and a complete list of citywide project sites please visit www.oaklandearthday.com  

Earth Day Shoreline Clean-up from 9 a.m. to noon at Albany Waterfront Trail Head, end of Buchanan St. Wear sturdy shoes, a hat and sunscreen, and bring your own water bottle and gloves if you have them. Snacks provided. Children must be accompanied by an adult.665-3508. staff@thewatershedproject.org 

Hi-Tec Recycling Electronics recycling from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 631 So 31st St., Richmond. 488-4564. 

Wildflower Walk Learn to identify wildflowers with linda Yemoto, naturalist, from 2 to 4 p.m. on the Big Spings Canyon Trail. Meet at the Big Springs Picnic Area. 525-2233. 

California Native Plant Sale with California shrubs, trees, perennials, and many plants that are not available in a nursery, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at The Botanic Garden, Tilden Park, Wildcat Canyon Rd., at South Park Dr. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society 44th Annual Iris Show and Potted Iris Sale Sat. from 1 to 5 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. http://bayareairis.org.  

STAND Oakland Candidates Forum / Earthday Event from 1 to 3 p.m. at Faith Presbyterian Church, 430 49th St. and Webster, Oakland, just off Telegraph. Sponsored by Standing Together for Accountable Neighborhood Development. www.standoakland.org 

California Wildflower Show Sat. and Sun. at the Oakland Museum of CA, 1000 Oak St., at 10th St., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. 

“Lead-Safe Painting & Remodeling” Learn to detect and remedy lead hazards in the home to prevent lead poisoning, from 10 a.m. to noon at Berkeley Public Library, South Branch, 1901 Russell St., at MLK. Registration required. 567-8280. www.aclppp.org/homeown.htm 

Green Building Open House from noon to 5 p.m. at 2619 San Pablo Ave. www.ecohomeimprovment.com  

Brooks Island Trip Paddle across the Richmond Harbor Channel to Brooks Island to explore the rocky island, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. For experience boaters who can provide their own canoe, kayak and safety gear. For ages 14 and up. Parent participation required. Cost is $20-$22. To register call 1-888-EB-PARKS. 

United-Front Protest to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal at 2:30 p.m. at 14th St. and Broadway, Oakland. Called by Partisan Defense Committee and Labor Black League for Social Defense. 839-0852. 

The War Comes Home: Campus Antiwar Network Western Regional Conference, from 1 to 6 p.m. at 200 Wheeler Hall, UC Campus. Cost is $5. For information contact katrina.yeaw@gmail.com (415) 335-0953. 

California Writers Club “Welcome to SoMa” with author Kemble Scott at 10 a.m. at Barnes and Noble Event Loft, Jack London Square, Oakland. 272-0120. 

“Spring/Summer Veggies and the Edible Landscape” with Stephanie Bittner at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave., off Seventh St. 644-2351. 

Storytelling Workshop with Liz Mangual from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Teen Knitting Circle at 3 p.m. in the 4th Flr Story Room of the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Bring your own needles in size 8. 981-6107. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

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, APRIL 20 

East Bay Labyrinth Project Community Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby and Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 526-7377. info@eastbaylabyrinthproject.org 

Mad Science for the Whole Family A introduction to chemistry from 10:30 a.m. to noon at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. For ages 7 and up. Cost is $4, registration required. 1-888-EB-PARKS.  

East Bay Crop Walk A fundraiser for the Alamenda County Comunity Food Bank around Lake Merritt, Oakland. Registration at 1:30 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave. Crop Walk begins at 2 p.m. For information call 635-3665, ext. 328. 

The Sydney B. Mitchell Iris Society 44th Annual Iris Show and Potted Iris Sale from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lakeside Park Garden Center, 666 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. http://bayareairis.org.  

Spring Family Hike Join an easy walk around Jewel Lake from 1:30 to 3 p.m. with Meg Platt, naturalist. 525-2233. 

Waddle and Swaddle East Bay Baby Fair from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kehilla Community Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave., Piedmont. Free. 540-7210. www.eastbaybabyfair.com  

Pachamama Alliance “Awakening the Dreamer Symposium” from 1 to 4:30 p.m. at New Spirit Community Church at Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. pachamama.org 

East Bay Atheists Berkeley Meets to discuss what to do when you find yourself ina situation where you are expected to join a religious ritual, at 1:30 p.m., 3rd flr. meeting room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 222-7580. eastbayatheists.org 

SF AIDS Benefit Brunch at 10:30 a.m at T-Rex Barbeque, 1300 Tenth St. at Gilman. 

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 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. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Jack Petranker on “Experiments in Awareness: Making Friends with Experience” 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, APRIL 21 

“Environmental Impact: Evolution of the Berkeley Landscape” with Chuck Wollenberg and Dave Weinstein at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, central meeting room, 2090 Kittredge.  

Berkeley Green Mondays Berkeley & Military Recruiting: What's All the Fuss? with Zanne Joi and Rae Abileah at 8 p.m. at Anna's Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. www.berkeleygreens.org 

“The Two Faces of Breast Cancer with Genes and the Microenvironment” with Joe Gray, LBNL Life Science Director, Mina Bissel, LBNL Distiguished Scientist, Mary Helen Barcellos-Hoff, LBNL Senior Scientist, at Berkeley Lab Friends of Science, at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Repertory Theater, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. www.lbl.gov/friendsofscience  

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group, for people 60 years and over, meets at 9:45 a.m. at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave, Albany. Cost is $3.  

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 

Free Boatbuilding Classes for Youth Mon.-Wed. from 3 to 7 p.m. at Berkeley Boathouse, 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Classes cover woodworking, boatbuilding, and boat repair. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

ONGOING 

E-Waste Recycling St. Vincent de Paul of Alameda County accepts electronic waste including computers, dvd players, cell phones, fax machines and many other ewaste products for disposal free of charge at many of its locations throughout Alameda County. Free bulk pick-up available. 638-7600.  

CITY MEETINGS 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., April 16, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6601. 

Commission on Aging meets Wed., April 16, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5344. 

Fair Campaign Practices Commission meets Thurs., April 17, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6950.  

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., April 17, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

Are you wanting to do more this year to live “green”? Looking for simple yet meaningful ways to be part of the solution?  

Here are suggestions for doing your part to heal the environment while directly supporting your personal well being: 

1. First and foremost, make the commitment to eat organically.  

Food grown without pesticides has been shown to contain significantly higher levels of naturally occurring, essential nutrients. Additionally, soil unadulterated by chemical contaminants sequesters (absorbs) much higher amounts of carbon, thus reducing CO2 in the atmosphere.  

Finally, the manufacture and usage of chemical pesticides in and of itself adds to global warming.  

In fact, according to highly respected environmental activist, ecologist and physicist Vandana Shiva, chemical agriculture altogether accounts for 40 percent of global warming gasses. 

2. Switch to non-toxic cleaning products.  

This will help you eliminate chemical residues, and help keep your indoor air free of toxic cleaning fumes. 

