The Week

Mojgan Deldari reads from Farsi poet Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh to Darya Massih and Lily Namdaran.
By Riya Bhattacharjee
Mojgan Deldari reads from Farsi poet Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh to Darya Massih and Lily Namdaran.
 

News

Planning Commission Ponders Housing Law Update

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday June 30, 2009 - 03:50:00 PM

Mandated by state law to analyze the city’s Housing Element for constraints on building new housing, Berkeley Deputy Planning and Development Director Wendy Cosin couldn’t find any. -more-


AC Transit Gives Public First Look at Line Cuts to Be Implemented in December

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Tuesday June 30, 2009 - 03:09:00 PM

AC Transit took its first steps June 24 toward implementing a December district-wide bus service cut. The bus district held a public board workshop to reveal the first public details of its plan and set a Sept. 9 date for a formal public hearing. -more-


Suspicious Fire Devastates South Berkeley Duplex

By Richard Brenneman
Monday June 29, 2009 - 04:19:00 PM
Berkeley firefighters battled their way through a maze of attic compartments as they extinguished a Saturday evening fire that did $200,000 in damage to a South Berkeley home.

A two-alarm arson fire caused nearly $200,000 in damage to a South Berkeley home early Saturday evening, the first in a series of three arsons on the same street that evening. -more-


Bus Rapid Transit Advisory Committee Recommends Consolidating Stops

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Monday June 29, 2009 - 02:38:00 PM

AC Transit’s Policy Steering Committee has approved in principle the bus district’s plan to consolidate station stops along the route of its prosped Bus Rapid Transit route, but made it plain that any decisions on setting aside dedicated bus lanes must go to the governing bodies of the affected cities. -more-


UC Berkeley Seeks Bids for $190 Million Memorial Stadium Renovation

By Richard Brenneman
Friday June 26, 2009 - 02:29:00 PM

UC Berkeley has just issued a call for bids from builders for the $190 million “seismic safety improvement” overhaul of Memorial Stadium. -more-


Budget Cuts Result in Reduced School Bus Services

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday June 26, 2009 - 02:27:00 PM

State budget cuts will force more parents to take responsibility for dropping off and picking up their children from Berkeley’s public elementary schools starting in August. -more-


West Berkeley ‘Fast-Track’ Proposal Draws Fire At Planning Commission

By Richard Brenneman
Friday June 26, 2009 - 02:26:00 PM

West Berkeley residents and business owners voiced their concerns to the Planning Commission Wednesday (June 24) about proposals to ease development rules on larger parcels in Berkeley’s only industrial area. -more-


Council Passes Budget, Raises Parking Fines

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:40:00 PM

The Berkeley City Council adopted its two year-biennial budget Tuesday night, with the caveat—now becoming the standard refrain of the day—that the results of currently ongoing state budget action will mean that Berkeley will be tinkering with its finances into the fall. Since no one expects that the results of the Sacramento deliberations will be more money going back to local governments in California, this will mean that Berkeley’s budget adjustments will either be cutbacks or revenue increases, or some combination of the two. -more-


City Adopts Sweatshop Ordinance

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:03:00 PM

The Berkeley City Council took significantly more than a symbolic stand against international sweatshop labor Tuesday night, approving a Sweatshop Free Ordinance to limit the amount of city money going to companies that exploit their labor. -more-


Richmond Gives Thumbs Up to Its Front-Yard Gardeners

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:06:00 PM

In nearby Richmond, Garden Club activist Jayma Brown had raised concerns with city officials after she was told during a monthly neighborhood council meeting that the city had banned front-yard gardens. -more-


Conflicting Versions Mark Case of the Errant Victory Gardens

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:04:00 PM
City officials say the planters built by Asa Dodsworth along the parking strip in front of his house violate city code, threatening hefty fines unless they’re removed or he applies for an encroachment permit.

Asa Dodsworth faces an ever-mounting pile of potential fines from the City of Berkeley. His crime? He says it’s front-yard gardening. -more-


Community, Educators Plan City’s First Public Charter School

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:04:00 PM

A pastor, a couple of community organizers and a group of parents, educators and students met at The Way Christian Center in Berkeley recently to discuss plans for a new charter school in the city. -more-


Board of Education Asks Berkeley High to Weigh In on School Governance Reform

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:05:00 PM

The Berkeley Board of Education will seek input from Berkeley High School before crafting any policy seeking to reform its School Governance Council. -more-


More Cuts On the Way for School District, Adult Education

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:10:00 PM

The Berkeley Board of Education approved more budget reductions at a board meeting Wednesday in response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s May revision of the state budget. -more-


District Convenes Committee to Address Berkeley High Campus Drug, Alcohol Use

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:40:00 PM

In a push to reduce drug and alcohol use by Berkeley’s public school students, the Berkeley Unified School District will collaborate with the City of Berkeley government to form a committee by September to address the issue. -more-


City Takes First Step Toward Aquatic Park Improvements

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:40:00 PM

The City of Berkeley began the formal process this week of what could be a decade-long or longer multi-million dollar environmental upgrade of the Aquatic Park bayside tidal pool. -more-


