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Teenagers practice dance moves at AileyCamp, where the goal is to teach them to value their bodies and themselves as individuals in the world.
Joe Yang
Teenagers practice dance moves at AileyCamp, where the goal is to teach them to value their bodies and themselves as individuals in the world.
 

News

Laser-Powered Accelerator Plan Gets Boost from Recovery Act

By Richard Brenneman
Monday July 13, 2009 - 10:59:00 AM

A strangely colored beam pouring out a quadrillion watts of peak power spewing out subatomic particles juiced up by a ten-billion-electronic-volt laser plasma accelerator housed in a facility dubbed the “experimental cave?” 

While it may sound like Dr. Frankenstein’s lab, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) officials are calling it BELLA—short for Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator and not for that Lugosi guy who played Dracula, though he too lurked in dark, cavernous places. 

To be built with the help of $20 million in funding from the Obama administration’s American Resource and Recovery Act, the project is part of the lab’s $115.8 million in Recovery Act funding awarded the lab in March by former LBNL director and now Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. 

The total cost of the laser facility will be $28 million, with the balance of funding also coming from Department of Energy accounts. 

Designed to replace vastly larger particle accelerators used in the study of the fundamental properties of matter, the research equipment will be housed in an existing structure, Building 71, on the northern edge of the lab’s campus. 

Construction of Building 71 was begun in 1957 to house the lab’s Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator (HILAC), according to the environmental assessment released by the lab to cover the BELLA project. 

The Department of Energy in 2007 listed the structure as eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places “because of the important role that the building had played in the nuclear physics and accelerator development” at the lab, according to the environmental assessment. 

But the removal in 2008 of the last equipment used in the HILAC experiments represented the disappearance of the building’s last remaining historic elements, the environmental assessment concluded. 

Unmentioned is the fact that building interiors are expressly excluded from the City of Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, which evaluates buildings solely on their exteriors and precludes designating interiors. 

Likewise, interiors aren’t mentioned in the criteria for designating an official California state landmark, which include: 

• Association “with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of local or regional history or the cultural heritage of California or the United States.” 

• A connection with “the lives of persons important to local, California or national history.” 

• Embodiment of “the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, region or method of construction or represents the work of a master or possesses high artistic values.”  

• Documentation that the site “[h]as yielded, or has the potential to yield, information important to the prehistory or history of the local area, California or the nation.” 

To be considered for designation, structures need only meet one of the four criteria, according to the state Office of Historic Preservation (http://ohp.parks.ca.gov). 

Neither the city nor state landmarks laws are mentioned in the environmental assessment, which was prepared by a Berkeley private planning firm, Design, Community & Environment, which also prepared the environmental analysis for the university’s controversial Long Range Development Plan 2020. 

The city has designated landmarks on the UC Berkeley campus and at LBNL, but the sites are outside the city’s official jurisdiction, though sometimes at least within the state’s purview. The BELLA itself is exclusively a federal project, and LBNL’s status as a federal lab operated under contract by the university adds to the legal complications of the environmental review process.  

“The Proposed Action would not affect cultural resources,” the environmental assessment states, though the assessment also notes that the project would make one significant alteration to the building’s exterior—a 2,000-square-foot rooftop structure housing a utility room and stairwell. 

While the labs’ project review has been conducted under the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), project critics like Pamela Shivola and Mark McDonald of the Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste said at least a preliminary review—a document formally entitled an initial study—should be conducted under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). 

In an June 10 letter, Shivola told city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks that a broader review was needed because of the site’s “proximity to residential neighborhoods. . .and the Lawrence Hall of Science, a children’s school and a museum just a few hundred yards away.” 

“This is very important,” Shivola told a reporter before a recent city planning commission meeting. 

In addition to its relative nearness to residences and places where children congregate, McDonald and Shivola point to the area’s seismic faults, and the predictions of state and federal geologists that the Bay Area’s next major shaker is most likely to come from the nearby Hayward Fault, which runs directly beneath Memorial Stadium. 

The heart of the new facility is the experimental cave—from which much of the equipment mentioned in the environmental assessment—has already been removed. The environmental assessment notes that of an estimated 100 truckloads of material involved in the project, one will be filled with hazardous material destined for a licensed waste facility. 

“Most of the material will be what you find in any old building, including asbestos and lead,” said LBNL spokesperson Paul Preuss, though some traces of other hazards might be present, including possible spills of small quantities of radioactive materials. 

The environmental assessment acknowledges that “several instances of low-level surface radioactivity have been detected in Building 71 equipment,” include Americium-241, Cesium-137 and curium-244, as well as subsequently cleaned-up traces of beryllium and PCBs. 

Experiments will be conducted by new equipment surrounded by heavy radiation shielding, including three-foot-thick concrete walls plus “an additional 16 inches of lead, 36 inches of steel and another six feet of concrete to absorb the radiation and reduce exposure levels.” 

The environmental assessment also states that the beam will produce subatomic gamma rays, neutrons and photomuons, even workers standing near the beam’s terminus—the point of most potential exposure—would receive less than a fifth of the allowable exposure level over the course of the year. 

But McDonald is skeptical, noting that federally set levels of radiation have changed over the years. He also cites a 2001 city-commissioned review of radiological monitoring at the lab prepared by researchers at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Heidelberg, Germany. 

That report concluded that radiation levels from lad accelerators had exceeded permissible levels 40 years ago at the lab’s border at the Olympic Gate monitoring station. 

Preuss and the environmental assessment both insist that the new accelerator won’t emit unsafe levels of radiation. 

The new accelerator will produce a beam about a million times more powerful that that emitted by the last-generation television’s cathode ray tube, he said, “so you definitely would not want to stand right in front of it.” 

But, “energetic as they are, none of the electrons in BELLA’s hair-thin beam are going to get out of the experimental area,” he said, “and no one can get through the interlocked doors when it’s on—it will shut down if anybody tries.” 

The device also stops abruptly in the event of an earthquake, Preuss said. In addition, the device, which is a mere three feet long, isn’t expected to irradiate other materials in the cave. 

McDonald and Shivola remain skeptical. 

The environmental assessment is available at www.lbl.gov/Community/BELLA.


UC President Announces Sliding Scale Cuts; Regents to Act on Stadium Finances

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 10, 2009 - 03:59:00 PM

The University of California Board of Regents is expected to slash pay for faculty and staff during the same meeting where they’re set to approve funds for rebuilding Memorial Stadium. 

UC President Mark Yudof announced Friday that he’ll present the regents with a plan for pay cuts when they meet July 14-16 at UCSF Mission Bay. 

Yudof’s proposal, released in a “Dear Colleagues” letter, calls for a sliding scale of cutbacks delivered through unpaid furlough days, ranging from a cut of 4 percent for those earning $40,000 or less up to 10 percent for those earning over $240,000. 

Unpaid days off will range from 11 at the bottom end to 26 at the high end. 

The one exception is senior management, who will take only 10 furlough days “even though their pay cut percentage may be higher,” according to Yudof’s letter. 

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) employees have been exempted from the cuts, and exemptions will also be granted to some other employees. 

“Systemwide furloughs will produce $515 million from all fund sources,” Yudof wrote, “including $184 million in General Fund savings, which equals roughly one-quarter of our state funding deficit.” 

Action on the cuts is set for the Wednesday morning meeting of the Committees on Finance and Compensation as part of a package which includes a declaration of financial emergency. 

For more on the proposal, click here.  

During the same three-day meeting, the regents are expected to confirm the appointment of A. Paul Alivisatos as LBNL interim director pending the hiring of a permanent replacement for Steven Chu, who left the lab to become President Barack Obama's secretary of energy. 

The proposal before the regents would pay Alivisatos—who won’t be affected by the cuts—A base salary of $357,000 plus another $49,980 additional stipend and a $8,916 car allowance. He will also be entitled to a home loan “up to policy limits.” 

The board’s Committee on Grounds and Buildings is also expected to approve $18.3 million in interim financing for preliminary plans for renovation of California Memorial Stadium, the landmark Berkeley structure that sits directly over the Hayward Fault. 

The full schedule for the three-day meeting is available online here.


Pacific Steel Lays Off Half its Workforce, Citing Weak Economy

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday July 10, 2009 - 02:49:00 PM

West Berkeley’s Pacific Steel Casting, the nation’s fourth largest surviving steel foundry, is hurting badly. 

Company spokesperson Elizabeth Jewel told the Daily Planet Friday that a weak economy was playing havoc with its sales, forcing the steel plant to cut half its workforce. 

The foundry, which has been operating at Second and Gilman streets for 75 years, laid off a couple of hundred workers in the last seven months, including 40 in June, and announced that another 75 new layoffs are on the way, sometime after Aug. 31. Pacific Steel had about 600 workers on its payroll until earlier this year; the cuts will leave the company with just 300. 

Management positions have also been eliminated, she said. 

The company, founded in 1934, is suffering low sales in part because one of its biggest customers, the Peterbilt Motors Company, has drastically reduced orders. 

“They were a longtime, consistent customer,” she said. “We can only hope that the economy will turn around as quickly as possible and people will start ordering trucks once again.” 

Jewel also blamed the recession and the weak housing market, explaining that steel products were just not in demand at the moment. 

“Orders are way, way down,” she said. “Nobody is ordering castings. It’s similar to what’s happening in other cities, and we are not immune.” 