3. Take footwear off at the front door.  

This keep dirt, pesticides, oil and other chemicals from being tracked into living spaces. 

4. Drive less, walk and/or bicycle more.  

Try to exercise outdoors in nature more often. 

5. Conserve energy by turning off lights when no one is in the room.  

And, put appliances and electronic equipment on power strips, then switch off the power when not in use. Appliances, televisions, computers, etc., individually turned to “off” are still drawing power. 

6. Take an eco- adventure vacation. 

Or stay in hotels where greening measures have been implemented. 

7. Switch to natural cosmetics, soaps and shampoos.  

As our largest organ, our skin absorbs what it contacts. Chemicals that we’d never think to eat are actually taken in through the products we put on our skin. 

8. Choose to purchase organic clothing.  

Conventional cotton production typically entails the highest amount of chemicals per acre of any crop and accounts for 16 percent of the world’s pesticide use. The processing of conventional cotton also significantly contributes to air and water pollution. It is true that at the moment, organic cotton usually does cost more out of pocket. Why not start with smaller items, such as socks and underwear? There are now lusciously soft organic cotton sheets, blankets and towels. Prices are already begun to go down, and the more we make these healthy choices the more likely that trend will continue. 

9.Choose post-consumer recycled paper products.  

Most often “recycled” paper is made of the scraps from lumber milling, not the stuff we so conscienciously putout on the curb. Paper labeled “post-consumer” is just that. 

10. Make conscious purchases all around.  

Is this item local, or is there a local equivalent available? Ask yourself if this is something you truly need. 

11.Plant a tree—on your own or through an organization such as Trees For The Future(.org). 

Approximately one ton of carbon is absorbed by each tree over it’s lifetime. (We lost millions of trees during Katrina.). 

12. And of course, make a pledge to utilize the three Rs.  

Reduce, reuse and recycle, in that order, whenever possible! 

This is a beginning list. Start with one or go for all. Once you start thinking, you’ll probably come up with many more ideas. For an added bonus, how about joining with a friend, family member or neighbor to become green resolution buddies? Get support, spread the action and spread the word!  

Arms—in Berkeley?  

Although the establishment of a Marine recruiting station downtown has brought attention—and controversy—to Berkeley in recent months, most locals are probably not aware that central Berkeley has a number of buildings and sites once used for military purposes, some dating back to the early 20th century.  

The sites and history of Berkeley’s military associations and veterans are the starting focus of the spring season of Berkeley Historical Society walking tours, which begin this Saturday. 

Later tours visit historic neighborhoods, take in some of Berkeley’s transportation history, and provide an insider’s peek at new libraries on the UC Berkeley campus. 

The Saturday tours, which run from about 10 a.m. to noon, extend through June and cost $10 each for those who aren’t BHS members. As of this writing, there were still spaces available on all of the tours. 

This Saturday, April 19, the first walk is co-led by the author, along with BHS President John Aronovici, and titled “Berkeley and the Wars: A look Back at Local Military Sites.”  

Concentrating on the downtown and the western side of the UC campus, we’ll see Berkeley’s old National Guard Armory, several war memorials, the former military training headquarters on the UC campus, and even the location of a local artillery park. 

The tour finishes with a viewing of local memorabilia of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), recently curated by the BHS. Back in 1933 and 1939 Berkeley hosted major GAR gatherings. 

The following Saturday, April 26, BHS Board member Dale Smith leads a walk through the Elmwood neighborhood which, just a little more than a century ago, was still a productive agricultural district.  

The walk, entitled “I Ain’t Gonna Work on Kelsey’s Farm No More,” recalls John Kelsey, who grew not only fruit crops but many of the sapling street trees for Berkeley—including the elms of the future “Elmwood”—on his ranch northeast of College and Ashby.  

It traces the pattern of residential development, where scattered homes of early settlers of the district still stand among handsome rows of “streetcar suburb” houses from the beginning of the 20th century.  

Attention will be called to homes designed by Leola Hall, one of Berkeley’s early women architects, as well as the history of the Kelsey Street Press, a poetry publisher founded by a group of local women. 

The tour also includes the Elmwood commercial district—packed today with fine restaurants, gelato fanciers, and a neighborhood-run movie theater—which has made its own history through struggles to preserve neighborhood businesses, such as Ozzie’s Soda Fountain, and to regulate commercial rents. 

If you’re also planning to go on the May 4 Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association house tour of the adjacent Benvenue/Hillegass neighborhood, this Elmwood walk is a good prelude and introduction to the environs. 

Saturday, May 10, another venerable Berkeley residential district—Northbrae—is explored, with a focus on the trolley system that served the neighborhood. The walk, led by Phil Gale, will recall how the streets came to be named, the grandeur that ambitious developers proposed for the neighborhood—including, at one time, plans for the State Capitol—and what actually came to be built. (The tour is not wheelchair accessible.) 

Gale, a Berkeley treasure (as well as BHS treasurer) whose local roots go back to the 19th century, is an expert on the early transportation systems of the East Bay. 

Then it’s off into the wilds—sort of—on Saturday, May 17, when Ron Sipherd leads visitors up Panoramic Hill, just southeast of the UC campus. Sipherd will focus on the “contrasting qualities of proximity to the university and steep, difficult terrain” that make Panoramic Hill a unique piece of Berkeley’s physical and cultural landscape.  

A remarkable array of homes—from early brown shingles, to the only Frank Lloyd Wright design built in Berkeley—are integrated with winding streets, staircases, and the natural landscape of Strawberry Canyon to the north and Hamilton Gulch to the south. 

See Sipherd’s website at www.well.com/~ronks/pix/panowalk/index.html for a preview of some of the sights on this walk. (This tour involves steep grades and stairs and is not handicapped accessible.) 

Eleven-year veteran tour leader and long-time Berkeley resident Paul Grunland is a familiar leader of BHS tours of the northeast Berkeley hill neighborhoods which he probably knows better than anyone else, but this season he comes down to the flatlands to guide a walk of the McGee Tract neighborhood west of Downtown. 

This pleasant but often overlooked district of older Berkeley homes and wide, leafy, streets includes Berkeley’s first Roman Catholic parish church, St. Joseph the Worker, and was once the site of the working farm of James McGee, who was also elected one of Berkeley’s first town trustees in the 1870s.  

Grunland will draw on the recent research of the McGee-Spaulding-Hardy Historic Interest Group, a dedicated set of volunteers who meet weekly to research and discuss their neighborhood history.  

Their own introduction to the neighborhood is posted at www.donaspring.com/HistoryDistrict4.htm 

Subscribers to at least three of the Spring walks are also eligible for a free bonus tour on June 14. This season, the bonus tour will visit the two newest libraries on the UC campus. 

The Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library, near Wurster Hall, is sheathed in green slate “shingles” and houses nearly a quarter of a million books, records, manuscripts, and other rare materials. The C.V. Starr East Asian Library—just opened last month—overlooks Memorial Glade and Doe Library. Library staff will guide the tours. 