Lab Plan Describes Bevatron Demolition

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:40:00 PM

The Bevatron, at least large parts of it, will be reincarnated, in concrete form—its concrete ground back to powder and used for new construction. -more-


County May Use Ranked-Choice Voting in 2010 Elections

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:42:00 PM

Although no one is giving any guarantees just yet, there appears to be a strong possibility that three Alameda County cities will have the opportunity to implement a ranked-choice voting system for the municipal 2010 elections. -more-


Albany Labs Receive U.S. Recovery Act Funds

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:42:00 PM

A $28.4 million chunk of federal money is coming to Albany’s U.S. Department of Agriculture Western Regional Re-search Center at 800 Buchanan St. -more-


BART Unions Vote to Strike

Bay City News
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:43:00 PM

Two of BART’s three largest unions have voted to authorize a strike, but BART spokesman Linton Johnson said Wednesday, June 24, that “it’s outrageous to even talk about a strike in these economic times.” -more-


Man Pleads Guilty to Voluntary Manslaughter for 2006 Homicide

Bay City News
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:43:00 PM

One of two men accused of murder for the 2006 death of a man who succumbed to a gunshot wound shortly after stumbling to the door of a University of California at Berkeley sorority house has pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, a prosecutor said Friday, June 19. -more-


Zoning Board Considers Conversion of Condos into Senior Housing

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:44:00 PM

CityCentric Investments will ask the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board June 25, Thursday, to modify a use permit to change a previously approved mixed-use building in West Berkeley into an affordable senior housing project. -more-


Oakland’s New Cathedral Transforms Lake’s Edge

By John Kenyon Special to the Planet
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:25:00 PM
The break in the outer facade of Oakland’s Cathedral of Light is the weakest element of the building’s design.

To an old urban designer, the best view of Oakland’s new Roman Catholic Cathedral is from the raised edge of the wooded park that runs along Grand Avenue between Harrison and Children’s Fairyland at Grand and Bellevue. Looking under big trees across the narrow northerly arm of Lake Merritt, you’ll notice a remarkable transformation. Dominating the lake-edge since 1970, the 27-story Ordway Building, Kaiser’s second tower, is now suddenly humanized by the low spreading social complex of a new Catholic center, whose novel sanctuary, a glassy oval crown, completes the northerly end of a striking ensemble. -more-


Opinion

Editorials

Thugs Aplenty Everywhere

By Becky O’Malley
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:37:00 PM

News from Iran this week prompts reflections on the utility of violence as a solution to problems and questions about the ability of humans to govern themselves. On the first topic, it’s been all too easy to contemplate a simple solution to perceived potential threats if Iran ever managed to develop nuclear weapons: a pre-emptive attack. But after the world has seen a large percentage of Iranian citizens take to the street to protest what looked to them like a rigged election which their side might actually have won, it’s going to be hard to view Iran as a monolith which can be ethically stopped by broad military action. It seems that many Iranians are prisoners of their government and therefore can’t be held collectively responsible for, e.g., President Ahmadinejad’s intemperate statements about the Holocaust. -more-


Cartoons

Save the State Parks

By Justin DeFreitas
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 07:44:00 PM

Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:38:00 PM

ENERGY BILL -more-


Readers Respond to ‘The Campaign Against the Daily Planet’

Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:38:00 PM

ATTACKS ON THE PLANET -more-


Preventing Drunk Driving in California

By Mary Klotzbach
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:34:00 PM

Stop four deaths in California every day? Senator Loni Hancock could do that with a simple vote in the Senate Public Safety Committee. -more-


Library Is Silent on Radio Frequency ID System

By Peter Warfield
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:32:00 PM

Dr. Helen Caldicott, the noted author and world acclaimed anti-nuclear activist, will speak in Berkeley this Saturday, June 27, 2009, 7:30 p.m., at a benefit to support SuperBOLD (Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense) in its legal challenge of the City Council’s waiver of the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act (NFBA) for the Berkeley Public Library. -more-


Berkeley City Budget 101

By Victoria Peirotes
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:36:00 PM

Steven Falk, the city manager of Lafayette, said in a recent San Francisco Chronicle article, “The state is broke, counties are broke and cities are broke.” He went on to say “Public pensions are unsustainable in the current form.” -more-


Reflections of the Iranian Election

By Ralph E. Stone
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:36:00 PM

After the dust has settled, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will again be the president of of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Why and how was he re-elected president? Because he was approved once again by Iran’s Guardian Council as a candidate for the nation’s highest office. The council consists of six Islamic jurists appointed by the Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and six from the Majlis, Iran’s popularly elected parliament. They screen presidential candidates through background checks and a detailed written examination. Very few pass the test. Since 2004, the council has routinely rejected reform candidates. If there was fraud in the recent election, it occurred much before the election itself. -more-


Say What? Amend the Guidelines

By Carol Denney
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:36:00 PM

The City of Berkeley’s community noise guidelines need an amendment; more than 70 local businesses and residents have signed a petition made necessary by its omission. -more-