Because the company is privately owned and operated, it is not required to make its profits public. 

Jewel said Pacific Steel laid off a few workers in the 1980s, but the numbers have never been this bad. 

“There have been cuts across the board—it’s the most serious situation in the last 20 years,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking. We are a family-held company and we have multiple generations of employees. These are people who have been working here for 30 years.” 

Most of Pacific Steel’s workers are Spanish, Asian or German immigrants and belong to the Glaziers, Molders, and Plasterers Union Local 164B. 

The union is working with Pacific Steel to provide counseling to the laid-off workers, advising them on how to find new jobs and survive foreclosure. 

Ignacio De La Fuente, the union’s vice president and an Oakland city councilmember, blamed the layoffs on the economic slump as well as environmental activism, which he said had compelled Pacific Steel to invest a lot of money on new technology for cleaner air. 

Local environmental groups and West Berkeley residents have protested what they say are toxic air emissions and odors from Pacific Steel for over two decades. Some area residents have blamed the steel mill for their health problems, even taking the company to court several times. 

“When there are no orders for products, no work and no money, eventually the workers will have to go,” De La Fuente said. “The economy is down, and the City of Berkeley and some environmental groups and small groups of people in West Berkeley have asked Pacific Steel to spend millions and millions of dollars on environmental technology, installing scrubbers, fan systems and air monitors.” 

De La Fuente said Pacific Steel’s legal expenses in battles against environmental groups may have affected the company as well.  

“The fact is that all this has taken its toll and there is less and less money,” he said. “I have represented the union since 1978 and we have had 10 to 20 layoffs at the most in the past. This is serious.” 

However, environmental groups and activists denied having any role in the layoffs. 

“There is not a shred of evidence that the layoffs are the result of environmental activism,” said Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental justice, one of the nonprofits which have pushed for cleaner emissions. “Pacific Steel still has the same permits with the same operating conditions they have had for a very long time, so blaming concerned community members for the layoffs ordered by this greedy corporation is shameful. Ignacio De La Fuente and the Pacific Steel bosses are more concerned about protecting corporate profits than the jobs or health of their workers.” 

L A Wood, an environmental activist who ran for Berkeley City Council last year, questioned De La Fuente’s motives for singling activists out. 

“Perhaps he feels threatened by the community’s inquiries into health issues—that says something about how effective we have been about getting his attention,” he said. “Honestly, we did very little to affect their operations. Pacific Steel has been operating under the gun since 1980 and they have dictated their own course. They should be working with us, and not see us as the enemy.” 

Ruth Breech, program director for Global Community Monitor, another environmental group, said that a cleaner, technologically advanced facility showed that the company was interested in making a long-term investment in the community. 

“When they make that investment, it means ‘we are going to be in the city for a long time,’” she said. “It shows they want to be a good citizen. Being a visionary, you’d expect Pacific Steel to reform its plants way ahead of everyone. All the legal stuff doesn’t have to happen if Pacific Steel is transparent and willing to talk to everyone, rather than pointing fingers at neighbors who are entitled to breath clean air.” 

Berkeley councilmember Linda Maio, whose district includes Pacific Steel, said there would be tremendous ramifications from the cuts. 

“There’s going to be a ripple effect—not just for the families of the workers, but for the city as well,” she said. “These are very good jobs with high-quality benefits, so there will be social impacts as well.” 

Maio blamed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for California’s budget deficit, which she said was negatively impacting trade and industry in the state. 

“Maybe when President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan really hits, we will see some new construction projects which will improve things,” she said. 

The only other large industrial employer in West Berkeley was the pharmaceutical company Bayer, Maio said, which had not been as badly hit. 

As for whether environmental activists had effected the layoffs at the plant, Maio said there was very little basis for that argument. 

“For many decades Pacific Steel didn’t pay very much attention to upgrading their facility.” she said. “They are playing catch-up now. They should have been doing this a long time ago.”


West Berkeley Zoning Struggle Heats Up as Deadline Nears

By Richard Brenneman
Friday July 10, 2009 - 01:49:00 PM

The fate of large-scale West Berkeley developments—pushed by both Mayor Tom Bates and officials at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—continued to preoccupy city planning commissioners Wednesday. 

Proponents of the project once called “West Berkeley Flexibility” say significant zoning code changes are needed to accommodate high-tech businesses spun off from patents generated by scientists at the university and its federal lab complex. 

But current residents, including artists, crafts workers and many business owners, have been skeptical of a push they fear could drive them out of their only foothold in the community. 

The central issue before the commission is a redefinition of the city’s master use permit rules governing development of larger sites in West Berkeley—the only part of Berkeley zoned for industry and manufacturing. 

As chair of the East Bay Green Corridor alliance of cities, universities and community colleges, Bates has led an alliance of public bodies who hope to attract green tech businesses to provide new revenues and jobs. 

That effort has sparked resistance from Berkeley’s low-tech green businesses, including the principals of Urban Ore, which specializes in selling recycled materials. Many existing business, as well as West Berkeley’s sizable community of art and craft workers, say they fear pricey labs will lead to spiraling rents and property values which could force them out of their last refuge in the city. 

Planning commissioners were unanimous during their July 8 session that retaining artists should be one of the incentives new enterprises could use as leverage to win approval of their projects. 

But what other incentives might be used to win approval of master use permits remained an open question by the end of the meeting, with some commissioners voicing fears that offering too many choices would reduce their cumulative impacts on higher priority objectives. 

“Be careful of Christmas trees,” said Alex Amoroso, the city planning staffer who has been leading the effort to draft new zoning rules. “If you water down your benefits, you get a couple of trees and an artist.” 

Commissioner Victoria Eisen, a private-sector transportation planner and an avid cyclist, said she’d like to see more bicycle improvements, including the completion of links between existing bike routes. 

“I would like to add something about support for open space and the arts,” said Commissioner James Novosel, an architect. He’d also like to add preservation, “because it’s going to cost developers a lot of money to preserve these buildings.” 

“I would like to add both green buildings and green manufacturing, said chair David Stoloff, a retired planner. 

Eisen said she’d like staff to investigate Emeryville’s shuttle system to find out what makes that program work as a possible incentive to create a similar system in West Berkeley to link employees with transit and reduce reliance on cars. 

Deborah Sanderson, the city’s’ land-use planning manager, said the key to Emeryville’s success was the shuttle’s connection to BART. 

“How do you get to the commensurate aspect of this,” asked Gene Poschman, the commission’s resident policy expert. How, he wondered, would the city place a value on granting exceptions in increased building mass and height in exchange for benefit? How do you set a price on mass, 90-foot buildings and reduced parking, he asked. 

“At this point we don’t have any way to put a value on these,” he said. “I don’t see any meat on these bones.” 

West Berkeley’s 692 acres comprise about a tenth of Berkeley’s land mass. The area is bounded by city limits on the north and south, and stretches from San Pablo Avenue to San Francisco Bay, including the 99 acres of waters in Aquatic Park. 

By way of comparison, the city’s University of California Campus, a politically separate entity, totals 1,232 acres, not including off-campus university-owned properties. 

According to the Land Use Element of the city’s General Plan, only 4 percent of the city is zoned for manufacturing, and all of it is in West Berkeley. “In 1977, industrial uses occupied virtually all of West Berkeley aside from its residential areas. Since then, industrial activity in the area has decreased substantially, and office and retail uses have occupied a portion of the former industrial area,” the document declares. 

That same document states that “Approximately 24 percent of all Berkeley jobs are in West Berkeley, where manufacturing and wholesale jobs account for 41 percent of all jobs, service jobs for 30 percent, retail jobs for 16 percent, and other jobs (construction, transport, etc.) for 13 percent.” 

The West Berkeley Plan specifically calls for retention of manufacturing in the area, and the current debate centers in part around definitions. 

The area is zoned for manufacturing and light industrial uses—the M, MM and MULI zones—and for mixed-use residential—MUR. 

The zoning code prescribes uses allowed in each zone, and one of the issues the commission has already tentatively resolved is a change in the documentation used to describe permitted use. While the existing code uses the Standard Industrial Classifications, or SIC code, to define business types, commissioners have already indicated they favor switching to the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS), which incorporate high tech business types that didn’t exist when the older code was drawn up. 

A second issue that may be close to resolution is the ability of property owners to reconfigure uses within a site as business uses change, though some dispute remains over the level of oversight of the needed permits. 

But other issues have generated more contention, especially the definition of sites which could apply for a master use permit. 

One issue is size: Should they be restricted to a few pre-existing and named sites or to any parcels of a given size? And what should be the minimum size? Three acres? Four? Five? A city block even if smaller than the agreed-upon size? 

And should they be pre-existing parcels or should a developer be allowed to buy contiguous parcels until the minimum size is reached? 

This, perhaps the thorniest of the issues, has generated heat between would-be developers, West Berkeley residents and members of West Berkeley Artisans and Industrial Companies (WEBAIC). 

While Amoroso said staff has focused on a four-acre minimum, WEBAIC has pushed to confine master use permits to limited number of sites. The commission majority has often sided with developers in the past, ensuring that WEBAIC and its allies have filled the great majority of seats in meetings devoted to the issue. 

