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UC Berkeley briefly gained a pair of tree-sitters Monday morning in one of two acacias at People’s Park designated for the ax by university officials. The activists and the tree came down a day later.
Richard Brenneman
UC Berkeley briefly gained a pair of tree-sitters Monday morning in one of two acacias at People’s Park designated for the ax by university officials. The activists and the tree came down a day later.
 

News

City Officials Question Both Marina Ferry Sites

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday January 13, 2009 - 05:37:00 PM

The regional agency that governs Bay Area ferries gave too little consideration to the impacts of a ferry terminal at Berkeley Marina, city officials say. 

Building at either of two proposed marina sites could have serious negative impacts on businesses, boat owners and visitors to Cesar Chavez Park, they contend. 

City Manager Phil Kamlarz summarized their concerns in a letter to the Water Emergency Transport Authority (WETA), which has commissioned an environmental impact report (EIR) on the project. 

The draft EIR released in October failed to adequately consider parking and traffic impacts of the ferry terminal, Kamlarz said. 

The water transit agency said the project is needed because projected population growth will add further congestion even to the remodeled Bay Bridge and for BART traffic. 

Ferry service would also provide “a viable alternative for transporting people around the region” in the event of disasters impacting road and rail traffic, according to the draft EIR. 

WETA picked four possible sites for an East Bay terminal, two at the Marina and one each on either side of Golden Gate Fields. 

City officials addressed only the two marina sites, given “the very small likelihood that either the Gilman or Buchanan (street) locations will proceed further in the process” because of significant environmental impacts at both of those locations. 

Kamlarz said the city’s waterfront commission, which oversees the marina, felt the draft EIR gave “insufficient emphasis to understanding and mitigating the negative impact a Ferry Terminal will have on parking and traffic on the Berkeley Marina and Cesar Chavez Park.” 

The first site, dubbed Option A, would create a new dock south of the Doubletree Hotel just west of Marina Boulevard and require 304 parking spaces on either side of the roadway. The hotel currently leases 104 of the existing spaces earmarked for ferry parking. 

Option A parking would also take the 104 spaces west of the boulevard which are currently allotted to 156 boat berths and 13 houseboats at the F, G, H and I docks, while the 200 additional spaces east of the roadway are currently gravel parking areas used by park visitors. 

Further complicating the Option A plan is the hotel’s lease on the parking, which runs through 2057. 

A parking lease also exists for the Option B site, which calls for a new dock to extend into the bay west of Seawall Drive south of the Berkeley Fishing Pier. Plans call for the use of all spaces currently leased—through 2017—to Hs Lordships. 

Kamlarz said the waterfront commission considers the site “vital for the future economic development within the marina and is unwilling to give up any parking which would limit future development on Hs Lordships site.” 

The city manager also cited concerns raised by planning and transportation commissioners. 

“They want our support, but they’re going at it in a rather slapdash manner,” said planning commission Chair James Samuels during the panel’s Dec. 10 meeting. 

Another complication is the gap between dreams and reality. While WETA’s plans call for the ability to serve two ferries simultaneously, the regional group has only authorized one ferry for each of two routes, one between San Francisco and Berkeley and the other between San Francisco and Albany. 

Other concerns involve a lack of details on a shuttle service WETA proposes to carry riders from Berkeley to the terminal, a possible need for public toilets to serve riders waiting for ferries to arrive and depart, impacts on parking and traffic in the marina, an inadequate description of Bay Trail uses and the impacts of construction on marina users. 

Kamlarz said the city also disagreed with the draft EIR’s conclusion that the loss of parking at the Doubletree site wouldn’t have negative impacts on the hotel, given that the report failed to include a parking utilization study addressing the issue. 

“The larger issue is whether a commuter terminal with 400 spaces is an appropriate use” in a recreational area, Kamlarz wrote. “The hundreds and perhaps thousands of people accessing the ferry for this new function on a daily basis will change the character of this area.” 

The public comment period on the proposal closed Dec. 31, and the WETA board will prepare a final EIR. The organization’s board next meets Feb. 19. A final selection of a site is scheduled to be made by July 1. 

The board is composed of state appointees, with three members named by the governor and one each by the Senate and Assembly rules committees. 

 


Reshaped Helios Building Sparks Further Criticism

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday January 13, 2009 - 03:15:00 PM

One after another, Berkeley residents voiced their frustration last Wednesday night with the building that will house a program that is the brainchild of nation’s energy secretary-designate. 

The dinner-hour meeting called by UC Berkeley was to gather public comments on the redesigned Helios building, set to house Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), the alternative fuels research program conducted under the half-billion-dollar grant from BP, previously known as British Petroleum. 

Named for the Greek sun god, Helios has generated considerable heat, especially from environmentalists, Cal students and faculty critical of both BP and the possible consequences of research they say could lead to vast Third World plantations devoted to fueling America’s cars and trucks. 

But Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory story staff didn’t come to answer questions last week. Instead, they were there to listen to a largely critical audience—so much so that UC Berkeley chemist David Chandler angrily responded to one critic, branding him a “selfish shit” and declaring, “We’ve got to have this building to save the world.” 

The critic, Cal graduate Jason Ahmadi, had been a participant in the Memorial Stadium tree-sit. He, in turn, singled out the presence at the meeting of Dan Mogulof, the university’s executive director of public affairs, saying, “that alone makes me think you’re lying.” 

Mogulof had presented the university’s case to the media during the tree-sit and the accompanying litigation. 

The most common argument from supporters of the proposed site was the need for interdisciplinary conversations, which would be facilitated by proximity to researchers working in other fields at the lab. 

Many criticisms echoed remarks made the last time the project was vetted by Berkeley’s citizenry. The earlier project, which had been approved by the UC Board of Regents, was withdrawn when soil problems were discovered at the original site. 

The building site was shifted to the west and the profile lowered compared to its earlier incarnation. 

Representing the EBI at the session was Susan Jenkins, the institute’s assistant director, who invoked the “daunting global energy crisis” and the mantle of national security as mandates for construction of the 144,000-square-foot, 720-foot-long lab on the edge of the hillside above Strawberry Canyon. 

Jenkins is no stranger to controversial researcher programs. She also administered the Syngenta/Novartis grant at Cal's College of Natural Resources—a grant that was bitterly debated and even criticized by the outside academicians the university hired to review the issues raised in that debate. 

“The Helios concept was developed by Dr. Steve Chu,” she said. Chu is LBNL’s director, a post he is about to vacate to take the helm of the Department of Energy in the cabinet of President-elect Barack Obama. 

Jenkins said the fuel plant crops developed by EBI could be grown on the nation’s “38 million acres of non-cultivated agricultural land,” as well as a billion acres of marginal land worldwide. 

Her figures for domestic farmland fall in the range of acreage kept out of production by the Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), created under the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt to take fragile cropland out of cultivation to prevent erosion. 

Oregon State University conservation biologist Patricia Muir has estimated that the CRP has reduced erosion on 37 million acres of sensitive lands by 93 percent, but under the George W. Bush administration, farmers are allowed to take land out of CRP if they plant it with crops that would be converted to fuels. 

Most of the Helios supporters who spoke had roles in the program, including Walter Weare, an inorganic chemist doing post-doctoral work on producing fuels by using artificial photosynthesis. Weare said the building needed to be located at the lab to facilitate scientific interchange of ideas. 

But many critics said other sites would be better, given both the environmentally sensitive nature of Strawberry Canyon and what they said were hazardous conditions stemming from soil contamination, earthquakes, landslides and other hazards of the Berkeley Hills. 

“I’m not against the project. I’m against the location,” said Joanne Draybeck of Oakland. “It’s not environmentally friendly. 

Another location critic was retired UC Berkeley engineer John Shively, who had once served as administrator of the university’s Richmond Field Station, a site deemed more appropriate by several speakers. 

One backer of the Richmond site, Gianna Ranuzzi, also urged the university to consider the comments made during the earlier EIR process. 

One lab scientist, Phil Price, also criticized the location while supporting the research. Instead of building on a pristine site, he urged the university to consider placing the building on one of several other sites at the lab currently occupied by antiquated, vacant or temporary buildings. 

“Give us an alternative of the lab campus,” Price said. 

“If you’re so environmentally concerned, how can you possible support a site at this location,” said Juliet Lamont, Sierra Club activist and a former lab worker. She said the university had also failed to adequately address climate change concerns raised by the building project as well as issues such as changes in a delicate watershed. 

Janice Thomas, who lives on Panoramic Hill, advocated for the Richmond site, which she said would be more accessible to scientists living in San Francisco or Marin counties as well as providing a pleasant environment right on the Bay Trail. 

“This is such a mistake to not seriously consider another site outside Strawberry Canyon,” said Hank Gehman. As for the need for proximity to other scientists, Gehman said, the same argument was used by opponents of locating other UC Berkeley subsequently successful labs at Los Alamos and Livermore. 

Martha Nicoloff said she was concern in part because of the extensive truck traffic that would be generated by removing earth and from the site on a route that added traffic to already congested University Avenue. 

Several speakers said that any review of the project should look at the cumulative impacts of all the construction projects now being planned for the university. 

At least two speakers mentioned concerned about possible air and water contamination from nanotechnology experiments that would be conducted at the meeting. 

Hillary Lehr, a student who was active in the opposition to the BP grant, called on the university to engage in more discussions with the public. “If you don’t engage,” she said, “how can we expect this project to really help save the world.” 

Friday is the last day for public comments, which may be emailed to the lab at planning@lbl.gov. 

For more information on the project, see the lab’s web page at http://www.lbl.gov/Community/Helios/documents/index.html 


Police Arrest Two Suspects in West Berkeley Shooting

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Monday January 12, 2009 - 11:03:00 AM

Berkeley police have arrested Berkeley residents Rhonda Reid, 47, and Lee Freddy Green, 50, for the attempted murder of William Payton on Sunday night. They are being held without bail, authorities said Monday. 

Payton, 37, also a Berkeley resident, was taken to Highland Hospital for treatment after he was discovered suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He is listed in critical condition. 

Berkeley police spokesperson Andrew Frankel said that the department received a 911 call at 8:15 p.m. Sunday regarding vandalism on the 1100 block of Parker St. When officers reached the area, they heard sounds of gunfire somewhere on the 2500 block of 10th St. while they were looking for the people involved in the argument. 

“After searching the area they found an adult male victim who apparently had been hit several times by gunfire lying on the sidewalk on the west side of the Bank of America Parking lot at 2546 San Pablo Ave.,” Frankel said. 

Frankel did not say how many times Payton, who apparently lives near the scene of the argument, had been shot or whether a weapon had been recovered at the scene. 

Berkeley police officers, assisted by a crime unit from Richmond and a helicopter from the California Highway Patrol, started combing the area, but came up empty. The team then began a neighborhood canvas, during which they went door to door taking to neighbors, asking if they had heard anything suspicious. 

Police detained Reid near the scene of the crime and arrested her at 9:28 p.m. Sunday. 

Homicide detectives searched for a second suspect at an address on the 2700 block of Wallace St. based on information gathered throughout the night, and served a search warrant at that address at 6:43 a.m. Monday morning.  

The second suspect, later identified as Green, learned that he was wanted for questioning and turned himself in at the Berkeley Public Safety Building at 10:50 a.m. Monday. 

 

 


Downtown Building Heights Set for Commission Action

By Richard Brenneman By Richard Brenneman
Monday January 12, 2009 - 05:28:00 PM

The most-contested chapter of the city’s emerging new Downtown Area Plan comes before planning commissioners Wednesday night. 

The struggle over building heights and bulk provoked the most controversy during deliberations of city planners who drafted the first edition of the document now undergoing revision by the commission. 

Both the commission’s draft and the original prepared by the Downtown Area Planning Advisory Committee will go to the City Council in five months. The city’s elected governing body must adopt a plan by May 26 or face cuts in university mitigation funds. 

The deadline was imposed in the settlement signed by the city and UC Berkeley that ended the city lawsuit challenging the university’s building plans through 2020. 

Those plans call for a major university move into the city center, with 800,000 square feet of new downtown construction serving the university’s needs projected by the end of the 21st Century’s second decade. 

City staff is urging the commission to schedule extra meetings to finish their revision in time to hold a March 18 public hearing on their final draft, and complete their work so that both the plan’s final environmental impact review (EIR) and the revised plan are ready for the council to begin its work on the plan as early as April 21. 

The plan’s draft EIR is scheduled for release on Feb. 20, and commissioners will hold a Feb. 18 hearing on the draft to gather comments for consideration in the final version, which is scheduled for release April 8. 

The Wednesday meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

The plan appears as four different action items on the agenda, starting with the schedule for upcoming meetings, a decision on maximum building heights, the base project size that, with additional bonuses, would meet the maximums heights and masses allowed as well as the language of the chapter itself. 

The agenda and related documents may be found at: www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=33076 

 


North Berkeley BART Station Windows Smashed to Protest Grant Death

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday January 09, 2009 - 04:59:00 PM

The North Berkeley BART station was vandalized early Thursday morning as a protest against the killing of Oscar Grant III by a BART police officer, BART authorities said Friday. 

BART spokesperson Jim Allison said that the incident was the first report of direct vandalism at a BART station in response to Grant’s death that he was aware of. 

Thursday’s incident followed violent civil protests in Oakland Wednesday night, during which angry mobs of people were arrested after setting fire to cars and smashing storefronts. 

According to BART police log, a neighbor reported loud noise coming from the North Berkeley BART station to the Berkeley Police Department around 3:07 a.m. on Thursday. 

When officers arrived at the scene after some time they found the station damaged. 

Several full length and small windows were broken toward the back of the station.  

Graffiti was found on the exterior of the station and bricks were located both inside and outside the building as well as on the platform.  

BART police responded and took down a report.  

Allison described Thursday morning’s events as a criminal action that BART police was investigating. 

“Those responsible could be prosecuted,” he said. “We encourage people to express themselves under the First Amendment but the First Amendment does not include criminal acts. Peaceful demonstrations are fine, but damaging equipment and facilities is not.” 

BART police chief Gary Gee called the incident a "very unfortunate and malicious act on someone's part." 

Allison said BART police was still looking into the identity of the suspects. 

According to a message posted on Indybay.org by people who called themselves “anarchists,” the windows were smashed “in memory of Oscar Grant and all who are murdered at the cold hands of the police.” 

The message says in part: “This action was taken out in response to the murder of Oscar Grant by BART police and in solidarity with the riots that have been taking place in Oakland. Our hope is that this action will inspire others to rise up against this atrocious police state in which we live. 

“This action was very easy to carry out and took no more than a few minutes to get done. We approached the BART station fully masked and carried stones, bricks, and spray paint in our gloved hands. We painted first as to not make much noise, and did so in block letters to not reveal any personal handwriting. We spent no more than 20 seconds smashing in the glass windows and then vanished into the night.” 

The message can be seen at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/01/09/18560418.php 

Calls to the Berkeley Police Department for comment were not returned. 

 


Off-Campus Muggings Escalate at Berkeley High

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday January 09, 2009 - 04:31:00 PM

At least two Berkeley High students were arrested and another student was sent to the Berkeley Police Department Youth Services Division for disciplinary action in the weeks before Christmas break for a string of strong arm robberies of Berkeley High School students in and around Martin Luther King Civic Center Park. 

The robberies have alarmed school and city officials and parents, who said they don’t understand how such brazen acts took place in the shadow of City Hall, with bike cops routinely patrolling the area. 

A total of seven robberies, carried out through strong arm or threats, were reported to the Berkeley police in November and December, and a Berkeley High senior was arrested on Dec. 16 as the suspect in both cases. He is being held in juvenile hall for multiple counts of robbery, said Officer Andrew Frankel, spokesperson for the Berkeley Police Department. 

The second incident in the series, which took place in November, was not reported to the police until the victim, a Berkeley High male student, learned about the suspect’s arrest in December. In this instance, the student said he was hanging out in Civic Center Park—which overlooks Berkeley High and City Hall—around 3:45 p.m. on Nov. 18 when he was approached by the senior who “threatened to kick his ass” if he didn’t give him his iPod. The student complied, Frankel said, and although there were other people in the park, no one reported it at the time. 

Two more robberies were reported on Dec. 10. In the first one, at 3:50 p.m., a group of students—including the Berkeley High senior who was arrested and another student—approached two male students in the park. 

Two students in the group demanded a cell phone or some cash from one of the students and when he tried to walk away they pushed him to the ground, at which point the student gave them his money and the group left the park.  

The second robbery of the day took place two and a half hours later when a sophomore was asked to give up his iPod and his wallet by the same senior and his accomplice, a sophomore, who has been sent to the Youth Services Division. 

“We arrested various individuals during this particular series of muggings, some of them high school-aged juveniles, and they are being disciplined in the appropriate manner, which could be anything between expulsion and suspension,” said school Safety Officer Billy Keys. 

Eyewitness evidence played an important part in the arrests, said Keys, who has worked as a safety officer at Berkeley High for 19 years. 

“To me it is alarming if any high school student is assaulted or harassed,” he said. “What is more alarming is that [the incidents] happened during the day, when these students were around friends and when they were surrounded by three or four buildings always full of adults. They did not happen in the dark, in secret.” 

School Safety Officer Keys said that school authorities had noticed a sudden spike in off-campus muggings in November, leading to investigation by both Berkeley High School and Berkeley police. 

“The School Safety Committee is working to develop some possible goals and we are sending out notices and pamphlets to parents about what to do in case something like this occurs again,” he said. 

According to authorities, the perpetrators—mainly juniors and seniors—stuck to “give me your iPod or wallet” kind of threats and often resorted to bullying to intimidate their victims, who were either freshmen or sophomores. 

Keys said that he didn’t suspect any gang activity, adding that after the last series of arrests in December, things have cooled down. 

Security has also been increased, he said, with Berkeley police stepping up patrol after school hours. 

Calls to Berkeley High’s Dean of Students Alejandro Ramos for comment were not returned. 

Berkeley Board of Education President John Selawsky said he would be taking up the issue with Superintendent Bill Huyett next week. 

“Obviously for me, student safety is very important,” he said. “We need to coordinate with the city and the police department to figure out a way to make the park a safe place. If there is an increase in activity there, I take it seriously and the district takes it seriously.” 

Selawsky said that during his eight years on the school board, he had witnessed similar incidents at certain “hotspots” in downtown Berkeley, such as the now-closed Ross store and Games of Berkeley. 

“Since these are all moving targets, it’s hard to get a handle on it entirely,” he said. “But since Civic Center Park is right across from Berkeley High, it should be easier to monitor it.” 

Julie Sinai, chief of staff for Mayor Tom Bates and a Berkeley High parent, said she had received a couple of phone calls from concerned citizens, one of them being the parent of a student who had been robbed. 

Sinai said the mayor had raised the issue with City Manager Phil Kamlarz and the Berkeley Chief of Police Doug Hambleton and was waiting for a response. 

“I am absolutely astounded,” Sinai said. “I go out there all the time to shuttle my own child and I am curious how all of this is happening right under the watchful eyes of the bicycle cops. It’s totally unacceptable.” 

Margit Roos Collins, a Berkeley High parent and member of the School Safety Committee, said that the committee was working on a plan to get correct information about crime out to parents in a quick and efficient manner. 

“Our biggest effort this year on the crime front is to make sure we are all looking at the right data,” she said. “Something that will help us to look at a crime blotter on the Berkeley High e-tree so that people knew what was happening in real time and could talk to their kids to keep them safe. More information is better for all sorts of purposes.” 

Don Morgan, another parent-member of the safety committee, said that plans were in the pipeline for a crime subcommittee which would focus on analyzing data about crime at Berkeley High. 

“Right now we get second-hand data, either through word of mouth or the newspaper, instead of getting accurate and timely data through the police department,” he said. 

Morgan said that a service—similar to the crime alerts issues by Councilmember Laurie Capitelli in his district to those who sign up for his mailing lists—for the entire Berkeley High community would be a big help. 

Parents receive some crime data from the school’s interim data system (SASI), but according to Morgan it deals predominantly with on-campus disruptions, fights and thefts, and is often unreliable because incidents are often underreported. 

On Thursday afternoon, a group of students sat at Civic Center Park eating lunch, and when asked by a Planet reporter about the recent muggings, admitted hearing about them. 

“One of my friends got mugged,” said one of the students who asked not to be identified. “I think it happens because people leave their backpacks and iPods out in the open all the time.” 

 

 


Oakland and BART Officials Respond to Killing

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday January 09, 2009 - 01:14:00 PM

City of Oakland officials moved quickly on Thursday to respond to the growing controversy over the investigation of the New Year’s Day shooting death of 22-year-old San Leandro man by a BART police officer, while members of the BART board of directors—which had been accused of dragging its feet on a response—officially heard the public anger over the shooting for the first time. 

In an event that was captured by citizen cellphone cameras and spread on websites around the country, BART police officer Johannes Mehserle, 27, shot Oscar Grant in the back on the Fruitvale BART platform while Grant was lying face down and subdued by several police officers.  

Grant, a father of one who worked as a butcher at Farmer Joe’s supermarket, was one of several African-American men detained at the station following a fight between young men on the BART train. It has not yet been determined whether Grant was part of the fight, or was merely caught up in the BART police sweep of the train that followed. 

Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson called the Grant killing an “execution-style murder.”  

Mehserle has retained legal counsel and resigned from the BART police force earlier this week to prevent being forced to answer questions about the killing by BART internal police investigators. He has not yet given a statement to police or District Attorney officials in the killing. 

Thursday’s events followed a somewhat chaotic Wednesday in Oakland that included the funeral of Grant, a confrontation between protesters and Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff, an angry but peaceful march from the Fruitvale BART station to downtown Oakland, and a later night of mini-rioting in which multi-racial bands of youths roamed the downtown section for several hours, setting trash fires and breaking automobile and store windows. 

Oakland officials have said that more than 300 businesses were vandalized on Wednesday night, mostly in the downtown section but as far south as 7th Street and as far east as 20th Avenue, with a total economic damage that has yet to be determined. Oakland police say that as many as 120 arrests were made Wednesday night, 70 percent of them for acts of civil disobedience for which they will receive citations, the rest for more serious criminal violations. 

“The department supports people coming out peacefully and protesting,” OPD Chief Wayne Tucker said at a packed Thursday afternoon City Hall press conference called by Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums. “But we will not tolerate the things that went on last night.” 

Dereca Blackmon, co-founder of the Coalition Against Police Corruption and one of the organizers of Wednesday’s Fruitvale to downtown march, said that organizers have planned another protest action for next Wednesday. Police officials and most observers have said that while some of Wednesday night’s rioters may have been involved in the earlier protest and march, the march itself was peaceful and organizers and the bulk of the marchers were not involved in the violence. 

Also at the Thursday afternoon press conference, Dellums announced that the City of Oakland was entering the controversy over the Grant killing, saying that he had directed Oakland police officials to investigate the young man’s shooting death “as you would any other homicide in Oakland.” OPD’s investigation will be coordinated with that of the Alameda County District Attorney’s office. There is a parallel investigation being conducted by the BART Police Department. 

The Dellums press conference included several city and county officials, including District Attorney Orloff, who announced that he was giving his office a two week deadline to complete the investigation of the Grant killing and to decide whether Mehserle will be charged and arrested in the killing and, if so, what legal charges would be brought.  

A group of Oakland citizens, including prominent African-American leader Rev. J. Alfred Smith of Allen Temple Baptist Church and Rev. Keith Muhammad of the Oakland mosque of the Nation of Islam, had appeared frustrated following a Wednesday meeting with Orloff in which the district attorney had declined to give such a deadline for the end of the investigation. Thursday’s announcement by Orloff appeared to be a concession that with the growing controversy over the shooting, the district attorney’s normal course of complete silence over an investigation until its completion could not be followed in this case. 

“I know that there’s a lot of anger in the community, a lot of emotion,” Orloff said. “But it’s important that we move forward with a case that is court-ready. I request that you be patient, and we’ll be able to demonstrate that we have brought a thorough and thoughtful conclusion to this investigation that will bring justice to all.” 

Several other Oakland officials spoke at the press conference, including Councilmember Jean Quan, who had accompanied Dellums Wednesday night when the mayor walked the streets attempting to quiet and calm the protesters and rioters.  

“Oscar Grant was someone we knew,” Quan said. “He was the nice counter guy at the meat section at Farmer Joe’s [supermarket]. His death left a hole in my heart.” 

And newly sworn-in Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, who said she wanted to speak directly to the “small number of violent protesters” who trashed the downtown streets the night before. “Breaking the windows of minority-owned businesses in Oakland to get at BART is no better than George Bush bombing Iraq to get at Al Queda,” Kaplan said. 

His voice sometimes breaking with emotion, Dellums also addressed Wednesday night’s violence, saying that “the community is saying, don’t hustle our pain [over the death of Grant]. We cannot exploit other people’s pain. Whether you’re Black, Latino, white, Asian, or whatever the hell you are, at this moment, we need to embrace each other.” 

Several hours earlier, members of the BART Board of Directors, meeting in regular session for the first time since the New Years Day killing, heard several hours of speeches by citizens angered at Grant’s death and by the long delay by BART officials in releasing information or meeting with the public. 

Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson said that from the video “this appeared to be an execution” and told BART board members that “you had the responsibility to contact this community immediately and let people know what you know. It’s not just the young people demonstrating in the streets who are concerned about this incident. The entire community is watching, and will be following it to its outcome.” 

Referring to the alleged leader of the “Oakland rider” renegade police officers group who fled—allegedly to Mexico—to avoid prosecution before being charged and arrested for falsifying evidence and assaulting suspects, Minister Keith Muhammad of the Oakland mosque of Oakland urged BART officials to arrest Mehserle “before he leaves the country.” Muhammad added that “we want justice in this matter, and we won’t rest until we get it.” Muhammad also criticized BART officials for waiting a week to present condolences to Grant’s family. 

BART Board President Thomas Blalock opened Thursday’s meeting with a moment of silence for Grant as well as expressing condolences to his family. BART Board member Carole Ward Allen, who represents the Fruitvale BART station where Grant was killed, also offered “sympathies, love, and prayers to Oscar Grant’s family.” 

But that was not enough for protest organizer Blackmon who also castigated the BART board members, saying that “the board needs to be accountable for its delayed reaction. Had information been released earlier, it might have delayed some of the rage that was displayed last night.” Saying that “the police cannot police themselves,” Blackmon urged that BART turn the investigation of Grant’s death over to an outside agency. 

Councilmember Desley Brooks said that “there is a community that is outraged and angry by what we saw in the [Grant shooting] video,” adding that “the response by BART officials was not of acknowledgement of the execution of a young man, but of covering up, of closing ranks. This was a failure to communicate, the failure to acknowledge the taking of a life that was harmful to the community.” 

Both Brooks and Blackmon told board members that the investigation of the Grant shooting should not be limited to Mehserle, but should also include the actions of all of the officers who were present at the time of Grant’s death. “BART should publicly identify each and every officer,” Brooks said. “Each one was culpable. Each one should be placed on leave and an investigation held into their actions or inactions.”  

Brooks also called on BART to set up an independent citizen police review board, as well as to revamp its police procedures and policies, including recruitment and hiring, training, use of force policies, and disciplinary action. 

BART Board President Blalock said that the board was setting up a special committee, to be chaired by Board member Allen, to convene meetings in the community concerning the Grant killing. 


Dental Records Give ID for Berkeley Burnt Body

By Richard Brenneman
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:36:00 PM

East Bay Regional Parks District Police Thursday announced their identification of a body found in a burning trash along Interstate 80 along the Berkeley shore. 

The dead man, identified through dental records and fingerprints, is Peter Allen Whigham, 49, of Richmond. 

His vehicle, a 2000 white Chevrolet van with California plates 6EMB905 is still missing, as is his dog, a yellow Labrador Retriever, said park police Sgt. Tyrone Davis. 

Berkeley police and firefighters rushed to the a freeway frontage road near the city’s shoreline early Dec. 30 after callers reported seeing someone set a fire in a trash container. On their arrival, emergency workers discovered a gruesome sight: A cadaver set alight with liquid fuel and burning in a trash container. 

The dramatic scene that led to the discovery of Whigham’s body began shortly after 6:30 a.m. at the Virginia Gate to Eastshore Park west of Interstate 80. Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Andrew Frankel said BPD and firefighters initially responded to the scene, then called the East Bay Regional Park Police when the site was determined to lie within park district boundaries. 

“We immediately sent investigators and patrol officers, and I responded as well,” said Capt. Mark Ruppenthal of the park police force. “Berkeley police and firefighters were on scene at the time I arrived and they transferred the scene to us.” 

A week later Capt. Ruppenthal was able to report that a subsequent examination revealed to corpse to be that of a male approximately 48-years-old. 

“We are still waiting for the Alameda County Coroner’s Office to make a positive identification,” he said at the time. “Because the body was severely burned, it’s been a very difficult process.”  

Capt. Ruppenthal said investigators “have an idea of who we think it is. We have a missing person whose vehicle is also missing, but we can’t say for sure if there is a connection.” 

Identification was announced the next morning. 

Sgt. Davis said Thursday morning that he couldn’t offer any information about how Whigham died. “I don’t know when that’s going to be announced,” he said. 

Sgt. Davis asked anyone with information about Whigham and his missing vehicle to call him at 881-1833. Those wishing to remain anonymous can call the park district’s Confidential Tip Line at 690-6521. 

Whigham is described as an Anglo American who is believed to have been a resident of Richmond and had a prior address is San Jose, said the sergeant.


Cops Mum in Case of Walled-Up Cadaver

By Richard Brenneman
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:37:00 PM

While Berkeley police have identified the body found walled up in a Berkeley apartment building at 2235 Ashby Ave., they aren’t saying anything about how or why he died. 

One the day before Christmas, police revealed that the Alameda County Coroner had used dental records to identify the badly decomposed cadaver as Taruk Joseph Ben Ali, who was born April 14, 1968. 

Police said the man had been missing since 2004. 

Police found the body two days after his father, 60-year-old Hassan Ben Ali, had shot himself to death during a confrontation with Berkeley police, who had been called to his apartment Dec. 15 by reports of a loud argument at the Ashby building. 

Once officers had entered the apartment, Ben Ali “pulled a handgun, put it to his head and subsequently took his own life,” said Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Andrew Frankel on the day after the body was found in the wall. Police issued no press release about that suicide, which became news only after the discovery of the body of the dead man’s son two days later. 

Officer Frankel said the younger man’s case “is still being investigated as a suspicious death.” 

The officer said more information might be released “when the coroner is done” but declined to say whether the autopsy had been completed or what it might have revealed. 

“We’re not ready to share that information,” Frankel said, adding that a future press release might provide further details. 

Police have also declined to say what information had led them to the discovery of the second body.


People’s Park Acacias Felled Despite Tree-Sit Protest

By Richard Brenneman
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:37:00 PM
UC Berkeley briefly gained a pair of tree-sitters Monday morning in one of two acacias at People’s Park designated for the ax by university officials. The activists and the tree came down a day later.
Richard Brenneman
UC Berkeley briefly gained a pair of tree-sitters Monday morning in one of two acacias at People’s Park designated for the ax by university officials. The activists and the tree came down a day later.

Berkeley’s latest tree-sit ended almost before it began when the lone remaining branch-percher descended to earth Tuesday morning, followed by two acacias a few hours later. 

Campus community relations director Irene Hegarty said that only one of the two tree-sitters who took to the branches was still aloft when community members talked him down. 

“He walked away, though he was cited and released for trespassing by university police a couple of blocks away,” she said. 

Arborists made short work of the trees, leaving five or six five-foot logs and a pile of wood chips for use at the park. “They might use the logs to make benches or to line planting beds,” Hegarty said. 

“In any other context, this would not be news,” she said. 

But tree-sitters and their supporters were much more upbeat Monday after a reporter responded to a tip from Zachary RunningWolf, who launched Berkeley’s best-known tree-sit at Memorial Stadium on Big Game Day 2006. 

Two protesters had declared their occupation Monday morning of one of two People’s Park acacias that the university plans to chop down.  

Unlike the Memorial Stadium tree-sit, which ended in September with the demolition of a venerable oak grove, the People’s Park protest wasn’t sparked by construction.  

While the university wanted to clear the stadium grove to make way for a four-level high tech gym and office complex, UC Berkeley spokesperson Irene Hegarty says safety concerns have prompted plans to remove the trees from the park.  

And even some tree-sit supporters say they weren’t adamantly opposed to removal of the trees should that prove necessary, so long as the university replaces them, and not necessarily with acacias.  

“We have a lot of demands,” said one of the tree-sitters Monday afternoon.  

Just what those demands were wasn’t clear.  

While some supporters say they wanted the acacias to live, others said that they might accept replacements if the university proved that the trees must go.  

RunningWolf staged a brief occupation of one of the acacias on Dec. 18, before UC Police Capt. Guillermo Beckford signed an agreement to postpone any axing action until after the holidays.  

RunningWolf is among the backers of indigenous replacements if needed, preferably a redwood—the same species he climbed to kick off the Memorial Stadium tree-sit two years earlier.  

Kingmen Lim, an independent certified arborist who volunteered to look at the two acacias, said he believed the People’s Park trees could be saved “with a combination of non-invasive cabling and end-weight reduction.”  

Hegarty said reports on the park’s acacias were prepared by three arborists in 2003 after safety concerns were triggered when another park acacia toppled unexpectedly.  

One consultant was on the university staff and a second was hired by the school, while a third was paid “by the community.”  

All of them said the three playground acacias were structurally weak, and one had been reduced to a hollow shell. The hollowed tree was removed, and the decision was made to examine the remaining trees in five years.  

The university’s latest plans to remove the trees were sparked by the collapse of a fourth acacia at the western end of the park in early December, she said, though the People’s Park Community Advisory Board had been briefed on concerns about the trees a month earlier.  

RunningWolf said he didn’t believe the larger community had been adequately notified, “and needed to be involved before any decisions were made about the trees.  

Reign, another supporter of the tree-sit and one of those who had occupied the trees at Memorial Stadium for 11 months, said “the kids up there in the trees know they are depending on this earth to keep on living, and they are there to save life that is in jeopardy.”  


Brunner Elected Oakland City Council President

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:38:00 PM

The era of male-dominated city government ended in Oakland Monday morning—and perhaps the era of a city government dominated by former state Sen. Don Perata as well—when North Oakland Councilmember Jane Brunner was elected to the powerful position of Oakland City Council president, to succeed the outgoing Ignacio De La Fuente. 

With women now holding a 6-2 advantage over men in the Oakland City Council, Brunner becomes the first woman to head the city’s ruling legislative body. Oakland mayors—who have always been men—chaired the council until the passage of Oakland’s strong mayor initiative 10 years ago. Since then, the position of council president has been held by De La Fuente. 

Monday’s special council meeting to inaugurate newly elected councilmembers, Oakland school board members, and other city officials also opened the unofficial beginning of campaigning for the 2010 mayoral election, with Oakland City Attorney John Russo giving an inaugural speech that had all the earmarks of a bid for Oakland mayor. 

As an indication that he knew he did not have the five council votes necessary to keep the position for a fifth straight two-year term, De La Fuente had issued a press statement late Sunday evening saying that “after much consideration, I have decided not to pursue another term as council president, and will instead offer my support and experience to whomever the council selects to assume the role.” 

Among other things, the Oakland City Council president chairs council meetings and decides the composition and chairmanship of the council’s various committees. 

Other than switching places with De La Fuente as chair of the Rules and Legislation Committee—giving her considerable power over the setting of the council agendas—Brunner made virtually no changes in committee chairmanships from De La Fuente’s previous selections. Larry Reid remained chair of the Public Safety Committee, Jean Quan of Finance, and Nancy Nadel of Public Works. De La Fuente will take Brunner’s place as chair of the Community and Economic Development Committee, and Desley Brooks will succeed Henry Chang as chair of the Life Enrichment Committee. 

De La Fuente did not come out the complete loser of the day, however. He was unanimously elected to the position of vice mayor, the city officer who succeeds the city’s mayor should he leave office early. 