For last-minute reservations, call the Berkeley Historical Society at 848-0181 on the Thursday or Friday afternoon (1-4 p.m.) before the tour to see if space is available and to get your name on the list. 

For reservations further in advance, mail a check payable to Berkeley Historical Society to P.O. Box 1190, Berkeley, California, 94701. 

When making a reservation, please provide your telephone number and e-mail address (if you have one) so you can be contacted with information about where to meet for a tour, and last-minute updates. 

Membership—which costs $20 individual, $25 family—entitles the ticket purchaser to an $8 price for individual tours, or a “season ticket special” of all six tours for $30. Only members are eligible for the June 14 Bonus Tour. 

FRIDAY, APRIL 11 

CHILDREN 

Storytelling from Japan Traditional Japanese folktales, songs and games at 7 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Workshop follows to learn how to make toys from recycled materials. 525-2233. 

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 

Aurora Theatre “The Trojan Women” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through May 11. Tickets are $40-$42. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

California Conservatory Theatre “The Turn of the Screw” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at 999 East 14th St., San Leandro City Hall Complex, near BART, through April 27. Tickets are $20-$22. 632-8850. 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Foxfire” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave. at Moeser, El Cerrito, through May 11. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Masquers Playhouse “Tartuffe” Fri.-Sat. at 8 p.m., some Sun. matinees at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Pt. Richmond, through April 26. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Shotgun Players “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” by George Bernard Shaw. Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m., through April 27, at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $17-$25. 841-6500.  

www.shotgunplayers.org 

Teen One Acts Festival with the winners of the Teen writing competition Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Rep School of Theater, 2017 Addison St. Tickets at the door ate $6-$12. 647-2917. 

TheatreFirst “Future Me” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $23-$28. 436-5085. www.theatrefirst.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Fiber 2008” Works by Ingrid Cole, Tom Chen, Donna Duguay, Karin Lusnak, and Alexandra von Burg. Reception at 6 p.m. at ACCI Gallery, 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Coffee House Press Night Readings by Joseph Lease and Martha Ronk at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Paul Belz and Norm Milstein will read their poetry at 7 pm on Friday, April 11th at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Avenue, a little north of Hearst, in Berkeley, as part of the Last Word Reading Series. There is also an open reading.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Pacific Boychoir “American Spirituals” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $15-$20, children under 10 free. 652-4722. 

California’s Música Mexicana with Dr. Loco’s Rockin’ Jalapeño Band and La Familia Peña-Govea at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

JJovino Santos Neto and Harvey Wainapel Brazilian music from yesterday, today and tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$15, children under 12 free. 228-3218. 

Ben Stolorow & His Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Jerry Kuderna in Recital Friday, April 11th at 8:00 pm Admission $15 ($10 for HSC members and Seniors) The Berkeley Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. 845-1350. 

Stompy Jones, East Coast Swing, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ron Thompson, blues, at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Ramana Viera Ensemble at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Karla Bonoff with Kenny Edwards at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $26.50-$27.50. 548-1761.  

www.freightandsalvage.org 

Charles Wheal & the Excellorators, blues, at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Resistant Culture, Black Fire, Disobediencia Civil at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Kevin Beadles Band at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Bird Head at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 12 

CHILDREN  

Celebration of Children’s Literature with Marissa Moss, Gennifer Choldenko, Thacher Hurd, Elisa Kleven, Joel ben Izzy, Gary Lapow, LeUyen Pham, and Sarah Klise at 11:30 a.m. at Tolman Hall, UC Campus. http://gse.berkeley. edu/admin/childlit.html  

East Bay Children’s Theater “The Emperor’s New Clothes” at 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Cost is $10. 655-7285.  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Jerry Kennedy, blues and soul music, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5 for adults, $4 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Active Arts Theatre, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $14-$18. www.activeartstheatre.org 

J. Otto Seibold on illustrating “Seamore, The Very Forgetful Porpoise” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

THEATER  

San Leandro Players “Redwood Curtain” Sat. at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at San Leandro Museum Auditorium, Casa Peralta, 320 W. Estudillo Ave., through May 4. Tickets are $10-$15. 895-2573. www.sanleandroplayers.org  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Pamplona Spain 1953” Historic color photographs by Andrew Stern on diplsy at Downtown Restaurant, 2102 Shattuck Ave. 649-3810. andresternphoto.com 

“Dancing for Joy” Group art show celebrating dance and movement. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. Gallery open Wed.-Sat., noon to 5 p.m., Sun. noon - 3 p.m. www.expressionsgallery.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Moazzam Sheikh reads from his new book “The Idol Lover” at 4 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350, www.asiabookcenter.com 

Small Press Distribution Open House from noon to 4 p.m., readings by Joanne Kyger, Marjories Welish, Taylor Brady and Rob Halpern at 2 p.m., at 1341 7th St. at Gilman. 524-1668. 

Book Party for “Love, Grandma” letters written mostly by women activists to their grandchildren, telling how they became activists, at 2 p.m. at Redwood Gardens, 295l Derby St. 549-2210. www.gawba.org 

West Coast Live with Germaine Greer, author of “Shakespeare’s Wife,” Sue Miller, author of “The Senator’s Wife,” and Mark Wilson, author of “Julia Morgan, Architect of Beauty” at 10 a.m. at Freight & Salvage Coffee House, 1111 Addison St. Tickets are $13-$18. 415-664-9500. www.ticketweb.com 

Robert Kourik explains “Roots Demystified: Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Oakland Youth Chorus “Music of Our World Concert” at 3 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St., Oakland. Suggested donation $5 per family. 893-6129. www.uuoakland.org 

Animal Crackers! Music by Gershwin, Whitacre, PDQ Bach at 7:30 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $15-$20, no one turned away for lack of funds. 525-0302. 

Oakland Ballet “The Secret Garden” at 2 and 8 p.m. at Oakland Paramount Theater 2025 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $15-$50. 465-6400. www.paramounttheatre.com.  

Kensington Symphony with Geoffrey Gallegos, conductor, Kelsey Walsh, piano, at 8 p.m. at Northminster Presbyterian Church, 545 Ashbury Ave., El Cerrito. Suggested donation $12-$15, children free. 528-2829. 

San Francisco Bay Area Chamber Choir “Utterly English” Choral music of Britten, Rutter Howells at 7 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Alameda, 2001 Santa Clara at Chestnut. Suggested donation $10-$15. 522-1477. 

Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, Dana and Durant. Tickets are $48. 642-9988. 

Kat Parra, jazz vocalist, at 1 p.m. at Downhome Music, 1809b Fourth St. 204-9595. 