Rick Auerbach, WEBAIC’s lone staffer, told commissioners that while the group was willing to settle for a four-acre minimum, “unlimited consolidation does effectively change the West Berkeley Plan because it changes the mix of uses sought in the plan.”  

Commissioner Patti Dacey, with Poschman a member of the minority on many votes, has been strongly critical of the staff’s handling of discussions with West Berkeley stakeholder groups, urging her colleagues to spend more time listening to critics and asking staff to let the groups meet jointly in an effort to come up with a consensus proposal. 

“You’re just raping the West Berkeley Plan,” Primo Facchini of Pacific Coast Chemical told commissioners. 

The commission is pushing forward with its work, and will hold a critical discussion July 22 when they will vet tentative language on zoning code changes. 

After the August break, they’ll be back to vote on the first measures to be sent to the City Council, which is expected to approve the final package in January.


Berkeley Receives $1.3 Million in Federal Homelessness Prevention Funds

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Friday July 10, 2009 - 01:06:00 PM

Berkeley was awarded $1.3 million in federal homelessness prevention funds Thursday under President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. 

The news came a day after Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates announced the results of a new study which showed a 48 percent drop in chronic homelessness in the city over the last six years.  

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan allocated a total of $1.2 billion to more than 400 communities nationwide Thursday as part of the agency’s new Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program (HPRP) funded by the Recovery Act. 

Alameda County was awarded $802,915; Oakland was awarded $3.4 million; and Alameda received $552,208 under HPRP. 

The total amount awarded to Alameda County jurisdictions was $6.8 million. 

  These new awards represent about a nine-fold increase from what any jurisdiction typically receives under the department’s formula allocation, said HUD Regional Coordinator Eduardo Cabrera. 

Cabrera said the funds would be used to prevent homelessness and to swiftly re-house families that are already homeless. 

The program helps individuals and families who have met with sudden financial crisis which could lead to homelessness by providing them with short-term (up to three months) and medium-term (up to 18 months) rental assistance and services. 

It will also provide security deposits, utility deposits, utility payments, moving-cost assistance and hotel vouchers. 

“This is money that will not only spare families the hardships of homelessness, but will save taxpayers significant money in the long run,” Donovan said in a statement. “Often times, a little bit of financial assistance can make all the difference between a stable home and being forced to live in a shelter or on the streets.”  

HPRP grants are not intended to provide long-term support or help homeowners facing eviction with mortgage assistance. 

Cabrera said in order for these funds to be released, each jurisdiction had to submit a plan by December.  

The Recovery Act includes $13.61 billion for projects and programs overseen by HUD, of which nearly 75 percent was allocated to state and local recipients eight days after President Obama signed it into law. The HPRP funding was included in the 75 percent allocated at that time. Because HUD has approved the grant recipients’ spending plans now, the agency is officially making the money available for spending. 

The remaining 25 percent of HUD Recovery Act funds will be awarded through a competitive process. 

Bates’ Chief of Staff Julie Sinai said that Alameda County’s EveryOne Home program would be coordinating with six resource centers in the county, including Berkeley, to provide rent support, case management and help with down payments. 

The Berkeley center will help homeless populations from Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville and Piedmont. A request for proposals is currently being developed, Sinai said, in order to find a non-profit organization to operate the center. 

For more information on the HPRP, see www.hudhre.info/HPRP. 


Three Arrests in South Berkeley-North Oakland Gang War

Bay City News Service
Friday July 10, 2009 - 01:48:00 PM

An investigation into two rival gangs from North Oakland and South Berkeley led to the arrests today of several suspects, including one who was shot by a police officer, authorities said. 

Oakland and Berkeley police have been investigating the feud between the two gangs since 2001. Oakland police said the gangs, mostly consisting of males between the ages of 16 and 30, may be behind a recent escalation of shootings in Oakland and Berkeley. 

Over the past two weeks, Oakland police have conducted several hours of surveillance and dozens of interviews, which led to the issuing of seven search warrants and several arrest warrants that targeted the most violent gang members, according to police. 

This morning, officers served high-risk warrants in a number of East Bay cities and made at least three arrests. Additionally, police seized 12 firearms and some narcotics. Hercules, Berkeley, Richmond, and Hayward police assisted in today’s operation, as did the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives. 

Coleon Carroll, 19, was arrested on an outstanding robbery warrant at about 7 a.m. at a home in the 100 block of Chestnut Avenue in Hercules, Hercules police said. 

Carroll allegedly fled the home through a back window. Hercules police said an officer shot Carroll after seeing him reach for a weapon. 

Carroll then went back into the home where he was apprehended. He suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen and was taken to the hospital to be treated for the injury, which did not appear to be life-threatening. 

The Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office and Hercules police are investigating the shooting. 

In addition to Carroll, Gregg Fite, 34, was arrested on an outstanding murder warrant and Joseph Carroll, 22, was arrested for being a felon in possession of a firearm. 

Oakland Acting Police Chief Howard Jordan said of today’s operation, “We are highly sensitive to the ongoing issues involving firearms within our city. We put significant resources into this investigation and today’s operation and are here to stem the tide of violence within our community."


Wareham Wins Permit for West Berkeley Bioscience Lab

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:34:00 AM
Wareham Development’s proposal for a new 92,000-square-foot bioscience laboratory on the site of the landmarked Copra Building at 740 Heinz in West Berkeley.
Wareham Development’s proposal for a new 92,000-square-foot bioscience laboratory on the site of the landmarked Copra Building at 740 Heinz in West Berkeley.
The existing Copra Warehouse, a city landmark.
The existing Copra Warehouse, a city landmark.

In what was regarded as a first for West Berkeley’s zoning history, the city’s Zoning Adjustments Board last week gave Wareham Development the green light to exceed neighborhood height limits and construct a four-story, 92,000-square-foot bioscience lab on the Aquatic Park Campus. 

The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission and the zoning board held what city staff called an unprecedented special joint meeting Thursday, July 2, to vote on whether to approve various permits for the project, including a variance for the proposed height. 

Berkeley’s Planning Manager Deborah Sanderson said that the city combined what would normally be three separate meetings to get the commissioners’ votes on permits related to a project of this scale. 

Although the zoning board approved the use permit and variance for the project, landmarks commissioners denied a demolition permit for the historic 740 Heinz St. Copra Warehouse—the site of the proposed lab—which is one of the three remaining structures on the former Durkee Famous Foods campus. 

The project’s environmental impact report states that demolition would result in long-term significant unavoidable impact on historic preservation. 

Some landmarks commissioners and zoning board members, neighbors and preservationists also objected to the mass and scale of the proposed project, arguing that it would destroy the neighborhood fabric, cast shadows on the adjacent Magic Gardens nursery and create a parking nightmare. 

Wareham has partnered with the building’s owner, Garr Land & Resource Management, to develop the property, and urged both voting bodies to support the project, explaining that the Copra Warehouse was a seismic hazard economically unfeasible to restore. 

Soft, sandy silt beneath the structure “is potentially liquifiable in an earthquake,” said Wareham partner Chris Barlow. “The building could come down and kill someone.” 

Bruce Judd of Architectural Resources Group said the existing walls were in extremely poor condition, with cracks, missing bricks and holes. 

“This is not a preservation project,” Judd said. “We are trying to preserve the memory of part of the building.” 

Wareham currently has 15 buildings on the Aquatic Park Complex related to the life and physical sciences. 

The new building would incorporate the north and south facades of the existing Copra Warehouse, adding more windows to provide natural light, which the Landmarks Preservation Commission said would change the historic nature of the old building. 

The new facades would be made out of brick precast panels and Barlow said the design would be “sympathetic” to the neighboring buildings, reflecting an old industrial look. 

The current parking to the east of the building would be partly converted into landscape, and an underground structure would provide 49 parking spaces, a net loss of six parking spaces. Disability parking for artisans who live and work next door at 800 Heinz, another Wareham property, will remain. 

Garr Land & Resource Management President Kathleen Garr wrote to the zoning board, saying she would be forced to sell if they denied the project. She said the city had declared the Copra Warehouse a public nuisance in November 2002, mandating a seismic retrofit she couldn’t afford.  

“I have a strong personal attachment to the property and do not want to sell it,” said Garr, who bought the property with her husband in the mid-1980s. “Instead, I want to see it developed in a way that will benefit the community and the City of Berkeley while providing me with a regular income.” 

Barlow told zoning board members that Wareham had signed a long-term ground lease with Garr Land & Resource Management, at the end of which Garr would own all the improvements on the site. 

“We have some extraordinary and exceptional challenges with this site but it also creates an extraordinary and exceptional possibility,” Barlow said. “The City of Berkeley is crying out for research and development lab space.” 

Barlow quoted from zoning board member and university patent marketing manager Michael Alvarez Cohen’s comments at a March Planning Commission meeting about the importance of making West Berkeley’s zoning laws more tech-friendly. 

Cohen, who was absent from Thursday’s meeting, had stressed that of the more than 100 start-up companies he had worked on, most eventually left Berkeley. 

Barlow said there was little space available for lab buildings in Berkeley outside of the Aquatic Park Campus, and said the city’s stringent zoning laws had forced the multi-million dollar Joint BioEnergy Institute to locate in Wareham’s EmeryStation East in Emeryville instead, along with 500 jobs. 

Barlow said the Copra Warehouse project would create both short-term construction jobs, permanent employment in the planned labs, new municipal tax revenues and commerce for local businesses. 