The council’s unanimous decision to select Brunner capped two months of intense speculation and backroom political maneuvering that began with last November’s general election, when progressive and former Green Party member Rebecca Kaplan beat out Oakland School Board member and former Perata Chief of Staff Kerry Hamill in a runoff for the at-large Oakland City Council seat. The outgoing At-Large Councilmember Henry Chang had been a reliable vote for De La Fuente, and Chang’s decision not to run for re-election set off a scramble for the council presidency between De La Fuente, Brunner, and councilmembers Larry Reid and Jean Quan. 

Chang’s retirement, Kaplan’s subsequent defeat of Hamill, and Brunner’s election to the council presidency also means that former state Sen. Don Perata has lost considerable power and influence with the Oakland City Council. 

De La Fuente is Perata’s closest political ally on the council, one of the most important members of a group of officeholders—commonly known as the Peratistas—spread through city governments throughout the East Bay. It was through this network of city government influence that Perata was reportedly able to influence the awarding of development and procurement contracts to favored developers and businesses, which the former State Senate leader then cashed in for political favors and campaign contributions.  

While Brunner was once considered a political ally of Perata as well, their political relationship may have soured several years ago when the state senator reportedly blocked Brunner’s plans to run for the California State Assembly. 

Perata, currently under investigation over allegations of political corruption by the United States Attorney’s Office and a federal grand jury, has indicated his interest in running for Oakland mayor in 2010. The current Oakland mayor, Ron Dellums, is eligible to run for a second term when his current term runs out, but has not yet indicated whether he intends to run for re-election. 

Meanwhile, City Attorney Russo gave every indication that he is interested in a position other than his current job. 

In a three-page prepared inaugural speech with copies handed out to reporters prior to Monday’s meeting, Russo briefly thanked voters for re-electing him as city attorney, and then launched into a program for reform of Oakland city government that concentrated, in part, on reducing the size of the city’s governmental organization to meet the current budget crisis as well as increasing the “crime fighting capacity” of the Oakland Police Department. 

Councilmember Jean Quan is reportedly also looking into a run for mayor in 2010. 

Meanwhile, Mayor Dellums was not present in City Council chambers for Monday’s meeting. Dellums was several blocks away at the Oakland Marriott auditorium, giving remarks and joining a gathering of several thousand in a memorial service for the late Oakland activist Dr. C. Diane Howell. The 58-year-old Howell, who ran the highly successful Oakland Black Expo for several years and published the monthly Black Business Listings newspaper, died late last year after a short illness. Monday’s council meeting was cut short so that members could also leave early to attend the end of the Howell memorial. 


Local Groups Plan Events For Obama Inauguration

By Rio Bauce Special to the Planet
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:23:00 PM

While only a select few will actually get to attend the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States on Jan. 20, many Bay Area citizens and organizations are coming together to have their own local celebrations.  

Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson is putting one such series of events together. Carson’s office has mobilized numerous local faith-based and non-profit community organizations to put together small events, which emphasize community service and helping those in need as necessary tools to pulling the country out of the current economic recession, in the week leading up to Obama’s inauguration. The final event on Jan. 20 will take place at the Oakland-Alameda County Oracle Arena with a community viewing, starting at 7 a.m., of Obama’s inauguration and acceptance speech.  

“This is a call to action,” said Carson. “Barack Obama cannot turn this county around by himself. We have to leverage our resources and work together as a community to weather the storm of uncertainties during this economic recession.” 

On six non-consecutive days leading up to the inauguration festivities, there are activities planned at faith-based locations. These smaller events will commence with a service, an optional prayer, and music from local choirs. Following this will be presentations from community-based organizations on how to get involved in helping improve the economic situation in the country at the local level. 

“I want to stress that all these events are interfaith,” said Mateo Reyes, spokesman for Carson. “Regardless of your faith or multicultural practice, these events are really intended to celebrate and help out your community. We are trying to work with people that we haven’t worked with before. These faith-based institutions have done work with a myriad of people before, so we are trying to use them as a vehicle to reach across all areas: race, sex, sexual orientation, etc.  

The Jodo Shinshu Center, a relatively new Buddhist resource center in Berkeley, is one of the venues for the community gatherings. At the gathering, several Buddhist ministers from the Bay Area will come to speak and lead services, with traditional chantings. 

“We are hoping to incorporate a continued hope and commitment to the community even in times of economic recession,” said program assistant Yumi Hatta. “ We are hoping to adapt some of the content into a Buddhist setting. It will be a nice way to open the year and I think that people are looking forward  

to it.” 

Tickets to view the inauguration at the ORACLE arena are $5 at the Coliseum box office or at www.ticketmaster.com. Doors open at 7 a.m. and Obama’s acceptance speech should start at around 9 a.m. Event parking is free. However, public transportation is also encouraged. School, senior and disability groups should contact Jeanne Palmer at 464-6949 for discount information. For more information about the Obama events, see www.ObamaCelebration.org. 

The other “ObamaCelebration” events are as follows:  

• Sunday, Jan. 11, 4 p.m., at the Cathedral of Christ the Light, 2121 Harrison St., Oakland.  

• Monday, Jan. 12, 4 p.m., Jodu Shinshu Center, 2140 Durant Ave., Berkeley. 

• Wednesday, Jan. 14, 7 p.m., St. Paul AME, 2024 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. 

• Thursday, Jan. 15, 6 p.m. (with $5 admission), Diamond Palace, hosted by Afghan Muslim Community, 4100 Peralta Blvd., Fremont. 

• Sunday, Jan. 18, 4 p.m., Beebe Memorial Cathedral, 3900 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 

• Monday, Jan. 19, 11 a.m., Acts Full Gospel Church, 1034 66th Ave., Oakland. 

UC Berkeley is holding its own inaugural event at Sproul Plaza. UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau will welcome the community and refreshments will be served. 

“We are going to have a large community viewing of the inauguration and swearing-in ceremony on a 15-by-20-foot screen at Sproul Plaza,” said event coordinator Danielle Wiskerson. 

Across the bay, Inauguration West, a Jan. 20 evening event from 6-10 p.m. at the Metreon in downtown San Francisco, will commemorate Obama’s inauguration and will benefit local charities. California State Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, Golden State Warrior Stephen Jackson, and 49er football legends Ronnie Lott, Dwight Cark and Roger Craig, among others, plan to attend. 

“The Bay Area played a significant role in making the presidency of Barack Obama a reality, and we felt it was only natural that we join in the celebration of this historic event,” said Ave Montague, creator of Inauguration West. “We know that not everyone can make it to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration, so we are focused on providing people here with the next best thing. The diversity, the colorful entertainment and the excitement of the evening will all reflect the candidacy of Barack Obama.”  

Money from the event will benefit charities such as All Stars Helping Kids, Omega Boys Club, the Museum of the African Diaspora education programs and the San Francisco Black Film Festival’s Urban Kidz youth program. For more information or to purchase advance tickets, visit www.inaugurationwest.com.


Fire Dept. Log

By Richard Brenneman
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:26:00 PM

Eunice Street blaze 

A smoke detector did its job in Berkeley on Monday morning, warning residents of a fire in their home in the 2300 block of Eunice Street. 

“Everyone got out without any injury,” said Berkeley Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong. 

“We were called by the residents after they were awakened by the alarm,” he said, “showing once again how important it is to have working smoke detectors.” 

The deputy chief said the fire was caused when a burning log rolled out of the fireplace, igniting the flooring. 

The blaze spread to the walls around the fireplace and did more than $20,000 in structural damage before it was extinguished by firefighters. 

It’s not only smoke detectors that matter, said Deputy Chief Dong. “We have three cases of carbon monoxide poisoning in the Bay Area during the recent cold spell.” 

Carbon monoxide detectors would have helped, warning residents of a build up of the colorless, odorless gas before it reached toxic levels. 

But just as important, said the deputy chief, is to check to see that furnaces are working properly. 

And at least one of the cases stemmed from the use of a gas-powered generator to power appliances after regular electric service had been disconnected. 

“No gasoline- or propane-powered equipment should be used inside a residence,” he said.


Police Blotter

By Rio Bauce
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:26:00 PM

Sink hole on Tunnel Road 

On Jan. 7, at 6 a.m., a water main broke on Tunnel Road, south of Bridge Road. East Bay MUD and CalTrans came on the scene nearly 20 minutes after the original call. Traffic was closed on the westbound side at around 6 a.m. until the afternoon. The water main created a sink hole that was about eight feet by five feet deep.  

 

Purse stolen 

On Jan. 6, a little after 11 a.m., a woman reported that her purse had been stolen from the front counter lobby of the Rose Garden Inn on the 2700 block of Telegraph Avenue. The woman left her purse unattended at the counter for about 10 minutes before she called to report it missing. No suspects have been identified at this time.  

 

Camera stolen 

On Jan. 5 at 2:13 p.m., the owner of Adams and Chittenden, on the 2700 block of Eighth Street, called in to report that a Nikon digital camera and lens had been stolen from his store over the last few weeks. There have been no suspects identified in this case.  

 

Vandals 

On Jan. 4 at 4:34 p.m., a Berkeley citizen informed Berkeley police that several people have been tagging a commercial property on the 2200 block of Dwight Way with spray paint. The people responsible for the graffiti remain at large.  

 

Drug bust 

On Jan. 3, at around 1:30 p.m., Berkeley police were dispatched to the intersection of Oregon and Sacramento streets with a report of drug activity. Police arrived, searched two people and found marijuana on them. One was a 20-year-old man, who was also arrested for possession of a 380 semi-automatic handgun on his waistband, and the other was a 19-year-old man, who also had a warrant out for his arrest.


Council 2008:Controversies, Deliberations And Goodbyes

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:39:00 PM

The year 2008 saw the renewal of the political battle between the once and future mayors of Berkeley: Tom Bates and Shirley Dean. It was a year in which environmental issues dominated City Council discussions, from the furtherance of various “green action” plans to the continuing battles over cellphone antennae facility expansion. Development issues were a constant—what should be built, and where, and how high.  

And demonstrations—from the downtown Berkeley Marine Recruitment Center to the oak grove in front of UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium—brought national attention to the city. Berkeley was holding its own against proposed and possible state revenue shortfalls due to the growing recession.  

In short, it was a typical year for the Berkeley City Council. 

That, however, is not how the year will be remembered. In-stead, 2008 in the Berkeley City Council will be forever linked  

in our minds to the passing of two long-term Councilmembers from the scene, Dona Spring and Betty Olds, one from an untimely death, the other by retirement. Though Spring was one of the council’s most committed progressives and Olds, a solid Berkeley moderate (the emphasis here being on the word “Berkeley”), often putting them on opposite sides on some of the council’s most ideologically driven issues, the two councilmembers held a common concern for animal rights and formed a formidable team on the council to push through animal welfare issues. 

 

January 

Berkeley City Council started off 2008 in typical Berkeley fashion, joining in a far-reaching East Bay urban environmental protection effort, but squabbling over the ways and means of it all the way. A unanimous Berkeley City Council agreed to join the East Bay Green Corridor Partnership, a coalition of the cities of Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond and Emeryville along with the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory designed to “strengthen the regional economy through support for emerging green and sustainable industries, alternative energy research, and a healthy built environment.”  

But while support for the proposal itself gained full council support, at least one councilmember complained about the manner in which it had been brought about, with Kriss Worthington concerned that Mayor Tom Bates had signed the partnership’s statement of principles without first getting the City Council’s approval.  

And several citizens speaking at the council meeting, along with Councilmember Dona Spring, questioned whether a “green” alliance with the University of California might also mean support for oil giant British Petroleum, with which UC had recently entered a $500 million partnership to develop biofuels. 

Also in January, the council passed at the time what seemed like a routine-for Berkeley-set of proposals in relation to the ongoing U.S. war in Iraq. With some dissent, the council approved a Peace and Justice Commission resolution condemning the presence of military recruiters in Berkeley. One of the planks of the resolution asked the city manager to write the United States Marines telling them that their downtown recruitment center was not welcome in Berkeley, adding that “if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders.”  

At the time of its passage no one, not even the council dissenters, appeared to know just how explosive the resolution would be, or how much it would put Berkeley again in the national forefront of anti-war activity. 

 

February 

By early February, with national media attention focusing on the “uninvited and unwelcome intruder” Marine recruiters statement and pro-military and anti-war demonstrators beginning to converge on the city, Councilmembers Betty Olds and Laurie Capitelli called for a revision of that statement, saying in a press conference, “We failed to make it clear that while we continue to oppose what we consider an unethical and illegal war in Iraq, at the same time we respect and honor all the brave men and women who are serving or have served in the military … We have erred by not adequately differentiating between the war and the warriors.” 

On Feb. 12, the Planet reported that “since voting Jan. 29 to support protests at the downtown Marine Recruiting Center and asking staff to write a letter telling the Marines they are ‘unwelcome intruders,’ the Berkeley City Council has been skewered on-line and in print, excoriated in thousands of e-mails, and threatened by Republicans in Congress and state legislature with the loss of government funds.”  

Later that evening, after up to 2,000 pro-military and anti-war demonstrators jammed the street and parklands in front of old City Hall, Council effectively reversed its earlier vote to declare Marine recruiters “intruders” in Berkeley, substituting instead a statement that recognized “the recruiters’ rights to locate in our city” as well as “the right of others to protest or support [the Marine recruiters’] presence.” 

And late in the month, the council joined several other Bay Area cities in opposition to a controversial plan by the California Department of Agriculture to use aerial pesticide urban spraying to eradicate the Light Brown Apple Moth. The controversy spread, and late in June, the Planet reported that “after months of local government and citizen condemnation from Monterey to the East Bay of the state’s proposed plan to spray by air to disrupt the reproduction of the light brown apple moth, with anti-spray bills moving rapidly through the state legislature and with lawsuits temporarily tying up the spray program in two counties,” California Secretary of Agriculture A. J. Kawamura announced plans to call off the aerial spraying and substitute the plan with the release of sterile moths to drive the apple moths into extinction. 

 

March 

In March came the first reports of the effects of the growing national recession on the City of Berkeley’s finances. City Manager Phil Kamlarz informed the Council that with “property-based revenue tanking,” while the city’s budget was balanced at the midyear point of the ‘07-’08 fiscal year and no layoffs or program cuts were on the horizon, there would be no new city services envisioned unless residents authorized new taxes to pay for them, and Berkeley could face a $1.6 million budget deficit by 2011.  

Late in the month, the Council began discussions on proposed revenue increase ballot measures to put on the November ballot, but delayed a final decision pending an April David Binder poll designed to determine what services Berkeley taxpayers were willing to pay more money for, and how high the increases should be. 

 

April-May 

After taking its annual four-week spring break in late March and most of April, the council got the results of the David Binder tax-support poll, and they did not look good. A survey of 600 Berkeley residents showed lukewarm support for tax increase ballot measures, with library facility upgrades, recreational improvements, construction of a warm water pool, and storm water upgrades all failing to receive the 66 percent approval rating needed for tax increase measures. Councilmember Dona Spring told the Planet that “it doesn’t look good for taxes at all from the results.”  

But late in the month, with the need for support of those services critical, the council asked staff to prepare three possible November ballot measures, promising to make a decision on one of them in June. 

City Manager Kamlarz told councilmembers that he was proposing setting aside $2 million in the FY ’08-09 budget as a contingency fund to meet the almost certain cuts in money from the state that he felt were sure to be caused by the deepening state and national recession. 

Also in May, breaking with tradition, Mayor Bates gave his annual State of the City address not to the general public in City Hall chambers, but at a semi-private, invitee speech at Meyer Sound in West Berkeley. And the council postponed until October discussion of the long-awaited revisions to the city’s Sunshine Ordinance. 

 

June 

Late in June, the council briefly considered entering the growing controversy over UC Berkeley’s plans to tear down a grove of oak trees in front of Memorial Stadium. Protesters had been living in the trees for several months, effectively blocking the use of chainsaws, and the council had been requested to intervene to protect the health and safety of the tree-sitters, who were charging that their lives have been put in danger by the university’s various attempts to isolate them and bring them down. But in a chaotic end to the last meeting in the month, the Council failed to get enough votes to extend the meeting time past 12:30 a.m. in order to take up the issue. 

And despite its promise to do so by the end of June, the council again deferred a final decision on what tax-increase measures to put on the November ballot. 

 

July 

In July, the council finally settled on its bond and tax measures, authorizing what later became Measure FF (branch library renovation) and GG (fire stations, medical response, and disaster preparedness). The council also decided in closed session that it would not sue to keep a citizen-initiative measure off the ballot that, if passed, would give citizen control over street lane set-asides for public transit. That measure, KK, was crafted by opponents of AC Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project, which proposes to set-aside the two middle lanes of Telegraph Avenue in order to put in a high-speed bus system from downtown San Leandro to downtown Berkeley.  

Also in July, what may have been the year’s biggest single council controversy arose over the council’s decision not to appeal a Superior Court ruling in favor of UC Berkeley on the university oak grove issue. The council had sued to stop the university from constructing a new athletic facility near Memorial Stadium on Strawberry Canyon grounds which run along an earthquake fault. UC Berkeley’s athletic facility plans had led to a year-long occupation of a grove of old oak trees in front of Memorial Stadium, which were scheduled by the university to be cut down to make way for the new facility.  

After the council declined in a special closed session to appeal the judge’s decision in the university’s favor, it was revealed that the university had earlier sent the city a letter negotiating concessions on their construction plan, and asking the city not to appeal. The existence of the university letter was not revealed to the public until after the council’s closed session vote against an appeal, giving the public no chance to give councilmembers their own views on the appeal prior to the vote.  

The controversy grew worse over the fact that city officials asserted that in this particular case, California’s open meeting laws did not require the council to reveal which councilmembers had voted for or against the appeal in closed session. 

But the biggest news of July, without doubt, was the death of longtime Councilmember Dona Spring from complications due to her longtime affliction of rheumatoid arthritis. “Berkeley is mourning the loss of Councilmember Dona Spring,” the Daily Planet wrote in a special July 25 update, “protector of the environment, fighter for housing rights and champion for human and animal life. 

The normally talkative Kriss Worthington, Spring’s closest council ally, was “too distraught” immediately afterwards to comment on her death. But in the most poignant of many statements used to describe Spring, who moved about in the last years of her life only with the aid of a wheelchair, the Planet quoted Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman as saying that “She was a tough and wonderful person. One wants to use the word ‘saint’.”  

 

Augus-September 

The council took its six week summer break through August and the first two weeks of September. Late in September, the council took its first look in a while at revisions to its existing condominium conversion ordinance, considering a “complicated staff recommendation” for revisions in the amount of fees charged to convert dwellings to condominiums, as well as the process by which those fees are determined.  

 

October 

In October, City Manager Kamlarz told councilmembers that prudent city financing would absorb state cutbacks mandated by the passage of the recent state budget, with $1.7 million in cuts to be offset by a $1.8 million contingency fund set aside in this year’s city budget for just that probability. But with the current year’s state budget still several billion dollars out of balance, Kamlarz said that the city might have to brace itself for further state cutbacks. 

Meanwhile, the council tinkered for a bit with its condominium conversion ordinance, trying to find a balance which did not encourage the loss of the city’s rental housing stock while not shutting off conversions altogether. Finally, with the issue too complicated to handle on a short-range basis, the council decided to hold the issue off until the November election and the certainty that at least two new Councilmembers would be on board (the successors to the late Councilmember Spring and the retiring Councilmember Olds). 

 

November 

With the city’s Planning Commission considering revisions to the Berkeley’s Wireless Telecommunication Ordinance in response to a recent federal appeals court decision, the council re-entered the cellphone antennae facility battles with a bang in November, considering citizen appeals from the Zoning Adjustments Board over granting permits for two new antennae facilities.  

The discussions of the two appeals, which spread over several meetings in November and into December, sparked a running debate between two Councilmembers, Max Anderson (an antennae facility opponent) and Gordon Wozniak (who supports expansion of the facilities). Most of the councilmembers expressed frustration that the federal Telecommunications Act prevented any consideration of the possible health effects of increased cellphone antennae facility construction. 

The council also said goodbye to the retiring 88-year-old Olds, who was participating in her last meeting of the council, in which she had served for the last 16 years. She entered the meeting to a standing ovation from a packed council chambers and cheers of “Yay, Betty!” A mayoral proclamation set aside the day in her honor, and a long string of friends and constituents—as well as councilmembers—came to the microphone to pay tribute and to repeat their favorite “Bettyisms,” the prickly, pithy (and sometimes earthy) remarks for which Olds was famous. Olds herself was allowed to gavel her final meeting to a close, saying that she was “sad to be leaving.”  

She showed up at the first council meeting in December as a private citizen, with one friend joking with her that “now you can leave early, if you want.” She did. 

 

December 

The council went back to a favorite issue in December—international affairs—approving a resolution calling for federal prosecution of UC Berkeley Boalt Hall Law Professor John Yoo for supporting torture by the Bush administration. 

Meanwhile, the council got predictably gloomy economic news from City Manager Kamlarz. The economic downturn has caused a $2 million downward projection in general fund revenues for the current fiscal year with the city’s largest revenue producers—restaurants and car sales—particularly hard hit by the recession.  

But with the state legislature meeting to close a projected multi-billion dollar gap in the ’08-09 state budget—and with a certainty that state cutbacks to local governments were in store in the upcoming ‘09-10 budget as well—there was certainty at the end of the year that the worst of the recession’s effects were yet to be felt. 

 

 


Top Berkeley Headlines of 2008

Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:24:00 PM

By Riya Bhattacharjee 

 

Berkeley shoreline opens after  

Cosco Busan oil spill 

Berkeley rang in 2008 with some good news, with city officials declaring the city’s shoreline open for use in January after declaring it off limits for more than two months, during which hazmat professionals battled toxic gunk from the freight ship Cosco Busan and wildlife experts worked fervently with locals to rescue birds and other marine life. 

Parks, Waterfront and Recreation officials said the city was working on an additional oil spill recovery plan to thwart unforeseen incidents in the future.  

 

Council ponders whether to  

call Pacific Steel a nuisance 

Councilmember Linda Maio’s proposal to declare the West Berkeley-based foundry a “public nuisance” at a City Council meeting in February was drowned under the angry cries of several hundred Pacific Steel workers, who called the idea a ruse to push them out. 

After an hour-long public hearing, the council voted unanimously to enter into an agreement with Pacific Steel to cut odor and emissions within a specific timeline. 

The steel plant was back in the news again in December when a pollution report by USA Today included three Berkeley schools in the top 1 percent of the country’s most at-risk sites for exposure to toxic air emission, immediately drawing the attention of community members and environmental activists who pointed at Pacific Steel as the city’s chief polluter. A spokesperson for Pacific Steel Casting told the media that given West Berkeley’s proximity to a busy freeway and other industry in the area, it was unfair to pile the blame on only one source. 

 

The end of an era: Cody’s closes  

after 52 years in Berkeley 

Cody’s Books, which was founded on Euclid Avenue in Berkeley in 1956 and later moved to Telegraph Avenue, expanded to Fourth Street in 1998 and San Francisco in 2005, closed on Telegraph in 2006, closed in San Francisco the following year, moved to Shattuck Avenue in March, and then, on June 19, 2008, went out of business. Hiroshi Kagawa, Cody’s current owner blamed declining sales for the store’s demise. 

 

Pixar comes to Berkeley 

in search of childcare 

Wareham Development’s plans to convert the Saul Zaentz Media Center—formally known as the Fantasy Records Building—at 2600 Tenth St. into a day care center for Disney Pixar employees received the green light from the city’s zoning officials in February. 

In the past, Wareham has developed a part of the former headquarters of Durkee Famous Foods at 800 and 830 Heinz Ave. into a day care center. 

 

Act 1&2 Theatre gets approval  

to become restaurants 

The city’s Zoning Adjustments Board granted Berkeley developer Patrick Kennedy a use permit to establish a 13,974-square-foot full-service upscale restaurant and bar at the former location of the landmarked Act 1&2 Theatre, which was formerly home to Ennor’s Restaurant in the 1920s. The building is currently vacant and is going through interior renovations. 

 

Option contract signed  

for Berkeley Iceland 

Tom Killilea and his non-profit Save Berkeley Iceland signed an exclusive contract with East Bay Iceland, which owns Berkeley Iceland, in March to purchase the 67-year-old ice skating rink, which closed down almost a year ago due to flagging business and high maintenance costs, for $6.25 million. 

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

East Bay Tibetan stores close to protest Olympic Torch relay 

As pro-Tibet groups and supporters of the Beijing Games engaged in a war of words during the Olympic Torch Relay in San Francisco on April 8, Tibetans in Berkeley kept their businesses closed to join in a movement very close to their heart. 

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 passed during its journey spanning six continents and 150 cities. 

 

Sunday brunch at Berkeley Thai Temple sparks neighborhood protest 

A popular weekend tradition at the Wat Mongkolratanaram on Russell Street drew the ire of its neighbors who charged the 30-year-old temple with attracting crowds, traffic and trash during a packed Zoning Adjustments Board meeting in April. 

The city found the Buddhist temple guilty of violating its use permit and is currently working with neighbors and the temple’s volunteers to figure out a resolution. 

Meanwhile, the movement to save the Sunday brunch, labeled as a gastronomical delight by many, has taken on mammoth proportions, with a website and a Facebook page dedicated entirely to it. 

 

Berkeley City College student charged with murdering UC Berkeley student 

The Alameda County District Attorney’s office charged Berkeley City College student Andrew Hoeft-Edenfield, 20, with murder in the stabbing death of UC Berkeley engineering student Chris Wootton in May. 

Wootton, 19, was stabbed during a fraternity row fight on May 3 in front of a group of college students. Little has emerged about the incident til now and Hoeft-Edenfield, who was earlier denied bail, is scheduled to appear in court for trial at the end of this month. 

 

Berkeley’s Juneteenth festival called off 

Berkeley didn’t have a Juneteenth festival in 2008 in the face of what some event organizers said was a myriad of restrictions city officials imposed on the 22-year-old tradition just months before the big weekend.  

The festival promises to be back next year, albeit on a different day, after the Berkeley Police Department complained its officers did not want to patrol the city’s streets on Father’s Day—which falls on every third Sunday in June, the same day on which Juneteenth has typically been celebrated. 

In addition to the conflict with Father’s Day, city officials also cited safety, location and organizational concerns for saying they would not approve a festival permit in 2008.  

 

Missing Rice University student  

turns up in Berkeley 

Matthew Wilson, who made national headlines after he disappeared from his off-campus apartment in Houston right before Christmas, was discovered in a UC Berkeley classroom in August, and was promptly arrested by UC police for breaking into university property after class hours. 

Wilson told authorities that he had come West to “disappear.” The District Attorney later dropped all charges against him, following which he flew back home with his family. 

 

Berkeley Sea Scouts Captain  

gets six years for sexual misconduct 

Eugene Evans, the Berkeley Sea Scouts leader convicted of two counts of child molestation in July, was sentenced to a total of six years in state prison by an Alameda County Superior Court judge in September. 

Judge Morris Jacobson ruled that Evans, 65, would be incarcerated for three years for each of two counts of lewd and lascivious behavior with minors, in what prosecutors described as “an atmosphere of secrecy,” and ordered him to be registered as a sexual offender for the rest of his life under Penal Code 290. 

 

Employee charges downtown 

McDonald’s with discrimination 

The Legal Aid Society Employment Law Center of San Francisco filed charges with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in July, alleging that the McDonald’s in downtown Berkeley unlawfully discriminated against one of its employees, Lisa Craib, and her two co-workers because of their developmental disabilities.  

Disability rights advocates in wheelchairs held a protest in front of the downtown McDonald’s franchisee on July 29 criticizing the action and demanding an answer from the owners. 

 

Ed Roberts Campus Breaks Ground 

The $45 million Ed Roberts Campus, described as the nation’s first universally designed transit-oriented development, broke ground at the Ashby BART station in September and is scheduled to become a reality within the next 15 months. 

The outcome of years of hard work by many disability organizations, the Ed Roberts Campus is a two-story, 86,057-square-foot building planned for 3075 Adeline St., which includes about a dozen nonprofits, child development and fitness centers, a cafe, Braille maps and spacious elevators, complete with a spiral ramp—inspired by the one at the Guggenheim Museum in New York—winding up to the second floor.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Budget Woes Shadowed School District for Much of Year

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:25:00 PM

Although the Berkeley Unified School District spent the better part of 2008 bracing for state budget cuts, there were tidings of comfort and joy amid all the gloom and doom, giving way to sporadic bursts of celebration in classrooms, schoolyards and even the steps of the state capitol. 

While the district prepares for what educators are warning could be mid-year slashes to public school funds, as proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in his January budget to balance California’s faltering economy, it is also taking pride in a successful first year under a new superintendent, higher test scores and revamping district facilities that were in need of repair. 

 

January 

Berkeley High teachers showed the district they meant business when they turned up at a school board meeting on Jan. 16 to complain about the space crunch at the high school, which had forced them to conduct classes in portables, share classrooms and, like nomads, push their carts from one site to another in the absence of a permanent space to hang their charts or give their lessons.  

The district approved funds that paid for six new portables on the softball field, which are now occupied by students and teachers returning from Christmas vacation this week, and announced plans to create four new classrooms through remodeling, including a shared space with Berkeley Community Media. According to district officials, the proposed demolition of the Old Gym on campus, scheduled to take place in 2011, and the subsequent construction of a new building in its place as part of the South of Bancroft Master Plan, would add at least 15 new classrooms, giving teachers at Berkeley High the much needed space to teach without interruption.  

A report prepared by the school district warned that the space problem is only likely to get worse in the years to come since enrollment will keep growing until 2011. 

January also saw The National Register of Historic Places grant the Berkeley High campus historic district status, a feat made possible due to the efforts by Friends Protecting Berkeley’s Resources, a local group led by Berkeley resident Marie Bowman. 

Friends sued the school district in March 2007 for what they charged was an inadequate environmental impact report on the demolition of the gymnasium and warm water pool inside it but reached a settlement with the district almost a year later, after the two sides agreed on a charrette to discuss the adaptive reuse of the two structures. 

The city is currently working with Berkeley Unified on a plan to relocate the warm pool, and a third public workshop to comment on a draft Citywide Pools Master Plan is in the cards for Jan. 24 at the James Kenney Community Center. 

The first signs of the governor’s proposed budget cuts to education also started making the rounds in January, paving the way for tougher times, pink slips and frequent trips to lobby legislators in Sacramento. 

 

February 

Berkeley Unified got a new superintendent in February, one who made it a priority to say hello to and mingle with community members before every school board meeting this year, no matter how pressing the agenda before him was. 

When Bill Huyett replaced former superintendent Michele Lawrence on Feb. 4, all eyes were on him to address the looming school budget crisis and close the achievement gap. Huyett worked with parents, teachers and the community to understand the problems, lunging into action from day one. 

He led a contingent to Sacramento later in the month, vowing to fight the cuts. 

On Feb. 19, the Planet reported that the Berkeley Board of Education was investigating Willard Middle School Vice Principal Margaret Lowry for allegedly attempting to arrange a drug sting involving two special education students within the school’s premises.  

During the time Lowry was placed on administrative leave pending investigation, several other parents came forward with complaints against Lowry involving their children, shedding light on the district’s complaint process, which had left families frustrated by the lack of response, follow-up or resolution of their concerns. 

The State Department of Education announced in February that Berkeley Unified had failed to meet the federal No Child Left Behind goals when it did not meet the 95 percent participation criterion for local education agencies in their third year of Program Improvement for 2007. 

Under the governor’s proposed im-provement plans, Berkeley Unified was asked to amend its current education plan. 

 

March 

The Berkeley High School Girls Basketball team won the North Coast Section Division I Championship for the second year in a row on March 1 at the Oracle Arena, after defeating Deer Valley High School of Antioch by a score of 62-45.  

The Planet reported at the beginning of March that Lowry had been reassigned from her position at Willard to a special assignment with Berkeley Unified School District central staff for the remainder of the school year. Thomas Orput, vice principal of the Berkeley Adult School, was called in to take over to replace her at Willard. 

In an interview with the Planet, Huyett said that the district would investigate complaints made by parents against Lowry and work toward some kind of a resolution. The Planet reported on March 7 that the district’s two week-long investigation of Lowry had come to an end. 

Berkeley Board of Education President John Selawsky said that although the district had investigated Lowry for “heavy-handed use of authority and cutting corners on due process,” the investigation had concluded that she had not put any child in harm’s way and that the allegations of her running a sting operation were inaccurate. 

Selawsky added that Lowry might be working to set up summer programs under her new assignment, but it was unlikely that she would be working with children. 

“We want to reassure the public and parents that we are taking the allegations against her very seriously,” he said.  

The district also saw an increase in student enrollment in March, with the number of kindergarten assignments at 660, almost 100 more than the year before. 

Although district officials couldn’t provide a specific reason for the hike in admissions, some parents attributed it to the rising cost of tuition fees in private schools. 

Berkeley High’s International Baccalaureate program was approved by the International Baccalaureate Organization in March. Based out of Geneva, Switzerland, the organization has programs in 2,145 schools in 125 countries, including seven Bay Area schools.  

The four-year interdisciplinary curriculum, which began with the ninth-grade in 2006, focuses on global culture, history, artistic expression, and political and economic systems. It now consists of two years, ninth and tenth grades.  

Berkeley Unified received a setback on March 16 when its student assignment system was once again challenged by Pacific Legal Foundation when the Sacramento-based right-wing public interest litigation firm appealed an April 2007 court decision which had ruled in favor of the district.  

The foundation sued Berkeley Unified for violating California’s Prop. 209 by racially discriminating among students with placements at elementary schools and at programs at Berkeley High in October 2006, but an Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled that the district’s student assignment system and integration system were fair and legal.  

 

April 

Berkeley PTAs united against the state education budget cuts in April and turned out to be the largest contingent at the “Flunk the Budget” California State PTA rally in Sacramento, where they lobbied legislators to increase revenue instead of taking away money from the state education budget. 

Around the same time Berkeley Unified announced that it had been able to bring back almost all of its “pink-slipped” classroom teachers, who had received possible layoff notices in face of the governor’s proposed budget cuts. 

The Berkeley Board of Education approved $1.4 million for Baker Vilar Architects to design the new gym and classroom building after the Old Gym gets demolished, as outlined in the South of Bancroft Master Plan. 

 

May 

When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents picked up a Berkeley family on May 6, during what federal authorities called routine targeted enforcement action, the incident sparked protest among local immigrant groups and advocates and prompted the Berkeley Unified School District to send out a telephone message advising parents not to panic, after rumors started circulating that ICE agents were rounding up students in Berkeley. 

ICE officials denied the allegations, explaining that searches at schools were treated with extremely high sensitivity. 

A few weeks later, Berkeley High Principal Jim Slemp organized a human chain around the school, rounding up 3,000 students in an act of solidarity with immigrants across the nation. Slemp promised to make Berkeley High a safe haven for everyone.  

More rallies to protest the ICE raids in Berkeley as well as all over the Bay Area took place over the next few months, with the most recent one taking place in front of the ICE office in San Francisco in November, when hundreds of students from schools and colleges demanded that sanctuary cities such as San Francisco and Berkeley be off limits when it came to arresting undocumented immigrants. 

On May 15, a Berkeley technology student was shot a few blocks from his school by one of his seniors, shocking the entire B-Tech community and leaving district officials to re-examine safety practices at the school. The district introduced more counselors for at-risk teens, among other intervention methods. 

Berkeley High turned out to be the largest group at a statewide rally in Sacramento during the third week of May to protest the budget cuts, a day after the governor released his May budget revisions, which contained significant changes to his January proposal, including a combination of spending reductions, revenue solutions and several creative financing mechanisms. 

 

June 

Berkeley Unified officials started taking a closer look at rehabilitating West Campus in order to relocate its headquarters there from the seismically unsafe Old City Hall building at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, after talking to neighbors, who criticized the district’s original plans to construct modulars on the grounds of the former Berkeley Adult School.  