Nosotras at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Macy Blackman & The Mighty Fines at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

“Rock the Planet” A Benefit for Greenaction with Nu Snowmen, Lebo, The Jolly Gibsons and David Gans at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo. Tickets are $20-$40. www.ashkenaz.com  

Geoff Muldaur at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Vocal Masters Series: Nancy King and Steve Christofferson at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Dave Rocha Jazz at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Roger Rocha & The Goldenhearts at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Blue Bone Express, New Orleans jazz, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Street Eaters, and showing of film “156 Rivington” at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Omar Sosa Afreecanos Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, APRIL 13 

EXHIBITIONS 

Darfur Humanitarian Aid “Tents of Hope” outdoor painting project for Darfur Humanitarian Aid from 1 to 5 p.m. at Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford St. 813-3777. 

“The Nature of LA” Paintings by Samantha Fields, Portia Hein, Stas Orlovski and Andre Yi at Traywick Contemporary, 895 Colusa Ave. through June 28. By appointment. 527-1224. 

FILM  

The Magnificent Orson Welles “It’s All True” at 2 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Victor Martinez and Enrique Chagoya in discussion at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum Galleries Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Rusty Morrison, Barbara Claire Freeman and Elizabeth Robinson read their poetry at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Jazz/Poetry with poet Michael McClure and saxophonist George Brooks at 2 p.m. on the 5th flr of Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

Kota Ezawa: The History of Photography Remix Artist lecture at 3:30 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak St. Cost is $5-$8. 655-7285.  

“Freedom Illuminated: The History of The Szyk Haggadah” with Rabbi Irvin Ungar at 2 p.m. at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. RSVP to 549-6950. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Community Women’s Orchestra, Dr. Kathleen McGuire, conductor, at 4 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave., Oakland. Suggested donation $10, children free. 463-0313. www.communitywomensorchestra.org 

Art Lande & Paul McCandless Duo at 7 p.m. at The Berkeley Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $10-$15. 

The Itchy Mountain Men “Kickgrass” at 4 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. 684-7563. 

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra celebrates the 175th birthday of Johannes Brahms at 3 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Free. 415-248-1640. www.sfchamberorchestra.org  

The Grassroots Composers and Performance Worksop A two-hour jazz lecture/performance event at 3 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$15, children under 12 free. 228-3218. 

Kate Royal, soprano, Roger Vignoles, piano, at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $42. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Anton Schwartz Quartet with Tim Bulkley at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The Angry Philosophers at  

9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Dave Ellis “A Tribute to Joe Henderson” at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Reilly & Maloney: Tribute to Tom Dundee at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MONDAY, APRIL 14 

CHILDREN 

Alex Ramon, illusionist, of Mickey's Magic Show at 11:30 a.m. at Bayview Library, 5100 Hartnett Ave. near Carlson and Bayview, Richmond, and at 2 p.m. at West Side Library, 135 Washington Avenue,in Point Richmond. 620-6566. www.richmondlibrary.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Cassandra Clare reads from “City of Ashes” the second book in The Mortal Instruments Trilogy at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Scoop Nisker on “Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again!” at Cody’s Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Poetry Express with Cynthia Ruth Lewis and “The Bard of San Francisco” at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley New Music Project performed by the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Kinsella Brothers at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Berkeley High School Ensembles at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$15. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, APRIL 15 

CHILDREN 

Walter the Giant Storyteller for ages 3 and up, at 6:30 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

FILM  

“Schindler’s Houses” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Amy Goodman introduces “Standing Up to the Madness at 6:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. at 25th, Oakland. Tickets are $12-$15. www.kpfa.org/events. 

Jack Hirschman, San Francisco Poet Laureate, reads at 7:30 p.m. at Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

LeRoy Thomas & the Zydeco Roadrunners at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $12. 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. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

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

Karen Blixt at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joshua Kryah and Alex Lemon read their poems for National Poetry Month at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Bob Barde discusses his new book “Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger Ships, Exclusion, and Angel Island” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

Priscilla Royal talks about her medieval mystery series at 2 p.m. at at West Side Library, 135 Washington Ave., Point Richmond. 620-6567. www.richmondlibrary.org. 

Cafe Poetry hosted by Paradise at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Laurel Anne Hill reads from her new crossover novel “Heroes Arise” at 7 p.m. at Laurel Bookstore, 4100 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. 531-2073. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Fever, swing music at noon at 555 12th St., Oakland. Part of Oakland City Center Spring Concerts.  

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Jared Redmond, piano, at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

UC Berkeley’s Cal RaijinTaiko, Taiko Drumming Concert, at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $5-$7 at the door.  

Mesut Ozgen at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Terrence Brewer Quartet with Lorca Hart at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

MIBB, University of Copenhagen Jazz Big Band in a benefit for Ashkenaz, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Swing dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Whiskey Brothers, old-time and bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Benny Verde 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.  

Keith McArthur Project, funk, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Billy Cobham & Friends at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $16-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, APRIL 17 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Here: Oakland Through the Arts” Works by Excel High School Students. Presentation by the artists at 7 p.m., performance at 5 p.m. at the Craft & Cultural Arts Gallery, State of CA Office Bldg., Atrium, 1515 Clay St., Oakland. 622-8190. 

Enrique Chagoya: Borderlandia Guided tour at 12:15 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

THEATER 

“Medea, A Tragedy by Euripides” Thurs.-Sat. at 7 p.m. at Oakland School for the Arts, 1800 San Pablo, Oakland, 1 block from 19th St BART. Tickets are $5-$10. 873 8800. www.oakarts.tix.com 

FILM 

Heinz Emigholz: Architecture as Autobiography “Sullivan’s Banks” at 7 p.m. and “Loos Ornamental” at 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Adam David Miller, reads from “Ticket to Exile” at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6107. 

June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Adam Mansbach reads from “The End of the Jews” at 7 p.m. at Cody's Books, 2201 Shattuck Ave. 559-9500. 

Doug Fine reads from “Farewell, My Subaru: An epic Adventure in Local Living” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

San Francisco Chamber Jazz Quartet, live recording session at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The California Honeydrops, New Orleans blues and roots, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Bryn Terfel, bass-baritone, at 7:30 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $35-$100. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Vladimir Tarasov, Mark Dresser & Larry Ochs: Thinking About Morton Feldman at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Houston, Jones & Jacques at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

The Sacred Profanities at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Dietsnaks, funk, nu-jazz, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277 

The Emperor’s New Clothes, a family show by that great musicals team Ahrens & Flaherty (Seussical, Ragtime), will be staged by Active Arts for Young Audiences, opening this weekend at the Julia Morgan Center on College Avenue. 

The old story’s presented with a twist: the emperor’s a 14-year-old boy (though played by a professional adult actor, part of Active Arts’ credo), Marcus the Third, who’s approaching his imperial inauguration nervously. A smart kid who likes to read, Marcus doesn’t think he has what it takes to be an emperor—not if an emperor’s a big, tough guy wielding a sword. 

“Marcus begins to think, perhaps it’s the clothes which make the emperor,” said Nina Meehan, executive director of Active Arts and co-producer of this show.  