He said the building needed the planned mass, scale and 15-foot floor heights to accommodate mechanical equipment and air conditioning. 

Although lab buildings are extremely complicated and expensive to build, Barlow said, the Aquatic Park Campus, with its extensive research facilities, cafés, child care centers and shuttle services, was the logical place for the project. 

In exchange, he said, the new lab would attract new tenants to the campus and expand life science capabilities. 

Michael Ziegler, owner of the Temescal Business Center with tenants such as Berkeley Mills, US Healthworks and Xoma, and Pietro Mussi, proprietor of Berkeley Industrial Artworks Complex on Heinz Avenue, said they and their West Berkeley neighbors were working with city staff, the planning commissioners and the Office of Economic Development to create a “new more flexible zoning for large-site development projects in West Berkeley. 

“It would be premature for the zoning board to set precedents through variances for land use and height which were currently being considered by the Planning Commission,” said Ziegler, adding that equal treatment should be given to all property owners. “This development goes to the heart of future development in West Berkeley. What you are doing here is hijacking a public process.” 

The West Berkeley plan mandates a 45-foot height limit in the area. The highest point on the Copra Warehouse is 74 feet, but it was built before the city’s zoning laws came into existence. 

Sanderson told the board that the environmental impact report on the changes to the West Berkeley plan should be completed in December. 

“My understanding is that the intended role of these boards is that you should ensure that development is appropriate in type and scale to the neighborhoods of Berkeley while preserving the heritage of the city,” said Barbara Bowman, another West Berkeley neighbor. 

“Unfortunately, I am more getting the impression that sort of gets forgotten and that the mission becomes more to figure out how to get every project proposed by the developer past the zoning law. Why are we pretending that we need biotech labs so badly at this location that it’s worth allowing Wareham to destroy yet another landmark to build them?”  

Landmarks commissioner Carrie Olson criticized what she said was Wareham’s decision to exploit the historic structure’s peak height to justify a building height otherwise not allowed under zoning.  

Both Olson and landmarks commissioner Anne Wagley, arts and calendar editor for the Daily Planet, said they were disappointed that Wareham did not opt for one of the alternatives in the environmental impact report, which asserts that they could do a profitable project that saves the building.  

“It seems the ulitmate hypocrisy to engage in such a large-scale destruction of a building, and perhaps of a neighborhood, for the sake of a speculative green development,” said Wagley. “But perhaps it is really only the green of the dollar that the developers are after with this project.” 

The landmarks commission used the preservation alternative as one of the criteria to deny the demolition permit. 

Calling the Copra Warehouse “a large fixed-cost liability,” Barlow said the Alameda County assessor’s office had valued the property at only $2,000. A variance, he said, would be the only thing that would allow Wareham to transform it into something economically viable and prevent foreclosure by the city. 

“You are asking us to give you a variance to create value, not protect value,” said board member Sara Shumer, who said it was impossible to make a finding for a variance. “It’s not a black and white issue, but it’s a decision about how much we want to have a building of that size in that neighborhood and what we are doing to the neighborhood to put it in.” 

Shumer said the current property value of the Copra Warehouse was so low that any improvements would make it attractive, arguing that a variance was not necessarily required to enhance its value. 

Other zoning board members contended that they could not see any way the Copra Warehouse could be preserved and financially viable to its owners. 

“Renovating would not make financial sense to anyone except a multimillionaire who wants a toy,” said Bob Allen. “We are putting the property owner in jeopardy of selling the property.” 

One of the findings used by the zoning board to approve the permit was protection of the owner’s property rights.


City’s ‘Chronic Homeless’ Count Drops 50 Percent; ‘Hidden Homelessness’ On the Rise

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:39:00 AM

Berkeley’s chronically homeless population decreased by nearly 50 percent over the last six years according to a recently released study. Federal officials said it was the largest reduction of chronic homelessness in the state to date. 

Standing in the sunny backyard of Bonita House, a nonprofit that partners with the City of Berkeley to provide low-cost housing to homeless adults, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates announced the news to the public. Also present were homeless advocates and agencies and formerly homeless Bonita House residents. 

According to a count and survey of homeless people conducted by Alameda County’s EveryOne Home program, the number of chronically homeless residents in Berkeley fell 48 percent since 2003. 

  Alameda County officials said that Berkeley started working with community agencies to focus services toward chronic homelessness after the 2003 count. 

“What’s working needs to be continued and expanded throughout the state of California,” said Bates, admitting that the news wasn’t all good. 

Blaming the recession, Bates said that it was becoming increasingly difficult to hold on to state and federal funding for homeless services. “But even during the downturn we continue to fund homeless programs,” he said. “The most important thing is not to be homeless; the second most important thing is to be homeless for as short a time as possible; and the third most important thing is to find a safe place to live.” 

The 2003 count and survey showed that two-thirds of Berkeley’s homeless population was chronically homeless adults, defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as “an unaccompanied disabled individual who has been continuously homeless for over one year.”  

This comprised 20 percent of Alameda County’s homeless population, and 10 percent of the homeless population nationally. 

Berkeley, Bates said, had invested more deeply in programs which aimed to end homelessness through permanent housing. 

Some of the strategies included creating new supportive housing opportunities for chronically homeless adults by combining resources from the Public Commons for Everyone Initiative’s Square One Program, new federal funding for permanent housing subsidies and new federal and state funding for permanent housing subsidies combined with intensive mental health services. 

The city also realigned supportive services, emergency shelter and transitional housing programs to push for permanent housing through agencies such as Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency, the Berkeley Food and Housing Project, and the city’s mental health and aging services. 

City funding for programs to help homeless residents has also increased, with money for some disabled adult services having tripled over the years. 

Rick Crispino, executive director of Bonita House, said that his organization provided 12 units of Section 8 housing at 1912 Hearst Ave. to homeless people with mental disabilities and substance-abuse problems, who eventually moved into permanent housing. 

Caroline Barajas, who moved into one of these temporary apartments in May, is now getting ready to move into her own two-bedroom apartment in Oakland. 

“I was shut out of my house in North Richmond and my children were scattered all over the place, so I ended up homeless,” she said. “I am finally getting my life back together.” 

Crispino pointed at Draundre Rice, a recovering substance abuser who has been living at Bonita House for two months. 

“Druandre came in with hardly anything, but our program enabled him to save some money and take classes at City College,” he said. “We reached out to him and helped turn his life around.” 

Berkeley, however, continues to face a challenge when it comes to reducing chronic homelessness, city officials acknowledged, because most homeless individuals have at least one disability, long histories of homelessness and typically very low incomes. 

  Eduardo Cabrera, regional coordinator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said that although there has been significant improvement in chronic homelessness, the recession had catapulted “hidden homelessness” countywide.  

Data from Alameda County shows that the number of people living temporarily with a friend or relative, in a motel, or facing eviction within seven days countywide had increased by more than two and half times, and had increased to 41 percent of the county’s total homeless population. 

“Millions of jobs have been lost—to think that would not have an impact is naive,” Cabrera said. 

  Berkeley’s number of “hidden homeless” has increased tenfold, going up from 14 to 144. Although, at 17 percent, this represents a small chunk of Berkeley’s homeless residents, the city has requested federal stimulus money for their assistance. 

 

Statistics comparing 2003 to 2009: 

• The number of chronically homeless people in Berkeley decreased from 529 to 276 (48 percent). 

• Berkeley’s share of the countywide chronically homeless population decreased from 41 percent to 27 percent. 

• People residing on the streets, in shelters or in transitional housing programs decreased from 821 to 680 (17 percent). 

• Significant decreases in the number of homeless adults with no dependent children were somewhat offset by an increase in the number of literally homeless adults with dependent children, from 94 to 125 adults and children. 

 


City Council Postpones Final Vote on Downtown Plan

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:39:00 AM

The Berkeley City Council ground its way slowly—and sometimes painfully—towards passage of its proposed Downtown Area Plan Tuesday night, working its way through consideration of a series of detailed amendments by Councilmember Jesse Arreguín before finally putting the matter off until next week. 

The Downtown Area Plan (DAP) is a far-reaching proposal to set development goals and policy guidelines for the city’s downtown area. The council is trying to reconcile two versions of the plan, one created by the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), the other by the Planning Commission. 

From the tone of Tuesday’s discussion, it appeared that the consensus of the council is that it will work from the foundation of the 118-page revised version published in Tuesday night’s agenda packet, and that this is the version—with some modifications—that will win final passage. This version—prepared by staff—takes the Planning Commission version of the DAP as a base, adding back some of the stronger language and suggestions contained within the DAPAC version. 

Tuesday’s DAP deliberations were a far cry from the council’s June 9 meeting, when an angry Arreguín charged that his views and proposals on alterations to the plan were not being considered. On Tuesday, the council went into considerable detail over the first eight of Arreguín’s 14 proposed amendments before Mayor Tom Bates asked that city staff study the bulk of them for analysis and recommendations to come back to the July 14 council meeting. 