If all goes according to plan, BUSD will move into the old red brick building on University Avenue and Bonar Street by 2010. 

The school district, partnering with the City of Berkeley and community activists launched the 2020 Vision for Berkeley’s Children and Youth in June, which aims to close the achievement gap in the city’s public schools and remove barriers to educational equity for African Americans and Latinos by 2020. 

The Berkeley Board of Education picked Curvy Derby as its preferred option for the Berkeley Unified School District’s East Campus field, but acknowledged that the district lacked the funds to build it.  

 

July  

The Berkeley Board of Education approved a resolution to work with the City of Berkeley to relocate the warm water pool from the landmarked Old Gym to an appropriate location without naming West Campus as a preferred site.  

The first statewide report on high school dropout and graduation rates tracking individual students revealed a high dropout rate for African Americans and Latinos compared to other ethnic groups. Although dropout rate for students at Berkeley Unified School District (15.6 percent) were lower than the countywide (18.7 percent) and statewide (24.2 percent) rates, the dropout rate for Berkeley Technology Academy (59.3 percent) was more than three times the countywide rate and more than double the statewide rate.  

The Berkeley Board of Education gave Berkeley High the go-ahead to move forward with a five-year federal Smaller Learning Community grant that aims to expand small school programs, provide students with a personalized college prep education and work on closing the achievement gap. 

 

August 

Kalpna Mistry, a global studies teacher at Berkeley International High School, died from a heart attack on Aug. 4 while on a Fulbright Scholarship to the Philippines. 

The results for California's 2008 Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program showed that a higher percentage of students in the Berkeley Unified School District scored proficient or above in reading, writing and mathematics as compared with the state results.  

The Berkeley High Jacket, the student-run newspaper, announced in August that it was under financial strain and might not be able to publish in the new school year. 

With the installation of 480 solar panels on its roof, Washington Elementary School became the first educational institution in Berkeley Unified to go solar. Funded by state and district money, the project serves as a model for other schools in Berkeley who want to turn solar in the future. 

The school district’s $8.7 million King Dining Commons also began and will serve—under the supervision of chef Ann Cooper—as King Middle School’s new cafeteria and the district’s central kitchen, preparing 3,000 hot lunches and 8,000 meals daily for hungry children at each of the city’s 16 public schools. 

The school board unanimously approved a schematic design for the $35 million South of Bancroft project, which would build about 55,000 square feet of new buildings and improve landscaping in the southern part of the Berkeley High School campus. 

 

September 

At least 11 schools in the Berkeley Unified School District met their Academic Performance Index targets for 2008 according to the state’s 2007-08 Accountability Progress Report and 

four other Berkeley public schools saw their API scores rise but did not meet the target. 

Berkeley Unified received a API score of 760, up 14 points from its 2007 Base API score of 746, showing that the district was progressing toward the target of 800. 

The Berkeley Board of Education unanimously approved a plan to put the historic Hillside School at 1581 Le Roy Ave. up for sale. 

Built in 1925 after the original Hillside School on Virginia Street burned down in the 1923 Berkeley fire, the building is a split-level three-story wood-frame Tudor designed by Walter Ratcliff. The school closed down in 1983 due to declining enrollment. 

Its main building straddles a trace of the Hayward Fault, which makes it unsuitable for public use. 

The board also approved a $15 Million West Campus Rehab for BUSD Headquarters, granting its neighbors a major victory. 

California’s long overdue state budget was finally signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger leaving the Berkeley Unified School District’s budget virtually unchanged from last year, but forcing it to grapple with the rising cost of living. 

Under the new budget, the district is set to make cuts of $2.5 million, which leave the budget barely balanced and with a loss of almost $2.9 million in general revenue and program reductions. 

 

October 

Gwen Martin, a third grade teacher at Jefferson Elementary School, resigned following allegations that she might have violated the separation of church and state by teaching creationism to her third-grade class. District officials decline to comment on the outcome of their investigation against Martin, explaining it was a personnel matter. 

The Berkeley Rep announced it had raised $6,000 at the world premiere of Yellowjackets to help the Berkeley High School student newspaper The Jacket stay afloat. 

 

November 

Berkeley Unified felt threatened by the governor’s proposed mid-year budget cuts and prepared for the worst. 

Community activist and leader Beatrice Leyva-Cutler led the Berkeley Board of Education elections with 37 percent of the vote, with incumbent and board president John Selawsky coming in second at 30 percent.  

Board member Joaquin Rivera stepped down after serving for 12 years. 

 

December 

Amid mixed reactions from parents and community members, the Berkeley High School Governance Council passed the BHS redesign plan that would put students on a new class schedule and incorporate an advisory curriculum into the school day. 

Berkeley’s Malcolm X Arts and Academics Magnet, an elementary school that integrates art and academics, receives the Title One Academic Achievement award for 2008-2009.


AC Transit in 2008

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:25:00 PM

In 2008, the East Bay’s only public bus system—AC Transit—staved off possible service cuts or fare increases, for now, at least, with the passage of a tax measure by area voters, and signed a new contract with its bus drivers union. The financially troubled agency was not able to pull away from the continuing controversy over its “partnership” with Belgian bus manufacturer Van Hool, however. And AC Transit continued its deliberate march that the agency hopes will ultimately lead to the Bay Area’s first rapid bus line, BRT. 

Meanwhile, the Berkeley Daily Planet continued as the only local media outlet that covers the multi-million dollar AC Transit on anything resembling a regular basis. 

 

January-March 

Late in January, members of Amalgamated Transit Workers Union Local 192—AC Transit’s 1,400 member bus drivers union—voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike vote in negotiations over a contract that expired last July. Union officials said that no strike was imminent, however. 

Also in January, AC Transit members were surprised to learn that its plans for a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system running between downtown San Leandro and downtown Berkeley along the current 1 and 1R lines might reach a potential chokepoint at Oakland’s Lake Merritt.  

AC Transit is committing much of its operational and financial future on the building of the BRT system, which depends on high-speed buses running along its line. But district officials learned in January that Oakland’s plans to shrink the roadway between Lake Merritt and the old Kaiser Convention Center—through which all buses going to and from downtown Oakland must pass—could so slow down traffic in that area that any speed gains along the rest of the proposed BRT line would be nullified. District officials said they were continuing negotiations with Oakland officials to try to work out the problem. 

And with expenses increasing rapidly and subsidies from the state in jeopardy, if fare revenues don’t increase, the district began taking its first look at possible fare increases.  

 

April-June 

The district held a public hearing in late May on proposed fare increases, some of which could be as much as 25 cents above the current $1.75 adult fare. Many public speakers at the hearing said the increases would be devastating to many bus riders and urged district officials and board members to look for other means to raise revenues. 

In late May and early June, attention in Berkeley began focusing on AC Transit’s BRT proposal which, if implemented, could significantly alter the two central traffic lanes of Telegraph Avenue from the Oakland border to UC Berkeley, making them exclusively bus-only lanes. The city was sharply divided over the issue, with some believing the lane and bus changes would bring about an economic revival of Telegraph Avenue as well as enhance bus service, others believing it would be a disaster for both the business district and the residents.  

The City of Berkeley’s planning and transportation commissioners held a joint meeting to consider possible alternatives to the AC Transit BRT proposal. At the same time, a group of anti-BRT residents moved forward with a November ballot measure to make the BRT street lane closures subject to a direct citizen vote rather than City Council approval. 

While Berkeley debated the pros and cons of BRT, AC Transit Board President Chris Peeples expressed surprise that the proposal had not gained more attention and public discussion in Oakland. All three cities in which BRT proposes to be run, including San Leandro, must sign off on any BRT alterations that affect their city’s streets. 

The AC Transit Board of Directors postponed any possible fare increase until after the November election, in which they proposed to put a tax increase before the voters in order to solidify the district’s financial base. District officials warned, however, that even if any proposed tax measure passed, fare increases or service cuts might still be necessary in 2009 if the district’s financial situation worsened. 

Late in June, with an eye towards the continuing controversy over its relationship with the Van Hool bus manufacturers, AC Transit board members voted to put a new round of 60-foot bus purchases out for competitive bidding, rejecting a request by district manager Rick Fernandez to immediately award the 19 bus contract to Van Hool.  

And a confirmed Van Hool opponent, retired Oakland architect Joyce Roy, announced plans to run against Chris Peeples for his at-large transit board seat. 

 

July-September 

In August, AC Transit announced that it was initiating a rider survey to get feedback for the prototype for 66 modified 40-foot Van Hool buses the district has ordered from the Belgian bus manufacturer. The modifications were intended to meet complaints and suggestions made by riders, drivers, and district engineers about the original 40 foot Van Hools operated by the district.  

Under questioning from board members, however, district officials admitted that the prototype survey results would come back too late to have any effect on the manufacture of the modified buses, which were scheduled to begin delivery in late August, leading to questions about why the survey was commissioned in the first place. 

 

October-December 

In mid-October, a forum held by District One Oakland Councilmember Jane Brunner showed that North Oakland residents were as divided over the BRT proposal as Berkeley residents, with many public speakers in support, and just as many in opposition. 

AC Transit scored an impressive double victory in the November election, with 72 percent of Alameda and Contra Costa county voters supporting the district’s $48 per year parcel tax (Measure VV), and 80 percent of Berkeley voters rejecting the ballot measure (KK) that would have effectively hamstrung the development of BRT along Telegraph Avenue. Proponents and opponents of Measure KK continued their battling, post-election, unable to decide whether the decisive defeat of the measure meant that Berkeley residents were also decisively in favor of BRT.  

Council President Peeples won a 64 percent to 35 percent victory over challenger Joyce Roy for his at-large district board seat, putting away the most spirited challenge against the district’s continued close relationship with Van Hool bus manufacturer. Roy had made the election in part a referendum on the AC Transit-Van Hool relationship. The AC Transit board immediately moved to authorize new Van Hool bus purchases. 

AC Transit’s other at-large board member, Rebecca Kaplan, was elected to the Oakland City Council, meaning the AC Transit board will soon select a new member to complete the second half of Kaplan’s four-year term.  


News Analysis: 2008 Proved a Dismal Year for an Ailing Fourth Estate

By Richard Brenneman
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:27:00 PM

“... were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” 

—Thomas Jefferson, 1787 

 

For journalists and devotees of the printed page, 2008 proved nothing short of a catastrophe. A tsunami of downsizings, layoffs, bankruptcies and closures devastated an industry already reeling from the loss of advertising revenues and declining circulation as it struggled to come to grips with a brave new media world in which readers were rapidly migrating from print to pixels. 

For investors, news was equally bad, with newspaper stocks leading the avalanche that was the market collapse, dropping by an average of 83 percent in the year just ended. 

Reporters were laid off, editorial cartoonists eliminated, critics canned and local news truncated. 

And 2008 was also the year that Detroit became the first major American city without daily home newspaper delivery since before the Civil War, a reflection, perhaps, of the catastrophe that has befallen the once vital automobile industry, once Motown’s and the nation’s economic engine. 

With the smoke still rising from the ruins, the view for a reporter who started in the craft 42 years ago was appalling. 

 

Big BANG 

The San Francisco Bay Area was especially hard hit, as California’s largest newspaper publisher, MediaNews owner Dean Singleton, ruthlessly downsized his Bay Area News Group (BANG), gutting the staffs of papers from Marin County in the North to San Jose in the south and east as far as Woodland. 

One of Singleton’s key moves after taking control of the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times in 2006 was busting the Media Workers Guild by incorporating the non-union Contra Costa paper into a new group he called BANG-EB, with the last two initials standing for East Bay. 

Though the subsequent downsizings and staff shiftings helped guild activists win a new union vote that incorporated all the BANG-EB papers, the guild couldn’t stop the downsizings. Nor could the union block the lump of coal Singleton dropped into this year’s Christmas stockings, the announcement that the company was skipping its annual 401k pension contribution. 

Word of a coming new wave of downsizings swept the BANG newsrooms in December, and the guild offered members a workshop on how to cope with life after the newsroom. 

Meanwhile, MediaNews is struggling, with the privately held company’s bonds recently downgraded to junk status. That in turn means bad news for the Hearst Corporation, publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle and holder of a 31 percent ownership interest in BANG. 

Meanwhile, similar downsizings are under way in the Los Angeles basin, where Singleton has cornered the market on local papers in LANG, the Los Angeles News Group, leaving the downsized and now bankrupt Tribune Company’s Los Angeles Times its only major rival. 

Singleton is now California’s largest newspaper publisher, his figures towering over those for both Hearst and the Tribune Company. The state’s other major newspaper publisher, San Diego-based Copley, is now for sale and Singleton has been named as a potential buyer. 

One consequence of the consolidation is diminished coverage of local events. 

 

Dwindling coverage 

With the start of the new year, among the dwindling number of papers regularly covering the Berkeley beat, only the Daily Planet retained the same size newsroom staff as it had in the summer of 2003, though one reporting position added in the interim has been eliminated. The rest of the papers are functioning on reduced staffing, nearly 50 percent at the San Francisco Chronicle and even more in some of Singleton’s newsrooms. 

Local events that once drew reporters from the Oakland Tribune, Costa Costa Times, and—briefly—the East Bay Daily News, and occasionally the San Francisco Chronicle are nowadays often left to the Daily Planet to cover as it has been doing all along. 

And where BANG-EB appears, only one reporter usually files a story, leaving readers a much narrower range of perspectives on critical events in their communities. 

Another consequence of the print collapse is the loss of experienced reporters, with companies eager to push out higher-paid older reporters with their bigger salaries, longer vacations and heftier pensions. 

At the Los Angeles Times, the average age of vanished workers was 50, meaning that those journalists with the greatest experience and most wide-ranging perspective were nudged out the door. Some, undoubtedly, were examples of the dead wood that accumulates in any organization over time, but the Times lost some of its best and brightest. 

To quote from the Tell Zell blog briefly operated by Times journalists, “you were five times more likely to be laid off if you were 55 than if you were 25.” A full list of those layoffs is available at the blog, www.tellzell.com/2008/08/ doing-numbers.html. 

The blog itself went silent after executives made it known that dire consequences would follow should they be able to connect reporters and editors with creating the site, and nothing new has appeared on it since September. 

 

San Diego County 

Further to the south, in San Diego County, the newspaper landscape has been redrawn even more dramatically. 

I came to California in 1968, hired by the Oceanside Blade-Tribune to cover the City of Carlsbad immediately to the south. 

Though Carlsbad was a small town in those days, the city’s planning commission meetings were regularly attended by reporters from three to six papers, including the Carlsbad Journal, the San Diego Union, the San Diego Evening Tribune, the Vista Press, the San Dieguito Citizen, and even, on occasion, the Los Angeles Times, which briefly published a San Diego edition. 

My own paper’s coverage area also included the turf occupied by the Fallbrook Enterprise, the Escondido Times Advocate and a few smaller weeklies. 

Today the Vista, Oceanside, Carlsbad, Escondido, and San Dieguito Papers are gone, most of them folded into the North County Times, and the San Diego Union and Tribune have merged into a single paper. 

The North County Times itself has been hit by the downsizing tsunami, most recently by a 20 percent newsroom reduction in November. Shares of the parent company, Lee Enterprises of Davenport, Iowa, collapsed in 2008, dropping by 99 percent. 

 

Santa Monica 

After Oceanside, my next California paper was the Santa Monica Evening Outlook, where I covered courts. It was a great newspaper, run by two brothers who loved the business. 

The Outlook is long gone, swallowed up by Copley in 1983 and then folded after 123 years of publication on March 13, 1998, the same day Copley folded the nearby San Pedro News-Pilot. 

Also gone is the Outlook’s then-chief rival, the Westside zone edition of the Los Angeles Times, along with a host of other local papers in the Los Angeles basin. Most of the survivors are now owned by the same Dean Singleton who owns most of the Bay Area’s papers. 

The L.A. Times itself has since been twice sold, most recently to Sam Zell, who made his fortune on apartments and whose Tribune Company, which owns the Times, the Chicago Tribune and a host of other papers, was forced into bankruptcy last month. 

(Zell is also Berkeley’s biggest private landlord, his Equity Residential now owning the downtown apartment buildings built by Patrick Kennedy and David Teece.) 

 

Vanished memory 

The death of the Outlook, Blade-Tribune and other papers typically means the extinction of their websites as well. With the demise of the newspapers I once worked for, all of the stories I wrote have fallen into a sort of cosmic void. 

Run a Google search for the Blade Tribune, and you find scattered references, while references to the Vista Press (died 1995), Carlsbad Journal and San Dieguito Citizen are almost non-existent. The North County Times, their successor, offers online archive access only going back five years. 

Thus reporting done by the hundreds of journalists who worked at those papers over the years has no presence on the web, relegating the vital histories of the communities they covered to the scratched, dusty and often incomplete microfilmed archives resting in a handful of cash-strapped public libraries where the machines to read them may or may not be broken. 

As Nicholson Baker noted in Doublefold, his book on the systematic pulping of bound newspaper editions in local libraries and the Library of Congress, many of the microfilmed replacements are incomplete, and even those that are chronologically intact were improperly photographed with page edges truncated, losing sections of words. 

The same is true for the Santa Monica paper. In writing a story about Berkeley housing four years ago, I called a Santa Monica city official, and mentioned during the course of our conversation that back in the mid-century, a pair of urban renewal projects which had been targeted to clear out that city’s African American and working-class Jewish population had created the very conditions that led to the rise of the political machine headed by Tom Hayden and Ruth Yanatta Goldway and culminated in a rent control referendum and a City Council takeover. 

“I wasn’t aware of that,” said the official, who considered himself an expert on the city’s past. I sent him copies of a series I had written on that critical period in local history, and later received a letter of appreciation. 

He wouldn’t have found the stories online, nor in the library, except for an issue-by-issue search, since no index exists. 

 

What next? 

While Jefferson was born long before the age of the “netizen,” I have mixed feelings about the Internet as a successor to the role newspapers once played. 

Granted that the much-reviled MSM often failed in their duties to keep the citizens informed of critical events or biased their coverage of what they did cover behind the often-vacuous mantle of “objectivity,” yet they still supplied a community forum where a wider range of perspectives could appear than is on offer at a typical website. 

All too often, Internet sites are so focused on a single perspective that consideration of other approaches is reduced to invective, scorn and ridicule, stripped of all semblance of civility. 

Then, too, the imposition of the National Security State has created an unprecedented level of hatred of the press among some officials, with the greatest hatred directed at those with cameras. 

Perhaps sparked by the video of Los Angeles police beating the hapless Rodney King, police across the country are targeting journalists and citizens with cameras. 

Sites such as War on Photography (http:// nycphotorights.com/wordpress/), Photography is Not a Crime (http://carlosmiller.com/) and Schmuck Alert (www.schmuckalertcentral.blogspot.com/) regularly post stories about the harassment of journalists and citizens with cameras. 

The big problem for newspapers is figuring out their new incarnation, either on paper or online, in a way that can support reporters with the time and money needed to dig beyond surface impressions. 

The first casualty of downsizing is always investigation, the one thing that justifies journalism in the first place. 

Websites generally don’t have the money to support, say, a six-month dig into allegations of political corruption, and it’s questionable how fitting long-form reporting is for the LCD screen. 

Meanwhile, will anyone have time to read a newspaper? And if they do, will it be simply to reinforce existing prejudices? Just look at the comments readers append to any Oakland crime story on the Chronicle’s website to see reasons for concern. 

As Harvard’s Elizabeth Warren has demonstrated (www.youtube.com), the American middle class has been progressively destroyed, with two-income families replacing the single-earner households that accompanied the peak of the American press in the 1950s. 

With the average American laboring more hours per week than her counterparts in any of the other industrialized democracies, will anyone have time to read a paper? 

Or will we be relegated to the realm of the sound bite and screen blurb, increasingly seeking refuge from the bad news around us in the diversions of the tube, the iPod and the Xbox? 

At the end, after 44 years in journalism, I have many more questions than I do answers. 


Opinion

Editorials

It Was a Wonderful Life

By Becky O’Malley
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:28:00 PM

Last week, as a cold December was coming to an end, my father, Warren Peters (known to everyone from his Princeton ‘34 classmates to his great-grandchildren as “Pete”) departed from his life on this earth. He’d been around for almost a century: Born in 1912, he enjoyed 93 years of vigorous good humor, and endured three more recent years of much-diminished mobility and mental acuity with good grace, dying at 96.  

In 1930, as the depression was taking hold, it was somewhat unusual for a boy born in Brooklyn, graduating from a smalltown public high school in New Jersey, to matriculate at Princeton in a class populated largely by graduates of exclusive prep schools. He thoroughly enjoyed studying history there, and told us later that if circumstances had allowed he would have gone to graduate school to become a professor. But he graduated from college in 1934, when the economic outlook was considerably bleaker even than it is today, and he counted himself lucky to get a job selling industrial chemicals with a big corporation.  

It took him to St. Louis, where he met and married my mother in 1939. She was the oldest daughter in a big and lively Catholic family. My father, despite his more reserved Protestant background, enthusiastically became a key family participant. He was great good friends with his brothers-in-law and a mentor for my mother’s younger sisters.  

I was born in 1940, as war clouds were gathering around the world. Not too much later, after Pearl Harbor, my father decided that he should volunteer for the U.S. Navy, which he did without consulting my mother. She (and I) moved into her family’s big old house, and he went to war.  

From the stories he told afterwards, it seems that his war experience was similar to that of many other men of his generation. On the one hand, it was traumatic—my father, who became a gunnery officer on a ship, couldn’t enjoy Fourth of July fireworks in later years because they brought back painful combat memories. On the other hand, he enjoyed his chance to see the world, in both the Pacific and the Atlantic theaters. A cherished souvenir is a photo of my father standing next to a water buffalo in the Philippines.  

His ship was torpedoed in the Mediterranean, and he was re-assigned to a Free French vessel for nine months. He visited Italy, Algiers and Tunis, gained 30 pounds because the food in the French officers’ mess was so good and acquired a good grasp of sailor’s French. (This would come in handy after the war, when he was seated at dinner next to a visiting French dignitary, but he learned then that the dialect and vocabulary of Marseilles seamen weren’t exactly right at a genteel dinner party.)  

As the war wound down he was stationed once again in the United States, with chances for his family to join him in Florida and other southern ports from time to time. My sister was born in 1943, just a couple of days after one of his beloved brothers-in-law was killed serving in the Army Air Force. 

By 1945 he was back in St. Louis to begin another couple of decades as the Organization Man who was thought to typify the culture of the ’50s. During that time, he singlehandedly supported not only our nuclear family, but made major contributions to supporting my grandparents and others. This was not because he particularly enjoyed the corporate life, but because he saw his duty and did it as needed.  

In the mid-’50s the corporation moved us to southern California, transplanting my mother away from her St. Louis roots. The move was hard on her, but it turned my sister and me, and eventually our parents too, into lifelong Californians.  

Once again the corporation spoke, and this time it said move to New Jersey, not a destination my parents approached with much enthusiasm. They stuck it out there for a few years, long enough to see my sister and me out of college and married.  

Finally, my father got a job he couldn’t tolerate. He was assigned the task of travelling around the country to all the sales offices to “clean out the dead wood.” My father was a tender-hearted man, and firing people was painful for him. But he came up with an elegant solution to his problem. First, he invented a policy that said that anyone who’d been with the company for more than 30 years and was over 55 could take early retirement on a reduced pension, and he persuaded his bosses to endorse it. Then, as soon as it was in place, he announced that he himself would be the first person to take the deal, and he left. 

My parents moved back to California where my father looked for a retirement job to supplement his pension. Serendipitously, my mother-in-law had just agreed to be one of the first faculty members at the new UC Santa Cruz, and she tipped my father off to an opening there. He was hired to start the UCSC alumni office, and my parents moved to Watsonville. They built a house in the country, and for many years enjoyed rural life and entertained their grandchildren before moving to the East Bay after my father’s ultimate retirement from UC.  

In the last 10 years or so they lived near us in Berkeley, making out just fine on their own, though they were over 80 when they moved into a little house on a quiet street. There they had wonderful neighbors who kept an eye out for them, and a new young dog who has aged with them. Small strokes finally slowed my father down, so much that he spent the last three years in bed or in a wheelchair and was no longer as acute mentally. 

My mother took splendid care of him after that, with the aid of some excellent helpers, though she’s over 90 herself. She much appreciated the occasional backup in emergency situations provided by the people at Easy Does It, especially Louie and Gina, and the help of Berkeley firefighter paramedics in a few serious emergencies.  

My father’s life was not, one might think, a life remarkable in any way, looking only at these skeletal facts. What I haven’t mentioned yet, what is in some way the most important thing about my father, is that he was both a great lover and a great singer. 

He dearly loved his wife, his children, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren and also a succession of devoted dogs. All of us, people and dogs, flourished with the knowledge that we were appreciated. 

And the singing? My father boasted that he’d once sung on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, which he had—as a member of the Princeton Glee Club. But his longest and most appreciated run, after he got back from World War II, was as a purveyor of bedtime songs to daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren over many decades. One granddaughter became a professional singer, but all of us learned to love music by listening to Pete sing us to sleep.  

Recently I was minding one of my granddaughters, his great-granddaughter, 6 years old, and I sang to her (off-key, of course) a popular ditty from the ’20s that my father had sung to me when I was her age. “I know that song!” she said. “My mother sings it to me.”  

It’s a family tradition, we told her. “Well, if it’s a family tradition, why don’t I know the words?” she complained, and she has a point—it’s time to teach her the words. Everyone needs to know how to sing as my father did.  

In many ways, he represented the best of what the 20th century offered. He did what the times required of him as well as he could, and took care of a lot of other people without making a big deal out of it. And most important, he did what he had to do, almost all the time as far as I could see, with a song and a smile. Can any of us expect to achieve much more in life? 


Cartoons

Obama's Burden

By Justin DeFreitas
Monday January 12, 2009 - 02:21:00 PM

 


Shovel-Ready

By Justin DeFreitas
Monday January 12, 2009 - 02:31:00 PM


The Pottery Barn Rule

By Justin DeFreitas
Monday January 12, 2009 - 02:32:00 PM


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Monday January 12, 2009 - 03:25:00 PM

LEAVE ARTISAN DISTRICT ALONE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I can’t help but write this because of the blatantly acerbic, shortsighted tone of Russ Mitchell’s hit piece against the artists of northwest Berkeley. 

It may come as a surprise that some of the artists who have studios here are nationally known, and the artist community contributes quite a lot of sales tax revenue to the city. Enough for the city to have declared the area from University Avenue to Sixth Street, Gilman and Frontage Road an arts district, designated by signs specifying ceramics.  

In addition to the larger buildings housing ceramic studios, such as the Berkeley Potters Guild and The Potters Studio, 

there is the Trax gallery. There are also famous artists in private studios. Why does Mr. Mitchell feel that artists must be removed in order for this area to thrive? 

A culture that doesn’t care about art is a poor one indeed. Berkeley is too good to ruin. 

Rikki Gill 

Berkeley Potters Guild 

 

• 

WEST BERKELEY ZONING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Russ Mitchell's opinion piece, "Berkeley Is About to Blow it Again," alternative-energy research and development are already allowed in the portions of West Berkeley zoned as "Mixed-Use Light Industrial" and "Mixed Manufacturing," which include most of the non-residential blocks west of San Pablo. They are prohibited only in the "Manufacturing" district, which is north of Virginia and mostly west of Third. 

Robert Lauriston 

 

• 

WEST BERKELEY BLIGHT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am an advocate for no change to West Berkeley zoning. Who wants an Emeryville here where anything goes? I love the sight of blighted buildings and empty lots are great place to have a rave. It gives graffiti artists a great medium to show off their art. The transients need some place to live too. There is always plenty of parking in the hood. My fat four-wheel tires like to off road down Fourth Street past the Gilman Grill. I love the stinky air smell from Pacific Steel—it reminds me of my youth working in a steel shop in West Oakland. It keeps the tax burden on you home-owning folks in the hills. I am an artist and I need cheap housing! 

Patrick Traynor 

  

• 

'COLONIAL' SPELLING: 'THEATRE' VS. 'THEATER' 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Bonnie Hughes is right to be annoyed with the affectation of British spelling instead of American spelling for many words. But I would cite at least one exception. 

As one of the founders (with Barbara Oliver, Ken Grantham, Richard Rossi and Marge Glicksman) of Aurora Theatre Company, I remember the 1991 meeting when we chose the name, Aurora Theatre: "Aurora," because the given name of George Sand, subject of our first production, was Aurore; "Theatre" instead of "Theater" because (as I remember Barbara pointing out) that spelling denoted stage, while theater often meant movie house. 

So I would say that, in this case, the Brit spelling was co-opted and made use of in a very practical, American way. 

Dorothy Bryant 

 

• 

MY MAYOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I must take issue with Dorothy Snodgrass's Jan. 7 letter where she equates Dellums' twisted verbiage with Cheney's. As an avid apologist for Mr. Dellums, I think Ms. Snodgrass would have been far more accurate and less offensive comparing Dellums with Clinton and his "depends what is is." Dellums couldn't channel Cheney if he tried—and he wouldn't. 

Madeline Smith Moore 

Oakland 

 

• 

TELEGRAPH BENCHES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I, and many others, were delighted with the recent installation of several benches on the sidewalks of Telegraph Avenue, near the intersection of Haste Street. 

Oddly, despite their success and popularity and use by so many people, the other day city workers began to remove some, responding to inquiries about the reason with only a vague mention of the benches being relocated—supposedly to some unknown location. 

Why are these being taken away so soon? And to where? I can only wonder if the cost of three people and a truck to remove and transport each of these in this way might not begin to approach the cost of simply providing another bench for each of the (eventual?) relocation sites. 

Christopher Kohler 

 

• 

BART SERVICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have read the proposal to reduce BART service on weekends and nights with concern. I have occasion to use the trans-bay service to downtown San Francisco and to the airport, often at late hours. I have rarely traveled at night in a train which was not at least half full for my entire journey and for part of that route (especially downtown San Francisco to MacArthur) with standing room only. Often those late night trains are reduced in length, aggravating the problem even more. To reduce service frequency would certainly require longer trains, but it would greatly inconvenience the public to have to wait additional time—often on a cold and windy platform. 

I urge BART's board of directors not to resolve the system's budget problems with service cuts. Over the years and especially in the past few years, BART has become a vital link in the Bay Area’s transportation system and needs to remain fast, frequent and affordable. Nevertheless, I suggest that any budget gap be closed by instituting a reasonable fare increase instead of a service reduction. But I also wish to caution you to be cautious in any upcoming labor negotiations. The possibility of fare increases should not be a signal to unions to make unreasonable wage and benefit demands, since the costs could simply be met be a fare increase. 

Peter Klatt 

 

• 

AC TRANSIT IN 2008 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Mr. Allen-Taylor’s Jan. 7 article on AC Transit in 2008 exhibited both poor reporting and his continued anti-BRT bias. 

Certainly, AC Transit was concerned about how the planned lane reduction over the quarter-mile-long outlet of Lake Merritt would have slowed the proposed BRT service at that point. But the delay was never comparable to the time savings BRT provides from the rest of the San Leandro to downtown Berkeley line. Perhaps Mr. Allen-Taylor was relying on some overstatement meant to gain Oakland’s attention to the matter rather than a studied projection. Mr. Allen-Taylor also seems to have missed the fact that Oakland then made changes to the plan that give buses a “que jump” on the rest of the traffic, substantially restoring the time savings a full length dedicated lane would have provided at that point. 

Finally, Mr. Allen-Taylor then showed that, despite the overwhelming defeat of Berkeley’s Measure KK, he is still there to promote the myth of substantial public opposition to BRT; for although he determined that Berkeley’s Measure KK “would have effectively hamstrung the development of BRT along Telegraph Avenue,” he still cannot figure out what KK’s rejection by 80 percent of the voters, in the face of a significant campaign waged by its sponsors and backed by his paper, really implied. 

Greg Harper 

Director of AC Transit for Ward 2 

 

• 

TIME PASS JOBS AND RECOVERY PLAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The economic stimulus package being proposed is good, but I'm concerned about tax cuts for large businesses and upper-income citizens. The "trickle down" approach has failed miserably over the past eight years. I'm also concerned about lack of information about funding for education and the arts. The Bay Area has more artist residents than most other urban centers, and our public schools are struggling, if not bankrupt. 

I strongly support getting out of our various wars and transferring some of the military funds to domestic needs and to international humanitarian efforts. 

Susannah Tavernier 

Oakland 

 

• 

BERKELEY BUGS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have lived on and off in Berkeley for all of my 49 years. I come to town frequently to enjoy the best culinary offering in the country: a Top Dog. The loss of LaVals Pizza was a criminal occurrence. Blakes is still there at least. Whole Foods is a much-loved store with a commitment to quality and specialty foods. 

Now comes the disappointments; A lot of the city's history is derived from the 1960s and should be preserved. A lot of the "history" is nothing but an eyesore. Peoples' Park is my current "bug." It used to be nice little spot to listen to some local bands play, party a little. It has become a spot for drug dealing (not the innocent little joint here and there). Additionally it has become a public restroom, without the room. Either clean it up or put it good use. 

C.D. Fuller 

  

• 

BONDS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I usually enjoy reading Bob Burnett's columns but the "progressive" economics in his last one are ridiculous. He proposes Recovery Bonds, a patriotic-sounding scam worse than lottery tickets where well-meaning citizens loan their hard-earned dollars to the feds in return for good feelings and a meager income stream. Nevermind that your tax dollars pay for the bond income and with their low yields the tax-advantaged status of federal bonds only help those in the top marginal brackets, because who can put a price on good feelings? 

If you really want some good feelings, loan California your money. We've a lot of bonds to sell and a downgraded rating that makes interest more expensive. 

Despite all the nattering about how schools need more funding in the face of dire budget cuts, the voters approved more bonds in November. Propostion 1A for $10 billion, Proposition 3 and Proposition 12 for a billion each. All passed with 60 percent approval in Alameda County. 

Are California's voters are engaged in magical thinking, where you can spend tomorrow's school money today and somehow tomorrow will come up rainbows and puppies? Or are they just worried that we might run out of bonds for them to buy? 

So put your money where your vote is and buy some California bonds. We've got over $60 billion to sell, and the interest is tax-free which will be a help if California's 9.3 percent tax rate (the highest in the nation) goes up some more. See www.buycaliforniabonds.com and bid low for maximum good feelings. 

Or how about the progressive policy of living within your means? 

John Vinopal 

 

• 

AN ALTERNATIVE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his Jan. 8 commentary, "Only One Path to Peace in the Middle East," Rabbi Lerner proposes that the Israeli settlements be dismantled, or else the settlers would be citizens of Palestine. Many settlers would refuse to leave and would defend their homes from being dismantled. They would also refuse to acknowledge being citizens of Palestine. So this proposal would surely lead to violence and death. 

The better alternative is to let the settlers stay in the West Bank and remain citizens of Israel, but the land would be part of a Palestinian state. The settlers would pay rent to the Palestinians for the use of that land; that would acknowledge that it is Palestinian territory. The rent would compensate Palestinians for not using that land, and would provided much needed revenue to Palestine, while creating a significant cost to the settlers for remaining in the West Bank. 

Fred Foldvary 

 

• 

SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL INVITES BLOWBACK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I periodically read letters to the editor by those expressing horror at the disproportionate violence rained down upon Gaza imploring readers to write to their representatives. In two words: don't bother.  

I know of no other nation whose chief lobbying group can turn out the vast majority of the U.S. Congress for a photo-op demonstrating unconditional financial and military support for that country or before whom U.S. presidential candidates must ritually demonstrate unconditional fealty. Despite international protests as well as letters and calls from her own constituents, Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Jan. 9 introduced House Resolution 34 reaffirming the strong support of the U.S. for Israel as it continued to flout international law and to tighten its decades-long noose upon the Palestinians in order to make them leave their occupied lands. The vote was 390 to 5. Not one of those five representatives was from the Bay Area.  