Meehan described the musical, which she said was in a new version being premiered in California by Active Arts with the shows at the Julia Morgan, directed by Mike Kasin. With sophisticated music and humor to engage the older kids and the adults, Meehan said it welcomes younger children to the world of theater, with interactive moments (”the audience helps make a parade”), vibrantly colorful costumes and a medieval fairytale inspiration reminding audiences the story came from books—a pop-up storybook effect “that pops out to the audience.” 

Plus, Meehan said, “there’s a song every three minutes that tells the story, drives the plot” in a show that, with intermission, runs about an hour and 20 minutes. 

“My favorite moment in the play,” said Meehan, “is a really fun song, a duet between the emperor and the scullery maid. They’ve become friends, though they’re not supposed to, and realize they can play together, use their imaginations to create stories. So they play a guessing game. They come from different worlds, but find common ground.” 

Meehan continued: “What’s neat for me as a producer to see is the scullery maid being played by Jayne Deely, a recent Fordham graduate and newcomer to the Bay Area, while Emperor Marcus is played by Brendan Simon, who performed in our first show ever, at the Bay Area Discovery Museum in 2004, and has always done our choreography.” 

Meehan calls the cast of five “spectacular, all incredible vocalists” with each actor (except Simon) playing two roles. 

Active Arts is committed to producing shows based on children’s literature, “to enchant children and their families, encourage them to use their imaginations, and entertain not only the child, but the mother, aunt and older sister or brother sitting next to them,” Meehan said. “Hopefully, we’re educating the next generation of theatergoers.”  

She added how much the actors respond to performing for younger audiences, meeting them after the show “so the experience doesn’t end with the end of the show and the children can see that the actors are real people, not just images on a screen. They let you know immediately when they’re having a good time.” 

The Emperor’s New Clothes 

Active Arts for Young Audiences 

weekends through April 20 

Julia Morgan Center on College Ave.  

Tickets: $14 for children, $18 for adults. 

(925) 798-1300  

www.active artstheatre.org 

The crowd was streaming through the flaming metal portals of The Crucible’s big industrial complex on Oakland’s 7th Street well before curtain time for the “fire ballet” production of Stravinsky’s Firebird.  

Like a sideshow, there were “fire arts” demos going on inside, Crucible artists and volunteers pulling molten glass from a blindingly hot oven and shaping it, or showing someone how to pound out a burning ingot on an anvil, or just displaying artworks from one of the center’s many workshops. 

Once the big audience was seated in rows of chairs on the floor in front of the stage and on the bleachers just behind them, the taped Midd;e Eastern-flavored dance music went off and an emcee welcomed everyone, touching on the workaday, educational and community features of the foundry-like place that was presenting a 1910 Ballet Russe classic, reforged in real flame, “an incendiary update,” with proceeds to benefit their education fund. 

“A funky and fiery reinterpretation of the classic Russian folktale,” The Crucible’s Firebird was conceived and designed by Michael Sturtz, founder and executive director of the nonprofit, with choreography by Viktor Kabaniaev of Diablo Ballet, where Tina Bohnstedt, excellent as the Firebird and onetime principal with the Bavarian State Ballet, also performs.  

The stage direction is by Mark Streshinsky, whose staging of Chrysalis for Berkeley Opera was a highlight of recent East Bay theater. The musical direction (all prerecorded) is by Scott Sterling and Ben Davis handles the lighting. The show features appearances by performers from Smuin (dashing Easton Smith as Prince Ivan) and San Jose (lithe Haley Henderson as Tsarevna) ballets, exotic dance company Nekiya, street dancers from Flavor Group and fLo-Ology, as well as aerialist (the other Firebird) Janine Fondiller and “Moto Prince Ivan” (stuntman Darius Khashabi doubling the Prince, riding Sturtz’s dream machine) and an airborne ’70s flaming red (and flaming) Pontiac Firebird. 

In many ways the Crucible’s hour-long production follows the fairytale (and the original Fokine ballet) pretty closely, albeit with the anachronistic air of an illustrated storybook for young techies, with the huntsman Prince, out for a ride (in this case, on his cycle), encountering and snaring the Firebird, who begs her freedom, rewarding the prince with a (flaming metal) feather.  

Anachronistic in more ways than one, as The Crucible’s FIREBIRD is at once like seeing a revival of the Ballet Russe original, but as performed by the early Siegfried and Roy in Vegas at the Circus Circus. Given the close connection between early 20th-century ballet and the carnivalesque (recall Picasso’s Ballet Russe designs), it’s a doubly wry tribute. 

A well-known local dancer, once a ballet student, who’s seen other Crucible shows with enthusiasm, commented afterwards how high-quality the soloists and the aerialist were, but suggested that the choreography “never completely gelled” and that The Crucible’s signature pyrotechnics weren’t “integrated as fully” as in last year’s ROMEO & JULIET, in which the dancers at the ball waved flaming fans. 

But THE FIREBIRD, in any case, is unusual entertainment, with high production values and in an unusual and intriguing setting. The audience, on the youngish side but diverse enough in every way, ate it up, afterwards pouring out of the vast studio to West Oakland BART, a couple blocks away. 

Firebird  

The Crucible, 1260 7th St, Oakland 

Wed.-Sat., April 16-19, 8:30 p.m. 

Tickets $55 

444-0919 

www.thecrucible.org 

Firebird Gala 

Friday, April 18 

Reception 6:30 p.m. featuring wines, fiery hors d’oeuvres, exclusive performances and an opportunity to meet the cast 

Tickets: $150  

The Berkeley Art Center’s current show, “Loom & Lathe: The Art of Kay Sekimachi and Bob Stocksdale,” is full of revelations. 

Sekimachi, a weaver and fiber artist, and Stocksdale, a wood turner, are both internationally renowned but largely unrecognized in Berkeley, despite having lived and worked here for most of their lives. Sekimachi is in her early 80s; Stocksdale died in 2003 at the age of 89.  

“Loom & Lathe” is a handsomely staged survey of their work. It offers Berkeleyans a rare opportunity to appreciate the extraordinary achievements of these two local treasures. 

Be prepared to gasp in delight as you encounter Sekimachi’s hangings, scrolls, boxes, bowls and baskets, and Stocksdale’s bowls. These elegant and ingenious objects exploit and reveal the qualities of their materials in surprising ways. Many embody what curator Robbin Henderson calls “the lyrical dialog between the artists,” who were wed in the early ’70s, and whose creations often took the same form, rendered in different materials.  

At the same time, Sekimachi and Stocksdale worked in—and reworked—traditions peculiar to their respective crafts. As Suzanne Baizerman writes in the show’s beautifully produced catalogue, Sekimachi drew on both the Japanese culture of her family and the mainstream culture of the United States.  

Albert LeCoff’s essay, also in the catalogue, tells how Stocksdale was distinguished among modern wood turners by his “passion for the wood itself: finding it”—especially exotic wood—“working it, and showing it.” 

Sekimachi’s and Stocksdale’s lives and works also bear witness to the creativity of the contemporary Berkeley crafts community. Famous for its progressive politics, Berkeley is also nationally known for its fiber artists, ceramicists and woodworkers.  