The council agreed to one of Arreguín’s suggestions—to change the official title of two of the areas referred to in the DAP in order to avoid confusion—but balked at suggestions that changed height or setback limits, with several councilmembers either saying that they needed more information on the possible effects or suggesting that the more detailed Arreguín proposals needed to be in the zoning code rather than the DAP. Planning and Development Director Dan Marks appeared to grow increasingly testy and frustrated as he answered questions concerning the proposed amendments, several times sparring with Arreguín over the reasons why he thought the councilmember’s proposals were unnecessary. At the end of the DAP discussion, a weary Marks sat down heavily on one of the seats in the first row of the council audience section, closing his eyes, tilting his head back, and clutching several thick planning documents against his chest. 

The council also put over consideration a proposal by Councilmember Kriss Worthington to put into the DAP protection for workers hired in downtown area hotels, but voted down a Worthington proposal to raise the inclusionary zoning affordable housing percentage from 20 percent to 25 percent in the downtown area. With Councilmember Max Anderson saying that with “developers hav[ing] figured out how to game the [inclusionary zoning] system” and the “actual percentage of inclusionary units in the city is between 12 and 14 percent,” Worthington has been arguing that the only way to reach an actual mark of 20 percent affordable housing was for the council to set a higher rate. But Marks said that it would be impossible for staff to provide a full analysis of the effects of the percentage raise by next week, and Capitelli suggested that the discussion be put off until the fall. 

The council also agreed to consider—at next Tuesday’s meeting—transit-friendly amendments to the DAP submitted by the AC Transit bus district. 

The council had scheduled a final vote on the DAP for Tuesday night, and Marks’ staff had rushed to get a final version ready which included amendments introduced by Bates and Councilmembers Linda Maio and Laurie Capitelli and approved by the council at the June 9 meeting. 

At the beginning of Tuesday night’s DAP discussion, however, Bates announced that the council was “not going to take final action tonight,” but would simply give staff direction for changes to be prepared for next week’s meeting. While Bates gave no reason for the postponement, Councilmember Worthington had earlier told reporters that because the final proposed version of the DAP had not been delivered to councilmembers or the public by the 48-hour deadline preceding the council meeting, he had asked Acting City Attorney Zack Cowan to rule on the legality of any final vote on the plan Tuesday night. 

In other action Tuesday night, the council formally approved an across-the-board residential and commercial refuse and organics collection rate increase after a state law-mandated citizen “majority protest” ballot came close to 10,000 votes short of disallowing the raises. The council originally proposed the rate increases on April 21 and then, under rules set out by 1996 state Proposition 218, sent out letters to city waste collection customers calling on them to mail back protest votes if they didn’t want the raise. More than 4,600 valid protest votes were received by Tuesday night’s meeting, but a majority of the city’s 28,627 real property owners—14,314—would have been needed to overturn the proposed raise. 

Several citizens came out to protest the fee increase procedure, with Bill Herman of the Northeast Berkeley Association calling it a “flawed process” and Berkeley Property Owners Association Administrator Nancy Friedberg labeling it an “unfair election,” and some speakers adding that many residents may have thrown the letters away because there was nothing on the envelopes indicating that it concerned a “majority protest” vote. 

City Budget Manager Tracey Vesely conceded that because the latest property tax rolls the city could use for the mailouts was from 2008, which listed property ownership as of December of 2007, it was probable that people who purchased property after that date would not have received the forms. Councilmember Linda Maio agreed that the procedure was “confusing and probably annoying” but added that the city “didn’t do anything disingenuously,” and said that the procedure was more democratic than in previous rate increases, when the council alone made the decision, with a public hearing but no public vote. 

And Acting City Attorney Zack Cowan said that while Proposition 218 required the city to mail the “majority protest” forms to parcel owners “it doesn’t require us to verify that everyone received it.” 

The rate increases go into effect immediately. 

Left off Tuesday’s agenda was consideration of proposals for amendments to the city’s Wireless Telecommunications cellphone regulation ordinance, which governs the placement of cellphone towers in the city. City Manager Phil Kamlarz said that with no cellphone tower applications pending and a packed calendar before the council adjourns for the summer break, his office and the council Agenda Committee decided to postpone discussion of the ordinance to the fall. 

The council will meet again on July 14 and then for an unusual Thursday night session, July 23, before breaking for the summer. 


Teaching Kids to Dance at AileyCamp

By Jaime Robles Special to the Planet
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:40:00 AM
Teenagers practice dance moves at AileyCamp, where the goal is to teach them to value their bodies and themselves as individuals in the world.
Joe Yang
Teenagers practice dance moves at AileyCamp, where the goal is to teach them to value their bodies and themselves as individuals in the world.

Sitting in the empty audience of Zellerbach Hall, David McCauley talks about AileyCamp, the educational dance project that he is the charter director of for Cal Performances. Simultaneously, on the barren stage, stripped of its curtains and scrims, some 15 adolescents are being led through modern dance exercises by M’bewe Escobar, who has taught and danced with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for over a decade.  

As the students fling their arms upward, outward, forward and back, they shout out the name of the various arm positions. In one month, these students, many of whom have never danced before, will be performing on this world-class stage, under its lights and before a live audience. 

McCauley explains that Alvin Ailey, founder of the famous New York-based dance company, believed that dancers need to bring dance—its joys and its disciplines—back to the community from which it came: “He has always had an outreach component in his technique.”  

Ailey founded the AileyDance camps in Kansas City in 1989, “using arts to help with academics” through, McCauley explains, “that natural discipline that goes with the arts.” Since then camps have been established in many cities in the United States. In 2001 AileyCamp came to the UC Berkeley campus as part of Cal Performances’ educational community outreach. Berkeley is the first West Coast city to establish the program.  

The participants of the dance camp are youths aged 11 to 14. All from the Berkeley, Oakland and Richmond school districts, the students are selected primarily from underserved communities. Although AileyCamp targets students with academic, social and domestic challenges—those things that contribute to an adolescent’s risk of later dropping out of school—the program also welcomes students who have little opportunity to develop their artistic interests.  

This dance program is not meant to develop dancers, however; its aims are broader and farther-reaching. For six-weeks the students, divided into four groups, take daily classes in Modern, Ballet and African dance technique. Interspersed with the dance sessions are classes in personal development and creative communications. In these classes the students are taught to value their bodies and themselves as individual and unique beings in the world. And they are taught life skills to help them understand the world around them. 

In today’s Personal Development class, the students of group P—the “Professionals,” a name they devised for themselves on the first day of camp—are trying to sort out the differences between being “passive,” “aggressive” and “assertive.” 

Teacher Shawn Nealy asks them, “How can you tell a person is being aggressive? How does it affect their voice?”  

“It gets louder,” says one of the male students.  

“Louder?” Nealy asks. 

“Bold,” shouts another student.  

Nealy leads the class through other physical signs of aggression—how it affects their body, their posture. After, she asks them to break into pairs and devise a scene in which one student acts passive and the other aggressive. Then she asks them to construct scenes between an aggressive and an assertive person. 

In another room tucked among the maze of studios and classrooms that constitutes backstage at Zellerbach Hall, Willie Anderson, principal dancer at Ballet San Jose, leads students in a ballet class. The combination of steps are simple but grueling, geared to developing muscle rapidly and efficiently as only ballet can.  

The three young men of the class warm up at a barre in center floor. They are very excited about taking ballet; they have been told the benefits of taking dance class, and one of them hopes it will help his soccer career by improving his strength and coordination. 

You might wonder how students can afford a program of five hour-long classes taught by advanced dance professionals, five days a week, for six weeks. AileyCamp, true to its commitment to serving the underserved, pays for everything.  

Not only are classes free, but also the dance togs, the T-shirts, the shorts, shoes and backpacks, and, because nutrition is a major concern in the program, breakfast and lunch are also provided free of cost. Sign me up, Scotty! 

Given its generosity, the program needs serious funding. It takes a year of fund-raising to put the program in place, and this year, due to cutbacks in grants and donations, the program had to cut back. Cut back, rather than be cut.  

Over 250 students applied for acceptance this year, and instead of 80 students, the 2008 enrollment, the program accepted 51—15 young men and 36 young women.  

Assistant AileyCamp Administrator Nicole Anthony saw this as a possibly positive thing for the current participants, who now have more “one-on-one attention.” Nonetheless, such a large cutback indicates a perilous existence for this unusual and worthwhile program. 

Aware of their great good fortune, the students are working hard; their focus and attention are obvious. As is their seriousness. On July 30 at 7 p.m. they will be taking the stage at Zellerbach Hall. Most of the choreography they will present that evening will have been learned in the last two weeks of AileyCamp.  

Some of the program will be taken from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s repertoire, and some will be devised by the teachers at the dance camp specifically for these students. Admission to the performance, like everything in AileyCamp, is free, but you do need to make reservations. It will be worth it. 


Farewell to the Fujimotos

Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:42:00 AM
Robert Smith

The Monterey Market neighborhood—and the greater Slow Food community—hosted a party for Bill and Judy Fujimoto, who are walking away from the Monterey Market due to a family rift. A crowd of nearly 100 foodies, shoppers, growers, restaurant owners, musicians, and even the Cal Band, joined in celebrating the Fujimotos and their pioneering contribution to quality food in the Bay Area.


Battle Over LBNL Computer Center Heads for Key Court Hearing

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:40:00 AM

The battle over construction of a new computer facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory may hinge on a single issue: whether or not it’s a federal project. 

U.S. District Judge William Alsup is scheduled to rule July 30 on two competing summary judgment motions, with each side calling on him to rule for their arguments before the case ever comes to trial.  