In particular, I have found that writing to Sen. Dianne Feinstein is as futile as demonstrating at the foot of the downtown high rise in which she maintains her San Francisco offices. I've repeatedly asked her aides to tell me why there are any Jewish-only colonies and roads on illegally occupied Palestinian land and why I—a 3/4 non-Jewish and 100 percent non-fundamentalist Christian—must pay to maintain and expand these facilities with $3 billion in U.S. aid each year. I get back only boiler plate responses assuring me of the Senator's desire for restraint on both sides and for a diplomatic solution.  

In July, 2006, Feinstein appeared at a San Francisco rally for Israel as it was again devastating Lebanon to lend her full-throated support. I have never known her to demonstrate anything but unconditional aid for one side of an endless conflict that gravely endangers the national security of the United States and that of the world itself. Israel has become a terrible liability that, as Chalmers Johnson has noted, invites catastrophic blowback to the United States.  

Gray Brechin 

 

• 

U.S. AID TO ISRAEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Israel is the world’s largest recipient of U.S. military aid, and the Arms Export Control Act stipulates that U.S. military aid cannot be used in attacks against civilians. 

  The United States has provided over $24 billion of military aid to Israel over the last 10 years, and has pledged to increase this by 25 percent over the next decade. 

On Jan. 6 Israel dropped bombs just outside a UN school that sheltered 1678 civilians, killing 43 people and injuring 100 more. The UN denies that any militants were sheltering in, or operating from, the school. The Israeli military has identified only two Hamas operatives amongst the dead. 

There should be an independent investigation of this and other attacks on civilians in Gaza. Future U.S. military aid to Israel should be strictly conditional on its adherence to the Geneva Conventions. 

Lorien Vecellio 

San Francisco


Letters to the Editor

Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:29:00 PM

 

 

CENSORED ARTWORK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Censorship is a controversial issue, as evidenced by the amount of discussion in regard to the censoring of visual art from the Addison Street Windows Gallery. However, unless we are able to view the work, our judgment about this gallery’s decision lacks perspective. To facilitate an educated debate on this topic, The Red Door Gallery (reddoorgalleryandcollective.blogspot.com) is showing two of the aforementioned censored works in its exhibition, “Art and the Body Politick.” Hopefully, this lends perspective to the discussion and encourages healthy discourse on a topic so critical to our community’s history. 

Lauren Odell Usher 

 

• 

PEOPLE’S PARK TREE-SIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I tolerated the Memorial Stadium tree-sit with reasonably good humor. Despite being an environmentalist myself, I never fully empathized with the cause. It seemed too small an area of landscaping to dedicate such resources toward protecting when there are much larger ecological causes in our own backyard that warrant much more attention (e.g., the bay and delta). But I allowed that some people may have a strong connection to their own sacred places and perhaps this grove was a sacred place for the people sitting in the trees. I was disappointed to find out that many of the final tree-sitters were not local and had little to no connection to Strawberry Canyon or even the Bay Area prior to ascending. It hinted that their motivation was one of self-aggrandizement rather than a committed passion for a piece of land. Still, to each his or her own. 

This latest tree-sit in People’s Park goes beyond the absurd and borders on the offensive. I don’t intend to question the motives of the tree-sitter, but as someone who has dedicated his life to healing ecosystems, I find distractions to petty causes such as the preservation of three acacia trees in People’s Park counter-productive.  

I know the trees in question. I travel past the one that was removed every day on my way to work. Acacia trees are invasive and horribly damaging to native Californian ecosystems. People’s Park is a small urban park. It has great cultural value but its ecological value is minor. The ecological value of three invasive acacia trees in a small urban park is negligible, if not negative. I would urge the tree-sitter and his compatriots to focus their energy, attention, and local celebrity on more productive and urgent environmental issues.  

Rich Walkling 

 

• 

AUSTRALIA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Estelle Jelinek’s Dec. 23 review of my book, Multiethnic Australia: Its History and Future brought out some changes in the status of indigenous peoples there: citizenship and the vote. The recent movie, Australia, set on a cattle station (ranch) in the Northern Territory from 1939 to 1942, can serve as a prelude to other major changes in later decades: 

When a cattle industry developed in the Territory and adjacent Western Australia (it’s too hot there for sheep), station owners used indigenous people as stockmen and their wives as domestic servants; they lived in camps on the stations, working for room and board. By 1940 stockmen received wages, but they were about a fifth of what white workers got. During World War II many indigenous people worked for the military in Darwin or served in the army; seeing how other people lived and were treated made them chafe under the old system. In 1946 stockmen from 25 stations in Western Australia went on strike, demanding higher wages and better living conditions. They didn’t get either. 

In the mid-1960s the Northern Territory legislature passed an equal pay for equal work law; station owners appealed and got a three year delay to help them make the transition. After that, many downsized their operations and evicted their indigenous workforces. As one worker recalled, station managers said: “We can’t afford to pay you the basic wage, and we can’t afford to keep feeding you. The Welfare mob have a lot of money for you to live on in the town. So pack up your camp and start walking.” At Wave Hill, a large station in the Northern Territory owned by an English lord, where Gurindji people still worked for low wages, they went on strike in 1966, but again to no avail. 

Their plight had an unforeseen side effect, leading to a movement for the return of their traditional lands so indigenous people could run their own cattle stations. In the 1970s, under a program initiated by the Labor government of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, the Gurindji and some other indigenous peoples were granted land. And in 1992, in the landmark land reform case called Mabo (brought by indigenous people including Eddie Mabo, in Queensland), the High Court ruled that indigenous peoples had a right to the use of their ancestral lands. The effects of that ruling are being played out to this day. 

Celeste Lipow MacLeod 

 

• 

DON’T EXPECT A MIRACLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After reading the recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Dellums faces growing criticism,” I agree with San Francisco State University political science professor Robert Smith’s assessment that Mr. Dellums’ next two years will be like his last two. “It’s his personality and character.” 

Why should Oakland residents continue to pay the mayor his full salary, with limo and driver, travel expenses and other perks when he essentially only works part time? If we don’t remove him from office now and cut our losses, Mr. Dellums will continue to disappoint us and leave us with a bigger mess, if that’s possible. More crime victims will suffer needlessly. 

Impeach the mayor now. Don’t sit and wait and expect a sudden miraculous major turnaround in terms of the mayor’s personality and character. Let someone more motivated and competent take over. Someone who is willing to work full time to combat the escalating crime we face these next two years. We need to take tough measures in order to make Oakland a safe city again. 

Tori Thompson 

Oakland 

 

• 

INEXCUSABLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to point out to Ms. Loubel two errors in her Dec. 23 piece. First the commission did not accept a misleading environmental impact report (EIR). They did however accept a mitigated negative declaration (MND) which can be accepted in lieu of an EIR. It is the first step so to speak. If the commission denies the MND, an EIR must be prepared which is a more complete declaration of impacts and requires a higher level of mitigation for those impacts. 

Second, the statement, “How many endangered species does the [built-up] site have?” and comment upon it by Ms. Loubel, while funny, misses the point that the site is unlikely to have endangered species on the site since it is built up. Nevertheless, significant impacts from traffic, streetlights, runoff etc would significantly affect any species, endangered or otherwise from associated indirect impacts. Missing this point means the article did not disclose to the public that the commissioner’s comment was ignorant. Considering she is a member of the Planning Commission and should therefore understand the importance of indirect impacts, her comment shows how ignorant she is of basic planning concepts—inexcusable. 

Peter Weschler 

 

• 

HAVE YOU BEEN TO THE  

THEATER LATELY? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If you read the arts pages of national newspapers and magazines, you might have noted that most U.S. theaters display anglophilia in their “theatre” names and listings. After wracking my brain for a way to do something about this incredibly trivial annoyance, I think I have a solution that will also give a boost to the economy.  

We could make it illegal to use the English English rather than the American English spelling of “theater.” Business would boom for graphic designers, printers of books, posters, letterheads, and programs. Architects, neon crafters, sign installers would be busier from coast to coast. And the penalties for infractions could be steep. 

I can’t think of another area that suffers from this echo of colonial power. How often do you go to your favourite automotive centre to change your tyres or go to the banque to cash a cheque? 

Enough said. 

Bonnie Hughes 

 

• 

THE HOMELESS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Stevanne Auerbach (“One Neat City! Change Starts with Clean Community,” Commentary, Dec. 10) has a stack of things she doesn’t like about Berkeley’s landscape; old food wrappers, trash, graffiti—and homeless people. Thank you for allowing her to so clearly express her interest in having the “streetlivers,” as she puts it, “cleaned up” like so much trash. 

My idea of “one neat city” would be a place where such obvious bigotry is just as obviously and publicly singled out for objection. If any readers out there know Ms. Auerbach, let her know that in a month where 533,000 jobs were lost and one out of 10 homeowners is in foreclosure, her suggestion that homelessness be treated like so much graffiti is not kind, useful, or welcome. 

Carol Denney 

 

• 

CEOs NO BETTER THAN  

WORKING CLASS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Hard-working Americans should have to right to organize their coworkers around issues like health care and workplace safety. But that’s not the case today. 

American workers trying to form or join a union today have the odds stacked against them. Major corporations routinely coerce, intimidate, or even fire employees who try to unionize. They can essentially veto their workers’ choice to form a union. 

We need a system that puts the power to organize back in the hands of American workers, and the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) does just that. It prevents corporate bullying and allows hard working men and women to form a union so long as a simply majority supports it. It’s democracy in the workplace, and it’s commonsense fairness. 

Big business and their super-rich CEOs are already flooding radio and television with attack ads, but we shouldn’t back down now. Big CEOs pay themselves seven-digit salaries with eight-digit bonuses while giving nothing back to the people who work their entire lives. It’s time for a change. 

Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress were given a mandate last month, they should use to pass the Employee Free Choice Act into law. 

Kenneth Martin 

Oakland 

 

• 

MAYOR DELLUMS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor asks a very good and well phrased question in his recent article: 

“But has the [Mayor Dellums] carried out his core responsibility of running the city? If you’re looking for the definitive answer to that question, you’re going to be disappointed. The answer depends upon the criteria put forth by the person posing the question, and those criteria have a wide variance.” 

There is one criterion I’d like to ask about, and that is the criterion described in the city charter. What exactly are the Oakland mayor’s areas of responsibility? Does he appoint? Oversee? Propose? Veto? And what departments? Does he have any role in the Redevelopment Agency or the Port? What is the relationship between the mayor’s powers and the school system? Can he fire administration officials? Can he fire the chief of police for example? The city administrator? Or does he ask for the resignation? Can he declare a state of emergency? Call an election? How is the “Strong Mayor” strong? Did Harris have that much less power when he had Manager Bob? What are the checks and balances with the council? What powers are held by council and the mayor cannot do anything about them? Who, if anyone, is responsible for the quality of Oakland agencies?  

I am not asking these questions because I know the answers. I have lived in Oakland for most of the last 20 years and I do not begin to know or even know where I could find out. Is it spelled out clearly in the charter or does it take a team of lawyers to understand? Do state laws dictate some of the terms? I think it might be good to take a step back and have a background report on what the powers of that office really are and then match that to the actions taken by Dellums, Brown, and Harris to give us an idea of when they are using their charter authority and when they are exercising their leadership role outside of the strict legal description of the job.  

Don Macleay 

Oakland 

 

• 

SILVER-PLATED SHOES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Do you remember in the good old days when folks used to hang tiny silver-plated kiddy booties over their car’s rearview mirrors? Well, here’s a chance for that old fashioned custom to come to life again; only this time with a little less cutesiness and more meaningful political significance. Tiny silver-plated replicas of the two shoes thrown at Bush should be made available immediately! I would be the first to buy them! Liberal venture capitalists, here’s an opportunity.  

Robert Blau 

 

• 

EQUALITY FOR ALL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

After reading Zionist Freedom Alliance Director Yehuda Hakohen’s commentary, “Address the Real Problems at Berkeley,” I was wondering what Mr. Hakohen meant by stating that “the ZFA’s overall message is one of Jewish rights.” Does he mean the right to conquer and occupy neighboring territories? 

The right to impose curfews on the non-Jewish residents of those territories? 

To erect separation barriers deep inside their borders that choke off any possibility for nor mal subsistence? To starve a massive population by closing border crossings, disabling their ability to obtain life-sustaining food, fuel and medicine? I could go on, but I think my point has been made. 

I fail to see why the ZFA needs to “unapologetically assert that the Jewish people...enjoy national rights,” while denying those same rights for their Palestinian neighbors. Maybe what is needed, Mr. Hakohen, is something broader, say, a desire for human rights, and equality for all. 

Robert Kanter 

Emeryville 

 

• 

A RHETORICAL QUESTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve always considered former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld to be an absolute master of perplexing, convoluted and unintelligible rhetoric. I’m having second thoughts. Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, in explaining the bungled investigation of the Chauncey Bailey murder case, stated “Look at the whole thing. All of it is tied in. The whole thing means the whole thing.” 

Move over, Donald—you have competition. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

 

• 

BERKELEY AIR QUALITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Recently, USA Today published an article, shocking to many of us, asserting that the air quality around Berkeley’s schools was among the worst in the nation. The article linked the bad air to the Pacific Steel Casting (PSC) plants at Gilman and Second Streets. The city and the school district joined many who were greatly concerned. We made a formal request to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to explain the USA Today reports. Below is the Air District’s strongly worded response, which Mayor Bates has also sent to Berkeley Schools Superintendent Bill Huyett.  

The city will not relieve Pacific Steel Casting of its responsibility to improve its processes and limit its emissions. We will continue to press for improvements based on facts. The USA Today report does not appear to fall into the “factually useful” category.  

Linda Maio 

 

• 

USA TODAY ARTICLE: BAD DATA Editors, Daily Planet: 

The USA Today series that looked at toxic air near schools and communities was misleading and false. The EPA data used to research the story is not scientifically valid or verified for the purposes of making risk based assessments. 

The EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory data is not used for quantifiable inventory purposes by any local, state or federal agency to determine air emissions limits. The data are notoriously inaccurate, and there is no quality assurance/quality control required before it is submitted. 

The most damning point against the EPA’s TRI data is the fact that the agency does not recognize diesel particulate matter as a toxic pollutant, even though the agency two years ago significantly tightened the fine particulate matter air quality standard—cutting it nearly in half. Diesel particulate matter is the primary source of risk in most industrial or high traffic areas. The study itself states that “large industrial sites account for only a fraction of the nation’s toxic air pollution. The EPA estimates that in 2002, cars, smaller businesses and other sources accounted for 85 percent of the toxic chemicals in the nation’s air.” 

The Political Economy Research Institute sites six reasons why the TRI data should not be used for risk screening purposes, citing incorrect, inaccurate and inadequate information as the first three sources of error. It is irresponsible for a national newspaper, like USA Today, to develop a “study” based on unscientific and invalidated data. Readers throughout the United States deserve better standards of reporting than this. 

Jack Broadbent 

Executive Officer 

Bay Area Air Quality  

Management District 

 

• 

CLOSING THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you Kristin McFarland for your Dec. 18 article in the Daily Planet, highlighting Malcolm X School’s successful efforts in academic growth with socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Educators know the significance of The Title One Academic Achievement Award along with the Distinguished School Award as the most honored awards a California public school can earn. Malcolm X School has achieved both! 

Take the opportunity and visit Malcolm X School in South Berkeley during the instructional day and note how clean and quiet the halls are while learning in the classrooms is taking place. The time, effort, planning and professional skills involved in achieving success are daunting! Students, parents and staff working together show what is possible! This is happening in a state that ranks at the bottom in money spent on education! 

Congratulations to Principal Cheryl Chinn and her staff of dedicated and hard working professionals! By the way, in addition to academics, Malcolm X School has an outstanding performing arts program! The school motto is “Together We Can.” 

James Harris  

Past parent and teacher,  

Malcolm X School 

 

• 

BIRDS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Maybe Joe Eaton’s feeders are too close to an open window. Too prevent birds from coming inside the house, one should be mindful not to provide an environment where they can get lost. Be mindful that a captured bird is extremely frightened long before the gigantic hand captures it. Considering it has only a mere seven or eight years to live, this could be a very stressful event if you count those moments in a bird’s time. Maybe this is the same wren that visits our place as does Joe’s. We placed our specialty feeders (including the nectar) up high and away from the house for the wren and his other buddies. It is nowhere near a building, or cats, dogs, or even those annoying squirrels. If we intentionally maintain a garden area for the birds then it is also a Sanctuary for Wildlife. We should make those surroundings safer for the birds as suggested by nature organizations like the National Wild Life Federation. If we can’t do these little things for the protection of the birds then who will? At least, we should put a small screen around the opening or close the enticing window.  

Dea Robertson-Gutierrez 

 

• 

INSPIRED BY ILLINOIS  

GOVERNOR BLAGOJEVICH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Though we simplify good versus bad, 

No conscience means utterly mad. 

To some, copacetic  

Is sociopathetic. 

There isn’t much more I could add. 

Ove Ofteness 

 

• 

CHRISTMAS SPIRIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With an economic downturn propelling it, I’m more aware this year for the need to focus on the simplicity of the original message on which Christmas is based: the birth of a baby whose adult life was to become all about love, healing the sick, and justice for the downtrodden. Jesus sought out society’s rejects—tax collectors and others considered sinners. All were included in his ministry. Can I do less than try to bring my thought, word, and action in line with the command to “love one another,” and to do so through simple acts of kindness and grace? For me, this includes a daily period of quiet contemplation of the God whom Jesus called father and shepherd and whose goodness he trusted unquestioningly. It may be hard to believe that good can triumph when evil seems to be so active in the world, but there is evidence all around of people of good will applying their expertise to the problems around them. My prayers seek to encompass and lift up all—people, animals, the environment—suffering hurt and degradation, that they may know hope and peace. May the spirit of gratitude and joy, “the wonders of his love,” extend the reach of blessings, as 19th century author and healer Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “…over continent and ocean, to the earth’s remotest bound.” 

Marilyn McPherson 

 

• 

A WAY TO HELP 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With the daily news of declining sales and increasing layoffs I want to ease the suffering. When I hear of restaurants, retailers and auto-makers facing possible closure and millions of people losing their homes because they can’t earn enough to make their payments, I want to help. I want to go out and lunch at restaurants, not the simple salads my wife packs into my cooler. I want to buy clothes at malls instead of thrift stores and outlets. And I want to buy a brand new truck, especially from poor Chrysler. I wonder—would they reward my benevolence with a good deal on one of those 25mpg Dodge Sprinters that Mercedes builds?  

The problem is, I don’t have much money in my pocket, and my plastic is all in debits. The only way I can see to be of any real help in this time of great national need is to spend the money I normally give to the IRS. As far as I can tell, once they get it, they simply give it to their crying friends. Wouldn’t it be more efficient for me to distribute this money to my crying friends? With the extra money in my pocket and not yet debited accounts I would, for my country man and woman, go out and spend like I’ve never spent before. I’m sure I could do this, so long as I felt the money wasn’t really mine. 

This simple plan would surely work. Local cafes, thrift stores and mechanics would smile again. For me to be even more helpful, to lift the bottom line of larger companies, I’d need the pro-active assistance of the federal government. If the president, Congress or treasurer would give me a loan against the taxes they could no longer afford to let me pay, I would promise to spend every penny, and spend it locally, since it’s a global economy and I can get that German truck at my nearby American dealer. 

Hard times can only be softened if we help each other. I’m willing to do my part. And I bet you are, too.  

Eric Rasmussen 

Castro Valley 

 

• 

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY  

MOVEMENT BEHIND DROP IN FUEL PRICES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In slick advertisements paid for by oil companies, we are led to believe that the big oil producers are on the forefront of researching and obtaining alternate fuels. In fact, the opposite is true: The oil companies would like it if alternatives to gasoline would disappear and never come back. 

I see a two-year cycle in the fluctuation of gas prices, a cycle intended to disrupt the implementation of alternatives to gasoline. When alternates to gasoline are widespread, this will end the monopoly of the oil companies on transportation fuel, and it will end this horrible choke hold they have on Americans. 

Gas prices soar at the high point of the cycle. At that point many people join the alternative fuels movement because of the fact that gas prices are becoming unbearable. 

A few months later, at the point where the alternate fuels movement is gaining momentum, and we are getting ready to implement many of the plans, gas prices inexplicably drop, way down. And they stay down for about the next year; enough time for people to forget about alternate fuels. After all, who needs biofuels when gas is cheap? 

Then, when alternate fuels have been forgotten, and when we’re not looking, gas prices begin to creep upward. The oil companies at this point are reaping huge profits. 

Gas prices go upward some more, until someone says we ought to do something about this. And we have arrived again at the top of the two-year cycle. 

If we employ our human memory, and remember that at some point, the oil companies will stick it to us again if we let them, we can end the monopoly of the oil companies forever, and we will no longer have the wild fluctuations in gas prices. 

We ought to continue the pursuit of alternative energy, including times when gas prices are low. 

Jack Bragen 

Martinez 

 

• 

GREEN TALK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

There’s too much “green talk.” Many businesses are jumping on the ecology bandwagon. Bank of America has a Mastercard that rewards customers with carbon tradeoffs. McDonald’s has tried to greenwash its hamburgers by touting the use of recycled paper. General Motors has become more environmentally friendly by stopping production of their 10-miles-per-gallon H1 Hummer. Unfortunately, even well-intentioned efforts may have little impact on global warming because increased population inevitably results in more pollution. For example, buying a hybrid automobile simply means that it is less environmentally unfriendly. Any effort to stop global warming—other than population reduction—is just a speed bump on the way to the apocalypse. 

Robert Gable 

 

• 

CARING WITH LOVE AND DESIRE TO CURE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am wondering if in the medical field doctors will do the research to bring changes in the existing system of providing treatment to their patients for better health and longevity. Mostly the patients are only told about the physical problem or the trouble but they don’t encourage the patients to take preventive steps. I know that in major drastic health reasons, the medical intervention may be important but it should be done after real discussion with the field of all experts naturopathy, homeopathy and allopathy. The human life must be treated with respect, and care so the poor patients do feel comfortable. We need to think in the ancient way of healing where the supreme power and natural healing also takes place even in the hospitalized patients. 

Romila Khanna 

 

• 

KEEP THE FAITH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In this time of such heartbreaking terror in the name of God, let us all take a moment and be open to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit of justice, and mercy and love; this is where of I speak. In our own small world here in the Bay Area, let us not give into the naming rights and ownership of peace and justice. All of us, all good people: Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindi,Pagan, Agnostic and Atheist; we have to stand together in the widening division brought on by the most radical of the political-religious zealots. The Spirit of peace and love is indeed Holy by its nature. When we encounter one another, let us be united in grace and tenderness, and not attack our sisters and brothers for their own spiritual beliefs (or lack there of). Let us not bring the battle to our fellow citizens, but to those who may make a difference. And in our unique ways, let us offer a prayer, a song, a work of art, or a pice of theatre to peace. 

Mike Vaughn 

 

• 

BART POLICE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

BART police have shown themselves to be murderers of customers. We can protect ourselves, to a point, by the following tactic. When ever you are in a BART station and you see a BART cop, pull out your cell/phone and be ready to phone and snap pictures. Then pass among other customers, informing them of the presence of a cop, and suggest that they make their cell phones visible and ready for action. 

Ted Vincent 

 

• 

A SUGGESTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Are you guys out of business yet? 

Maybe your Code Pink readers could gather up all their welfare and disability checks and make a contribution to keep you alive for one more final farewell issue. 

Jonathan Wornick 

 

• 

ONE OF A KIND 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A politician who steps onto the national stage expects extraordinary scrutiny from the dominant media and outrageous slings and arrows from political opponents. Barrack Hussein Obama not only expected this on Feb. 10, 2007 when he launched his presidential campaign but was ready to counter these assaults and proved it by his upset victory over Sen. Clinton on June 5, 2008 and his stunning defeat of Sen. McCain five months later.  

The media’s attention was unstinting and the opposition attacked on many fronts, but one feature encompassed the whole elongated campaign: Both media and opponents made strenuous imaginative efforts to classify and thereby limit or contain Obama. At first he was deemed gifted but untried. Then he was charismatic but elitist. To escape the label, “foreign affairs neophyte,” he visited the Middle East and Europe and returned more popular than ever.  

By assembling a cabinet of rivals he was said to be mimicking Lincoln. Ever since Nov. 4 the chattering classes have debated the proper location of Obama’s presidency on their over-used political spectrum: centrist, right-centrist, left-centrist with socialist tendencies, etc. Inviting Reverend Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration he was declared by a supporter as, get this, “synergistically religious.”  

Now, there is a growing consensus that our 44th president is a pragmatist, a classification presumed to be more desirable than ideologue. A political pragmatist being a person who focuses on causes and their effects as a source of policy development, this label may well stick. 

The fact is, however, that none of the usual categories fit; Barack Hussein Obama is, to a degree never before seen in this country, unique.  

An attribute shared by all great men throughout history is to be different, extraordinary, to be one of a kind. In Obama inheritance and accomplishment combine to form a man of budding greatness. We do not know yet if the bud will blossom into greatness. 

Marvin Chachere  

San Pablo


The Green Smoke Screen

By Toni Mester
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:23:00 PM

Things are seldom what they seem 

Skim milk masquerades as cream 

—W.S. Gilbert, HMS Pinafore 

 

The Climate Action Plan (CAP), a policy work now in its second draft, is currently under public review (www.BerkeleyClimateAction.org) and slated for a City Council workshop Tuesday, Jan. 13.  

Presumably the CAP was written by Timothy Burroughs, the Climate Action Coordinator, but when I asked at a public workshop who wrote the land-use chapter, Dan Marks, head of Planning and Development, answered, “It was a group effort.” 

The plan reads like a job description that would cost additional expenditures of $1.4 million a year to implement its proposals, mostly bureaucratic coordination. But added to this second draft are sweeping land-use changes that unravel zoning protections for neighborhoods. 

One of the most egregious proposals is to “adjust zoning to allow for greater residential and commercial density along transit corridors and in proximity to the…BART stations,” an apparent call for widespread up-zoning. The plan also wants to “establish minimum building heights …, reduce the minimum lot size for construction of an accessory dwelling unit..., revise zoning restrictions on removing of housing units …” and to effect other zoning changes that have raised eyebrows around town. 

These recommendations made their way into the second draft through pressure from Livable Berkeley as evident on their website. One can overlook the impropriety of a position paper signed by Erin Rhoades transferred into city zoning policy when her husband is a use permit applicant, but not the glaring inconsistencies and lack of findings specific to the inner East Bay that would justify these proposals. 

The smart growth concept of planning greater density near transit to decrease car use sounds logical, but allowing too much density in the wrong places can be counterproductive, adding rather than reducing traffic. As the CAP reports and we know too well, Berkeley is awash with cars, responsible for 29 percent of carbon emissions. 

In the years between 1960 and 2000, the number of autos increased by almost 20,000 while the number of households rose by only 5,000. The CAP fails to analyze this data, jumping to increased density as a corrective, which assumes that residents in new housing will use public transit more than we. That’s a stretch.  

Car increase can be explained by social, economic, and geographic factors. With two parents working, families could afford a second car. More students must own cars. And because Berkeley is central in the Bay Area, traffic flows in all directions. Add the bifurcated topography that requires trips up and down the hills to shop or just get a decent cup of coffee, and voila: a glut of cars. 

More research is required to get at solutions beyond guilt-tripping attempts at behavior modification. We need serious measures such as better buses and bus routes, a congestion charge on cars entering the city, peripheral parking garages served by shuttles, and a regional tax on the second car. One thing we learned from gas prices: people will drive less when driving costs more. 

The CAP neglects to analyze diesel, which accounts for 17 percent of emissions, or methane, including the pump at the waterfront and sewage gas. The plan also fails to consider smoke from wood burning or industrial pollution. 

Home owners will find little information on how to reduce natural gas emissions, which account for 19 percent of CO2 escaping into the atmosphere. Solar installations are expensive, and switching to more efficient gas appliances takes a sizeable investment. The CAP offers little practical advice like cost-benefit analyses on tank vs. on-demand water heaters or preferred types of washers and dryers and overlooks PG&E’s puny rebates compared to $150 that EBMUD credits for a low-flow toilet. 

Nor does the CAP weigh the emissions from demolition or the heating, cooling, and ventilating of new apartment buildings against the exaggerated benefits of density. One of their doubtful claims is that “compact development patterns result in improved public health” when a recent study of downtown San Francisco found that noise creates health risk. Such dangers should be considered before approving residential development on busy avenues. 

While buildings account for 53 percent of emissions, the CAP fails to cite preferred engineering standards, systems and materials or to consider increased run-off to the bay and demands on the sewers, especially along San Pablo Avenue, which is only ten feet above the current sea level. The over-use of the vague rubric “green building” is tiresome, to say the least. 

The city’s commendable solar initiative, funding installations through the property tax, assumes that home owners have the right of solar access, which would be threatened by increased density on lots. The CAP also encourages open space, trees, and gardens, which are all endangered by the building allowances the plan advocates in its land-use chapter. The City Council cannot ignore these contradictions. 

The solid waste section doesn’t explain that many units in the flatlands have absentee landlords and no manager, which accounts for poor practices. We need mandatory recycling and enforcement. 

No city is an island. Berkeley cannot reduce emissions alone, but we can do our part. Except for the debatable density proposals, the rest of the Climate Action Plan sounds tentative. There’s too much bureaucratic flab for a price tag of $1.4 million a year and not enough muscle. 

One thing is certain though; Berkeley is at a turning point. Get involved, or what we value most in Berkeley will soon be memory. Or as Gilbert put it: “We shall learn the truth with sorrow / Here today and gone tomorrow.” 

 

Toni Mester is a West Berkeley resident and gardener.  


Berkeley Is About to Blow it Again

By Russ Mitchell
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:23:00 PM

Take a walk through Berkeley’s West Side manufacturing and light industrial district, north of the fancy Fourth Street retail strip where the swells go to shop. You’ll see a few industrial plants puffing their last breaths, and plenty of weedy lots surrounded by chain link fences with plastic bags blowing around inside. 

Berkeley’s Planning Commission is now debating how the city should control development in these zones. The city’s efforts thus far have led to a sorry lack of development and a dimunition of the revenue that comes with thriving business and job growth. Property taxpayers are expected to fill the gap. 

Even as the world economy crumbles, fortune is smiling on Berkeley, offering a chance to develop the city into a world class center of alternative energy research, development and production. The University of California-Berkeley already does top-notch work in this area, as does the federal government’s Lawrence Berkeley Labs. The labs’ director, Steven Chu, is about to be named Energy Secretary in the Obama administration, and if it plays its cards right, the City of Berkeley could reap an economic bonanza, seeing the creation of new private-sectors jobs and filling the dwindling coffers of the city, the school district, and other governmental entities. 

All signs indicate that Berkeley is about to blow it. The Planning Commission’s recent deliberations over the so-called ‘West Berkeley Project’ is the latest manifestation of the reality distortion field that subverts high-technology economic development in Berkeley and sends companies to fleeing to Emeryville and elsewhere. 

In most cities, setting policies to move high-tech research from a nearby university into the local economy would be a no-brainer. Our planning commmission is frittering its time debating whether child care centers should be allowed in industrial zones near the freeway (zones that are the same distance from the Interstate 80 as Rosa Parks Elementary School) and whether mini-storage businesses should be kicked out. 

Activists who are now pushing to preserve these zones for artisan crafts and “green collar” jobs like those provided at Urban Ore are stuck longing for a utopia that will never exist. Urban Ore is a cool place and if the city wants to preserve it, fine; that by itself won’t stall economic development. But those who think that a belt of junk shops and jewelry makers will in any meaningful way improve Berkeley’s economy and employment rolls are smoking 40-year-old weed. 

Other Berkeley residents, those who complain about the city’s activist fringe and its control of local politics, share the blame for the city’s failure to grasp economic opportunity: if you want the city to become world class center of high tech green technology development, and lower your property taxes, too, you’d better get involved, now. 

There is always talk of economic justice when industrial zoning issues are debated here. The best cure for poverty is jobs. Social justice activists should be cheering on modern economic development in West Berkeley, while pressuring government, industry and the university to provide money, time and talent to Berkeley’s struggling schools. Then kids might grow up with the chance to become a high-paid scientist at one of West Berkeley’s alternative energy laboratories, instead of being stuck taking over Dad’s job sweeping sawdust at Urban Ore. 

 

Berkeley resident Russ Mitchell is a longtime journalist covering business, economics, technology and science. 

 


Saving Strawberry Canyon

By Neal Blumenfeld
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:24:00 PM

On Dec. 4, three weeks ago today at the Berkeley High School Auditorium was the scene for the 12th annual Mario Savio Lecture, given by Robert Kenney, Jr. Because of UC administration’s refusal to settle a labor dispute on campus, RFK Jr. refused to talk there. His address was preceded by the “Young Activist Award,” given to an organizer of immigrant women in New York City. One of her accomplishments was to help taxi dancers unionize; she even convincing the dance hall patrons, the $2 a dance ticket men who were also immigrants, to empathize with the dancers. 

RFK Jr., also an organizer par excellence, founded the Waterkeepers’ Alliance, a local division, the Baykeepers, is helping the Save Strawberry Canyon group with its legal battles with UC. While the tree-sit at the UC stadium oak grove got some coverage, the bigger issue of the watershed has been largely ignored. By the way, the Oak Grove protests marked the last public appearance of Mario Savio’s Free Speech Movement sidekick, Michael Rossman, who passed away earlier this year.  

RFK Jr. didn’t mention the Save Strawberry Canyon fight; I thought that would have neatly captured the “local” aspect of the “think globally, act locally” slogan. He was busy enumerating an amazing number of other environmental struggles, with such enthusiasm, humor, and knowledge that he could have gone on until midnight.  

Lynn Hollander Savio, chair of the Lecture committee, filled that blank, and talked about saving Strawberry in her introduction. Like most people, even those in the activist community, she had never heard of the issue until she saw the big banner in the foyer of the auditorium.  

The banner was courtesy of the Save Strawberry Canyon activists (one of whom, Sylvia McLoughlin, had been instrumental in Save the Bay 40 years earlier—and now in her 90’s, climbed one of the oaks during the stadium protest). Not only was Strawberry Canyon never intended for development, communities all around the bay are clamoring for usage of their buildings and space. 

A watershed is an apt metaphor—for a new awareness, after which nothing appears like it had been. For the Free Speech Movement—out of which the Savios and this lecture series sprung—seeing what corporate UC was up to was old home week. It took Lynn Savio no time flat to get it. UC, the local 800-pound gorilla, wants to turn the Strawberry watershed into an industrial park. That includes a half-billion dollar deal with British Petroelum for a biofuel “factory”; a big expansion of Lawrence Berkeley Lab; and a new building for an expanded computer facility.  

So once again, while there are the countless global issues that RFK Jr. spelled out—let’s not forget to act locally as well.  

 

Neal Blumenfeld is a Berkeley resident.  

 

 


Berkeley Needs to Protect its Air and its Children

By Maggie Riftik
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:24:00 PM

In “Berkeley Schools Top Bad Air Quality List” (Dec. 17, 2008), Kristin McFarland writes that the air quality in Berkeley schools is among the worst in the nation, as reported recently by USA Today. As a Berkeley parent, I am deeply upset about this, especially given Berkeley’s reputation as one of the greenest cities in our country. I am particularly shocked at how long our local government has let Pacific Steel Casting (PSC) pollute our air. I would like to comment about a few items from Ms. McFarland’s article. 