As founding members of the Art Co-op, now ACCI gallery, which grew out of the mid-century progressive cooperative movement, Sekimachi and Stocksdale contributed to this town’s fertile melding of politics and art. Having nurtured that melding for over forty years with integrity, skill and economy, the Berkeley Art Center is the perfect venue for their creations. 

Loom & Lathe: The Art of  

Kay Sekimachi and Bob Stocksdale 

through April 27  

Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. (Live Oak Park).  

Wed.–Sun., noon–5 p.m.  

Admission is free.  

644-6893.

I’ve been the Mulch Queen, or at least her Majesty’s faithful herald, for years. The sight of our locally predominant clay soil lying naked to the elements upsets me. I know what happens when it gets walked on and rained on—yes, rain does compress soil over time if that soil doesn’t have nearly perfect drainage or spongelike absorption—and dried to dust by the sun.  

Besides, I’m lazy. Or I prefer to mimic natural processes when I can. Choose one; please don’t consult the editors whose deadlines I break habitually, if not merrily.  

When I want to add compost to my garden, I do it by spreading it as mulch. Then I stand back and let the worms do the work, and by gum they do it right. They don’t mess up existing root webs or useful mycorrhizae. (At least, not in my garden they don’t. What imported earthworms have done to the soil networks in some of our forests, that’s a story that can leave me catatonic.) 

And though some folks who plant the margins of apartment blocks in Berkeley seem not to believe it, we don’t have much in the way of dangerously venomous snakes here in the flatlands. The bare dirt between those wilting dwarf rosebushes and mums is just so sad and starved-looking.  

Now comes UC’s Gordon Frankie to mess with my cherished beliefs. Dang. 

We have a surprisingly large number of native bee species right here in Berkeley: at least 74. This doesn’t include the familiar honeybee or one of our leafcutter bees, which are exotics native to Eurasia. Frankie has been doing research and education on the ecosystem roles of assorted bees, especially in pollination. I’ve seen him gently catch bees in flight, hold them for a group’s appreciation, and then release them to resume their business.  

The good news is that we still have that many bee species in the city. The bad news is that, according to Frankie, some 60 to 70 percent of native bees, most of them solitary rather than colonial species, make their nests in the ground and they need access to bare dirt to do so.  

Typically, what ground-nesting bees do is dig a little hole—some line it with bits of leaf or with polyester that they manufacture themselves—lay an egg or a few eggs in it, and provision the egg with a lunchbox of pollen and maybe nectar. This takes numerous trips to each nest, and she needs more than one spot to make a season’s worth of nests.  

Frankie recommends leaving half your garden’s soil open and bare. Seems to me you’d also have to keep it undisturbed and not dig up the babies, too. I’d suggest keeping at least the spaces underneath furniture, decks, and such features bare, just mulching places that get walked on and the rootways of plants. (And keep it a foot or so away from tree trunks too!)  

Unlike barbeque, it seems gardening isn’t a place to go whole hog about anything.

FRIDAY, APRIL 11 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Charles Wollenberg on “Berkeley: A City in History” 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 524-7468.  

East Bay Sanctuary Covenant: Celebrating 26 Years in Berkeley at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free, donations gratefully accepted. 527-0324. 

Celebrating Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers’ Movement with a screening of the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation film “Common Man, Uncommon Vision: The Cesar Chavez Story” and “Immokalee: From Slavery to Freedom,” at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, near Dwight Way Free. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

California Studies Conference “Changing Climates: Class Culture, and Politics in an Era of Global Warming” Fri.-Sun. at Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St. For details see http://geography. 

berkeley.edu/ProjectsResources/californiastudies.html 

“Ministry as Vocation” A week-end long free conference open to all at Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. For information call 849-8253.  

Girls Inc. of Alameda County 50th Anniversary Gala at 6 p.m. at the Rotunda Bldg., 300 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland. Tickets are $250. RSVP to 357-5515, ext. 282. 

Friday Films for Teens at 3:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. For details call 981-6121. 

Non-Toxic Cleaning at noon at Elephant, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200.  

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

SATURDAY, APRIL 12 

John F. Kennedy High School 40th Anniversary Celebration from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 4300 Cutting Blvd., Richmond. Activities include art exhibits, carnival games, entertainment, and food. 231-1433, ext. 25883. 

Goats are Groovy Meet the new goats at the Little Farm in Tilden Park, learn how we care for them, and take them for walks. For ages 6-10 at 2 p.m. at Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

The 2008 Edith Coliver Festival of Cultures from 11 a.m. at 6 p.m. at International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. 642-9461. http://ihouse.berkeley.edu  

“California Budget Crisis: How Tax Reform Can Solve It” at 7 p.m. at the Alameda Free Library, Conf. Room A, 1550 Oak St. at Lincoln, Alameda. Sponsored by the Alameda Public Affairs Forum 841-9592. www.alamadaforum.org 

Music and Crafts the Ohlone Way including dances by the Maidu-Miwok Dance Group, stories from the elders and other cultural events, from to 2 to 4 p.m. at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. Free. 532-9142. 

“The Power of Community” a film on urban organic farming and how Cuba met the oil depletion crisis, at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists 1924 Cedar St at Bonita. Suggested donation $5. 540-1975. www.bfuu.org 

“On Sacred Grounds: Religion and the Counterinsurgency in Iraq” with Prof. Ron Hassner, UC Berkeley, at 7 p.m. at Congregation Beth El, 1301 Oxford St. 642-3398. 

“Once Upon a Time...” Spring benefit for The Museum of Children’s Art with artists and authors from the annual children’s book illustrators exhibit, at 5:30 p.m. at 538 Ninth St., Oakland. Tickets $150. For details call 465-8770. 

The USS Hornet Museum Commemorates the Doolittle Raid in a Living Ship Day demonstration from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. onboard the aircraft carrier berthed at 707 W Hornet Ave, Pier 3, in Alameda. Museum admission is $14 for adults and $6 for children 5-17. 521-8448. www.hornetevents.com. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

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, APRIL 13 

Learn About Plankton An adventure for the whole family to look at the tiny organisms that live in Jewel Lake, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. in Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Little Farm Open House Meet the animals, learn some new songs, make a craft and more from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Tilden Little Farm, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Native Plant Garden Tour “Meet the Do-It-Yourselfers” A self-guided tour of gardens in San Leandro, Oakland and Berkeley, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Cost is $30. To register see www.bringinbackthenatives.net 

CodePink Newcomer Orientation and activist training at 9:30 a.m. at 1248 Solano Ave, Albany. RSVP to 524-2776. 

Earth Day Electronics Recycling & Safe Medicine Disposal Event from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Class on Flat Repair at 10 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Talk with Cheri Huber, Zen teacher and author of books on meditation and psychology at 7 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. www.eastbayopencircle.org  

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. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Erika Rosenberg on “Seeing through Self-Images” 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, APRIL 14 

Tax Day Event: People’s Life Fund Granting Ceremony Join Bay Area War Tax Resisters are the donte over $10,000 in resisted taxes to groups that are working for peace, justice and human needs, at 7 p.m. at 2220 Sacramento St. Pot-luck at 6 p.m. 843-9877. 