At issue is the future of the Computational Research and Theory Building, slated for construction on a sloping stretch of hillside near the lab’s western borders close to Blackberry Gate. 

Attorney Michael Lozeau, who represents the group, has argued that the lab breached federal law by not preparing a federal environmental review under the provisions of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). 

Named as defendants are LBNL, the UC Board of Regents and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). 

The regents approved the building and an environmental review conducted under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) after hearings in which lab officials told Berkeley residents the building was needed to house the DOE’s high-speed, high-tech computer network.  

On the face of it, the arguments would seem to lie with the plaintiffs, Save Strawberry Canyon, a coalition of environmentalists who oppose lab expansion in an area they contend is environmentally sensitive. 

During a hearing conducted for the CEQA review, lab officials repeatedly said relocating the DOE’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center from its current location in a former bank building in downtown Oakland is a major reason for building the CRT facility.  

The feds changed their tune two months before regents approved project financing and the EIR on May 27, 2008, issuing a memorandum which stated that while the DOE professes “great interest” in relocating to the CRT, they had “made clear that DOE was not making any present commitment,” according to the proposal the regents approved. 

Then-LBNL Director Steven Chu became President Obama’s secretary of energy eight months later. 

Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Cruden and two assistants from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division are representing the DOE in the litigation. 

Oakland attorneys John Lynn Smith, Dennis Peter Maio and Rose L. Standifer have represented the regents. 

The hearing is scheduled for 8 a.m. on Thursday, July 30, on the 19th floor of the federal court building in San Francisco.


Judge Halts Chevron’s Richmond Refinery Expansion

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:41:00 AM

Chevron must stop all work on expanding its Richmond refinery until a new project environmental review is completed and approved, a Contra Costa County judge has ruled. 

Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga issued the second of two crucial rulings July 1 in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of environmental groups in opposition to the refinery expansion. 

Zuniga had already overturned Chevron’s environmental impact report (EIR) last month. 

About 100 workers have already been laid off as a result of the decision, Chevron representative Brent Tippen said Monday, “and over the next several weeks we will continue to release workers as we begin to safely demobilize the project.” 

Will Rostov, attorney for Earthjustice, and Adrienne Bloch of Communities for a Better Environment, represented their own organizations in the lawsuit along with Asian Pacific Environmental Network and West County Toxics Coalition. 

“It’s a big victory for the community and for environmental health,” Rostov said, “because as a result of Judge Zuniga’s ruling, everyone will now have a chance to learn what the true costs of the refinery expansion will be.” 

“Chevron is disappointed with the court's ruling,” Tippen said. “We feel both the evidence and the law amply supported the adequacy of the EIR prepared by the City of Richmond for the Renewal Project.”  

That document, approved by the Richmond City Council, had breached the California Environmental Quality Act by failing to include a comprehensive evaluation of the effects of the refinery expansion, the judge ruled. 

The Richmond City Council had certified the EIR even though the document failed to declare whether or not the project would enable the oil company to process heavier and potentially more pulling crude oils than are currently refined at the site, one of the reasons cited by the judge in her June decision that invalidated the EIR. 

The EIR was also invalid because it allowed the refinery to postpone a plan to mitigate any increase in globe-warming greenhouse gases generated by the expansion for a year after the city had certified the EIR and because the document failed to examine a hydrogen gas pipeline that is a key part of the project. 

In addition to tossing out the EIR, Judge Zuniga’s writ of mandate overturned the City Council’s approval of the Richmond Planning Commission’s decision to issue conditional use and design review permits for the refinery expansion. 

Finally, the judge ordered Chevron to stop work on the project and gave the oil company “up to 60 days to complete any needed demobilization that does not include any new construction.” 

Tippen said a year’s delay in the project could mean the loss of more than a million labor hours and $50 million to $75 million in lost income to workers in the city and county. 

Other questions remain open, including the fate of the $61 million Richmond Community Benefits Agreement the refinery pledged in exchange for city approval of the project. 

Tippen said the decision places the agreement in jeopardy, and the loss of funds plus the loss of worker income “will result in significant revenue loss to the City of Richmond at a time when the local economy can ill-afford even more job and revenue losses.” 

Rostov said the court’s decision means that Chevron will have to disclose fully what its plans for the refinery are, and to disclose the real impacts of greenhouses gases generated by the project. 

Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin said she veiws the judge’s decision as a victory for the city, and a critical step on the road to the creation of an environmentally just community. 

McLaughlin, who was among the council minority who opposed the project and the EIR, said Judge Zuniga’s decision will enable the development of a good project at the refinery, “one in which all the requirements and regulations are spelled out in the EIR.” 

“It’s an opportunity to bring about a project that has the health of the community at heart,” McLaughlin said. 

The mayor said that Chevron should also continue to pay its construction workers while the EIR is being rewritten. “There’s precedent for that,” she said.


Zoning Board to Vote on Downtown Teen Center

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:41:00 AM

Almost two years after PG&E handed over their former service center at 2111 Martin Luther King Jr. Way to the Berkeley-Albany YMCA, the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments will vote Thursday on whether to turn it into a teen center. 

Located right across from Civic Center Park and within walking distance of Berkeley High School, the two-story, 8,000-square-foot building dedication to YMCA was PG&E’s largest corporate contribution to date.  

A PG&E press release shows the building’s value to be $2.1 million. 

PG&E and YMCA have asked the zoning board to approve a 3,794-square-foot addition on the third floor and smaller additions of around 400 square feet on the first and second floors. 

The proposed project would change the use of the building to a teen center and administrative offices for the Berkeley-Albany YMCA, currently located at 2070 Allston. 

The building will be LEED certified and feature green elements, including solar panels, on-site recycling and rain water retention. 

YMCA hopes the new teen center will attract youth from all over Berkeley, including those who are homeless. 

A staff report from city planning staff notes that the teen center will be compatible with the Civic Center District because the Downtown Plan, adopted in 1990, calls for a youth center downtown, identifying the Civic Center area as a perfect location. 

The city will not lose property taxes from the transfer to the non-profit YMCA because PG&E is exempt from paying property taxes. 

The YMCA, which currently has less than 400 square feet of permanent space in downtown Berkeley for teen programs, has plans to double the number of participants in programs such as Y-Scholars, The Outsiders Club and YMCA Youth and Government, which address issues such as college preparation, employment and leadership development.


Richmond Man Convicted of Murder for Berkeley Shooting

Bay City News
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:42:00 AM

A Richmond man was convicted July 8 of first-degree murder and attempted second-degree robbery for the shooting death of 23-year-old Wayne Drummond of Oakland near the University of California at Berkeley campus three years ago. 

An Alameda County Superior Court jury deliberated for only three hours before delivering its verdict against 23-year-old Nicholas Beaudreaux for the Sept. 4, 2006, incident. 

Beaudreaux faces a term of 50 years to life in state prison when Judge C. Don Clay sentences him on Aug. 28. Sentencing guidelines call for him to get 25 years to life for his first-degree murder conviction and another 25 years for using a gun to cause Drummond’s death.  

Prosecutor Tim Wellman told jurors in his closing argument on Monday that the incident began shortly after midnight on Sept. 4, 2006, when Drummond got into a confrontation with 21-year-old Brandon Crowder of Berkeley outside Blakes on Telegraph at 2367 Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley. 

Drummond, who grew up in Southern California but attended a junior college in the Bay Area, had been friends with Crowder but their relationship had soured in the weeks before the shooting. 

Wellman said that for reasons that haven’t been made clear, Beaudreux, who has known Crowder since they were in middle school together but didn’t know Drummond, injected himself into the confrontation and told Drummond, “I don’t know how to fight, but I know how to use this metal in my waist.” 

Four witnesses testified that Beaudreaux then pulled out a gun, stuck it into Drummond’s neck and demanded Drummond’s wallet, Wellman said. 

The prosecutor said that instead of surrendering and handing over his wallet, Drummond chose to fight back and struggled with Beaudreaux over control of Beaudreaux’s gun. 

Defense attorney David Kelvin said the gun went off during the struggle and that Drummond may even have accidentally pulled the trigger himself, but Wellman said witness testimony and the angle of the single bullet that struck Drummond in his torso indicates that Beaudreaux deliberately pulled the trigger and shot Drummond from a short distance. 

Wellman said Drummond’s friends and a Berkeley police officer who came to the scene a few moments later attended to Drummond while he was lying on a sidewalk but they didn’t see any blood and didn’t take him to the hospital because they didn’t realize he had had been shot. 

Instead, Drummond’s friends drove him to a friend’s room at the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority at 2311 Prospect St., near the UC Berkeley campus, where he collapsed and died shortly after 2:30 a.m. that day. 

Beaudreaux and Crowder weren’t arrested until February 2008 because it took authorities time to develop sufficient evidence in the case. 

Crowder was initially also charged with murder in connection with Drummond’s death, as Berkeley police said they believed he had directed Beaudreaux to shoot Drummond. 

But prosecutors allowed Crowder to plead guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter on June 15 in exchange for his testimony against Beaudreaux, and Crowder testified last week. 

Crowder, who was arrested for allegedly threatening a basketball player at a UC Berkeley facility in December 2007, could face up to six years in state prison when Clay sentences him on July 21, but Wellman said Crowder could also be freed at that time, after only 18 months in custody, if Clay determines that he testified truthfully. 