Ms. McFarland notes that PSC released a Health Risk Assessment Report in 2007, whose findings imply that there are no health problems caused by PSC. Readers should know that these findings are based solely on modeled (i.e., invented) projections that were generated by a company PSC hired for the job. This means that 1) the report was heavily biased in favor of PSC, and 2) no real data was used to produce the findings. The most worrisome problem with the report, however, is that many local officials, including Mayor Tom Bates as recently as an October 2008 debate about PSC, cite it as proof that PSC is doing nothing wrong. Now that there is excellent, well-collected scientific data available, both from USA Today and from a recent study by Global Community Monitoring, the HRA has no place in discussions about Berkeley’s air quality. 

In her article, Ms. McFarland also refers to Elizabeth Jewel, the PSC representative and a partner at the public relations firm Aroner, Jewel and Ellis (AJE). Readers should be aware of the full extent of the relationship between PSC and Mayor Bates, via Ms. Jewel and others. Ms. Jewel served as one of Mayor Bates’ staff members, and Dion Aroner served as Bates’ chief of staff. Loni Hancock, Tom Bates’ wife and our current state senator, is one of AJE’s clients. It is possible that these connections between PSC and Mayor Bates amount to nothing, but given the lack of action taken to curtail PSC emissions and the lack of transparency permitted by Bates on PSC issues (e.g., holding closed-door meetings with PSC representatives), the associations begin to raise questions.  

Readers should also know that the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), the nine-county body that regulates the emissions from PSC (and on whose board Mayor Bates serves), has fallen down on the job of protecting public health. This is evident to anyone who has tried to register odor complaints with them. Inspectors from the BAAQMD, whose credentials have not been disclosed to the public, arrive to follow-up on complaints often 60-90 minutes after the complaint was registered. By this time, the wind direction may have changed or the source of the odor may have discontinued. The inspectors smell the air to verify the complaint, and only if they smell the same odor described by the complainant will they classify the complaint as “confirmed” and therefore worthy of review. Otherwise, the complaint is considered unconfirmed and has no impact. The smell test is used despite the existence of readily available, handheld, inexpensive air-sampling kits, used by air boards in other states (e.g., Ohio) that inspectors could use to test the odors and identify pollutants. Furthermore, the inspectors are only available to the public during regular business hours on Monday through Friday, despite the fact that PSC now operates well into the night and on weekends. There is simply no reliable regulation of PSC’s emissions during these off-hours. Of course, the effect of all these hurdles raised by the BAAQMD is to make residents feel that their complaints are useless and too hard to register, so naturally they stop calling. Predictably, as the complaint process has become increasingly difficult, the number of odor complaints has gone down, as Mayor Bates often notes when speaking publicly about PSC. 

As the issue of our city’s bad air heats up in the coming months, Berkeley residents should expect the findings from the USA Today article to be criticized and minimized by PSC representatives and local officials. One major way they have done this in the past is to suggest that Interstate 80 is the real culprit behind the air pollution. By this logic, any city that borders a highway should have similarly poor air quality and similarly high levels of manganese and other toxins. Of course, we know from the data that this is simply not true. It would be easy to do the basic math on this and identify hundreds of cities with even more highway frontage than Berkeley with much better air quality. Furthermore, we know that PSC is at fault here: according to their own mandatory disclosure records, PSC is responsible for 99-100 percent of all manganese and nickel emissions in the area, and is also the largest (and sole) industrial releaser of many other toxic chemicals. Manganese and other toxins released by PSC have serious, long-term effects on the health of our children, including asthma, cancer, birth defects, lung and kidney problems, and IQ deficiencies. PSC’s emissions of these toxins routinely exceed EPA levels, as uncovered by Global Community Monitoring. 

I urge parents and other concerned citizens to take action on this issue by writing to the mayor and City Council members, particularly Linda Maio who is responsible for the area that includes PSC, and demanding that they protect our air and our children. These officials have the power to stop the air pollution by getting Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board to revoke PSC’s permits. Parents can also attend the Feb. 12th Berkeley city council meeting, at which PSC will be discussed. Finally, parents are invited to attend the parents committee meetings of the Healthy Air Coalition, as noted in Ms. McFarland’s article. 

 

Maggie Liftik is a concerned Berkeley parent.


Housing and History at Anna Head

By John English
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:25:00 PM

The university is gearing up to build a big student-housing complex on what it calls the “Anna Head West” parking lot. This project poses complex and vital issues, including ones regarding the UC-owned and historic Anna Head property itself and the project’s relationships with the also-historic surrounding neighborhood. 

Within the large block that’s bounded by Bowditch Street, Channing Way, Haste Street, and Telegraph Avenue, UC now owns 2.79 acres. But for much of its history this acreage was in two significantly distinct parts. (The distinction has gotten blurred because parking now sprawls across much of the former lot line.) I’ll call them the “Anna Head campus” and the “Hinkel estate.” 

The rectangular Anna Head campus occupies the block’s easternmost 300 feet, is landmarked, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Anna Head School, an important private facility for girls, operated here from 1892 till UC bought the property in the 1960s. That school developed the remarkable planned ensemble of Brown Shingle buildings that we see today, the Bay Region’s largest such grouping. These buildings were interspersed with diverse outdoor areas and landscaping that were used in the curriculum and contributed to the school’s image. The buildings are now occupied by various UC entities but decades of deferred maintenance have left much of their exterior fabric in poor condition. Most of the open space has been harmfully invaded by auto parking. Yet as emphasized in the pertinent HSR (Historic Structure Report) that was done this year for UC, the “spatial organization of the site” is still intact—and is both “character-defining” and “very significant.” One important feature of this layout is that there’s still continuous open space between the historic buildings and Channing Way. 

The Hinkel estate is a rectangle comprising the western 150 feet of UC’s present landholding. On it, in about 1895, a large house was built for prominent Berkeleyan John Hinkel (for whom today’s park in north Berkeley is named). The house faced Channing and the estate also had generous landscaped grounds extending down to Haste. Later on, the house was for some years a noteworthy “approved” residence for women students, and called Casa Hispana. UC bought the property in 1948 and demolished the house about a decade later. The land is now paved over for parking, though several large trees remain. 

UC says it’s preparing a “master plan” for all its property on the block. But it emphasizes that the imminent project per se “does not include renovation of the Anna Head buildings.” 

The project as such is to build what a May 2008 RFQ anticipated as a “479-bed student housing complex”: a 134-bed freshman residence hall plus a 345-bed apartment building for upper-division students. The design process has already begun and construction supposedly will start in May 2010. Please note: UC says the project site covers not just the entire Hinkel estate but also the now-open northwest corner of the Anna Head campus per se. 

Though the RFQ said the site’s present parking would be “partially replaced on-site,” a subsequent UC fact sheet apparently says none of it will be. 

Unfortunately it seems that the new construction would extend into the Anna Head campus itself and thereby disrupt the latter’s historic spatial organization—which UC’s own HSR says “should be maintained.” Especially if there’s any such intrusion, project mitigation per se should include restoring the full original extent of the front lawn area along Channing. (The HSR recommends that restoration in any event.) Is the project’s density excessive? With 479 beds, it would be notably denser than UC’s present “Channing-Bowditch” housing across the street. An important concern here is livability for the project’s own future residents. 

How will the new buildings be massed and oriented? This will of course signficantly affect the project’s livability—and its compatibility with the surroundings. 

Indeed will the project be visually, and functionally, sensitive enough to the special context? It should conscientiously relate to, and take cues from, the Anna Head buildings—and the impressive larger cluster of historic structures that nearly surrounds People’s Park. Even more broadly, it should contribute importantly toward reknitting the badly frayed fabric of the general Southside neighborhood. 

Will the new housing sufficiently provide “eyes on the street”? It would be good to have multiple doors adjoining the public sidewalk. Street-facing terraces or balconies would also help. 

How will the housing relate to People’s Park? It should be so designed as to encourage wholesome recreational use of the park by students, and give perceived surveillance of what’s long been a pretty unsavory corner of the park. 

How will the project acknowledge, such as with plaques, the Hinkel estate’s own interesting history? 

The project site now offers public parking very close to Telegraph’s shops and restaurants. Even if UC replaces this with parking somewhere else, will that happen anytime soon and at a location similarly convenient for customers? 

When will the historic Anna Head buildings ever get the rehab they sorely need? The master plan should include serious commitments and timelines for this. It should also include compatibly reusing some of these buildings’ upper floors as housing for faculty, staff, grad students, or visiting scholars. 

UC hosted an “informal discussion” of the project on Dec. 17: miserable timing. when students were busy taking finals. Only 16 or 17 people showed up and about half of them were UC staff. Though attendees mentioned diverse relevant issues, none got discussed at any length. The whole thing was over in two hours: a typically unsatisfying UC gesture toward public involvement. 

Meatier meetings are needed—and very soon, while the project’s design is still within the conceptual stage. In them, meaningful alternatives should be posed and seriously discussed. So should strong mitigation measures. 

If UC is truly open and responsive, the result for town and gown could be a real win-win. But will the 800-pound gorilla listen? 

 

John English is a very nearby longtime resident of the Southside neighborhood. 


Peace and Justice Commission Reject’s Library’s Request for Waiver of Nuclear Free Berkeley Act

By Peter Warfield
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:25:00 PM

Berkeley ‘s Peace and Justice Commission (P&J) has voted overwhelmingly to deny the Berkeley Public Library (BPL) a waiver of the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act.  

The vote was 7-1, with two abstentions, and it took place at the commission’s regular, first-Monday-of-the-month meeting Jan. 5.  

The library had sought the waiver so it could sign a contract with 3M to do maintenance on the library’s Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) checkout system, which the library purchased from Checkpoint Systems in 2004. According to the library, Checkpoint in 2008 turned over its sales and servicing functions to 3M, and 3M subsequently refused to sign standard City of Berkeley forms for contractors stating that they do not, and will not for the life of the contract, do “work for nuclear weapons.”  

The 3M company also did not sign the City’s standard “Oppressive States Compliance Statement,” confirming that it does not, and will not for the life of the contract, do business with oppressive states as defined by the City, but this was not on the agenda for the January 5 meeting. 

BPL’s Checkpoint system, like other RFID systems, suffers from a lack of interoperability. That means Checkpoint equipment can only read Checkpoint RFID tags, which are placed in books and materials, and Checkpoint tags can only be read by Checkpoint equipment. As a result, the library cannot obtain equipment and tags—or apparently even maintenance—from any other vendor.  

The library’s initial letter to the commission said failure to get a waiver would require it to obtain a new RFID system from another vendor at a cost likely to exceed the $643,000 it paid for the existing Checkpoint system, and it did not mention the possibility of converting to bar codes. However, when the public and P&J suggested a bar code system could be obtained instead of an RFID system, and might in the long run be cheaper, the library did not deny that bar codes were a reasonable alternative, instead making its primary objection that the cost would be high, based on its own estimates.  

Public comment opposing the waiver request came from 16 people who filled the area reserved for members of the public. Opposition speakers included Ying Lee, a current member of the Board of Library Trustees (BOLT), two former BPL librarians, and more than a dozen individuals and members of such organizations as Western States Legal Foundation, Mayors for Peace, East Bay Peace Action, East Bay Gray Panthers, an ecology group, SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense), and Library Users Association.  

Only a single public comment favored granting the waiver, and it came from Terry Powell, a current member of BOLT. Phoebe Sorgen, a P&J member, said an anonymous library worker had called her to oppose the waiver, saying additional library workers were opposed but “don’t dare come here and say so.”  

Commission members expressed dissatisfaction with information provided by Director of Library Services Donna Corbeil. She had sent P&J three letters in the last two months, and had spoken extensively at the commission’s previous meeting December 1, 2008 and at a subcommittee that met to have questions answered Dec. 11, 2008.  

Corbeil did not speak during public comment at the beginning of the meeting, and several times declined to answer questions posed by P&J members, saying she had provided answers in three memos. When Chair Bob Meola asked whether a possible conversion to bar codes could save money by leaving RFID tags in books and materials rather than removing them, Corbeil referenced her three memos and added, “I can’t really address that issue.”  

Andrea Segall, a retired librarian and former union shop steward, said of Library Director Corbeil’s written answers to P&J questions, “some are erroneous and some are evasive.” Segall said repetitive stress injuries were not reduced [as promised with installation of RFID], and an effort to convert from RFID technology to bar codes, if undertaken, would not be as time consuming as the one to two years estimated by Corbeil. Segall said the library “can function very well without RFID.”  

Segall said library staff members “were forced to make it [RFID] work,” and said there is a “climate for staff not to speak up.”  

The seven commissioners voting to reject the library’s request for a waiver were Chair Bob Meola, Megan Winkelman, Rita Maran, George Lippman, Phoebe Sorgen, Diana Bohn, and Wendy Kenin. The single vote supporting the library’s request came from Jonathan Wornick, and the two abstentions came from Rabbi Jane Litman and Michael Sherman.  

The commission’s action to deny a waiver of the law so that the library could “contract with 3M Corporation for maintenance of the RFID system” included a three-page Recommendation that ends as follows: 

“In conclusion, the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act and the Oppressive States ordinance, the former supported by an overwhelming majority of Berkeley citizens in a direct popular vote, and the latter expressing the deep sentiment of the community for a just and peaceful world, should not be lightly overridden. 

“The decision about whether to waive the provisions of these laws must take into consideration the purpose of the service or goods supported by the proposed contract. Greater leeway may be given to critical or emergency human services. Mere matters of convenience hold less weight in comparison to Berkeley’s heritage in the forefront of human rights. 

“The commission expresses its concern that the library’s request does not even envisage a sunset period for the contract with 3M, whether to find a non-nuclear vendor for the present system or an alternative technology that does not require such a vendor. The commission recommends a denial of the waiver as requested.”  

The authority to make a final decision about whether to grant a waiver rests with the Berkeley City Council. Letters and calls to the City Council are likely to have a useful effect on that outcome.  

 

Peter Warfield is Executive Director of Library Users Association, which works to help make better libraries for all. 

 

 

 


Editor's Note on Israel-Palestine Commentary

Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:25:00 PM

Because of the holiday break, we have an unusually large number of letters and commentaries this week. Our first thought, to save space, was to run the commentaries on the situation in Palestine and Israel on the web only, leaving only local topics in the print edition. But then one of our advertising sales people relayed the following message from one of her faithful retail advertisers: “Two customers came in the store over the Holiday and BLASTED me for running ads in your paper saying the paper is biased towards Palestine... .”  

That makes it a local story. If Berkeley feelings about the situation in Gaza are so strong that some residents continue to try to shut down the Planet because we're willing to publish all points of view on the topic, it’s a local problem. So we decided to print local commentaries on the topic after all, and for good measure to use a piece by distinguished Berkeley Rabbi Michael Lerner. If the anti-Palestine crowd were to succeed in choking off press criticism of Israel, we’d all be the poorer for it. 


Only One Path to Peace in the Middle East

By Rabbi Michael Lerner
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:27:00 PM

Israel’s attempt to wipe out Hamas is understandable, but dumb. No country in the world is going to ignore the provocation of rockets being launched from a neighboring territory day after day. If Mexico had a group of anti-imperialist South Americans bombing Texas, imagine how long it would take for the United States to mobilize a counterattack. Israel has every right to respond.  

But the kind of response matters.  

Massive bombings of the sort that have thus far killed over 400 Palestinians and wounded 1,000 other civilians is a classic example of a disproportionate response.  

Before Israel’s massive bombing, the Hamas bombings that began when the previous cease-fire ran out had not (thank God) killed anyone. The reason is obvious: Hamas has no airplanes, no tanks, nothing more than the weapons of the powerless—limited range mortars with limited accuracy. Hamas can harass, but it cannot pose any threat to the existence of Israel. And just as Hamas’ indiscriminate bombing of population centers is a crime against humanity, so is Israel’s massive attack against civilians (in addition to those killed thus far in Gaza, there are the thousands killed by Israel in the years of the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza). 

Hamas had respected the previously negotiated cease-fire except when Israel used it as cover to make assassination raids against Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Arguing that these raids were hardly a manifestation of cease-fire, Hamas would, as symbolic protest, allow the release of rocket fire (usually hitting no targets). But when the issue of continuing the cease-fire came up, Hamas wanted a guarantee that these assassination raids would stop. And it asked for more. With hundreds of thousands of Palestinians facing acute malnutrition bordering on starvation, Hamas insisted that the borders be opened to counter Israeli attempts to starve the Gazans into submission. And in return for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, it asks for the release of a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.  

Hamas has made it clear that it would accept the terms of the Saudi Arabian peace agreement, though it would never formally recognize Israel. It would live peacefully in a two-state arrangement, but it would never acknowledge Israel’s “right to exist.” This position is unnecessarily provocative, and represents deep self-destructiveness on the part of Palestinians who believe that this refusal to acknowledge Israel’s rights is the only symbolic weapon they have left. To many Israelis, trapped in their own history as survivors of genocide and oppression, Hamas’ refusal to give official recognition is a way of saying, “We’ll wait till we have adequate military power, and then we’ll break any de facto truce and ceasefire and use that power to wipe out Israel, so just give us time.”  

How do we get out of these dynamics that have led to the current situation that has killed or maimed a small number of Israelis and a huge number of Palestinians?  

The first step is for the world to demand an immediate cease-fire. That cease-fire should be imposed by the United Nations and backed unequivocally by the United States. Its terms must include the following:  

A. Hamas stops all firing of missiles, bombs, or any other violent action originating from the West Bank or Gaza, and cooperates in actively jailing anyone from any faction that attempts to break this cease-fire from territory controlled by Hamas;  

B. Israel stops all bombing, targeted assassinations, or any other violent actions aimed at activists, militants, or suspected terrorists in the West Bank or Gaza, and uses the full force of its army to prevent any further attacks on Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, including Hebron, from any Israeli citizen or anyone based in territory under the effective control of Israel; 

C. Israel opens the border with Gaza and allows free access to and from Israel by Gazans and Palestinians, subject only to full search and seizure of any weapons. Israel allows free travel of food, gas, electricity, water, and consumer goods and materials including transports from land, air, and sea, subject only to full search and seizure of any weapons or materials typically used for weapons;  

D. Israel agrees to release all Palestinians held in detention with or without trial or in prison and to return those Palesitnians to the West Bank or Gaza according to the choice of the detainees or prisoners. Hamas agrees to release Gilad Shalit and anyone else being held involuntarily by Palestinian forces; 

E. Both sides agree to invite an international force to implement these agreements; 

F. Both sides agree to end teaching and/or advocacy of violence against the other side from within and outside mosques, educational institutions, the press, the media, etc.; 

G. This cease-fire is agreed to for the next 20 years. NATO, the UN, and the United States all agree to enforce this agreement, and impose severe sanctions on either side should either be determined to be in violation of the conditions. 

These steps would make a huge difference by isolating the most radical members of each side from the mainstream, making it possible to begin negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian people on a much broader and deeper set of issues. 

The basic condition for creating peace is to help each side feel “safe” enough to ignore those within their own community who claim that peace is impossible and that no one cares about the safety of “the Jews,” or “the Palestinians.” A first and critical step is to speak in a language that is empathic toward the suffering of each people. Rather than try to prove that the Palestinians are “nothing but” terrorists or that Zionism is nothing but an elaborate scheme for continuing and escalating Western colonialism and imperialism, we must create a climate of discourse in which both sides’ stories are genuinely heard and understood. I’ve done this last part in my book Healing Israel/Palestine (North Atlantic Books, 2003). 

Yet Israel, as the militarily superior power, ought to take the first steps to end this conflict once and for all. It could do that at any time by making the following moves:  

1. Implementing a massive Marshall Plan in Gaza and in the West Bank to end poverty and unemployment, rebuild all that has been destroyed of the Palestinian infrastructure, and encourage investment in a new Palestinian economy; 

2. Dismantle the settlements or tell the settlers unequivocally that they must become citizens of a Palestinian state, live by its laws, face charges if their settlements were constructed on land stolen from Palestinians, and that they will not be able to count on Israel to protect them; 

3. Accept 30,000 Palestinian refugees back into Israel each year for the next thirty years, a number that would not seriously endanger the population balance, apologize for its role in the 1948 expulsions of Palestinians (known as al Naqba), and offer to coordinate a worldwide effort to raise funds to compensate Palestinians for all that they lost during the Occupation; 

4. Recognize a Palestinian state within borders already defined by the Geneva Accord of 2003. 

This is the only way Israel will ever achieve security. It is the only way to permanently defeat Hamas and all extremists who wish to see endless war against Israel. But it won’t happen until there is a massive shift in understanding about what promotes “security.” 

Israelis have bought into a worldview about security that predominates in much of the world and is the central principle of American foreign policy: “homeland security can only be achieved by domination, either military, economic or diplomatic, of all those who might be potential adversaries.” It was this strategy of domination that led the United States into the war in Iraq and that still leads some Obama advisers to believe that it would be wise to shift the focus of that war to Afghanistan and/or Pakistan. Yet the strategy of domination does not and cannot work in the 21st century. 

The most significant contribution the new Obama Administration could make to Middle East Peace would be to embrace an alternative strategy: that homeland security is best achieved through generosity and caring for others. If the United States were to announce its embrace of a Global Marshall Plan, beginning with the Middle East and backed up with money and the conscious articulation of a Strategy of Generosity, it would do more to help Israel than all the armaments it can promise and all the shuttle diplomacy it might facilitate. If this new way of thinking could become a major part of US policy, it would have an immense impact on undermining the fearful consciousness of Israelis who still see the world more through the frame of the Holocaust than through the frame of their actual present power in the world. 

Meanwhile, it breaks my heart to see the terrible suffering in Gaza and Israel, as it does when witnessing the suffering brought to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Darfur—and the list goes on. For me as a religious Jew it is all the worse, because under the guise of serving God, both Jews and Arabs are actually acting out their accumulated pain in ways that will generate future suffering. At the same time American Jews who yearn to justify Israel’s actions only confirm to many young Jews that there is no place for them in the Jewish world if they hold a normal ethical sensibility, and further confirms to me how easy it is to pervert the loving message of Judaism into a message of hatred and domination. So I remain in mourning for the Jewish people, for Israel, and for the world. 

 

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun, a prominent progressive Jewish and interfaith magazine and chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives. 

 


The View from Tel Aviv

By Heidi Basch
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:26:00 PM

Last year on my birthday, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan. This year on my birthday, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) began bombing targets in Gaza to stop the rain of rockets falling on Southern Israel since the end of the ceasefire with Hamas on Dec. 19. I wonder what next year’s birthday will bring. 

Technically, it is arguable that the incursion into Gaza can be called a war, as it is not a conflict between two countries but rather one country and a political-military entity. In Israel, however, the media has called it as such, as have the politicians. And so I state, that, my observations in Israel during a time of war are most disheartening. 

What fails to make sense to me is: How is it that war is still considered an effective method of change? The United States got away with dropping nuclear weapons on Japan in 1945, bringing the war on that front to a stark and horrifying conclusion, but do we, as a human race ever ever want for that to happen again? Are we not more evolved, more refined, more capable in the 21st century of managing conflict in a place, by the way, where people have more in common that what they have been led to believe? 

It is understandable that the world is up at arms, marching through streets shouting slogans to end the war, to call for a ceasefire. It is unfathomable how in a week and a few days, hundreds have lost their lives, thousands have been wounded and those who survive this disaster will be left with nearly nothing to eke out an existence in the aftermath of Israel’s attempt to remove Hamas from rule in the Gaza Strip. 

However, there is more in the streets than a call for a ceasefire and a call for peace. There is a continued call for the end of Israel, and that is where the conflict intensifies and the Israel-supporting Jews and Israelis supporting the government’s decision to invade Gaza, become more hardened, more embittered and more alienated from the rest of the human population. 

The discussion, the demonstration, the debate, the tears, the anger cannot be about bringing an end to the State of Israel; it has to be a call for Israel to abide by international law and to make good on its promises. If anyone, the residents of the West Bank have greater reason to be fed up with Israel’s policies than with those in Gaza, because Abbas and Fayad are toeing the line and, still, for the Palestinians the situation under occupation has not improved. 

The violence is unforgivable on both sides. How it is that Hamas believes it will prevail with this method of rockets falling, killing, destroying, terrorizing and harassing Israelis of all walks of life, including Arab-Israelis, is incomprehensible. How an organization claiming to be for a living, developing nation could be so willing to jeopardize the lives of so many, filling them with hatred along way is also beyond my capabilities of understanding. But they have a right to resist, but they have a right to a country, but they have a right to Jerusalem, to compensation for refugees. 

This is not what Hamas wants. Hamas wants an eternal battle, they will always need an enemy, if it is not the Jews or Israel, it is Fatah. If it is not Fatah, it is the United States, it is Egypt, one day it could be their current sponsor, Iran. They play a despicable game with people’s lives, with children’s lives. Children who have no choice but to emulate what they see and experience in their environment. 

At the Tel Aviv University campus last week, Palestinian and Arab-Israeli students held a protest against the violence. Around a hundred students came out in their keffiyehs and their signs of solidarity with Gaza. They were angry and I found out, extremely sad. 

My friend Davide and I spoke to two female demonstrators to ask what they wanted to get out of this demonstration. They wanted a stop to the violence. Telling us about a mother and her four children who were killed that morning in IAF bombings. One of the young women said, “They want all of the land,” then thought again, “All of OUR land.” 

I responded to her, “It’s all of our land, there’s enough for all of us, and we have to all live here, so what do we do?” 

I continued to ask her how do we make it stop? What’s our plan? Other Jewish students were coming up to them and asking, “what about the rockets?” 

They couldn’t answer how to make the rockets stop, and neither were they justifying them. 

But I wasn’t interested in that argument. I was more concerned with the fact that none of us had a plan or a vision of what instead. 

I continued to talk to the other young woman about the situation. She continued to tell me about the brutality, the starving, the suffering. And I told her, “I know, I want it to stop too, but how?” 

We looked at each other and I asked her if I could give her a hug. I did, and when I pulled away I could feel tears forming in my eyes. When I looked up at her, she had started crying. There was no more anger in her body language, there was total sadness, defeat and helplessness. 

She said, “I am so sad I feel like crying.” 

“Me too,” I said. 

 

Oakland resident Heidi Basch is currently living in Israel, pursuing a master’s degree in Middle Eastern history from Tel Aviv University.


Palestinians Are Not Children of a Lesser God

By Hassan Fouda
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:28:00 PM

Israel’s PR machine has successfully controlled media coverage of the Gaza invasion by preventing journalists from entering Gaza and even preventing U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Professor Richard Falk from entering the country. Instead of exposing Israeli restrictions, our media is parroting Israeli government talking points and broadcasting video supplied by the Israeli military. There is also no shortage of local Zionists to spin and justify every Israeli crime. 

The media makes it seem that the conflict started two years ago with the election of Hamas or that the current onslaught in Gaza is first time Israelis are massacring Palestinians. The reality is that Israel has been killing Palestinians since 1948, 40 years before the founding of Hamas and 75 years before it was elected in a free and fair election. Witness the massacre of Deir Yassin and Tantura (1948) and the many atrocities documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pape in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. 

The media may have forgotten that most of the inhabitants of Gaza are refugees who were driven out of their homes inside Israel 60 years ago. Did they also forget that the Jenin massacre of April 2002? Hamas wasn’t elected yet. 

Before Hamas came to power, Arafat, was the excuse for attacking, murdering and abusing Palestinians? Arafat, the first Palestinian leader to recognize Israel and enter into a peace accord with it, saw Israel bomb his own compound and was put under house arrest until he was airlifted unconscious to die in a Paris hospital. With all the talk about his successor as a moderate, the hapless Abu Mazin can not leave Ramallah without an Israel permit, can not prevent Israeli military from assassinating and kidnapping Palestinian leaders, bombing and killing his own police force in the West Bank, the land theft and colonization, the encirclement of Bethlehem and Qalqelia, the frequent Israeli military incursion into Nablus or the current assault on Hebron Palestinians by paramilitary Jewish settlers. 

Fast forward to few months ago, when the Israelis were violating the cease fire by continuing their blockade of Gaza, by assassinating Palestinians and by killing Gazans slowly, especially the sick and elderly, by withholding food, fuel and medical treatment. 

Everyone knows there is no Hamas inside Israel, yet this did not stop Israel from demolishing the homes and villages of non-Jewish Israelis in the Negev and the Galilee. The Zionist drive started in 1948, to clear and Judaize the entire area of historic Palestine, is still unfolding. 

It is time the media tells it like it is and for people of conscience to reflect on the meaning of “never again.” 

 

Kensington resident Hassan Fouda is board director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (www.ICAHDUSA.org). 


The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Bit of Background

By Ralph E. Stone
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:27:00 PM

Much of the reportage on Israeli’s response to the Hamas rocket and mortar attacks gives the reader the impression that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a relatively recent event. What is sometimes lost in such coverage is the deep background. Of course, Hamas has much to answer for, but the present conflict is but the latest chapter in a long saga stretching back to the creation of Israel in 1947. Then, the United Nations partitioned the land, allotting the Jews 55 percent of Palestine. The Arabs did not agree to this partition. In the 1948 “war of independence” (called the “El Naqua,” the catastrophe, by the Arabs), Israel ended up with 78 percent of the area of Palestine. This war displaced 750,000 Palestinians and over 450 Arab villages were erased.  

In the war of 1967, the remaining Palestinian territory was captured by Israel. Out of this captured land, Israel created the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by chopping up the land into isolated enclaves surrounded by Jewish settlements and Israeli occupation forces. The Palestinians lost 78 percent of their land to Israel and are left with 22 percent.  

Recently, Israel has erected a wall or fence, which cuts deep into Palestinian territory, joining large Jewish settlement blocks to Israel, further confining the Palestinians to isolated enclaves. Israel continues to establish new settlements (called outposts), demolishing homes and uprooting plantations in the process.  

Since Israel instituted a strict closure policy in 2000, the Palestinian economy has been on a downward trend. Fuel, electricity and materials to maintain water and sanitation are under Israeli control. The lack of investment in public infrastructure and private enterprises is eroding the limited remaining Palestinian economic base. The economic blockade has devastated the Gaza private sector and driven almost all industrial producers out of business. The poverty rate in Gaza and the West Bank is estimated to be 79.4 percent and 45.7 percent respectively. The unemployment rate is about 26 percent in the West Bank and about 36 percent in Gaza. Most of the 1.5 million Gazans cannot exit into Israel or Egypt. 

Is it any wonder that the Palestinians believe that Israel’s ultimate goal is to take over the entire country and to drive out the non-Jewish population? 

What do the Palestinians want? The Palestinians want “Two States for Two Peoples”—Israel and Palestine—which means the peaceful coexistence of two independent states with West Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel, including the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter, and East Jerusalem to be the capital of Palestine, including the Temple Mount, with open borders between between the two states. They want a return of territories annexed by Jewish settlements. They want Israel to recognize the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees as an inalienable human right with the establishment of a Committee of Truth and Reconciliation to establish the historic facts with the right of return for some and compensation for others. They want to stablish joint control of the water resources. And finally, they want a security pact between Israel and Palestine, endorsed by the the international community and reinforced by international guarantees. 

President Barack Obama may be the last hope for a lasting resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Without a peace agreement, the United States partiality toward Israel will continue to fuel Arab anti-American sentiment. It will also generate continued support for Al Qaeda. I am hopeful, but not optimistic. 

 

Ralph E. Stone is a retired Bay Area attorney. 


Make Peace with Terrorism

By Dharam Ahuja
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:27:00 PM

We have been waging war on terrorism for seven years and the threat of terrorism at the global level looms just as large today as it was when we declared war on terrorism. I believe we need to shift the paradigm for action taking to “Making peace with terrorism.” The desired goal of any war too is to establish peace. However this is not any war and the actions we take by declaring war on terrorism are not the same that we will take by working on the paradigm of, “Making peace with terrorism.” 

Some of the greatest achievements of the mankind in the last hundred years were made possible because of paradigm shifts to peaceful means brought about by the visionary leaders. The paradigm shift to, ‘Non-violent active resistance to the unjust occupation,’ by Mahatma Gandhi resulted in the beginning of the end of colonialism. Majority of the British in the end changed their hearts and minds to align with Mahatma’s goals and methods. The sea-change in race relationships in the USA started with Martin Luther King changing the paradigm to his vision of, “Black and White walking hand- in- hand,” from the violent struggle against racism. That paradigm shift this year has brought America its first non-white president, an ultimate tribute to the power of a paradigm shift to peaceful means that touch the inner goodness in all of us. India and China, two of the world’s largest countries worked for almost 50 years on the paradigm of, “Let us eradicate poverty,” and adapted socialist and communist methods. That not only did not eliminate poverty, it made things worse. The on-going success in reducing mass-scale poverty began when both the countries changed the political paradigm a decade ago: To be rich nations. Policies and actions put in place in support of the new paradigm is reducing the ranks of the poor at the fastest pace since the end of WWII. Policies and action taking of Nations are aligned to the paradigms and working on the right paradigm is of the utmost importance. 

I believe that the visionary politicians of the world must look at the terrorism menace with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective. And the way to do that is by changing the paradigm for action to: “Let’s make peace with terrorism.” This shift in paradigm will focus on changing the hearts and minds of the people on all sides and by allowing us to work on the root causes of what causes ordinary people to become terrorists; it will bring about the true end to the terrorism menace. Killing a few thousand or a few hundred thousand people under the pretext of war against terrorism has not and will not put an end to terrorism. “Hatred in return for hatred has only brought more hatred.” The only way to cut through a cycle of hatred is by infusing love to break the cycle. Palestinian/Israel problem has been a time bomb since the end of World War II and will remain this way until one side takes the bold step to stop the killing and infuses love. For example, the peace may begin to flow the day when politics encourages Israeli parents to adapt Palestinian orphans and raise them as their own. This and other acts of total love will break this cycle of hatred, nothing else will. The new paradigm will require working with Saudi Arabia to alter the hateful messages coming from the seat of Islam: Mecca. For example, Mecca could make a fresh start in accepting co-existence with other faiths by hosting a first multi-faith conference somewhere on Saudi Arabia soil. Saudi Arabian money going to Pakistani madrassas could be channeled to providing more general purpose schools to prepare the children for competing in the global economy. Nations could adapt policies about no forced conversions. For a lasting peace amongst people of different faith, each one of us must learn to respect others faith as much as our own and there can be no compulsion to stay in faith or convert.  

When Mahatma Gandhi changed the paradigm to fight colonialism, those who were waging war on the British to end colonialism withered away under the pressure from their own constituents. Similarly when Martin Luther King changed the paradigm to improve race relations in America, those pursuing the same goal with violence gradually disappeared under the force of their own people. I believe pursuing the paradigm, “Let’s make peace with Terrorism,” will ultimately result in the isolation and demise of the likes of Al-Queda and Taliban under the force of their own people. The silent majority of the people of any faith want peace above all. It is easy to dismiss my suggestion of the paradigm shift while the horror of Nov. 26 in Mumbai still so fresh. Yet the only way LeT (Lasker-e Tyaba; the suspected group of Mumbai attacks) and JeM (Jaish-e-Muhammed) will go away is if they are isolated within their own society: The Pakistanis. The only way to defeat Al Qaeda is to align the hearts and minds of the majority of Islamic population with the actions taken by those who are the targets of Al Qaeda hateful crimes against all mankind. 

 

Dharum Ahuja is an East Bay resident. 

 

 

 


Columns

Dispatches From The Edge: Voices On Gaza

By Conn Hallinan
Saturday January 10, 2009 - 09:39:00 PM

Words have power, particularly when they confront each other. These are some words on the current crisis in Gaza: 

“There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce—Tzipi Livni, Israeli Foreign Minister and candidate for Prime Minister. 