Open Letter to Robert Fujimoto

Veronika S. Fukson
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:37:00 PM

An open letter to Robert Fujimoto, the new manager of Monterey Market: -more-


Columns

The Public Eye: Obama’s Two-Step Healthcare Strategy

By Bob Burnett
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:29:00 PM

After five months, President Barack Obama’s managerial style has become obvious. He’s focused on his top priorities and he is collaborative and pragmatic; his operating instructions are “never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” This summer, Obama’s leadership will put to the test as he struggles to get Congress to pass comprehensive healthcare legislation. -more-


UnderCurrents: Discussion of East Bay Violence Leaves Out Those Most Affected

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:21:00 PM

We seem to be running on parallel tracks on this ongoing discussion of the East Bay’s nagging street violence, like the words from the Longfellow poem: “Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness. So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.” -more-


Green Neighbors: Everything’s Hitched

By Ron Sullivan
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:16:00 PM
And then juvenile crows go out and hang around in delinquent gangs in parking lots. Really.

Another Solstice gone by, another year’s peak passed, another year older, another long half-year of diminishing light. Or, to be jollier about it: the sweet downswing of the seasons, the ripening of all that winter and spring promised. -more-


Architectural Excursion: In Glen Ellen, a Pig Palace, a Wolf House and Other Wonders

By Daniella Thompson
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:19:00 PM
London lived and worked in this cottage from 1911 until his death in 1916.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two articles on the Sonoma County town of Glen Ellen. -more-


About the House: Children, Falls And the Building Code

By Matt Cantor
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:17:00 PM

I have a major pet peeve (well, many major pet peeves, actually) with the building codes. They say far too little about places where people, particularly little people, can fall, and the area in which my knickers get most fully twisted concerns the accessibility of windows. -more-


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:15:00 PM

THURSDAY, JUNE 25 -more-


‘In My Corner’ at New Black Box Theater

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:27:00 PM

A man dances salsa in silhouette, then bobs and weaves like a fighter in the ring, backed by a tight piano trio. Lights up; Joe Orrach turns and tells us, “When I was 17, I signed a contract with the U.S. Air Force for the next four years of my life. After three, they decided they had enough. I could’ve told them that after a week!” -more-


Round Belly Theatre Presents ‘Living Room’

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:28:00 PM

When director Mario Gonzales welcomed the audience to Round Belly Theatre Company’s performance last Sunday at West Oakland’s Noodle Factory, offhandedly acknowledging it was Father’s Day, there was some irony: Living Room, billed as an ensemble piece, is more about what keeps the family apart than together, no one more estranged than dear old dad. -more-


Revenaugh, Floyd DVD Offers Rare Glimpse of Music Making

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:28:00 PM

Berkeley pianist Daniell Revenaugh remembers, during his student days in the late 1950s at Florida State University, walking at night by a former slave cabin near the campus in Tallahassee, hearing composer Carlisle Floyd, best-known for his nine operas, including Susannah, working on his Sonata for Piano. -more-


Low Bottom Playaz: Plays by Marvin X and Opal Adisa Palmer

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:29:00 PM

In the shady backyard of the Prescott-Joseph Center for Community Enhancement, a grand old Victorian just a few blocks up Peralta Street from West Oakland BART, The Low Bottom Playaz present two short plays, and the actors’ lines as they perform are textured by the rustling of leaves in the breeze at this outdoor venue. -more-


'Thoroughly Modern Millie' at Contra Costa Civic Theatre

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Monday June 29, 2009 - 02:43:00 PM

A Midwestern gal takes a bite of the Big Apple, gets her hair bobbed, dances the Charleston in a speakeasy and is busted in a raid; falls for the first ne’er-do-well she meets, instead of the successful boss she’s determined on; evades the toils of White Slavery—and lives happily ever after. -more-


Aurora Presents 'Jack Goes Boating'

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Monday June 29, 2009 - 02:22:00 PM

Jack Goes Boating, Bob Glaudini’s play now onstage at the Aurora, is a little bit of a double work-buddies comedy—Jack and Clyde drive limo for Jack’s uncle; Lucy supervises Connie, selling grief seminars in a funeral home phone tank—combined with a couples comedy, though these four are no Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice, much less the lost souls of Carnal Knowledge. -more-


Architectural Excursion: In Glen Ellen, a Pig Palace, a Wolf House and Other Wonders

By Daniella Thompson
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:19:00 PM
London lived and worked in this cottage from 1911 until his death in 1916.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two articles on the Sonoma County town of Glen Ellen. -more-


About the House: Children, Falls And the Building Code

By Matt Cantor
Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:17:00 PM

I have a major pet peeve (well, many major pet peeves, actually) with the building codes. They say far too little about places where people, particularly little people, can fall, and the area in which my knickers get most fully twisted concerns the accessibility of windows. -more-


Community Calendar

Thursday June 25, 2009 - 06:13:00 PM

THURSDAY, JUNE 25 -more-