Uhuru Forum and Call to Action for Social Justice in Oakland with presentations by Wendy Snyder and Bakari Olatunji at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. 

El Cerrito Green Party County Council Candidates and others at 7 p.m. at The Sky Lounge, 10458 San Pablo Ave. Donation $2-$5. 526-0972. 

Habitot 10th Anniversary Week Dress in costumes, meet Lovee the Clown and enjoy art activities all week at 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Orientation from 4 to 5 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Come learn about volunteer opportunities. 644-8833. 

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 

Free Boatbuilding Classes for Youth Mon.-Wed. from 3 to 7 p.m. at Berkeley Boathouse, 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Classes cover woodworking, boatbuilding, and boat repair. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

TUESDAY, APRIL 15 

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 Crockett Hills Regional 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. 

Birds and Butterflies: Easy Garden enchantment with California Native Plants. An Audubon Nature Studies class begins at 7 p.m. at Albany Adult School. Cost is $35. For details on the class call 559-6580 http://www.albany.k12.ca.us/adult/birding.html 

Amy Goodman and David Goodman: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times and 6:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Oakland 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Tickets are $12. 444-8511. www.brownpapertickets.com/event/31304  

Bayview Library Grand Re-opening Party from 4 to 7 p.m. at Bayview Library, 5100 Hartnett Ave., near Carlson and Bayview, Richmond. 620-6566, www.richmondlibrary.org. 

“Texts We Wish Were Not In the Bible” with Mary A. Tolbert, Professor of Biblical Studies, at 11:10 a.m. at Pacific School of Religion Chapel, 1798 Scenic Ave. 

Climbing Mt. Shasta Tips for the novice and expert at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Teen Playreaders meets to read and discuss plays at 4:30 p.m. at Claremont Branch Library, 2940 Benvenue. 981-6121. 

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 

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., and Sat. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Sing-A-Long Group from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masoni Ave., Albany. 524-9122. 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16 

City of Oakland 14th EarthEXPO with products and tips to reduce energy use, be a greener consumer, information on bay-friendly gardening, and more, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza, 14th and Broadway. www.oaklandearthexpo.org 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will learn about plants from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m.. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

“Bush’s Brain” A documentary about Karl Rove, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy” with author Michael Klare, introductory remarks by Daniel Ellsberg, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way at Durant. Donation $10-$20, no one turned away for lack of funds. ProgressivePersp@aol.com 

Green Chamber of Commerce “Green Industry Trends” at 5:30 p..m. at StopWaste.org, 1537 Webster St., Oakland. Cost is $20-$30, includes program and tour of LEED Platinum building. greenchamberof commerce.net 

Simplicity Forum “Decluttering—physical, mental and metaphysical” at 6:30 p.m. at Claremont Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave. 

Anime in the Afternoon at Bayview Library Watch a classic Japanese animation film featuring a mysterious forest spirit who befriends two young girls at 3 p.m. at Bayview Library, 5100 Hartnett Ave., near Carlson and Bayview, Richmond. Appropriate for all ages. 620-6566.  

www.richmondlibrary.org. 

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 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

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, APRIL 17 

Berkeley High School Red & Golden Girls Reunion Luncheon at 11 a.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $35, reservations required. 582-2478. 

Chiapas Support Committee Report and slide show on the International Zapatista Women’s Meeting at 7:30 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. 654-9587. 

LeConte Neighborhood Association meets at 7:30 p.m. at the LeConte School, Russell St. entrance. If you have agenda items please forward them to karlreeh@aol.com 

Stories about Travels to Australia with Stuart Pawsey at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library North Branch, 1170 The Alameda. 981-6250. 

Brain Games at Bayview Library Exercise your brain and have fun with your neighbors at this free, casual event at 1 p.m. at 5100 Hartnett Ave., near Carlson and Bayview, Richmond. 620-6566.  

www.richmondlibrary.org. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

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.  

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., April 14, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Youth Commission meets Mon., April 14 , at 6:30 p.m., at City Council Chambers, Old City Hall. 981-6670.  

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., April 16, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6601. 

Commission on Aging meets Wed., April 16, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5344. 

Fair Campaign Practices Commission meets Thurs., April 17, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6950.  

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., April 17, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

“Don’t let school interrupt your education,” said Mark Twain. He spent most of his youth on steamboats going up and down the Mississippi River, earning a living. He lost his father when he was young and could not complete his school education. Later he went on to write many books, such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 

At the other end of the world, in India, the Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore expressed similar sentiments when he established the institution “Shantiniketan” (meaning “an abode of peace”) . He too did not complete his formal school education.  

He has stated, “My object in starting the institution was to give the children full freedom of joy, of life and of communion with nature. I myself had suffered when young through the impediments that were inflicted on most boys while they attended school, and I have had to go through the machine of education, which crushes the joy or freedom of life for which the children have insatiable thirst. And my object was to give freedom and joy to children (of men).” 

Freedom of expression, living without fear, joy of learning and reaching out to marginalized families have been the four principles on which the Center for Human Settlements (CHS)-Habitat developed its philosophy towards life and learning. The executive director of CHS-Habitat, Professor K. P. Bhattacharjee (the author of this article), was exposed to India’s Freedom Movement, having witnessed the freedom struggle and non-violence movement initiated by Mahatma Gandhi and Nobel laureate Indian poet Rabindranath Ta-gore’s cry for freedom and democracy scripted in his poems.  

During his years on the UC Berkeley campus he observed the famous Free Speech Movement and the brutal force unleashed on students by the state to curb freedom of expression.  

The founders of CHS-Habitat longed for the type of democracy about which the Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote in his book Gitanjali: “where the mind is without fear and the head is held high ...” Similar ideas on freedom have been written and propagated by many authors including the famous Irish author Iris Murdoch.  

The directors of CHS-Habitat initiated action research on socio-economic issues and development to provide economic freedom to the economically weaker section of the population.  

In order to extend the output of its action research to the field, CHS assisted marginalized families to enhance their income, assisted families to build affordable houses, provided free books to school-going children of marginalized families and provided health care facilities. Households were guided to improve their living environment. Such inputs from CHS has helped the marginalized families in improving their lives and freed them from the shackles of economic burden.  

In order to exchange ideas with other institutions and individuals on improving the quality of life of the marginalized families, CHS-Habitat organized international conferences bi-yearly during last 20 years. Many participants from abroad and local areas contributed toward implementing income-generation projects and social housing for the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) of the society.  

Among them was Dr. Jon D. Raggett, a senior structural design engineer based in California. He is also the director of the Development Engineering Research Institute (an organization supporting development of school projects in different developing countries around the world.)  