“It has never been like this before. The assault is coming from the sky, the sea and the ground. The explosion of shells, the gunfire from the tanks and the missiles from the planes and helicopters is incessant…most Gazans can only cower in terror in whatever shelter they can find”— The Guardian 

“Doctors are working day and night on floors soaked with blood to help the rapidly mounting numbers of wounded. In the halls and corridors, screams and uncontrolled sobbing, along with the sounds of bombs and mortars, punctuate the conversation”— Washington Post 

“Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who was allowed into Gaza last week to give emergency medical aid, and who has worked in many conflict zones, said the situation was the worst he had seen. The hospital lacked everything, he said—monitors, anesthesia, surgical equipment, heaters and spare parts. Windows had been blown out by a bombing nearby and like the rest of Gaza, limited fuel supplies were running low”—Sidney Morning Herald 

“The humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip is significant and cannot be understated. The elements of the current humanitarian crisis include…80 percent of the population cannot support themselves and are dependent on humanitarian assistance. The figure is increasing….No wheat entered Gaza since the beginning of the hostilities, resulting in the closure of all mills…The Nahal Oz fuel pipelines remain closed…resulting in no delivery of fuel…the sewer and water systems in Beit Hanoun were hit at five locations…The situation has left up to 250,000 people in Gaza City and northern Gaza without water supply”—United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Situation Report 1/2/09 

“The idea it to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not make them die of hunger” —Dov Weisglass, advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert 

“Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution”—UN Relief and Works Agency Commissioner-General Karen Koning Abu Zayd 

"We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants were being starved, as the UN special rapporteur on the right to food found that acute malnutrition in Gaza was on the same scale as in the poorest nations in the Southern Sahara, with more than half of all Palestinian familes eating only one meal a day”---Former President Jimmy Carter. 

“According to Oxfam only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza in November. This means that an average of 4.6 trucks per day entered the strip compared to an average of 123 in October of this year and 564 in December 2005…On 18 December UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees] suspended all food distribution for both emergency and regular programs because of the [Israeli] blockade”—Sara Roy, London Review of Books 

“We don’t have any intention whatsoever to target civilians. The targets we choose are military targets. If there were civilian casualties, it would only be under the responsibility of Hamas” —Maj. Avital Leibovich, Israeli Self-Defense Forces spokesperson. 

“The Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and the combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives”---Article 48, Geneva Conventions, Part IV 

“The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character”---Article 50, Geneva Conventions, Part IV 

“We are targeting Hamas, we are not looking for civilians to kill more than that” —Tzipi Livni 

“What did [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert mean when he stated ‘WE’ the people of Gaza weren’t the enemy, that it was Hamas and Islamic Jihad who were being targeted?…Were the scores of children on their way home from school and who are now among the dead and injured Hamas militants? A little further down my street…three schoolgirls happened to be passing by one of the locations when a missile struck the Preventative Security Headquarters building. The girls bodies were torn into pieces and covered the street from one side to the other”—Safa Joudeh, a university student in Gaza, by email. 

“Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life”. Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post 

“In Gaza City, surrounded by tanks and troops since the start of the Israeli invasion on Saturday, 13 members of the same family were killed when an Israeli tank shell hit their house. The victims included three children and their mother, whose bodies were put on the floor of an overcrowded morgue. “Get up, boy, get up,” cried the weeping father, said a report by the Reuters news agency. “Please get up. I am your dad and I need you.”---Tobias Buck, Financial Times 

“Any journalist who enters Gaza becomes a fig leaf and front for the Hamas terror organization, and I see no reason why we should help that” —Daniel Seaman, director of Israel’s Government Press Office 

“The unprecedented denial of access to Gaza for the world’s media amounts to a severe violation of press freedom and puts the state of Israel in the company of a handful of regimes around the world which regularly keep journalists from doing their jobs”—Foreign Press Association 

“I think this terrorist organization, Hamas, has got to be put away. They’ve got to come to their senses” —Harry Reid, (D-NV) Senate Majority Leader 

Americans are closely divided over whether Israel should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip—44% favor, 41% oppose— but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive by a 24-point margin, 31% to 55%. Republicans support the offensive 62% to 27%—Rasmussen Report Poll 

“Israel believes its deterrence was lost in that [the 2006 Lebanon] war, and Israel’s current campaign against Hamas should be seen as an effort to regain that deterrence. Israeli military officials believe that if Hamas feared Israel they would not be firing rockets at Israeli towns. The legacy of Israel’s inconclusive 34-day war with Hezbollah in 2006 hovers over Israel’s current military operations in Gaza” —David Makovsky, director of the Washington Institute Project on the Middle East Peace Process  

“Thus far, the operation have been very popular with the public, and most the credit has gone to Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is also Labor’s [Party] chairman…Last week’s Ha’aretz poll, for instance, found that Labor had risen to 16 Knesset seats from 11 in the previous poll. 

“’There is no doubt that the [Gaza] operation has highlighted Barak’s advantages and enabled a real discourse about the truly important matters,’ one senior Labor official said this weekend. ‘That’s what we were trying to say all along: He’s not a pal, he’s not nice, but he is a leader. And now people see that’”—Roni-Singer-Heruti, Ha’aretz 

“…the people of Gaza are being victimized for reasons remote from the rockets and border security concerns, but seemingly to improve the election prospects of current leaders now facing defeat, and to warn others in the region that Israel will use overwhelming force whenever its interests are at stake…the people of Gaza are victims of geopolitics at its inhumane worst”—Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories 

“Tony Blair, the Middle East envoy of major powers sponsoring Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said… that new anti-smuggling measures would be needed to clinch a ceasefire. 

“What is being talked about is a credible plan to stop the smuggling,” Blair, a former British prime minister, told reporters in Jerusalem” —Reuters 

“Life cannot go on in Gaza if the tunnels are destroyed—they are the only opening to the outside world,” he [Abu Ali] said. 

Foodstuffs, building materials, medicines and electric equipment are all brought from Egypt thought the passages—as well as weapons, notably rockets, and ammunition”—Agence France-Presse 

From fiscal 2002 through 2009, Israel has received $19 billion in direct U.S. military aid. Israel has 226 U.S. F-16 fighter-bombers, over 700 U.S. M-60 tanks, and 6000 U.S. armored personnel carriers, plus attack helicopters, bombs and missiles—Frida Berrigan and William D. Hartung, New American Foundation 

“The United States late Saturday blocked approval of a U.N. Security Council statement calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel and expressing concern at the escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas” —Associated Press 

“It has been proven that the United Nations doesn’t have the courage to make a decision to establish peace over there. It lacks the courage because the U.S. has the power to veto and, therefore, things don’t happen”—Brazilian President Lula da Silva  

“Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said Monday settling the Arab-Israeli conflict on the basis of a two-state solution was no longer workable and suggested giving the Palestinian territories to Egypt and Jordan…Gaza is returned to Egyptian control and the West Bank in some configuration reverts to Jordanian sovereignty,” says the former ambassador—Agence France-Presse 

“Israel would prefer any end to the siege to be conducted through the Rafah crossing [into Egypt], thus fulfilling another strategic aim: that of making Gaza Egypt’s responsibility”—Ghassan Khatib, co-editor of Bitterlemons, vice-president for community outreach, Birzeit University, and former Palestinian Authority planning minister. 

" Israel’s attack was “perfectly proportionate” —Alan Dershowitz 

According to the UN, as of Jan. 8, 758 Palestinians had died (including 257 children, 56 women), and more than 3100 wounded (including 1080 children, 465 women). Thirteen Israelis have died, ten of them soldiers, five killed by Israeli tank fire. 

 

 

 

 

 


The Public Eye: 10 Progressive Policies Whose Time Has Come

By Bob Burnett
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:29:00 PM

Among the Obama Administration's highest priorities should be these ten progressive notions: 

1. Tax the Looters. During the last eight years, the rich and powerful profited while everyone else struggled to keep their heads above water. Bush fellow travelers typically made their money at the expense of the common good; for example, by selling fossil fuel and sub-prime mortgages. Now is the time for these profiteers to pay for the mess they created. Wealthy individuals should pay more taxes, as should corporations whose practices facilitated the looting of America. 

2. Partition Iraq. It’s time for the United States to recognize what everyone else in the world seems to understand: Iraq is an artificial entity, cobbled together by the British, that cannot function as a democracy because of intractable differences between Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis. The surge produced stability by repatriating Iraqis to areas controlled by their ethnic group. The Three State Solution recognizes this reality; it would govern Iraq as a federation with Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center, and Shiites in the south. 

3. Guarantee a Living Wage. It seems illogical to tackle some of the roots of inequality—education and discrimination—without taking on the central economic issue: wages. For the past quarter century, the gap between minimum wage workers and America's executives has grown until it is now 1:821. There should be a national living wage statute that sets a humane floor adjusted by region; for example, in Berkeley the law would raise the minimum wage for a single adult from $8 to $11.93 per hour. 

4. Co-opt the Afghani Insurgents. History teaches that no Western power has conquered Afghanistan; the British and Russians failed, and the US-led NATO force is sliding into defeat. A pragmatic US policy would recognize that most Afghan insurgents are not guided by fanatical Islam; they’re not Wahabbis, but rather bandit capitalists—they go where the money is. We should adopt the counter-insurgency policy that worked in Iraq with Sunni militants and buy off the Afghani insurgents. We should pay Afghani “mercenaries” to fight the Taliban, and religious extremists, while our coalition rebuilds the country. 

5. Raise Gasoline Taxes. America needs to make a conscious decision to move away from carbon-based fuel. However, demand for fuel-efficient vehicles varies with the price of gasoline. To motivate Americans to shift behavior away from gas-guzzlers, the federal government should levy a variable consumption tax that would keep the price of a gallon in the range of $4–5 dollars, regardless of fluctuations in the petroleum market. (Enlightened tax credits would protect disadvantaged populations.) 

6. Cancel Deployment of Ballistic Missile Defense Systems. There are two critical problems with the US Ballistic Missile Defense System: it doesn’t work and it has curtailed effective diplomacy with Russia. Obama should halt deployment of the missile defense system. That would save $5 billion per year and facilitate fruitful cooperation with Russia. 

7. Issue Recovery Bonds. During World Wars I and II the U.S. Treasury marketed special bonds—Liberty and “War” bonds —to strengthen the economy. That’s what is required now: new bonds, with positive tax incentives, that will encourage Americans to save their money and underwrite rebuilding of the US infrastructure. Citizens need more practical opportunities to be patriotic. 

8. Cooperate with Russia to Reduce Nukes. Terrorism has gotten so much attention that most Americans have forgotten the problem of nuclear proliferation. A key objective of Obama diplomacy should be to rebuild our relationship with Russia, negotiate a reduction in nuclear weapons, and strengthen our agreement to police loose nuclear materials. 

9. Provide Healthcare for All of America’s children. America’s dirty secret is that millions of its children are denied healthcare because their mothers and fathers are among the working poor: families who make to much for the children to be eligible for Medicaid, but who typically can’t afford to take care of their children’s basic health needs. There’s a simple solution: expand Medicare to cover all children under 12. 

10. Pass a New Homestead Act. The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged the development of land outside the original thirteen colonies. Now America needs a new Homestead Act that would encourage occupancy and renovation of properties empty because of foreclosure or ill-considered development. If left alone, these homes often become blights on their communities. The Federal government should pass a law giving priority rights to these properties to First Responders—police, fire, and public health workers—and then to public servants such teachers. 

On January 20, President Obama will have a lot on his plate. Nonetheless, he’d be well advised to honor his progressive roots and implement these ideas. 

 

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


Speculation Continues—What Is Dellums Trying to Do?

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:29:00 PM

Sometime in the 1920s, the ruling Communist Party of Russia produced a silent-era film purporting to show how they won the Revolution.  

If you know your Russian history, there was a brief period between the reign of the last Czar and the Bolshevik takeover in which the nation was run by a Provisional Government made up in part of non-Bolshevik Socialist Revolutionaries. At one point, with the “heroic Russian working people” storming the Kremlin government gates with sickles and hayforks, the Communist Party film depicts Provisional Government Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky so overcome with fear that he dives under his office desk, trembling and cowering, in an attempt to hide. It was all political propaganda, of course. Whether he was right or wrong on the issues of his day, no historical evidence has passed down to us that Mr. Kerensky was a physical coward, and like as not he went to his government’s end cutting a far more determined and heroic figure. But that’s the nature of political propaganda, which ever seeks to assign the worst motives and characteristics to its political opponents and enemies in an effort to turn public opinion against them and bring them down. It’s a great and wondrous tool for winning political battles, and as such, it will almost certainly never go out of style.  

But while political propaganda can sometimes—and the operative word here is sometimes—be relied upon to accurately reflect actions, it’s an absolutely awful resource if what you’re trying to do is find out the actual motives and character of the individuals being attacked. For that, it’s about as useful as reading Little Red Riding Hood to ascertain the nature of wolves. 

One of the reasons I am so skeptical about so much of the local criticism of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums—whether it be in the blogsphere or in the opinion pieces of certain local columnists—is that far too much of it is put together for the sole purpose of political propaganda. While it often tells a great deal about the critics themselves and their attitudes, and it is sometimes useful in airing out specific actions taken by our government that might otherwise remain out of the light of day, it’s pretty useless if one is trying to ascertain the reasoning and motives underlying those actions. And understanding reasoning and motives—after all—is the absolute first step that must be taken if one’s goal is to eventually change those actions, change the government, and change the city. 

That local propaganda tends to depict Mr. Dellums, not as a Kerensky cowering under his desk, but as a doddering old man snoozing at his desk, unable to complete the weary tasks of the day, and too unconcerned about the future of the city of Oakland to care. That the real Ron Dellums is far different from this cartoon-character description is beside the point—the purpose of propaganda, after all, is not to ascertain fact but to drive the political narrative towards a certain, pre-determined end.  

The real damage of this propaganda chatter is that it often drowns out serious attempts at analysis and discussion and critique. Worse, it punishes the serious, thoughtful people in the political process, often driving them from office or the political profession entirely, leaving the field to the silly, the shallow, and those most adept at playing the propaganda game. I can understand this practice when it is done by some of our more conservative friends, since it is their goal to break government in half and leave it weak and defenseless to preying upon by the private sector. For those who loudly profess to care about the success of Oakland government, however, I wonder at their methodology and what ends they hope to attain. But that’s another story. 

For now, let us try to figure out what Mr. Dellums is actually trying to do and why, even if we don’t (always) agree with it. 

A good place to start would be the speculation that Mr. Dellums is wrangling for an appointment with the Obama administration and will be leaving Oakland shortly either for Washington or some foreign station. The speculation is the younger cousin of the rumor last spring that Mr. Dellums endorsed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries so he could get the same kind of position in a Hillary Clinton presidential administration. Whatever the case, the speculation always has Mr. Dellums eager to bolt Oakland a year or two before his mayoral term is out. This fits into the storyline that Mr. Dellums never wanted to return to Oakland in the first place, that he did so only on a whim, and that he immediately grew weary of carrying Oakland’s heavy load. 

But as for myself, I don’t think that’s what’s driving Mr. Dellums. 

I think there are three overriding goals motivating Mr. Dellums in these latter days of his political career. The first is that while Mr. Dellums has served in politics for many decades, this is the first time he has actually held political office inside his own hometown (he was a city councilmember in Berkeley in the mid ’60s, and thereafter spent all of his time as a Congressmember in Washington). Like anyone else who has achieved success and fame away, I believe that Mr. Dellums deeply wants to do the same at home. The second motivation—closely tied to the first—is that the mayor wants to protect his impressive political legacy. He does not want the last memory of him by his homefolks to be of a failure. And, finally but perhaps most important, I believe Mr. Dellums does not want some superficial accomplishments, houses of cards that begin to collapse within weeks after he leaves office. I think his goal is a permanent, positive turnaround of Oakland’s fortunes, defining Oakland not only by its geographic space and political designation, but also by the diverse population—and all of that population—currently living within its borders.  

If all those are the case, then, although I certainly believe it is possible that Mr. Dellums could receive and accept an Obama appointment and leave more than a year before his term is up, I find it most unlikely and would be pretty surprised if it happens. An ambassadorship to South Africa, say, would certainly cap Mr. Dellums’ public career, but it’s difficult for me to see him doing so if it meant abandoning Oakland in mid-stream. For the rest of his life, the mayor would look upon that as a failure, not that he couldn’t accomplish all that he wanted, but that he gave up the attempt. 

Some people actually have bad motives, of course. I always felt that former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown never much cared about what happened to Oakland’s future and merely used his tenure as a stepping stone to vault himself back into public life. But that conclusion came after a long period of observation of Mr. Brown’s actions. I don’t think one ought to make up someone’s motives simply because one disagrees with their methods. 

While I tend to find myself in general disagreement of the “critical analysis” of Mr. Dellums’ motives—not finding much analysis in it at all—I have differences with some popular opinions about the mayor’s actions, as well. 

One of the most common complaints you will hear about Mr. Dellums is the belief that he is not putting in enough time carrying out his duties as mayor. The East Bay Express’ Bob Gammon—who is neither complainer nor propagandist but, rather, probably the Bay Area’s best investigative reporter— did a Dec. 24 piece (“Oakland’s Part-Time Mayor”) in which he estimated, based upon an analysis of the mayor’s official calendar, that Mr. Dellums “officially” puts in something in the area of 28 hours a week at the job. Mr. Gammon noted that while Dellums spokespeson Paul Rose said that the mayor often works from home—a habit Mr. Gammon said that the mayor picked up from his Congressional days—“there’s very little evidence of the mayor actually working from home on his official calendar,” and working from home does not appear on Mr. Dellums’ schedule. 

The problem with using the time-sheet formula for judging the amount of time being put on the job—the mayor’s official schedule standing in lieu of a time sheet—is that some jobs simply do not easily lend themselves to such hour-to-hour form. It is said that Martin Luther (not the King, but the protestant) used to develop his best sermons during extended times sitting on the toilet. If that were so, should Mr. Luther have marked that time down as “working on official church business” in the equivalent of a day book to be turned in to the parish deacons at the end of the month? Public officials’ calendars are important for determining whom they are meeting with and, therefore, who is influencing (or not influencing) their decisions. But I think they are not so helpful for much else. 

My friend, Mr. Gammon, appears to concede as much when he notes that “the scant number of hours that Dellums appears to put in week after week wouldn’t matter much if the city were running smoothly and he was an effective mayor who got things done.” In fact, that would appear to undercut the entire argument about the importance of tying down the exact amount of time being put in by the mayor, since Mr. Gammon says that it is the “effectiveness” that matters. But “effectiveness” has no objective standard. In his article, Mr. Gammon says that Mr. Dellums “has been a largely ineffective and indecisive mayor.” Others might argue that the opposite is true. That argument is still going on in and around Oakland concerning the effectiveness of the Brown administration. Although the Brown legacy discussion has been greatly hampered by the fact that we have no access to Mr. Brown’s mayoral records—Mr. Brown having failed to turn those over to city officials on his way out the door, for whatever reason—I would imagine that we’ll be debating the same about Mr. Dellums long after he has left office as well. 

For my part, I believe that Mr. Dellums’ chief problem is not that he has failed to take on enough responsibility but that he has taken on too much, or too much in certain directions, and has failed to properly delegate. But this is part of a long discussion, and so we will have to wait for another day, and another column, to complete that thought. 


Green Neighbors: Oh, Those Succulents!

By Ron Sullivan
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:30:00 PM
A succulent spreads thick leaves to catch sun amd minimize water loss at the Paul Leondis nursery in Berkeley.
Ron Sullivan
A succulent spreads thick leaves to catch sun amd minimize water loss at the Paul Leondis nursery in Berkeley.

Succulents—plants that store water in fat, fleshy stems and/or leaves—attract a coterie of fans who have in common little else, but usually can be relied upon to be just a little weird. Of course I count myself among them. 

All right, my fellows are not so much weird as original. So are succulents; the appeal is obvious. 

Unlike pines or roses, succulents are not so much a set of relatives as a way of life. The lifestyle has evolved in hundreds of species, in families from asphodels to zygophylls. It’s frequently an adaptation to drought, but there are succulents fringing the Bay with their figurative toes in the water—pickleweed, of course.  

Oh, those toes. Succulents, in their various adaptations, assume the oddest of shapes. “Baby toes” and “living rocks” and all manner of fans and propellers, whirligigs and whirlpools, stacks and sticks, teeth and tongues. Some look like lumpy potatoes; some, like translucent crowns; some, spiky and scary; some, furry and cuddly—with insidiously barbed fuzz.  

Aside from growing waxy or calloused hides to keep whatever water they get, most succulents have a few interesting strategies in common. One is minimizing and hardening leaf surfaces, as yuccas and dasylirions do. Another is dispensing with leaves, quickly or permanently. Some desert plants, like boojum trees and ocotillo, sprout leaves when it rains and drop them after only a few dry days.  

Others, like cacti and some euphorbias, just incorporate their chlorophyll into stem and branch surfaces and lose thirsty leaves entirely. This, I suppose, is part of the reason they take on such engagingly odd shapes: once they’ve done that and broadened themselves to store water inside, they might find it advantageous to increase the green surface for more photosynthesis. The opportunistic, contingent nature of this sequence—its crapshoot angle—gives us globular things like Euphorbia obesa and, simultaneously, the stick-sculpture Euphorbia tirucalli. Everybody reaching for the light. 

Many succulents (and some others) have a more intimate adaptation: crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM). Part of this operation is fairly macro: such plants open their stomata—the pores that exhale water, oxygen, and other metabolic byproducts and inhale carbon dioxide—only at night. They store the CO2 by fixing it as a four-carbon-molecule acid, malate.  

Daytimes, when their chlorophyll can react with sunlight, they free up the stored carbon and use it. 

If you were to nibble such a plant—Careful! Some are toxic—early in the morning they’d taste sour; late in the day, bland or sweet. 

Most nurseries sell some succulents; Berkeley has at least three specialists: Cactus Jungle, the original funhouse Dry Garden, and a well-hidden one I stumbled upon recently: Paul Leondis’ place on 10th Street, where he displays orchids and ferns and other lush beauties as well as calochortus, succulents, and more. Call or email for open times. Don’t miss it! 

Don’t miss Mrs. Dalloway’s Feb. 1 event, either: phenomenal photographer Saxon Holt will sign copies of the handsome Hardy Succulents, his collaboration with Gwen Kalaidis. Richard Ward (himself a phenomenon not to be missed) will sell plants from The Dry Garden. Maybe you can get him to autograph one for you.  

 

 

Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary and Garden Arts 

2904 College Ave., Berkeley 

(510) 704-8222 

http://www.mrsdalloways.com 

Sunday, Feb. 1, 4 p.m. 

Saxon Holt and Richard Ward.  

 

The Dry Garden 

6556 Shattuck Ave.,  

Oakland/Berkeley border 

(510) 547-3564. 

 

Cactus Jungle 

1509 4th St., Berkeley 

(510) 558-8650 

Closed till January 12, 2009. 

http://cactusjungle.com 

Check it out: 

http://www.cactusjungle.com/blog/ 

 

Paul Leondis 

2331 - 10th St., Berkeley 

(510)649-0993 

info@leondis.com 

http://leondis.com 

 


Dispatches From The Edge: Guns, Butter and Obama

By Conn Hallinan
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:28:00 PM

Over the next several months there will be a battle for hearts and minds, but not in Iraq or Afghanistan. The war will be here at home, waged mostly in the halls of Congress, where grim lobbyists for the 13th largest economy in the world are digging in to preserve their stake in the massive U.S. military budget. With the country in deep recession and resources dwindling for the new administration’s programs on health care, education and the environment, the outcome of this battle may well end up defining the next four years. 

But coming to grips with the issue, as one arms analyst noted, is likely to resemble the worst of World War I trench warfare. “It will be like the British Army at the Somme,” Winslow Wheeler of the Center for Defense Information told the Boston Globe, “you will just get mowed down by the defense industry.”  

For starters, there are 185,000 corporations behind those metaphorical machine guns, and a few are formidable indeed: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Alliant Techsystems, United Technologies, Textron, Teledyne, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Texas Instruments, just to name a few. And their influence is ubiquitous.  

The World Policy Institute found that dozens of high Bush Administration officials were former arms company executives, consultants, or shareholders, and that this network of influence reaches deep into Congress. The combination of lobbying and PAC money that pours into election coffers every two years gives the arms industry enormous influence over the actions of the executive and legislative branches. 

The reason is simple: the money at stake is staggering, although nailing down exactly what this country spends on the military is extremely difficult. “Figures on defense spending are notoriously unreliable,” defense expert Chalmers Johnson points out. “All numbers released by the Pentagon should be regarded as suspect.”  

While the “official” 2009 U.S. military budget is $516 billion, that figure bears little resemblance to what this country actually spends. According to the Center for Defense Information (CDI), if one pulls together all the various threads that make up the defense spending tapestry—including Home Security, secret “black budget” items, military-related programs outside of the Defense Department, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and such outlays as veterans’ benefits—the figure is around $862 billion for the current fiscal year. Johnson says spending is closer to $1.1 trillion. 

Even these figures are misleading, since it does not project future costs. According to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, when the economic and social costs of the Iraq War are finally added up-including decades of treatment for veterans disabled by traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder—the final bill could reach $5 trillion dollars. 

Given the current economic crisis, even the defense establishment recognizes that some cuts are inevitable. A recent study by a Pentagon advisory group, the Defense Business Board, says that current defense spending is “not sustainable” and recommends scaling back or eliminating some big-ticket weapon systems.  

Canceling Lockheed Martin’s F-22 stealth fighter and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, General Dynamics’ Littoral Combat Ship, and Boeing and Raytheon’s missile defense system alone would save $377 billion.  

But the problem with U.S. military spending is not just expensive weapons, but the underlying philosophy that the use of force is a valid policy tool. And on that question the incoming Obama Administration has yet to break from the past.  

While Obama has pledged to stress diplomacy over warfare, he has also promised to “maintain the most powerful military on the planet” and to increase the armed forces by some 90,000 soldiers. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that will cost at least $50 billion over five years.  

In some ways the most disturbing current initiative, however, is a push to “reshape” the armed forces. 

A recent Defense Department directive elevates “IW” [irregular warfare] to a level “as strategically important as traditional warfare,” arguing that for the “foreseeable future, winning the Long War against violent extremists will the central objective of U.S. policy.”  

This concept is no different than the “hearts and minds” counterinsurgency strategy that failed so disastrously in Southeast Asia two generations ago. The directive assumes that military disasters result from impatience and poor tactics. If you are willing to fight a “Long War,” don’t kick in too many doors, lunch with the locals, and hand out lots of candy to the kids, you win.  

But the key to understanding why the U.S. and NATO are losing in Afghanistan and Iraq is the word “occupation.”  

Writing almost a century ago, T.E. Lawrence laid out what he called the algebra of occupation: “Rebellion must have an unassailable base…it must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form of a disciplined army of occupation too small to dominate the whole area. It must have a friendly population…sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Granted mobility, security…time and doctrine…victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive.”  

Lawrence was writing about the British occupation of Iraq, but he might as well have been channeling the future. His conclusion should give the Obama Administration pause about its plans for a “surge” of troops into Afghanistan: “Against them [the algebraical factors], perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain.” 

History is replete with examples of Lawrence’s formula too numerous to list. Indeed, the few examples of successful counterinsurgency—the Americans in the Philippines and the British in Malaya—were the result of unique historical factors that that have never transferred well.  

The occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan has been a financial and diplomatic disaster for the U.S., devastated the countries we invaded, and is spreading the war to Pakistan and India. The recent terrorist assault on Mumbai was very similar to the September bombing of the Islamabad Marriott Hotel, both of them almost certainly “blowback” from the growing involvement of Indian forces in southern and eastern Afghanistan, and the Pakistani Army in the northwest frontier and tribal territories.  

Won’t adding 90,000 troops trained in counterinsurgency warfare create pressure to use those troops in places like the Sudan, Somalia, the Gulf of Guinea, Colombia, or any number of regions where U.S. interests collide with local aspirations? 

In a Dec. 4 Foreign Affairs article, Defense Secretary Robert Gates laid out “A Roadmap for a New U.S. Military”: “What is dubbed the war on terror is…a prolonged, worldwide irregular campaign-a struggle between the forces of violent extremism and those of moderation. Direct military force will continue to play a role in the long-term effort against the terrorists and other extremists. But over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory.” 

Gates’ strategy embodies the possibility of both hope and disaster. If the U.S. chooses to keep the military on its current footing-including adding more troops and focusing on the use of “direct military force”—then future wars and occupations will almost certainly torpedo Obama’s plans to deliver a more equal and humane society.  

If, however, diplomacy and negotiations takes the place of F-16s and Special Forces, then there is yet hope that the world can take a step back and look for alternatives that avoid Lawrence’s grim calculations. 

 

 


East Bay: Then and Now—Thornburg’s Storybook Village Succeeded Kellogg’s Farm

By Daniella Thompson
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:35:00 PM
Thornburg Village, popularly called Normandy Village, was built by Jack Thornburg and designed by William Raymond Yelland.
By Daniella Thompson
Thornburg Village, popularly called Normandy Village, was built by Jack Thornburg and designed by William Raymond Yelland.

On May 8, 1927, the Development page of the Oakland Tribune devoted its leading column and central photograph to what it called “a unique apartment structure.”  

“Thornburg Village, a conception of the art of humble European builders with names long forgotten, is now far enough advanced for public appreciation,” announced the article. “Located in a grove of trees almost at the edge of the university campus, on Spruce Street just above Hearst, this unique project is daily attracting interested spectators. Combining in its style the influences of villages from the Scandinavian peninsula to the Mediterranean, methods of construction are exhibited evoking the past […].” 

A detailed description of the exterior followed: “The first unit of Thornburg Village centers in a circular court, reached through an arched entrance. Brick paving is irregularly laid, pitching to the center. The walls, not only of the court but the exterior as well, are a combination of brick and stone with contrasting colors and textures as if traced and warped by time. Outside stairs lead to each of the eight apartments, straight and rigid lines in the exterior openings being avoided by fitting each unit at different floor levels. Large windows are the rule, and the charm of the strange building is enhanced by carved heads, or grotesque gargoyles hanging above the first story. The roof lines are broken, appearing as irregularly laid stone, soft and weathered, with tile along the ridges.” 

The article went on to describe the interiors, whose walls resembled hand-hewn stone and timber, with earthen fireplaces breaking through. Dowelled oak floors carried a hand-crafted appearance. In the kitchens and baths, stone and colored treatments were preferred over glazed tile. The mark of milling machinery was nowhere to be found. 

The developer and builder of this bohemian complex was a 25-year-old Californian by the name of Jack Wood Thornburg, who planned to build several groups of buildings on the site, each one unique and individually owned. Thornburg advertised for investors in the same issue in which the Tribune carried the article. 

The architect of Thornburg Village was William Raymond Yelland (1890-1966) of Oakland, who specialized in storybook-style design. A native of Saratoga, CA, Yelland graduated from UC Berkeley in 1913 with a B.S. in Architecture before spending a year at the University of Pennsylvania. 

During World War I, the architect was stationed in France, absorbing there the esthetic influences that would shape his career. In 1920 he joined the Oakland architectural office of Miller and Warnecke, and by 1924 he had opened his own practice at 1404 Franklin Street. 

In 1925, Yelland built a Medieval-style building on Shattuck Avenue for the Tupper & Reed music store. Clad in brick and crowned with an steeply pitched roof surmounted by the effigy of a piper, the building attracted much attention, which young Thornburg couldn’t have failed to notice. 

Why Thornburg desired to model his development after old European styles is not clear. He was born in Long Beach in 1901. His father was a rancher. By the time Jack was 9, the family had moved to Pasadena, where Thornburg père was managing a water company. Jack was the youngest of five brothers. In 1920, at the age of 18, he was working as a machinist on a stock ranch managed by his brother Wayne in Prescott, Arizona. Another brother, Max Weston Thornburg, married Leila Baldwin Berry of Berkeley and was living in her parents’ house at 2700 Benvenue Ave. 

It may have been Max’s presence in Berkeley that attracted Jack to the area. A mechanical engineer, Max would follow his father-in-law to a career at Standard Oil of California. In 1941, he was appointed Petroleum Advisor to the U.S. State Department. After World War II, he became chairman of the Board of Engineers of Standard Oil of California and was instrumental in the oil development of Bahrain, living in the Middle East for several decades. 

Jack is said to have studied at the University of California; engineering appears to have been was his chosen field. In 1923 or 1924 (accounts vary) he married the first of his four wives, Frances Ferris Geidner (1906-1947) of Los Angeles. The ceremony was performed by the captain of a tugboat on board his vessel, three miles off the San Diego coast. The couple had two children, but in August 1927, shortly after Thornburg Village was completed, the impetuous Frances sued for annulment, claiming there was no record of the marriage and seeking custody and a division of $40,000 in community property. In court, Jack was charged by his father-in-law with having kidnapped Frances. Despite the brouhaha, the couple remained married. 

A year after the first part of Thornburg Village opened, an addition called Norman Towers was ready for occupancy. It was touted in the newspapers as a “French-Norman type structure.” This time, Jack Thornburg was credited with the architectural design as well as with construction. Lillian Parker Allen was the owner. 

The Tribune described the “high gabled and broken roof lines” finished in “a shingle thatch of striking hues and colors.” Inside, doors and half-beams were hand-carved. “The floors are of various woods, some in mahogany plank laid with wooden dowels, some of parqueted redwood block laid on end, and others of oak plank. Lighting fixtures also are individual and of hand-made wrought iron from the studio of the Berkeley Craftsman. The fireplaces are in brick and plaster, odd-shaped and elevated.” 

Norman Towers comprised 12 apartments of two and four rooms “in studio types.” They came with stream heat, “genuine Frigidaire,” and Rip Van Winkle wall beds. It was thanks to this addition that the complex has acquired the moniker Normandy Village. 

While living in Berkeley, Jack Thornburg learned to fly. In June 1928, he was listed as having received his pilot’s license. At the time, his address was 1843 Spruce Street (Thornburg Village), but by 1929, he and Frances had moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Here Jack went into the aviation business, establishing Arizona Air Service Inc., a flying school. 

Thornburg’s most illustrious flying student was the 21-year-old future Senator Barry Goldwater, who used to sneak out of the house before dawn for his flying lessons. In his 1979 memoir With No Apologies, Goldwater reminisced: “In 1930 I decided to learn to fly. My instructor, Jack Thornburg, had a Great Lakes biplane with an inverted four-cylinder air-cooled engine. It was the only time I ever kept a secret from Mun [his mother].” 

Arizona Air Service was forced out of business by the depression. Thornburg worked nine years as a pilot for TWA before enlisting in the Navy in 1940. His new assignment was as Naval Air Transport Service operations officer for the Caribbean and South America. According to his obituary, published in the Oakland Tribune on Feb. 26, 1972, Commander Thornburg won the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1945, when he flew the first Douglas C-54 Skymaster transport plane into Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the evacuation of more than 9,000 wartime casualties, despite extremely unfavorable weather conditions. 

His outfit, the Naval Air Transport Service evacuation squadron, (VRE-1), received the Navy Unit Commendation for outstanding heroism in support of the Okinawa campaign operations. At the time, Frances Thornburg and their four children lived in Orinda. 

Out of the Navy in 1946, Thornburg joined Waterman Airlines as vice-president and general manager. The company’s six-plane fleet consisted of two DC-4s and four DC-3s, with which he operated a non-scheduled service to Puerto Rico, Central America, England, Germany, and South Africa, and an intrastate line between six Alabama cities. 

In early 1947, at the age of 45, he was picked by Waterman to run TACA Airways, S.A., a struggling Central American airline acquired by his parent company, Waterman Steamship Corp. Waterman controlled TACA until 1961, but Jack Thornburg was gone by then, having formed Thornburg Engineering and bought ranchland in San Diego County. He died in Santa Ysabel, CA, in 1972. 

Thornburg Village was acquired in 1936 by David and Rebecca Roth. Mrs. Roth was the daughter of pioneer downtown butcher Simon Fischel, who ran a meat market on the corner of Shattuck and University Avenues since the late 1870s. Rebecca continued to expand the complex between 1941 and the mid-1950s, engaging the San Francisco architect Charles E.J. Rogers to design the new buildings. In July 1950, after she had added four new units, Berkeley Gazette columnist Hal Johnson recalled the days when the same location had been the site of Professor Martin Kellogg’s home, and when Spruce Street had been called Bushnell Place. 