Beaudreaux, who was dressed in a light green shirt and dark brown pants, bowed his head when the verdict was read but smiled when he spoke with Kelvin afterwards. 

Kelvin said the verdict “was not good news” for Beaudreaux but declined further comment. 

Wellman wasn’t immediately available for comment because he rushed off to talk to the jurors in the case.


Hearing Scheduled for Oakland Contractor Charged with Underpaying Immigrant Workers

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:43:00 AM

A July 20 hearing has been scheduled in Alameda County Superior Court in Hayward for a prominent Oakland general contractor arrested in an alleged scheme to defraud workers and illegally lower her company’s insurance rates.  

In a 48-page indictment, the Alameda County district attorney’s office charges Monica Ung, owner of NBC Contractors Corporation of Oakland, and two employees, Joey Ruan and Tin Wai Wu, with grand theft, insurance fraud, and the possible falsification of time sheets. The district attorney’s office is alleging that NBC’s actions resulted in an estimated $3.6 million dollars in unpaid wages to 19 construction workers, with losses due to illegally misclassifying workers costing the state an estimated $1.5 million. 

Ung, Ryan and Wu were arrested late last month and have been released on $535,000 bail, with court appearances scheduled in Alameda County Superior Court in Hayward for July 20.  

Many of the NBC workers who were allegedly victims of the company’s actions were Chinese immigrants who spoke little English. 

The office of the California insurance commissioner also participated in bringing the charges against Ung and the two NBC employees. 

As part of the insurance fraud section of the indictment, the district attorney’s office and the insurance commissioner’s office are alleging that NBC knowingly made false statements to the company’s insurance carrier in order attain lower rates. 

As part of the indictment, the California Department of Insurance said that workers employed by NBC told an Insurance Department investigator that “they worked 60-72 hours per week, and were paid $8-$9 per hour. However, their check stubs only showed that they worked 10 to 40 hours per week and earned $33 to $58 per hour.” NBC allegedly had their workers sign two blank time cards—one filled out with the correct time, one with the falsified time—in order to get around the clauses in their public contracts that required paying their workers at prevailing wages, as well as state overtime pay laws. 

Investigation of Ung’s company, which has participated in such public construction contracts as the Skyline High School, Highland Elementary School, and Piedmont Elementary School renovations, may have begun following the filing of a 2008 class action lawsuit by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 595 and the Northern California Chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) on behalf of several of the NBC workers. The IBEW and the electrical contractors association have suspended action on their lawsuit while the criminal charges are pending. 

Oakland labor attorney Ellyn Woscowitz, who filed the original lawsuit along with Oakland attorney Sharon Seidenstein, said in a prepared statement following the arrests that “because of our lawsuit, dozens of exploited Chinese workers came forward and gave testimony, not only for their civil suit for wages, not just for economic justice, but for the criminal system as well.”  

NECA Executive Director Don Campbell added, “We are elated that a contractor is finally being held accountable for many years of illegal activities. Contractors who cheat workers out of wages, and cheat on insurance costs, undercut good, law-abiding union contractors.” 

Ung could not be contacted for this story. She initially hired high-profile East Bay attorney Michael Cardoza to represent her, but has since dropped him and hired another attorney. The identity of Ung’s new attorney could not be determined by press time.


Albany Woman Killed by Amtrak Train in Berkeley

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:43:00 AM

A 69-year-old Albany woman died early Friday afternoon when she was struck by an Amtrak passenger train near the Gilman Avenue crossing in West Berkeley. 

The Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau identified the victim Tuesday as Nancy Peterson. 

A Washington Avenue resident, Peterson was active in local politics and a volunteer for the Save Our Shoreline coalition that elected Joanne Wile and current Mayor Marge Atkinson to the Albany City Council. 

Their election spelled the end of a proposal to erect an upscale shopping center and condo complex in the Golden Gate Fields parking lot. 

A representative of the coroner’s office said the manner of death—accidental or suicide—is still under investigation. 

Peterson died after she was struck by Amtrak Capital Corridor train 535, which was headed from Sacramento to San Jose with 135 passengers. 

After an investigation at the scene, the original engineer and conductor requested relief, and a new cerw was brought on board, said Amtrak spokesperson Vernae Graham. The train continued on its way after a delay of nearly two hours, though some Berkeley-bound passengers were allowed to leave the train and walk to the city’s station near University Avenue, escorted by Amtak Police. 

“The trains can’t move until the coroner clears the scene,” Graham said. 

Just minutes later, the train struck and killed a second pedestrian in Oakland, and it was taken out of service. Passeners tansferred to another train at the 29th Street crossing, Graham said. 

A third fatality involving another Amtrak train, the Coast Starlight, occurred shortly before 9 a.m. Saturday near the Fruitvale Avenue crossing. 

The train, en route from Seattle to Los Angeles, was delayed by nearly four hours, and other trains were also delayed, though none for more than an hour, Graham said. 

A representative of the coroner’s office said he was not able to release the identities of the other two victims. Graham said her reports did not indicate the gender of the victims.


Bank Robber Strikes in Downtown Berkeley

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:44:00 AM

A man walked into Chase Bank’s Berkeley branch at 2150 Shattuck Ave. at 1:40 in the afternoon Monday, July 6, and handed a note to a teller. 

The bank employee handed over “an undetermined amount of cash,” according to Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Officer Andrew Frankel, and the felon fled. He remains at large, said Frankel.  

 


Flames Force Evacuation of Russell Street Apartments

By Richard Brenneman
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:45:00 AM
A firefighter tosses a shovelful of broken wallboard out the window of a third-floor apartment in the 2300 block of Russell Street Tuesday afternoon. Layers of aluminum, melted by the intense flames, formed metallic icicles visible on the drainpipe and the bottom of the window frame.
Richard Brenneman
A firefighter tosses a shovelful of broken wallboard out the window of a third-floor apartment in the 2300 block of Russell Street Tuesday afternoon. Layers of aluminum, melted by the intense flames, formed metallic icicles visible on the drainpipe and the bottom of the window frame.
Contributed photo

Flames gutted most of the interior of two third-floor Berkeley apartments Tuesday, July 7, as firefighters and neighbors worked to evacuate tenants. 

The flames broke out shortly before noon in a third-floor unit at Rus-Tel Apartments, 2321 Russell St. 

One neighbor said two other residents of the building had delayed calling 911 in hopes they could contain the fire themselves. 

Assistant Fire Chief Kevin Revilla said the fire began in apartment 3D and spread to an adjacent unit to the south. “It went to a second alarm before it was extinguished,” he said. 

While no firefighters were injured, one resident—the tenant of the apartment where the fire began—was taken to the hospital, “but that was mostly for an existing condition,” said the firefighter. 

Neighbors said many of the residents of the stucco-clad 1960s-era building have mobility problems and many are elderly, and the occupant of the second fire-damaged unit is confined to an electric scooter. 

Revilla said the occupants of both damaged apartments will have to be relocated, and shortly after the flames were quenched, Red Cross workers were interviewing the resident of the second apartment to find quarters for her and make arrangements with her caregiver. 

Iris, who did not want her last name used, discovered the fire after a three-story elevator ride up to her apartment. 

“When the elevator doors opened, the flames were shooting out his door. His apartment was totally engulfed,” she said. 

Iris made it to her apartment, gathered up essential belongings and headed back downstairs and to the street outside, where she waited for more than an hour until firefighters were able to recover her scooter and bring it down. 

Assistant Chief Revilla estimated the damage to the apartments as at least $50,000. 

At its peak, the flames were so intense that the aluminum frames of the windows in both apartments melted, flowing down the outside walls and collecting like icicles as it dripped off a rain-gutter drainpipe.


Ground Broken for New Wesley Center Building

By Steven Finacom Special to the Planet
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:46:00 AM
Stephen Sutton (UC), the Rev. Renae Extrum-Fernandez (United Methodist Church), Deborah Matthews (Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board), and Vincent Wong (Wesley Foundation Board President) line up to swing gold-painted sledgehammers during the groundbreaking ceremony, while documentary filmmaker and UC student Brighton Kimbel records the scene from behind.
Steven Finacom
Stephen Sutton (UC), the Rev. Renae Extrum-Fernandez (United Methodist Church), Deborah Matthews (Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board), and Vincent Wong (Wesley Foundation Board President) line up to swing gold-painted sledgehammers during the groundbreaking ceremony, while documentary filmmaker and UC student Brighton Kimbel records the scene from behind.

A long-planned private housing development and religious center for UC students symbolically got under way beneath sunny, breezy, skies Wednesday, July 1. 

Across the street from the UC Berkeley campus, at the southwest corner of Dana Street and Bancroft Way, individuals representing community, campus, and the United Methodist Church gathered to break ground for a “spiritual theme house and community center” which will house UC students and expanded facilities for the Wesley Student Center, the Methodist ministry serving the campus community. 

Eight five-bedroom apartments and an abundance of shared and common spaces will provide an “intentional living community” that can accommodate up to 95 student residents, the Rev. Tarah Trueblood, executive director of the Wesley Foundation, told the celebrants. 

“The mission of the Wesley Foundation is to create a spiritual community at the University of California, Berkeley. Open hearts, open minds, open doors,” she added. 