During Dr. Raggett’s participation at the International Conference on Human Settlements in Calcutta in 1997-98, he exchanged his ideas on the need for development of schools in villages in India with Professor Bhattacharjee and assured him that some joint venture project would be taken up in the future.  

In the meantime, CHS-Habitat prepared the ground for implementing its ideas developed from his action research toward total development of children in villages by making available to them shelter, education, employment opportunities and basic amenities (SEBA Mission). The word SEBA in Sanskrit means “service.” CHS would ensure that democracy, freedom of speech, joy of learning and rule of law would be the four cornerstones of his institution. His concept of development has been appreciated by many experts including Dr. Ramachandran, former Executive Director of UNCHS, Nairobi, and an advisor to CHS-Habitat.  

Many NGOs located in Indian villages came forward to implement the SEBA project. In order to get the local NGOs’ participation and involvement in the project, CHS-Habitat insisted that the local NGO is required to participate in the development of the project. In case they cannot devote time for the development and maintenance of the project, then they are required to provide land or donations. 

Action research  

The implementation of the present SEBA project (to develop an institution) has been initiated in a village named Chamtagarah within the district of Bankura (which is connected to Calcutta by motor-able road and rail track) in the state of West Bengal, India. A local welfare society named Vivekanada Adibasi Kaliyan Samity, serving the Adibasi (indigenous people) children of the villages, having realized the need for education for the children, invited CHS-Habitat to implement the SEBA project and offered its land on which the project would be developed. 

Prior to preparation of the project report and the physical layout design of the building complex and infrastructure, a number of visits to the site were made by the CHS team to inspect the land, to learn about the local conditions and the need for a primary and secondary school in the area. 

Bankura is one of the most backward districts in West Bengal, India. It is about 250 kilometers from Calcutta. The village of Chamtagarah is within the Block Chhatna (under Saldiha Gram Panchayat, the local administration). Hot and dry climate prevails for nine months of the year and the temperature is around 35 to 42 degrees C. There is little rain from July to September, and soil is unfertile and red. There is very little agricultural activity, and vast land lies barren. There are a few stone chip crushing mills and small business units. Small industries are now coming up in the area. 

Consequently, residents have little income and most of them come under the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) and are Below the Poverty Line (BPL) as defined by the government of India, except a few traders and businessmen. About 40 percent of the population of the village belong to Schedule Tribe and Castes (indigenous people) of the locality.  

According to the information collected by the CHS field team, those children who are not admitted to schools from the 12 villages in Saldiha Gram Panchayat under Chhatna Block within the district Bankura are likely to attend the new school. The local population of the block is about 10,000, and out of this about 40 percent (say 4,000) belong to the Schedule Tribe (indigenous people) and 25 percent of the remaining population belong to other backward classes.  

Among the 2,000 school-going children between 9 to 18 years of age within the 12 villages of Saldiha Gram Panchayat, about 1,000 children are enrolled in the only secondary school in the locality (Kesra High School) in this Gram Panchayat. Thus more than 50 percent of the children of this Gram Panchayat remain uncovered by any secondary education.  

Proposal for a green school and vocational training center 

During the field survey in the village on the type of school that should be developed, parents of children requested to introduce classes in nursery and primary sections first.  

They also requested to introduce kindergarten or Montessori system and to teach English conversation to students. Though such demand from the parents were not expected, considering that it is a village school, it appeared that a section of the villagers are well educated with degrees and even graduate qualifications. They know well that for higher education and employment, English is essential. 

Accordingly, a proposal has been made by CHS-Habitat for development and construction of a sustainable institution consisting of nursery and primary sections at the first stage.  

However, CHS committee decided to develop a long range master plan for this project to include Secondary section, hostel accommodation for the children who come from different villages and districts, as well as vocational training center for children who would not pursue higher education so they may be gainfully employed. It was also decided that a GREEN and SUSTAINABLE complex should be developed so that no greenhouse gas is contributed by this project, so the project has been planned to include electricity lights from solar panels ( installed on the roof of the building) and rainwater harvesting Accordingly, a master plan has been prepared and a view of the scheme can be seen in the website www.chshabitatcal.org.  

Fortunately, these facilities for the complex met the approval of the well-known Indian author and social worker, Maheswata Debi, who is also involved in social service work for the Indigenous people in the district of Bolpur which is located adjacent to the district of Bankura in West Bengal. 

The scheme for the school complex also met the approval of our American friend Dr. Jon D. Ragett, whose charitable organization Development Engineering Research Institute (DERI) had encouraged CHS to proceed with the project. 

He discussed the project with the board of directors of DERI who unanimously approved the project and agreed to provide grant for the class rooms and essential infrastructure for the school. 

Project implementation and its operation  

CHS has designed the building complex to meet the need of the local hot and dry climate All external brick walls were made of thick cavity walls so as to reduce transmission of external heat within the interior so classrooms are cool. Even during summer months mechanical fans are not required. In addition adequate cross windows and ventilators were provided for cross circulation of air and to keep the interior cool. Use of exposed bricks has enabled the building to merge with the local vernacular architectural style. The main roof is flat and made of concrete so that rainwater can be collected and then drained out by down pipes to discharge into the existing well at the edge of the compound. Water is scarce in the locality, so rainwater harvesting is essential. However for drinking water a submersible pump is to be installed at a local water tank far away. 

Carbon emission in this project has been reduced to nil, since solar panels have been used for lighting the class rooms. Though the initial investment for solar panels has been high, recurring expense for maintenance is very little. This is a green and sustainable project in view of taking care of the utilities and services which are served by renewable energy and harvesting of rain water to make water available for the institution. 

The first stage project has been successfully completed and on seeing the complex on our website, Dr. Raggett and his colleagues highly appreciated the project and remarked it is a “great project” and added he will take steps to strengthen this Indo-American partnership. 

The governor of the state of West Bengal has been invited by the directors of CHS to visit the school and he agreed to do the same. He has highly appreciated the school building project since it is green and sustainable.  

Social impact of ‘SEBA Mission’ project: 

The new school complex set in a green environment merged with the local surrounding and was immediately accepted by the people of the villages; word spread and people from distant places came just to see the school complex made in local vernacular architectural style using local bricks and construction techniques. Many families visit the school every afternoon and rest in its garden. Garden seats were built within the compound for visitors. Children play within the garden adding life to the entire area. 

Children were admitted and nursery classes started in August 2007. The school’s education and environment have been appreciated by parents and visitors. CHS’s current plan is to add seven more classrooms to accommodate its primary and secondary schools.  

There is an urgent need to build residential accommodation for teachers and dormitories for students, install pumps for drinking water and build other infrastructure. CHS desires donors and philanthropic organizations to come forward and complete this project where education is the light which would guide the villagers to a better living environment free from hunger and disease. 

For information write to chskpbcal@gmail.com  

For more details: www.chshabitatcal.org  

Krishna P. Bhattacharjee, professor, architect and planner, is the executive director of the Center for Human Settlements Int’l (CHS-Habitat). He is a graduate of UC Berkeley