Congregational clergyman, professor of Latin, and seventh president of the University of California, Prof. Kellogg was one of the first two faculty members hired in 1859 by the new College of California. As early as 1877, Kellogg was listed in the city directory as residing on the east side of Bushnell Place, which he named in honor of the 19th-century Congregational clergyman and theologian Horace Bushnell. Hal Johnson recounts that Kellogg ran a farm on his homestead and kept a cow that he milked himself, delivering milk to his neighbors. 

Kellogg planted many trees on his block, earning Bernard Maybeck’s indirect praise in his booklet Hillside Building: “With neighborhood cooperation the roadside banks, terraces, etc. can be planted systematically in blocks instead of lots […] long avenues of trees with houses back from roads, hidden behind foregrounds of shrubbery. Bushnell place is such a one.” 

By the time that Johnson was rhapsodizing about Kellogg’s farm, Spruce Street had already become a street of apartment buildings. Alone among them, Thornburg Village fills the viewer with enchantment. 

 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

 


About the House: Talkin’ Jack

By Matt Cantor
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:34:00 PM

Every few days I pass a house perched ten or fifteen feet up in the air, waiting for a new set of roots to climb up and bolster its weight. 

There’s something very strange (and for me, fun) about an entire house; some one or two hundred-thousand pounds perched blithely on stacks of railroad ties. It argues with our sensibilities.  

Odd as it seems, it’s actually quite common. Part of the reason I see these so often is that I’m looking for them. It’s like blue Ramblers. When you’ve just bought one, you see them everywhere and prior to knowing about them, they may not have enough cognitive traction to obtain an imprint. You might not have ever noticed a house up on blocks but you will now. I guarantee it. 

Lifting a house is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways to increase the size of a house and it has a number of benefits to recommend it, especially if other circumstances align to its advantage. 

Lifting a house is most advantageous when a foundation already needs replacement since foundation replacement is nearly always required in order to lift a house. Let’s look at the cases in which foundation replacement are not likely to be involved since this set is much the smaller of the two cases. 

A house that is lifted but will have no living space below the original main floor may be allowed to retain its foundation if that foundation continues to be deemed adequate for support of the original structure. This is an odd case because it’s rare for someone to undertake such a burdensome (and pricey) task for nothing more than a taller basement or crawlspace and, frankly, I generally wouldn’t bother. 

It’s very occasionally the case that a foundation is adequate for support of another level of living space without costly modification but when it is, a house can be jacked up with only replacement of a taller set of supporting walls rebuilt over the foundation. This is so rare that I almost hesitate to mention it at all but there it is. It’s worth checking out prior to planning your project but don’t hold your breath. 

There are two areas of reasoning that lead us to the almost certain conclusion that a new foundation (or a major modification of the original one) will be needed for your heightened house and these are as follows:  

First is that the baseline design requirements for even a one story house foundation are unlikely to be met in your current foundation unless it was built in recent decades. Design requirements continue to become more stringent for foundations and a house from 1950 may not meet the requirements for a new house, particularly if there are soils or other geological issues. A 1930s house is virtually certain to fail to meet even the most modest set of modern standards and may not even be suitable for foundation repairs that, in a newer foundation, might allow for a height increase. 

The second set of issues has to do with the difference between one story and two story foundation designs (or the difference between two and three story, etc.). A one story house foundation is designed to bear a particular set of loads and if you add a story, it is very unlikely that modern engineering standards will allow that same foundation to serve for an additional story.  

Even in the case of the new lower floor being built as a slab (a concrete tablet that serves as both foundation and floor), where there is no crawlspace and the lower level rests upon the ground, the requirements demand that the lower level have a minimum ground clearance of eight inches and this, again, voids the use of most older foundations. While many variants from the ideal get built-out as finished basements, many have not actually passed building department muster and also fail the design requirement that modern engineering demands. In short, jacking up a house and planning for the lower level to involve dry living space is pretty sure to demand a new or greatly modified foundation.  

Since I keep mentioning modifications as one possible way to meet the support needs of the newly enlarged structure, I should give some brief impression of what this might entail. An upgrade can vary quite a bit, depending on the original foundation’s strength but one fairly common method is to add some sort of underpinning or an array of piers that beef up the original footing. These may be placed every few feet or yards along the length of the foundation or run the length of the foundation while grasping the original footing in some manner, typically from below as well as along the sides using epoxied rebar connections that become buried in poured concrete so that they become an extension of, and indivisible from, the original. 

There are other, more high-tech methods in use today, such as helical steel piers that can be bolted onto the original foundation. These latter methods may be very cost effective and are worth a look. Don’t expect every engineer to jump at these. Like contractors and architects, most have favored methods and many are slow to cozy up to every new product on the shelf (even if they’re good). 

Once you’ve overcome foundation issues, it’s surprising how little is left to tackle. The lifting process itself is usually in the range of 10-20 thousand dollars and may take only a few days to realize. 

Keep in mind that leveling is not automatically included and that you’ll have to ask for this when the house is lifted. Leveling will tend to crack plaster, bend flooring, change the shape of doorways and window openings and make lots of noise (SCREEEEEECH). All that said, I’d try to head toward level in nearly every case. It’s your one great shot at level doorways, floors and cabinets and it’s worth the repair of some plaster. 

One of the big losses or changes will involve the original stairways to the ground. These are, for the most part, toast. You may, in some cases be able to modify them (especially if you started out with a stand-up height basement) but in most cases, you should plan on replacement. This may be a moot point as the elevation of your house is likely to involve entry and exit from exciting new places. If your main floor is now your upstairs, you may not now be entering it from the exterior at all, and instead ascend between floor via a new interior stairway.  

And here’s a bit of a rub. When you go from one story to two (and so forth), you will generally need to cut away about 50 square feet from each of these floors to accommodate a stairway. Furthermore, finding the right place for this involves a special cleverness relegated to the better architects (as well as a few clever builders, homeowners or the odd inspector (don’t say it)). 

If your new full-height downstairs is approved as a separate living space (often a lucrative financial coup), you may, in fact, be retaining an exterior entry to the newly elevated main floor but again, the old stairway probably won’t survive the ascent. While you can take anything and push it up in the air, the criteria for stairways and porches are so much more stringent than they were, even 25 years ago, that few will be worth modification. Also, the cost efficiency of rebuilding or modification is always tenuous when compared with new construction, which has a domain’s worth of practical advantages. 

Electrical and plumbing changes are surprisingly simple when jacking a house, even with regards to temporary connections. Electrical systems mount on the side of most houses with “service drops” swooping in from a nearby power-pole. Raising a house has almost no effect on these connections and may not require any special attention in the short run, although the main panel will probably have to be moved down to a reasonable height as your project culminates. 

Sewer and water connections will require temporary extension pieces for the short run and then more serious alterations prior to completion of your new first level but these are fairly minor issues both financially and physically and should not be deciding factors in your decision to go this route. 

House elevation as a vehicle to expansion has a number of formidable pluses. Here are a few. When comparing house jacking to side expansion, zoning laws will often favor the former with regards to maximizing square footage on a given lot. The reason for this is that stacking living space leave more open space and the maintenance of open space is usually a major imperative in the calculus of zoning laws. 

Lifting a house and adding a floor to the bottom means that both roof framing and roofing material can remain untouched (unless you happen to need a roof). You’re just putting more people under the same umbrella. That can provide a major cost saving as well as the preservation of an authentic design element. And it’s one less job to think about (which is pretty nice when the rains start in the middle of your remodel). 

From a design standpoint, I particularly like the fact that older (and generally finer) architectural details are thrust upward above the newer, and typically, simpler, fatter or more mundane details that “found” or “ground” the structure. This has precedence in nature and is commonly mimicked in architecture. In short, it tends to look right. 

Building from the ground up is expensive. Adding a lower floor isn’t cheap either but, if you have the right set of circumstances and the right help, can be a truly ascended experience. 


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Friday January 09, 2009 - 12:24:00 PM

THURSDAY, JAN. 8 

THEATER 

Shotgun Players “Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage” at 8 p.m. at The Roda Theater, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $30, includes a party after the show. Reservations advised. 841-6500. 

FILM 

“August Evening” A film of undocumented workers at Oaks 2 Theater, 1875 Solano Ave. 526-1836. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Elisabeth Payne Rosen discusses her new Civil War novel “Hallam’s War” at 1 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. 238-2200. 

“Cultural Landscapes” with Cathy Garrett, of PGAdesign landscape architecture at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Cost is $8-$10. 763-9218.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Crucible “Fire Ballet” Wed.-Sat. at 8:30 p.m. at 1260 Seventh St., Oakland, through Jan. 17. Tickets are $45-$65. www.thecrucible.org 

Open Decks, Grateful Dead night, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $6. 525-5054.  

Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

Kelly Park & Friends at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Seconds on End, Tistrya at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. 

Brwn Bflo, hip hop, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5. 849-2568.  

The Dave G Experience at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Eclair de Lune at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

Airto Moreira with Zakir Hussain at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200. 

FRIDAY, JAN. 9 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Art” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Feb. 7. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553.  

Berkeley Rep “The Arabian Nights” Tues.-Sun. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through Jan. 18. Tickets are $27-$71. 647-2949.  

Shotgun Players “Macbeth” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Feb. 1. Tickets are $18-$30. 841-6500.  

EXHIBITIONS 

Berkeley Art Center Members’ Exhibition Wed.-Sun. from noon to 5 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. Exhibition ends Jan. 25. 644-6893. 

Oakland Art Association Group show of 24 artists in a variety of media. Opens at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission Gallery, 101 Eighth St., Oakland, and runs through April 16. 817-5700. 

“Reflections” Documentary photojournalism by D. Michael Cheers. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. 465-8928. 

“Rust” Photographs emphasizing aged imperfections by Cary Hock. Reception at 5 p.m. at Awaken Cafe, 414 14th St., Oakland. Exhibition runs to Feb. 4. 836-2058. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Carol Dorf and Tracy Koretsky read their poetry at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave., a little north of Hearst, as part of the Last Word Reading Series. There is also an open reading. 841-6374. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Earl Zero and the Fire Band at 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Slammin’ All Body Band at UTunes Coffee House at 8 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 14th St., Oakland. Cost is $10-$18. www.brownpapertickets.com 

Dave LeFebvre Group at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

The Isaac Schwartz Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373.  

Amha Baraka and friends, reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

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

Davis Jones, Jenton Lee at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

The Loyd Family Players, Antioquia at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Chris Murray, Monkey, Flip the Switch, at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

The Todd Shipley Band at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Steve Carter Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Rebecca Griffin, jazz vocal, at 8 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

Airto Moreira with Zakir Hussain at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, JAN. 10 

CHILDREN  

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

John Weaver, storyteller, Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 452-2259. www.fairyland.org 

Hannah Banana, folk music, at 11 a.m. at Studio Grow, 1235 10th St. Cost is $8. 526-9888. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Challenge of Champions” A three part community art project commenting on the impact of violence and homicide in the East Bay. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at ABCo Artspace, 3135 Filbert St., at San Pablo and 23rd, Oakland. Runs through Jan. 26 by appointment. 415-420-8028. 

“Plasma Nation” Group show of plasma and neon sculptors. Closing reception at 6 p.m., presentation by Ed Kirshner at 7 p.m. at Float Gallery, 1091 Calcott Place, #116., Oakland. 535-1702. www.thefloatcenter.com 

“Forty Four Presidents” Works by Lena Reynoso. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Blankspace Gallery 6608 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. www.blankspace Gallery.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Crucible “Fire Ballet” Wed.-Sat. at 8:30 p.m. at 1260 Seventh St., Oakland, through Jan. 17. Tickets are $45-$65. www.thecrucible.org 

Les Grâces Vocal chamber music of the Baroque period at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864.  

Celestial Mechanics, female vocal trio, 8 p.m. at Oakopolis, 447 25th St., Oakland. 663-6920. 

Celtic and Flamenco Night with Meli, Fanny Ara, Diana Stork, Danny Torres and Katie White at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $12. 849-2568. 

Pamela Rose & Her Quartet, featuring Danny Caron, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Pellejo Seco at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cuban salsa lesson at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Big Lion, Julia Francis at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Steve Seskin, Craig Carothers, Don Henry at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761.  

Aaron Bahr, trumpet, at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

Planet Loop at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Culann’s Hounds, The Trespassers, Ben Bernstein at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $9. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Kate Van Horn, folk rock, at 7 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

Ritchie Beltran at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7-$10. 558-0881. 

Onion Flavored Rings, Trainwreck Riders, The Measure 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. 

Kenny Garrett at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, JAN. 11 

CHILDREN 

Family Square Dance with The Squirrely String Band at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Meet the Museum” A docent tour of the museum’s past, present and future at 1 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“Orchard Views” Paintings by Sonia Gill on display in the lobby gallery, 1947 Center St., through Feb. 27. 981-7533. 

“Fortuitous Garden” Paintings by Amy St. George. Reception at 4 p.m. at Albany Community Center Foyer, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany. 524-9283. 

FILM 

“August Evening” A film of undocumented workers at Oaks 2 Theater, 1875 Solano Ave. 526-1836. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Julia Morgan” will make a presentation about Oakland’s East of the Lake District referencing buildings she designed at 3 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 114 Montecito Ave. Donation $20 plus non-perishable food items requested. 848-3414. www.stpaulsoakland.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Voices of Music “The Art of the Cello” with Tanya Tomkins, baroque cello, at 7:30 p.m. at St. Albans Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Tickets are $20-$25. 236-9808. www.voicesofmusic.org 

Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble of S.F. at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$10. 849-2568.  

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

Arian Shafiee, Isaac Schwartz at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Berkeley High School Jazz Band members in a benefit for Akeen Hawkins at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $7-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Tommy Hodul and East Bay Breeze at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

Jazz Jam Session with Michael Zilber, Jeff Marrs, Peter Barshay and Erik Jekabson at 7 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

MONDAY, JAN. 12 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Sweet Dreams” Works by Ben Hazard from 1969-2008 opens at Craft & Cultural Arts Gallery, State of California Office Building - Atrium, 1515 Clay St., Oakland, and runs through Feb. 27. 622-8190. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dora A. Sorell, Holocaust survivor and local author, speaks at the Brown Bag Luncheon series at 12:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720 ext. 16. 

PlayGround, short works from new and emerging playwrights at 8 p.m., pre-show discussion at 7 p.m., at Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $15. 415-704-3177. www.PlayGround-sf.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Ambassador of Trouts, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

Jesse Scheinin Quartet at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, JAN. 13 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

NIAD 25th Anniversary Retrospective Works by artists with developmental and other disabilities. Artist talk at 1 p.m. at Pro Arts Gallery, 550 Second St., Oakland. Exhibition runs to Jan. 13. 763-9470. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Gator Beat at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun/Zydeco dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

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

On the Air, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

John Abercrombie Organ Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 14 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

William Iggiagruk Hensley reads from his story of the native people of Alaska “Fifty Miles from Tomorrow” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Donation $10. berkeleyarts.org 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Crucible “Fire Ballet” Wed.-Sat. at 8:30 p.m. at 1260 Seventh St., Oakland, through Jan. 17. Tickets are $45-$65. www.thecrucible.org 

Loose Wig Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Monthly Milonga, Argentine Tango, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Dance lesson at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054.  

Tone Bent at 7 p.m. at Le Bateau Ivre, 2629 Telegraph Ave. www.lebateauivre.net 

Carol’s Jazz Cats at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

John Abercrombie Organ Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, JAN. 15 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Walls” Paintings by Joel Isaacson on contemporary social and political concerns, at Flora Lamson Hewlett Library, 2400 Ridge Rd. Exhibition runs to Jan. 30. 649-2500.  

“Sweet Dreams” Works by Ben Hazard from 1969-2008. Reception and artist talk from 5 to 8 p.m. at Craft & Cultural Arts Gallery, State of California Office Building - Atrium, 1515 Clay St., Oakland. 622-8190. 

FILM 

Josef von Sternberg: Eros and Abstraction “Underworld” with Judith Rosenberg on piano, at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Amy Meyer talks about her new book and the fight to create the Golden Gate National recreational Area at 12:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200.  

“Celebrate the Ceramic Arts of Berkeley” with authors Nina Lyons, Dean Schwarz, Andrew Martin, Dana Gardner and Stephen DeStaebler from 6 to 9 p.m. at Leslie Ceramic Supply Co., 1212 San Pablo Ave. 524-7363. 

Lyn Hejinian reads from her new volume of poetry “Saga/Circus” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Renee Asteria, with 7th Street Sound at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054.  

Blue Note Records 70th Anniversary Tour with Pianist Bill Charlap and others at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $30-$50. 642-9988.  

Rhonda Vincent & the Rage at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $38.50-$39.50. 548-1761.  

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

Roger Roca and the Goldenhearts, Mushroom, Juanita and the Rabbit at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Tamika Nicole at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568.  

Gregg Cross at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Dore Coller & Bermuda Grass, bluegrass, at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

Jeremy Pelt at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$18. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, JAN. 16 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Art” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Feb. 7. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Berkeley Rep “The Arabian Nights” Tues.-Sun. at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through Jan. 18. Tickets are $27-$71. 647-2949.  

Shotgun Players “Macbeth” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Feb. 1. Tickets are $18-$30. 841-6500.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Fierce Fashion” A group art exhibition. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Eclectix Gallery, 10082 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 364-7261. 

“Queen & Country” Paintings by Richard Kramer, Dickson Schneider, Raymond Wong. Reception at 6 p.m. at Autobody Fine Art, 1517 Park St., Alameda. 881-6974. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Crucible “Fire Ballet” Wed.-Sat. at 8:30 p.m. at 1260 Seventh St., Oakland, through Jan. 17. Tickets are $45-$65. www.thecrucible.org 

Vince Ho, Renaissance organ music of the Hapsburg Court, at 8 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Suggested donation $10. 525-1716. 

 

 

 

 

 

Dgiin at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Robin Gregory & Her Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ.  

Jack Reilly on the music of Bill Evans at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $20. 845-5373.  

Native Elements at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

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

Jenn and the Hollowgrams, Melody Eversole at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Workingman’s Ed at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $12. 841-2082.  

Midnight Train at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

The Pam & Jeri Show at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. Cost is $10-$15. 548-5198.  

The Invaders at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Hepburn & Correri, jazz vocal ballads, at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

Roy Rogers & The Delta Rhythm Kings at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $20. 238-9200.  

SATURDAY, JAN. 17 

CHILDREN  

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

“Tales from Winter Wonderland, Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Cost is $6. 452-2259.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“What the ?” mixed media by Lola, sculpture by Brian Young. Opening party at 6 p.m. at Float Gallery, 1091 Calcott Place, Unit #116, Oakland. 535-1702. 

THEATER 

Rough and Tumble “Stupidity” Play reading and discussion at 11 a.m., potluck lunch at 1 p.m., work session by the company from 2 to 6 p.m., the public is invited to observe, at Civicorps Elementary School, 1086 Alcatraz Ave. Oakland. Free. 499-0356. www.randt.org 

FILM 

“My Name is Orson Welles” at 5 p.m. and Andrzej Wajda: “Ashes and Diamonds” at 8 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

American Bach Soloists, “Mass in B Minor” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Pre-concert lecture at 7 p.m. Tickets are $18-$60. 800-838-3006. www.americanbach.org 

National Acrobats of China at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$46. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Los Boleros, Havana dance party, at 9:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $8-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Lady Bianca Blues at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Savoy Family Band at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $15-$18. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Owen Roberts and the Doghouse Brewer at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Austin de Lone & Paul Rogers at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Frankye Kelly at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

The Luke Thomas Trio at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Ethan Byxbe and friends, blues, at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7-$10. 558-0881. 

The Everlovin’, American roots music, at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

The Morning Line, King Crab, Pinto Wagon at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Babyland, Mount Vicious, Savior, Absence 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. 

James Moody Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SUNDAY, JAN. 18 

CHILDREN 

The Kathy Kallick Band at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“L.A. Paint” Tour of the exhibition at 2 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

FILM 

“Unfinished Works by Orson Welles” at 2 p.m. and Josef von Sternberg “The Last Command” at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Robert “Bud” Roper reads from “Now the Drum of War” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“In the Name of Love” a musical tribute honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with the Marcus Shelby Jazz Orchestra, Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company and others, at 7:30 p.m. at Oakland Scottish Rite Center, 1547 Lakeside Dr. Tickets are $5-$12. 287-8880. www.mlktribute.com 

“Rejoice” Pre-Inaugural Gospel Concert at 7:30 p.m. at Star Bethel Church, 5800 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. Suggested donation $20. 978-6470. 

“Jazz at the Chimes” with vocalist Ellen Robinson at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10-$15. 228-3218. 

Diana Rowen, Rachel Durling, Gari Hegedus and others at 8 p.m. at Wisteria Ways, Rockridge, Oakland. Not wheelchair accessible. Cost is $15-$20. Reservations required. info@WisteriaWays.org 

National Acrobats of China at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $24-$46. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Sergey and Lusine Khachtryan, violin and piano at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $46. 642-9988. www.calperformances.net 

Sandy Perez y Su Lade, Afro-Cuban, at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $15-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Conspiracy of Beards at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Em K at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Ranzel Merritt Quartet at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

Jazz Jam Session with Michael Zilber, Jeff Marrs, Peter Barshay and Erik Jekabson at 7 p.m. at 33 Revolutions, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 898-1836. 

 

 

 


Joel Isaacson’s ‘Walls’ at the GTU

By Peter Selz Special to the Planet
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:29:00 PM
Joel Isaacson’s “Orange Burqa,” 2007, oil on canvas.
Joel Isaacson’s “Orange Burqa,” 2007, oil on canvas.

Harold Rosenberg, the eminent art critic and friend of the Abstract Expressionists, defined their paintings as “arenas to act in.”  

This description certainly applies to Joel Isaacson’s paintings currently on view at the Graduate Theological Library. At first viewing these canvases look abstract and, indeed the painter welcomed accident, using his palette knife as well his brushes when he made these pictures.  

To be sure, Isaacson began his career as a painter, working in the Abstract Expressionist mode, when he studied with Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko at Brooklyn College in the late ’40s and early ’50s. After his service in the army he decided to change his vocation and to study the history of art, earning his doctorate here at UC Berkeley.  

He then taught the subject for over thirty years at the University of Michigan. Upon his retirement at Ann Arbor he returned to Berkeley and to his previous calling. His field in art history is Impressionism, and indeed some of the paintings on view, such as West Bank (2006) are done in an Impressionist palette and could almost be enlarged details of a Monet panting. Actually, it is a view of villages and the land of Palestine fractured by the walls erected by Israel’s neo-colonial regime. 

The exhibition is entitled “Walls” and addresses the barriers erected by Israel as well as the U.S. to keep out undesired Arabs or Mexicans, respectively. These barriers, to which the Israelis refer euphemistically as “Security Borders,” merely replaced suicide attacks with rocket strikes. One of the paintings on view, called Road Map—West Bank (2008) signifies these walls with straight red, yellow blue and green lines, which rigidly cut across Palestinian towns, villages, olive groves and their secondary roads, ensuring continued Israel control.  

The parallel enterprise of exclusion, the U.S. wall on its Mexican border is the subject of Isaacson’s painting of a map showing the barrier next to the Rio Grande. In the exhibition there is also a highly evocative and deeply troubling canvas, Ghosts of Guantanomo (2008). 

The lower floor of the exhibition displays another kind of wall, the burqa which Afghan women are made to wear to separate their persona from the world outside. Typical is a beautifully painted canvas, Orange Burqa, showing the grid of heavy fabric, resembling a helmet, which makes sure that the woman cannot be seen and may barely look at her surroundings through the small threaded opening.  

In his artist statement Isaacson writes that “the burqa through which Afghan women look out at the world became a sign of everything that was wrong with the Afghan misadventure.” For Isaacson it is a symbol of the suffering of the Afghan people and the cynical claim of the Bush administration of having “liberated” the Afghan people, as well as a continuing manifestation of a restrictive Islam culture. 

The visitor to this exhibition will be well served by examining the fine works on paper in the display cases. The include sketches and studies for the paintings as well as extremely fine renderings of tree trunks and two commanding imaginary portraits of Walter Benjamin. 

 

Walls 

Joel Isaacson 

Through Jan. 30 

Graduate Theological Library 

2400 Ridge Road


Aurora Theatre Expands

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:31:00 PM

Aurora Theatre recently announced a breakthrough—literally.  

The Berkeley company, celebrating its 17th season, has been quietly campaigning for $2.1 million in capital to expand its Addison Street location, just west of Shattuck, cheek-by-jowl with Berkeley Rep and the Jazz School. 

And this coming Monday, Jan. 12, Aurora will hold a ceremony to break through the wall connecting its complex to an adjacent space. Once completed, the pending expansion will add 2,600 square feet to the 7,200 square feet currently occupied by the company. The new space will house a new rehearsal space for main stage productions, readings and workshopping new shows, plus artistic offices and an increase in space for in-house set building.  

Additional space will allow Aurora to increase the number of performances per show, extend current productions while preparing for the next show (reducing turnaround time to as little as two weeks) and allow for a larger lobby and other patron amenities. Projected completion for the expansion is this coming summer. 

“Up until now, the dedicated campaign committee has been working diligently behind the scenes. The response to our efforts has been very enthusiastic and we’re pleased to announce that we’ve reached $1.3 million in cash and pledges, over 62 percent of our goal,” said campaign co-chair Robert B. Hetler. 

In December, the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Trust, of New York City, announced a $200,000 grant over four years in support of the campaign to establish a Fund for Artistic Initiatives to underwrite the development of new work as well as the adaptation of large-scale classics, which the expansion will make possible. The Bernard Osher Foundation has also awarded a $45,000 grant to Aurora’s campaign in memory of Frederick Balderston. 

Aurora was founded in 1992 by Barbara Oliver, along with Dorothy Bryant, Marge Glicksman, Richard Rossi and Ken Grantham.  

“It’s remarkable to me that in its 17 years, Aurora ... has grown from a single theater production produced in a room where women once played cards [the 67-seat drawing room at the Berkeley City Club, where Central Works is now in residence] into a thriving Bay Area institution that continues to grow artistically, and once again physically,” said artistic director Tom Ross. “This is the next logical and essential step in our development.” 

Aurora moved into its current 150-seat location seven years ago. The new expansion is the final project of the late theater architect Gene Angell and his partner Brian Rawlinson.


SF Library Hosts Reading of Jack Spicer’s Poetry

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:32:00 PM

Forty-three years after the poet’s death in San Francisco, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, edited by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian, a handsome 496-page volume, easy to hold and to read, has been issued by Wesleyan University Press ($35), with Spicer’s poetry arranged in chronological order, including several of his “serial poems” previously unpublished. 

A tribute reading, which will celebrate the new book, will be held this Saturday at 1 p.m. in Koret Auditorium of the San Francisco Main Library, admission free. Readers will include Killian and Spicer’s friend Lewis Ellingham, co-authors of Spicer’s biography, Poet, Be Like God (Wesleyan). Spicer can be heard reading his poetry online at PennSound. 

The title of the Collected Poetry comes from Spicer’s last words to his friend and fellow poet, Robin Blaser, who edited The Collected Books of Jack Spicer (Black Sparrow, 1975). A structural linguist who did research at UC Berkeley, Spicer—born in Los Angeles—would playfully give 1945 as his birthdate, when he arrived in Berkeley. 

With Blaser and Robert Duncan, Spicer co-founded the Berkeley Renaissance poetry movement, and hosted “the most educational folk-song program West of the Pecos,” as he’d introduce his KPFA show of the late ’40s, with its deadpan mutations of the received word of folk-art, foreshadowing one mode of his later writing (though Spicer also contributed to music anthologist and filmmaker Harry Smith’s work).  

Spicer introduced a reading of his “Imaginary Elegies I-IV, for Robin Blaser,” featured in Donald Allen’s seminal New American Poetry anthology, with an epigraph from W. B. Yeats: “All that a man knows and needs to know is found in Berkeley,” to gales of laughter at the “pun” on the city and its philosopher namesake. The first poem in the new Collected Poetry is entitled “Berkeley in Time of Plague;” Spicer’s last public talk and reading were at the Berkeley Poetry Conference, just weeks before his death. His poetry career could be said to have begun and ended in Berkeley. 

Spicer’s poetry took an extraordinary turn in the late ‘50s, when he went away from writing the single lyric in favor of what he called the serial poem—“a name I dreamed up [to describe] what Duncan and Robin and I were like that others weren’t like.”  

He embarked on an exploration where a series of poems would “go from one point to another, to another, to another ... echo and reecho each other ... create resonances. They cannot live alone any more than we can.” Not mapped out in advance, a “book,” a kind of narrative was created, poetry telling of its own making. 

Spicer eschewed the academic, “the English Department of the spirit—that great quagmire that lurks at the bottom of all of us.” He mustered considerable abilities in composing after models of earlier British and American poetry, from Poe to Gertrude Stein to The Cantos, masters like Yeats and Rilke, Dada and Surrealist experimentation, with a remarkable ear for American speech, as well as great humor and wit—all delivered in a very different, ever-unfolding style that turned his “sources” to a radically innovative purpose.  

Blaser, whose Spicer essay “The Practice of Outside” can be found in The Fire (UC Press), recently called Spicer’s poetry “constantly oppositional.” Breaking with the Emersonian-Whitmanian tradition (of which Duncan was a great practitioner) and its spin-offs (autobiographical and confessional poetry), Spicer was caustic about “the big lie of the personal” (“For example/ The poem does not know/Who you refers to”), yet often wrote in a personable, playful manner about unusual or difficult things. His final serial poem ends with an admonition to Allen Ginsberg, just crowned King of the May in Prague: “At least we both know how shitty the world is. You wearing a beard as a mask to disguise it. I wearing my tired smile ... Why/ fight the combine of your heart and my heart or anybody’s heart. People are starving.” (Ten Poems For Downbeat, Book of Magazine Verse) 

A year or so before, he’d written some of the most unusual American love poems in Language: “Do the flowers change as I touch your skin?/They are merely buttercups. No sign of death in them. They die and you know by their death that it is no longer summer. Baseball season ...” 

Spicer pitched his sail to fickle winds, but never too far from shore, making his own sightings in a countercurrent, poetry that seems to appear and disappear with the weather, like the Farallons. “We are a coast people/There is nothing but ocean out beyond us. We grasp/The first thing coming.” also from Book of Magazine Verse, used as an epigraph by Richard Brautigan, who dedicated Trout Fishing in America to Spicer. 

Glibert Sorrentino, another writer Spicer influenced, said in 1966 that he had “achieved that rare and difficult feat—he created an art which was at once subservient to, and dominant over, a set of ideas.”  

Spicer’s 20-year engagement with the Bay Area poetry community is legendary, from the founding of the 6 Gallery, where Ginsberg famously debuted “Howl,” to satirizing the late ’50s scene that arose from the publicity that followed (the inspiration for a film project by Raul Ruiz), from collaborating with painters to reading (according to Herb Caen) to Dave Brubeck’s accompaniment; from the creation of poetry presses and magazines, as well as Blabbermouth Night in North Beach, where anyone could read or simply talk until told by the audience to sit down—to the sheaves of poems addressed to friends and fellow poets. 

This history of involvement makes it puzzling to read the recent slew of reviews—New York and Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Chronicle—and postings on poetry websites that peg Spicer as loner and malcontent: “Belated Book From A Misfit Poet Who Didn’t Want To Be Published,” read the dismal headline draped over a dreary review in the Chron’s Datebook section a month ago.  

To be maladroitly preoccupied with psyching out a poet by stitching together a few scraps of quotation and rumor is only to prove Spicer’s distrust of the politics of reputation—“As far as the poet and his audience, I just don’t believe there is an audience for poems. There is an audience obviously for poets ...”—versus the making of poetry, which Spicer gave everything to, encouraging other poets to do the same.  

“Graphemes should not be looked at so minutely. The/Forest for the trees. The kisses for the love.” (”Graphemics,” in ‘Language’)  

 

My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer is available at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 

 


For Shotgun Players, It’s Once Again a ‘Crazy January’

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:33:00 PM

After a packed fall season, with their own openings and other companies’ plays at the Ashby Stage—not to mention their free Election Night party and the special New Year’s celebration that followed a performance of Macbeth—the “can-do” Shotgun Players have embarked on a “Crazy January.”  

The company is staging an updated Beowulf (including new songs with party to follow) at the Roda, one night only (tonight); a cabaret version of the same in San Francisco (tomorrow night only); another freebee “with bagels, coffee and mimosas” from 9 a.m.–1 p.m. on Inauguration Day, and an ambitious staged reading of John Barton’s epic Tantalus, which covers the House of Atreus and its backstory “almost to the Greek creation myth,” over three Wednesdays, Jan. 14, 21 and 28, a fundraiser like last year’s reading of Tom Stoppard’s Coast of Utopia. 

Plus, Mark Jackson’s fashion ramp take on The Scottish Play has been selling out; extended twice, the run is now through Feb. 1. 

“Do we really want to have another Crazy January?” Shotgun’s intrepid founder, Patrick Dooley, asked. “Production for the staged reading—and it’s not a ‘cold’ but a hot reading!—is like cramming for an exam. But it gives our audience the opportunity to see what they’d otherwise never have the chance to experience. Tantalus has been done only once before in America, at the Denver Center almost a decade ago.” 

Dooley stressed that Tantalus isn’t a rehash of Aeschylus’ trilogy. “Barton takes a lot of liberties, playing with theatrical conventions, borrowing from other plays, including Troilus and Cressida, interposing lines from one character to another—both trying to make a more sympathetic character of Agamemnon, yet showing just how brutal the male-female relations were, not sanitized, as he seems to think the translators have rendered it.” 

As for it being a staged reading, “It’s not a finished project, but there’s a finish to it,” he said. “The actors aren’t dressed in black, sitting at music stands; they’re in makeup, doing things with scarves. By the third play, there’s dancing, fights—everything you could want in a run!” 

The ticket price of $150 brings tickets to all three plays, a dramaturgical package mailed before, and “champagne, sweets and savories” at every show. 

Banana, Bag and Bodice’s musical Beowulf, A Thousan Years of Baggage was “the runaway hit” of last year. Revised, with new songs by Dave Malloy, the spectacle is on its way to New York—but first, it will be at the Roda Theatre tonight, with an afterparty where the beer and mead will flow. Rush tickets only, at the face price of $30, are available at the door; the wait list will begin when “will call” opens at 7 p.m. for an 8 p.m. show. 

On Friday, there’ll be a cabaret version of Beowulf at San Francisco’s Chez Poulet, aka Chicken John’s, a BYOB joint at 3359 Cesar Chavez (between Mission & South Van Ness), with “all the songs, dancing, full costume—and a kissing booth. But not the academic stuff!” Dave Malloy will accompany. “He has to be there,” commented Shotgun managing director Liz Lisle, “after all, he’s king.”  

Dooley said, “We just said, ‘Let’s have a party!’—and give the show a send-off—and raise more money for the Banana, Bag and Bodice folks while they’re in town.” Tickets are $20.  

The free Inauguration Party was inspired by the success of its Election Night predecessor. “We put a big screen over the Macbeth set,” Dooley recalled, “and it was packed, more people than we’ve ever had in the building. It introduced us to a lot of new people”—and a lot of people to Shotgun’s new full bar. 

 

For more information, call 841-6500 or see shotgunplayers.org.


2008 Onstage in Berkeley and the East Bay

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:32:00 PM

Onstage, 2008 was more a year of marking time than of either innovation or astonishing successes. To put it in a different way, the gains of the last year for theater in Berkeley and the East Bay usually showed up in different ways than in the satisfaction over a generally recognized hit. 

There were hits, and satisfying moments, but the two didn’t always coincide. For theater, the audience is something that’s in flux—maybe something in the process of being replaced by a different entity of spectatorship—perhaps searching for a new synaesthesia of imagery to capture its attention.  

The most impressive “moment” of pure theater stepped forth at the Roda, when Ireland’s Druid (they’re known by the one name only) put on, for Cal Performances, a slice of their famous ‘DruidSynge,’ their staging of all the plays of last century’s first great Irish playwright (first of a few): John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World with his one-act, Shadow of the Glen. Directed by Druid founder Garry Hines (one of the first two women to win a Tony), the Berkeley Rep’s stage was rivetted by the best of European modern stagecraft, truly great theater that made its audience understand why Samuel Beckett spoke more and more about the influence of Synge towards the end of his life. Synge’s comic talents are often mentioned, but his humor in precise, idiomatic language and in rhythmic movement of groups of actors is rarely seen or heard with the extraordinary execution of this troupe from Ireland’s west country, its only professional company outside Dublin. 

(It’s a sign of how things have changed here, too, that even effusive reviews and comments tended to rely on cliches about Irish wit, not recognizing—or mildly criticizing—the terrific artistic rigor of the Druid show.) 

The most challenging local production came from a plucky troupe somewhat down on its luck: Future Me, TheatreFirst’s brave show at the Berkeley City Club of British playwright Steven Brown’s play about a pedophile—a lawyer, a “normal” man who’s convicted, serves his time and endeavors to return to society. Brown attended the opening; the fascinating post-show discussions of this difficult and humane work alone proved its success. (TheatreFirst, in its 14th year and until recently Oakland’s only resident theater company, is still searching for a new home. Co-founder Clive Chafer has stepped down as artistic director and producer, though still a board member, after last year’s exceptional—and final—season in their Old Oakland storefront venue.) 

Berkeley Rep, one of two or three fully professional theaters in our bailiwick, most impressively staged Itamar Moses’ Yellowjackets, his commissioned work based on the decade-old racial strife at Berkeley High that convinced him to leave his hometown right after graduation (Moses was editor of The Jacket, the school paper), eventually to become the rising young playwright he’s recognized as now. Sprawling, overreaching, at times overwrought, Yellowjackets and its young cast had the most heart of any of The Rep’s productions of recent years, even those more overtly successful. 

On a different scale, Oakland Public Theatre’s celebration of seminal African American author Richard Wright’s centennial with a series of staged readings concerning his relations with the black church, the Communist Party (as well as intelligence services of different countries) and other black expatriate writers, culminating in Richard Talavera’s play, Before the Dream, directed by Norman Gee, about the circumstances around Wright’s premature death, proved a fascinating model of “investigative theater,” a prime function of the most social of the arts. 

George Bernard Shaw, a pillar of the modern repertoire, received the best treatment locally in awhile, with Shotgun’s staging of Mrs. Warren’s Profession and Aurora’s version of The Devil’s Disciple, two early works, which—despite neglecting some of the finer points of Shaw’s art of characterization, and of the actor, which made him a forerunner of later European drama, including Brecht’s—helped put Shaw back on the tracks locally, after a few surprisingly clueless productions in recent years. 

(The same held true for most productions of Oscar Wilde’s plays, with a partial exception for Shotgun’s Vera Wilde—not one of Wilde’s plays, but a newer one about his first and forgotten opus, concerning a Russian woman “terrorist,” and Oscar himself, fascinating and uneven—yet well-directed by talented Maya Gurantz, whose own Temescal Labs, nee Ten Red Hen, lay dormant, except for an eerily creative turn at Hallowe’en in a Haight Ashbury haunted house.) 

Aurora also scored an election year hit with Gore Vidal’s ’60s political convention chestnut, The Best Man—another indication of the kind of year it was: perhaps its most integral local production a revival of a Broadway hit and movie of almost a half-century ago. 

Community theaters scored a few memorable shows: Actors Ensemble of Berkeley went from Neil Simon to Marlowe—an enjoyable, jazzed-up Dr. Faustus at Hallowe’en; Contra Costa Civic Theatre staged an impressive Foxfire and a plucky Kiss Me, Kate; Masquers Playhouse in Pt. Richmond unfolded more variations on the charms of a house style, from Jean Anouilh to The Full Monty; and Altarena Playhouse in Alameda put on a strong Hay Fever and an impressive—and loopy—Batboy. 

Also in Alameda, Virago brought off Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, a real feat. Central Works, resident in the Berkeley City Club, continued to display high production values in a tiny venue, in particular with Wakefield, from Hawthorne, featuring Julian Lopez-Morillas and Jan Zvaifler.  

Other companies, from small independents, like Ragged Wing Ensemble, Berkeley’s movement theater avatars, to CalShakes, the seasonal professional festival “over the hill” in Orinda, demonstrated the continuing development of artists both visiting and with the company. Woman’s Will, the all-female Shakespeare (and more than Shakespeare) company, played indoors and out with their usual range of repertoire. Brookside staged an original drawn from Kafka’s life and letters. On its tiny stage under a pizza parlor, Impact put on some surprising shows, from a gutsy ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore to a hilarious (and pointed) Ching Chong Chinaman. SubShakes—Subterranean Shakespeare—exercised the Berkeley Art Center with a burlesque Merry Wives of Windsor.  

An original Rosie the Riveter musical tribute went up amidship in the old Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond; And The Crucible continued to put on its “Fire Operas” in its Oakland foundry. 

Family theater was very much in evidence, from Active Arts for Young Audiences, Berkeley Playhouse, Youth Musical Theatre and Belasco Theatre Co.—whose founder (and his producer) just returned from retirement to stage The Wiz at Oakland’s Malonga Casquelourd. 

Other companies visit—the Mime Troupe, Traveling Jewish Theatre, Crowded Fire, Russian director Oleg Liptsin. Some locally based troupes play mostly in the San Francisco: The Eastenders and Golden Thread (with its important Middle Eastern-focused works and symposia). 

Across the board, there’ve been steady gains in acting and tech work on all levels. Directing lags behind, as do choices of new plays (despite local organizations like PlayGround, or Gary Graves’ workshop at the Berkeley Rep School, or Playwrights Foundation). With a staggering four to five hundred theater companies and projects in the Bay Area—and less and less public funding—the troupes have kept onstage by helping each other, further proof of the deep social nature of theater. 

 


East Bay: Then and Now—Thornburg’s Storybook Village Succeeded Kellogg’s Farm

By Daniella Thompson
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:35:00 PM
Thornburg Village, popularly called Normandy Village, was built by Jack Thornburg and designed by William Raymond Yelland.
By Daniella Thompson
Thornburg Village, popularly called Normandy Village, was built by Jack Thornburg and designed by William Raymond Yelland.

On May 8, 1927, the Development page of the Oakland Tribune devoted its leading column and central photograph to what it called “a unique apartment structure.”  

“Thornburg Village, a conception of the art of humble European builders with names long forgotten, is now far enough advanced for public appreciation,” announced the article. “Located in a grove of trees almost at the edge of the university campus, on Spruce Street just above Hearst, this unique project is daily attracting interested spectators. Combining in its style the influences of villages from the Scandinavian peninsula to the Mediterranean, methods of construction are exhibited evoking the past […].” 

A detailed description of the exterior followed: “The first unit of Thornburg Village centers in a circular court, reached through an arched entrance. Brick paving is irregularly laid, pitching to the center. The walls, not only of the court but the exterior as well, are a combination of brick and stone with contrasting colors and textures as if traced and warped by time. Outside stairs lead to each of the eight apartments, straight and rigid lines in the exterior openings being avoided by fitting each unit at different floor levels. Large windows are the rule, and the charm of the strange building is enhanced by carved heads, or grotesque gargoyles hanging above the first story. The roof lines are broken, appearing as irregularly laid stone, soft and weathered, with tile along the ridges.” 

The article went on to describe the interiors, whose walls resembled hand-hewn stone and timber, with earthen fireplaces breaking through. Dowelled oak floors carried a hand-crafted appearance. In the kitchens and baths, stone and colored treatments were preferred over glazed tile. The mark of milling machinery was nowhere to be found. 

The developer and builder of this bohemian complex was a 25-year-old Californian by the name of Jack Wood Thornburg, who planned to build several groups of buildings on the site, each one unique and individually owned. Thornburg advertised for investors in the same issue in which the Tribune carried the article. 

The architect of Thornburg Village was William Raymond Yelland (1890-1966) of Oakland, who specialized in storybook-style design. A native of Saratoga, CA, Yelland graduated from UC Berkeley in 1913 with a B.S. in Architecture before spending a year at the University of Pennsylvania. 

During World War I, the architect was stationed in France, absorbing there the esthetic influences that would shape his career. In 1920 he joined the Oakland architectural office of Miller and Warnecke, and by 1924 he had opened his own practice at 1404 Franklin Street. 

In 1925, Yelland built a Medieval-style building on Shattuck Avenue for the Tupper & Reed music store. Clad in brick and crowned with an steeply pitched roof surmounted by the effigy of a piper, the building attracted much attention, which young Thornburg couldn’t have failed to notice. 

Why Thornburg desired to model his development after old European styles is not clear. He was born in Long Beach in 1901. His father was a rancher. By the time Jack was 9, the family had moved to Pasadena, where Thornburg père was managing a water company. Jack was the youngest of five brothers. In 1920, at the age of 18, he was working as a machinist on a stock ranch managed by his brother Wayne in Prescott, Arizona. Another brother, Max Weston Thornburg, married Leila Baldwin Berry of Berkeley and was living in her parents’ house at 2700 Benvenue Ave. 

It may have been Max’s presence in Berkeley that attracted Jack to the area. A mechanical engineer, Max would follow his father-in-law to a career at Standard Oil of California. In 1941, he was appointed Petroleum Advisor to the U.S. State Department. After World War II, he became chairman of the Board of Engineers of Standard Oil of California and was instrumental in the oil development of Bahrain, living in the Middle East for several decades. 

Jack is said to have studied at the University of California; engineering appears to have been was his chosen field. In 1923 or 1924 (accounts vary) he married the first of his four wives, Frances Ferris Geidner (1906-1947) of Los Angeles. The ceremony was performed by the captain of a tugboat on board his vessel, three miles off the San Diego coast. The couple had two children, but in August 1927, shortly after Thornburg Village was completed, the impetuous Frances sued for annulment, claiming there was no record of the marriage and seeking custody and a division of $40,000 in community property. In court, Jack was charged by his father-in-law with having kidnapped Frances. Despite the brouhaha, the couple remained married. 

A year after the first part of Thornburg Village opened, an addition called Norman Towers was ready for occupancy. It was touted in the newspapers as a “French-Norman type structure.” This time, Jack Thornburg was credited with the architectural design as well as with construction. Lillian Parker Allen was the owner. 

The Tribune described the “high gabled and broken roof lines” finished in “a shingle thatch of striking hues and colors.” Inside, doors and half-beams were hand-carved. “The floors are of various woods, some in mahogany plank laid with wooden dowels, some of parqueted redwood block laid on end, and others of oak plank. Lighting fixtures also are individual and of hand-made wrought iron from the studio of the Berkeley Craftsman. The fireplaces are in brick and plaster, odd-shaped and elevated.” 

Norman Towers comprised 12 apartments of two and four rooms “in studio types.” They came with stream heat, “genuine Frigidaire,” and Rip Van Winkle wall beds. It was thanks to this addition that the complex has acquired the moniker Normandy Village. 

While living in Berkeley, Jack Thornburg learned to fly. In June 1928, he was listed as having received his pilot’s license. At the time, his address was 1843 Spruce Street (Thornburg Village), but by 1929, he and Frances had moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Here Jack went into the aviation business, establishing Arizona Air Service Inc., a flying school. 

Thornburg’s most illustrious flying student was the 21-year-old future Senator Barry Goldwater, who used to sneak out of the house before dawn for his flying lessons. In his 1979 memoir With No Apologies, Goldwater reminisced: “In 1930 I decided to learn to fly. My instructor, Jack Thornburg, had a Great Lakes biplane with an inverted four-cylinder air-cooled engine. It was the only time I ever kept a secret from Mun [his mother].” 

Arizona Air Service was forced out of business by the depression. Thornburg worked nine years as a pilot for TWA before enlisting in the Navy in 1940. His new assignment was as Naval Air Transport Service operations officer for the Caribbean and South America. According to his obituary, published in the Oakland Tribune on Feb. 26, 1972, Commander Thornburg won the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1945, when he flew the first Douglas C-54 Skymaster transport plane into Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the evacuation of more than 9,000 wartime casualties, despite extremely unfavorable weather conditions. 

His outfit, the Naval Air Transport Service evacuation squadron, (VRE-1), received the Navy Unit Commendation for outstanding heroism in support of the Okinawa campaign operations. At the time, Frances Thornburg and their four children lived in Orinda. 

Out of the Navy in 1946, Thornburg joined Waterman Airlines as vice-president and general manager. The company’s six-plane fleet consisted of two DC-4s and four DC-3s, with which he operated a non-scheduled service to Puerto Rico, Central America, England, Germany, and South Africa, and an intrastate line between six Alabama cities. 

In early 1947, at the age of 45, he was picked by Waterman to run TACA Airways, S.A., a struggling Central American airline acquired by his parent company, Waterman Steamship Corp. Waterman controlled TACA until 1961, but Jack Thornburg was gone by then, having formed Thornburg Engineering and bought ranchland in San Diego County. He died in Santa Ysabel, CA, in 1972. 

Thornburg Village was acquired in 1936 by David and Rebecca Roth. Mrs. Roth was the daughter of pioneer downtown butcher Simon Fischel, who ran a meat market on the corner of Shattuck and University Avenues since the late 1870s. Rebecca continued to expand the complex between 1941 and the mid-1950s, engaging the San Francisco architect Charles E.J. Rogers to design the new buildings. In July 1950, after she had added four new units, Berkeley Gazette columnist Hal Johnson recalled the days when the same location had been the site of Professor Martin Kellogg’s home, and when Spruce Street had been called Bushnell Place. 

Congregational clergyman, professor of Latin, and seventh president of the University of California, Prof. Kellogg was one of the first two faculty members hired in 1859 by the new College of California. As early as 1877, Kellogg was listed in the city directory as residing on the east side of Bushnell Place, which he named in honor of the 19th-century Congregational clergyman and theologian Horace Bushnell. Hal Johnson recounts that Kellogg ran a farm on his homestead and kept a cow that he milked himself, delivering milk to his neighbors. 

Kellogg planted many trees on his block, earning Bernard Maybeck’s indirect praise in his booklet Hillside Building: “With neighborhood cooperation the roadside banks, terraces, etc. can be planted systematically in blocks instead of lots […] long avenues of trees with houses back from roads, hidden behind foregrounds of shrubbery. Bushnell place is such a one.” 

By the time that Johnson was rhapsodizing about Kellogg’s farm, Spruce Street had already become a street of apartment buildings. Alone among them, Thornburg Village fills the viewer with enchantment. 

 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

 


About the House: Talkin’ Jack

By Matt Cantor
Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:34:00 PM

Every few days I pass a house perched ten or fifteen feet up in the air, waiting for a new set of roots to climb up and bolster its weight. 

There’s something very strange (and for me, fun) about an entire house; some one or two hundred-thousand pounds perched blithely on stacks of railroad ties. It argues with our sensibilities.  

Odd as it seems, it’s actually quite common. Part of the reason I see these so often is that I’m looking for them. It’s like blue Ramblers. When you’ve just bought one, you see them everywhere and prior to knowing about them, they may not have enough cognitive traction to obtain an imprint. You might not have ever noticed a house up on blocks but you will now. I guarantee it. 

Lifting a house is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways to increase the size of a house and it has a number of benefits to recommend it, especially if other circumstances align to its advantage. 

Lifting a house is most advantageous when a foundation already needs replacement since foundation replacement is nearly always required in order to lift a house. Let’s look at the cases in which foundation replacement are not likely to be involved since this set is much the smaller of the two cases. 

A house that is lifted but will have no living space below the original main floor may be allowed to retain its foundation if that foundation continues to be deemed adequate for support of the original structure. This is an odd case because it’s rare for someone to undertake such a burdensome (and pricey) task for nothing more than a taller basement or crawlspace and, frankly, I generally wouldn’t bother. 

It’s very occasionally the case that a foundation is adequate for support of another level of living space without costly modification but when it is, a house can be jacked up with only replacement of a taller set of supporting walls rebuilt over the foundation. This is so rare that I almost hesitate to mention it at all but there it is. It’s worth checking out prior to planning your project but don’t hold your breath. 

There are two areas of reasoning that lead us to the almost certain conclusion that a new foundation (or a major modification of the original one) will be needed for your heightened house and these are as follows:  

First is that the baseline design requirements for even a one story house foundation are unlikely to be met in your current foundation unless it was built in recent decades. Design requirements continue to become more stringent for foundations and a house from 1950 may not meet the requirements for a new house, particularly if there are soils or other geological issues. A 1930s house is virtually certain to fail to meet even the most modest set of modern standards and may not even be suitable for foundation repairs that, in a newer foundation, might allow for a height increase. 

The second set of issues has to do with the difference between one story and two story foundation designs (or the difference between two and three story, etc.). A one story house foundation is designed to bear a particular set of loads and if you add a story, it is very unlikely that modern engineering standards will allow that same foundation to serve for an additional story.  

Even in the case of the new lower floor being built as a slab (a concrete tablet that serves as both foundation and floor), where there is no crawlspace and the lower level rests upon the ground, the requirements demand that the lower level have a minimum ground clearance of eight inches and this, again, voids the use of most older foundations. While many variants from the ideal get built-out as finished basements, many have not actually passed building department muster and also fail the design requirement that modern engineering demands. In short, jacking up a house and planning for the lower level to involve dry living space is pretty sure to demand a new or greatly modified foundation.  

Since I keep mentioning modifications as one possible way to meet the support needs of the newly enlarged structure, I should give some brief impression of what this might entail. An upgrade can vary quite a bit, depending on the original foundation’s strength but one fairly common method is to add some sort of underpinning or an array of piers that beef up the original footing. These may be placed every few feet or yards along the length of the foundation or run the length of the foundation while grasping the original footing in some manner, typically from below as well as along the sides using epoxied rebar connections that become buried in poured concrete so that they become an extension of, and indivisible from, the original. 

There are other, more high-tech methods in use today, such as helical steel piers that can be bolted onto the original foundation. These latter methods may be very cost effective and are worth a look. Don’t expect every engineer to jump at these. Like contractors and architects, most have favored methods and many are slow to cozy up to every new product on the shelf (even if they’re good). 

Once you’ve overcome foundation issues, it’s surprising how little is left to tackle. The lifting process itself is usually in the range of 10-20 thousand dollars and may take only a few days to realize. 

Keep in mind that leveling is not automatically included and that you’ll have to ask for this when the house is lifted. Leveling will tend to crack plaster, bend flooring, change the shape of doorways and window openings and make lots of noise (SCREEEEEECH). All that said, I’d try to head toward level in nearly every case. It’s your one great shot at level doorways, floors and cabinets and it’s worth the repair of some plaster. 

One of the big losses or changes will involve the original stairways to the ground. These are, for the most part, toast. You may, in some cases be able to modify them (especially if you started out with a stand-up height basement) but in most cases, you should plan on replacement. This may be a moot point as the elevation of your house is likely to involve entry and exit from exciting new places. If your main floor is now your upstairs, you may not now be entering it from the exterior at all, and instead ascend between floor via a new interior stairway.  

And here’s a bit of a rub. When you go from one story to two (and so forth), you will generally need to cut away about 50 square feet from each of these floors to accommodate a stairway. Furthermore, finding the right place for this involves a special cleverness relegated to the better architects (as well as a few clever builders, homeowners or the odd inspector (don’t say it)). 

If your new full-height downstairs is approved as a separate living space (often a lucrative financial coup), you may, in fact, be retaining an exterior entry to the newly elevated main floor but again, the old stairway probably won’t survive the ascent. While you can take anything and push it up in the air, the criteria for stairways and porches are so much more stringent than they were, even 25 years ago, that few will be worth modification. Also, the cost efficiency of rebuilding or modification is always tenuous when compared with new construction, which has a domain’s worth of practical advantages. 

Electrical and plumbing changes are surprisingly simple when jacking a house, even with regards to temporary connections. Electrical systems mount on the side of most houses with “service drops” swooping in from a nearby power-pole. Raising a house has almost no effect on these connections and may not require any special attention in the short run, although the main panel will probably have to be moved down to a reasonable height as your project culminates. 

Sewer and water connections will require temporary extension pieces for the short run and then more serious alterations prior to completion of your new first level but these are fairly minor issues both financially and physically and should not be deciding factors in your decision to go this route. 

House elevation as a vehicle to expansion has a number of formidable pluses. Here are a few. When comparing house jacking to side expansion, zoning laws will often favor the former with regards to maximizing square footage on a given lot. The reason for this is that stacking living space leave more open space and the maintenance of open space is usually a major imperative in the calculus of zoning laws. 

Lifting a house and adding a floor to the bottom means that both roof framing and roofing material can remain untouched (unless you happen to need a roof). You’re just putting more people under the same umbrella. That can provide a major cost saving as well as the preservation of an authentic design element. And it’s one less job to think about (which is pretty nice when the rains start in the middle of your remodel). 

From a design standpoint, I particularly like the fact that older (and generally finer) architectural details are thrust upward above the newer, and typically, simpler, fatter or more mundane details that “found” or “ground” the structure. This has precedence in nature and is commonly mimicked in architecture. In short, it tends to look right. 

Building from the ground up is expensive. Adding a lower floor isn’t cheap either but, if you have the right set of circumstances and the right help, can be a truly ascended experience. 


Community Calendar

Wednesday January 07, 2009 - 06:27:00 PM

THURSDAY, JAN. 8 

Berkeley Oil Independence Report and Public Hearing at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. The report is available at www.relocalize.net/groups/oilindependentberkeley 

College Admissions Panel with college admissions officers on the college admission process and the abilities and strengths colleges are looking for in applicants at 7 p.m. at Redwood Day School, 3245 Sheffield Ave., Oakland. RSVP to 534-0804 ext. 225. JLewis@rdschool.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Kaiser Center Lobby, 300 Lakeside Dr., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Pacific Boychoir Academy Open House to learn about the academic and music program from 6 to 8 p.m. at 410 Alcatraz Ave. Please RSVP to 652-4722. www.pacificboychoiracademy.org 

Baby & Toddler Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

East Bay Mac Users Group “MacWorld Roundup!” We’ll tell you what we saw at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. http://ebmug.org 

Free Meditation Class at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarians, 2nd flr., 1606 Bonita Ave. 931-7742. 

FRIDAY, JAN. 9 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Frederick Shaw on “An Innovative Primary Health Care Model for Developing Countries.” 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. www.citycommonsclub.org 

“Evening with an Earthwalker” Slideshow and talk with Paul Coleman who has circled the earth and inspired the planting of millions of trees, at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-2220.  

Master Class “The Spirit of Percussion” with Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira at 3 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Cost is $20-$35. $7 for ages 7-12, and free for 12 and under. For reservations call 836-4649 ext.112.  

Womansong Circle Participatory singing for women at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, small assembly room, 2345 Channing Way at Dana. Donation $15-$20. 525-7082. 

Berkeley Women in Black weekly vigil from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. Our focus is human rights in Palestine. 548-6310. 

SATURDAY, JAN. 10 

Celebrating Fr. Bill O’Donnell (1930-2003) Salvadoran buffet dinner at 5:30 p.m., program at 6:45 p.m. at Marian Hall, St. Joseph the Worker School, 2125 Jefferson St. Donation $10-$20. 922-8797. 

“Climate Catastrophe and Social Change, an Eco-Socialist Perspective” A conference on the roots of the climate crisis from a socialist perspective. From 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and 7 to 10 p.m., Sun. from 9 a.m. to noon at Laney College Forum Lecture Hall, 900 Fallon St. at 9th, Oakland. Cost is $10 -$30 sliding scale. 415-863-6637. www.ncalcofc.org 

“Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal” with author Michael Brune at 7 p.m. at Alameda Free Library, Conference Rooms A & B, 1550 Oak St. at Lincoln, Alameda. Suggested donation $5, no one is turned away. www.alamedaforum.org 

Close the Little Farm Help us close the Little Farm and tuck in the animals for the night, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. at Tilden Little Farm, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Arrowhead Marsh Bike Trip with the Golden Gate Audubon Society from 9:50 a.m. to the afternoon. For details email Kathy_jarrett@yahoo.com 

Rose Pruning Class at 10:30 a.m. at Berkeley Horticultural Nursery, 1310 McGee Ave. Free. 526-4704. www.berkeleyhort.com 

The East Bay Chapter of The Great War Society meets to discuss “My Boy Jack” by S. Compagno at 10:30 a.m. in the Albany Veterans Building, 1325 Portland Ave., Albany. 526-4423. 

Berkeley Property Owners Association Meeting with a workshop on Rent Control with Michael St. John at 10 a.m. at St. Johns Presbyterian Church, Fireside Room, 2727 College Ave. bpoa@bpoa.org 

Sistaz N Motion Networking Mixer to help women entrepreneurs advance their businesses, from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Crescent Park Multicultural Resource Center, 5004 Hartnett Ave., Richmond. For more information call 253-5469. www.sistaznmotion.com 

Winter Story Time for preschool children and their families at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720 ext. 16. 

“I’ve Been Framed” workshop for families. Bring in a favorite piece of art and learn how to frame it, Sat. and Sun. from 1 to 4 p.m. at Museum of Children’s Art, 538 Ninth St., Suite 210, Oakland. Cost is $7. 456-8770. www.mocha.org 

San Francisco Girls Chorus Auditions for girls ages 7 to 12 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Mormon Temple, 4780 Lincoln Ave., Oakland. For audition time please call 415-863-1752, ext. 333. sfgirlschorus.org  

Luna Kids Dance Winter Open House with creative dance and improvisation from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Grace North Church 2138 Cedar St. 644-3629. 

“Reuse your Body” A voice and body workshop on vocal and somatic improvisation, from 2 to 5 p.m. at Oakopolis, 447 25th St., Oakland. Suggested donation $20. 663-6920. 

Auset (Yemaya) Lunar Cycle Workshop meditation class at noon, registration at 11:30 a.m. at ASA Academy, 2811 Adeline St., Oakland. Cost is $10. For additional classes during the day call 536-5934. 

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.  

SUNDAY, JAN. 11 

Slimy Slugs and Migrating Newts Rain brings out the limiest winter creatures. Join us at 10:30 a.m. as we look for them at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Strollers not advised. 525-2233. 

Little Farm Open House Come grind some corn to feed the chickens, pet a bunny or groom a goat, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. at the Little Farm at Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Berkeley Ballet Theater Summer Workshop Auditions from 1 to 4 p.m. at Berkeley Ballet Theater, in the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Cost is $15. For details call 843-4687, ext. 112. www.berkeleyballet.org 

Berkeley Rep Family Series “Action for the Stage” from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Nevo Education Center, 2071 Addison St. Free, but bring a book to donate to a school library. 647-2973. 

Prepeare Habitat for the California Least Terns from 9 a.m. to noon at the Alameda Wildlife Refuge. Meet at the main refuge gate at the northwest corner of the old Alamda Naval Air Station. jrobinson@goldengateaudubon.org 

“Green Sunday” The Obama Organizing Model: Lessons for Third Parties at 5 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Library 6501 Telegraph Ave. at 65th, North Oakland. Sponsored by the Green Party of Alameda County. 

Free Hands-on Bicycle Clinic Learn how to repair a flat, from 10 to 11 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Bring your bike and tools. 527-4140. 

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 

Tibetan Buddhism with Elizabeth Cook on “The Symbolic Language of Tibetan Art” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

“How World Religions Can Help Us with Illness, Loss Aging” with Ana Matt at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

“The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism” with Barbara Epstein at 10:15 a.m. at Temple Beth Hillel, 801 Park Central, Richmond. 233-2560. 

Jewish Bedtime Rituals for the Very Young at 10:30 a.m. at JGate, 409 Liberty St., El Cerrito. 559-8140. 

MONDAY, JAN. 12 

Birding at Martin Luther King, Jr. Shoreline, Arrowhead Marsh, Oakland with Bob Lewis from 10 a.m. to noon to see Clapper Rails. Meet at the last parking lot at 9:30 a.m. Sponsored by Golden Gate Audubon Society. For information contact bob@wingsbeats.org  

“Surfing for Life” A documentary about seniors from the ages of 60+ to their 90s, who are still surfing, at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Performing Arts Classes for Adults 50+ begin at Stagebridge Theatre Company, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Cost is $75 for 11 weeks. For information call 444-4755. www.stagebridge.org 

East Bay Track Club for girls and boys ages 3-15 meets Mon. at 6 p.m. at Berkeley High School track field. Free. 776-7451. 

Small-Business Counseling Free one-hour one-on-one couseling to help you start and run your small business with a volunteer from the Service Core of Retired Executives, Mon. evenings by appointment at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. For appointment time call 981-6134. www.eastbayscore.org 

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. 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, JAN. 13 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll explore the world of water, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will learn about the weather from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m.. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Golden Gate Audubon Society End of Year Celebration with slide shows, stories and awards, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 843-2222. 

“Snowshoeing Basics” at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Open House from 9:30 a.m. to noon at the Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison St. RSVP to 642-9934. olli.berkeley.edu 

“Staged Reading” Class with Joy Carlin, of Aurora Theatre Company and A.C.T. on Tues. from 1 to 3 p.m. at Stagebridge Theatre Company, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Class runs for 11 weeks. Cost is $75. 444-4755. www.stagebridge.org 

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 6 to 8 p.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

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 

Boffers and Board Games from 3 to 5:30 p.m. at Codornices Park, 1201 Euclid Ave. across from the Rose Garden, or 33 Revolutions Record Shop & Cafe, 10086 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito when bad weather. Free, but parental supervision required. 526-5985. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda.548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We 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. 

Ceramics Class Learn hand building techniques to make decorative and functional items, Tues. at 9:30 a.m. at St. John's Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Free, materials and firing charges only. 525-5497. 

Yarn Wranglers Come knit and crochet at 6:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. 

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 14 

23rd Annual Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from noon to 1:30 p.m. at 300 Lakeside Drive, 2nd flr auditorium. 454-7110. 

Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action “Unity for the Sake of Change” Inauguration Prayer Service at 7 p.m. at St. Paul AME Church, 2024 Ashby Ave. 665-5821. 

LiveTalk@CPS with Chris Hoofnagle on “Our Precarious Privacy” at 7 p.m. at College Prepatory School, Buttner Auditorium, 6100 Broadway. Tickets are $5-$15 at the door. www.college-prep.org/livetalk 

“Planet Earth” the documentary by David Attenborough, episodes I and II, “Ice Worlds” and “Shallow Seas” at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

“Avalanche Awareness” with Aaron Johnson of Mountain Adventure Seminars at 6:30 p.m. at Marmot Mountain Works, 3049 Adeline St. Cost is $20. 849-0735. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Oakland State Bldg., Rooms 2,3,4, 1515 Clay St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

Family Sing-Along at 4:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720 ext. 16. 

Poetry Workshop with Alison Seevak from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720, ext. 16. 

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. 548-9840. 

Theraputic Recreation at the Berkeley Warm Pool, Wed. at 3:30 p.m. and Sat. at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley Warm Pool, 2245 Milvia St. Cost is $4-$5. Bring a towel. 632-9369. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley BART Station 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. 

Berkeley CopWatch Drop-in office hours from 6 to 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch at 6:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

THURSDAY, JAN. 15 

Dream Opening Ceremony Celebrating the life of Martin Luther King, Jr, with entertainment and presentations, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., at Frank Ogawa Plaza, in front of Oakland’s City Hall. www.oakland.net. 

com/celebrations 

Birding at the Berkeley Fishing Pier from 8 to 10 a.m. Meet at the end of University Ave for a leisurely walk to see Surf Scoters, scaup, greebes and gulls. Bring a scope if you have one. Rain cancels. 540-8749. 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll explore the world of water, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

“How America Got a Great National Park: The GGNRA” with Amy Meyer at 12:30 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Golden Gate Audubon Society “Iceland: Birds, People and Conservation in a Land of Glaciers, Geysers, Volcanoes and Splendid Isolation” with Bill Lidicker at 7 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 843-2222. 

Free Meditation Class at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarians, 2nd flr., 1606 Bonita Ave. 931-7742. 

Avatar Metaphysical Toastmasters Club at 6:45 p.m. at Spud’s Pizza , 3290 Adeline at Alcatraz. namaste@ 

avatar.freetoasthost.info  

Baby & Toddler Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

Circle of Concern Vigil meets on West Lawn of UC campus across from Addison and Oxford, Thurs. at noon and Sun. at 1 p.m. to oppose UC weapons labs contracts. 848-8055. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

FRIDAY, JAN. 16 

Pre-Inaugural Ball celebrating the United States First Black Chief Commander President Elect Barack Obama at 7 p.m. at the West Oakland Senior Center, 1724 Adeline St. Tickets are $25. 238-7016. 

Iraq Moratorium Day and Vigil to Protest the War from 2 to 4 p.m. at the corners of University & Acton. Sponsored by Strawberry Creek Lodge Tenant’s Assoc & Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers. 548-9696. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Watergate Towers, suite 120, 2200 Powell St., Emeryville. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Jinky Gardner on “Insights from Underwater Archeology” 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. www.citycommonsclub.org 

Project Censored 2009 with Dr. Peter Phillips, Director of Sonoma State Univ.'s Project Censored, and PC Assistant Director Mickey Huff, on last year's most important and unreported news stories and social issues at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists1924 Cedar St. Suggested donation $10-$20. 527-7543. 

SATURDAY, JAN. 17 

Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations meets at 10 a.m. at First Pres. Church Berkeley, 2407 Channing Way, Church Lounge. mariebowman@pacbell.net 

Animals Catching Zzzzs Discover the surprising habits of animals that hibernate over the winter from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at Wildcat Canyon Regional Park Call for meeting place. 525-2233. 

 

 

 

Free Smoking Cessation Class meets Sat. from 10 a.m. to noon at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 2932 Ellis St., through Feb. 17. Acupuncture option available. To register call 981-5330. QuitNow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

“Creating a More Energy Efficient Home” from 9 to 11 a.m. at Truitt & White Conference room, 1817 Second St. Free, but registration required. 649-2674. 

California Writers Club “Hold on to Your Vision” with Amanita Rosenbush at 10 a.m. at Barnes & Noble, Jack London Square, 98 Broadway, Oakland. 272-0120. 

Winter Story Time for preschool children and their families at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720 ext. 16. 

Auset (Yemaya) Healing Meditation at noon, registration at 11:30 a.m. at ASA Academy, 2811 Adeline St., Oakland. Cost is $15. For additional classes during the day call 536-5934. 

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.  

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, JAN. 18 

Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Day with performances, music and activities from noon to 4 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts., Oakland. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Hike to the Peak Join a leisurely hike to Wildcat Peak to see the sights of winter, from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Bring lunch. Heavy rain cancels. Call for meeting place 525-2233. 

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 

Tibetan Buddhism with Donna Morton on “Meditations to Transform Pain” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

“How World Religions Can Help Us with Illness, Loss Aging” with Ana Matt at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

“The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism” with Barbara Epstein at 10 a.m. at JCC of the East Bay, 1414 Walnut St.. 848-0237. 

CITY MEETINGS 

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs. Jan. 8, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5428.  

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., Jan. 8, at 6:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.  

City Council meets Tues., Jan. 13, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Jan. 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5426.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Jan. 14, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7484. 

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Jan. 14, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. 981-6740.  

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., Jan. 15, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7415.  

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., Jan. 15, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7010.  

ONGOING 

Help Low-wage Families with Their Taxes United Way’s Earn it! Keep It! Save It! needs Bay Area volunteers for its 7th annual free tax program. No previous experience necessary. Sign up at www.earnitkeepitsaveit.org