The building “is a sign of our deep commitment to continue a long history to be a faith community fully engaged in the world and the lives of young people,” said the Rev. Renae Extrum-Fernandez, district superintendent of the United Methodist Church. 

The Berkeley campus ministry of the Wesley Foundation began in 1925. The current one-story Wesley Center building—which will be demolished to make way for the new structure—dates to the 1950s and sits adjacent to the older Trinity Church complex, which is a separate Methodist institution. 

“It’s not just the building. What we’re creating here is an environment that will help develop a whole person,” Trueblood said. “We want them to ask the important questions of life. What gives my life meaning and purpose?” 

The project, Trueblood said, “has taken miracles.” She acknowledged support from many in the religious community, the Wesley Center’s institutional neighbors including Trinity Church and the City Club, the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, as well as City of Berkeley officials and commissions that had approved the project. 

“I want to acknowledge that it’s an amazing thing we have happening here in our current economic time,” Zoning Adjustments Board Chair Deborah Matthews said during brief remarks at the groundbreaking program. 

Dr. Stephen Sutton of the University of California’s Residential and Student Service Program, the Rev. Dr. Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan of the Pacific School of Religion, and Wesley Foundation President Vincent Wong also spoke. 

About 60 people attended the event in a sunny courtyard behind the one-story building. Against a rhythmic backdrop of Zimbabwean drummers, Trueblood called up, four at a time, individuals who helped plan and support the project, to swing gold painted sledge hammers at the low concrete block wall surrounding the building terrace. 

The enthusiastic ceremonial hammering made barely a dent, but the actual demolition should begin soon, with completion of the structure slated for fall 2010. 

The new building, designed by architect Kirk Peterson, follows a traditional architectural style, neo-Gothic or Tudor in general character. It takes its design cues from Trinity United Methodist Church and the Berkeley City Club on the same block. The four-story structure will contain apartments on the upper floors and Wesley Center offices and common facilities at street level.  

Like neighboring structures it will be set back slightly from the street and free-standing. A large California live oak tree at the street corner of the property will be preserved within a small courtyard setback from the sidewalk. 

“The design of the new building relates to the old buildings. It strengthens the ensemble on the block,” John English, a local commentator and activist on planning issues, said approvingly after the groundbreaking. 

The new building will be a “green” structure, with numerous energy and carbon saving design elements. A fourth floor library will be named in honor of Peterson, the architect. The project is largely bond financed, but the Wesley Foundation is also seeking tax-deductible donations, and offering donors naming rights to portions of the project. 

With the demolition of the existing structure, a piece of mid-century architectural and cultural history will fade from the Berkeley landscape. In the 1960s, in addition to its Wesley Center functions, the low-rise building appears to have housed Berkeley’s first public, off-campus, activity center for gay and lesbian students. 

The new building, formally called “Wesley House and Campus Center” will be the second new student residence built in recent years by a religious organization along Bancroft Way. The Presbyterian Church-affiliated Westminster House at Bancroft and College, completed a large residential expansion in 2003. 

Both buildings have roots articulated more than 135 years ago when Daniel Coit Gilman, the second President of the newly established University of California, gave his inaugural address November 7, 1872 in Oakland. 

Gilman spoke directly to “the place of religion” in the institution. After noting that many in California “are afraid of a State University, and long for an ecclesiastical college,” he went on to emphasize that UC should be secular, not sectarian, unlike many of the private universities of the era. But then he mused “why may not any religious body or association…establish in connection with the University, a home, or hall, or college, which should be…a privileged residence?” 

“I can imagine on the slopes at Berkeley, a group of students’ houses, bearing honorable names, and made attractive by the convenience of their arrangements, the good fellowships within their walls, the privileges of the foundation. I should hope they would not be barracks, or dormitories—but homes, with rooms of common assembly and private study.”  

“I should hope the bathroom and the dining hall would be included in the structure; and if any would go so far as to have a place of light amusement and recreation, I for one should not object. Within such college halls, the love of learning would reign, bad morals and ill-manners would be excluded, and priceless associations would be cherished…Here, under right guidance, the best of moral and religious influences might be promoted.” 

“What church, what association, or what generous individual, will be the first to establish such a hall?” Gilman asked. 

Today, the “slopes at Berkeley” are lined, particularly along Bancroft Way and on Northside’s “Holy Hill,” with the type of private, religiously-sponsored, facilities Gilman envisioned, taking in members of the University community but operating independently from the secular institution. The new Wesley Center will be the newest facility in that long tradition.  


Black Press Pressures White House for Stimulus Money, Advertising Fairness

By Hazel Trice Edney NNPA News Service
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:44:00 AM

WASHINGTON (NNPA)—U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, is pressing the White House and the president’s cabinet on the apparent void in federal government advertising in black-owned newspapers and radio. 

CBC spokesman Jioni Palmer said the CBC anticipates more exchange on the issue in coming weeks as all White House cabinet secretaries have been sent copies of CBC letters on the issue. 

The dialog started April 23 when National Newspaper Publishers Association Chairman John B. Smith, Sr., sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, President Obama’s Special Advisor Valerie Jarrett, and Rep. Lee. Mr. Smith’s letter asked why the black press is not benefitting from economic stimulus dollars to help disseminate information to the black community on how to apply for and use the $787 billion in economic stimulus money. 

A story, partially prompted by the letter, was written by Wilmington Journal reporter Cash Michaels and syndicated by the NNPA News Service on April 27. 

Rep. Lee then followed up with a May 13 letter to Vice President Joseph Biden, who oversees the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the formal name for the president’s stimulus activity. Rep. Lee followed up with another letter to Timothy Geithner, secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Both letters were released to the NNPA News Service. 

“We write to bring to your attention the general concern among African-American newspapers and radio station owners that they are not being given a fair opportunity to compete for federal advertising dollars,” Rep. Lee and CBC leaders wrote to Mr. Biden. “Specifically, we seek your commitment that Black-owned media outlets are receiving their fair share of advertising dollars in conjunction with the various activities associated with the disbursement of federal dollars.” 

The letter further states, “We seek your additional commitment that black-owned media are being utilized by the federal government as it distributes the $787 billion recovery package. Additionally, we seek the same assurance when it comes to entities receiving money from the federal government ... We request a meeting with you at your earliest convenience to discuss this matter in detail.” 

A separate letter to Mr. Geithner, requests specific information on dollar amounts spent so far on his “department and financial institutions receiving TARP and TALF funds have spent on African-American, Latino and Asian-American-owned newspapers and radio stations.” Rep. Lee added, “Also please advise me on the measures your department has taken to insure that the minority-owned media outlets participate equitably in your department’s advertising, marketing and outreach activities.” 

TARP, which stands for Troubled Asset Relief Program; and TALF, which stands for Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, are both financial relief programs for businesses and corporations needing help. 

Mr. Palmer, CBC communications director, says the letter to Treasury Secretary Geithner was specifically a follow-up to questions that Rep. Lee posed to him as he testified May 21 before the House Financial Services and General Government Operations Subcommittee of which she is a member. 

“We have received acknowledgments of our concerns,” Mr. Palmer said. “While we have not settled on a specific course of action, a working conversation is ongoing.” 

In the April 27 story on Mr. Smith’s letter, which was widely circulated by NNPA Newspapers, NNPA Foundation Chairwoman Dorothy Leavell said it was “unclear in the black community where to go and what is available to help black families and black businesses, the very communities that we serve.” She added, “The black press has participated in teleconferences and have sought information locally, yet there are no clear answers to these two queries.’” 

Ms. Leavell vowed that the quest for information would continue. 

Mr. Palmer credits Mr. Smith’s letter, the article and the conversations that followed with stirring up interest and movement on the issue. 

“I think it’s fair to say that Mr. Smith’s letter, as well as the ongoing efforts of NNPA to bring attention to this economic justice, economic fairness, and economic parity issues are very important and very helpful,” Mr. Palmer said. 

Both of Rep. Lee’s letters, also signed by CBC officers Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), pointed out the dual purposes of the black press. 

“African-American owned newspapers and radio stations have historically captured and chronicled the hopes and history of the African-American community when no one else cared. They remain uniquely positioned to communicate directly with segments of the population that the federal government must reach to achieve its mission,” they wrote Mr. Biden. 


Opinion

Editorials

Development Goes Bust in Ireland

By Becky O’Malley
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:58:00 AM

Sometimes it can be hard to get away from home. Headline in the opinion section of the July 3 Irish Times we picked up in the Dublin airport: “Brought to our knees by bankers and developers.” It was a scathing piece by one Morgan Kelly, identified as professor of economics at University College, Dublin, documenting in exhaustive detail the relationship between Ireland’s building boom and its current disastrous economic bust. 

I told you so, he says: “Writing here two years ago I pointed out that the exuberant lending of Irish banks to builders and property developers would sink them if the property bubble burst. Since then, the bubble has burst, the banks have sunk, and we are all left wondering how to salvage them.” 

The evidence is everywhere as we’ve driven across Ireland to the west coast. Brand-new spec houses stand empty outside every small town. Professor Kelly derided “the delusion that the collapse of our property bubble is a temporary downturn,” and the belief that “in a few years when the global economy recovers we will be back building houses like it was 2006. All the ghost estates, empty office blocks, guest-less hotels and weed-choked fields that Nama [National Asset Management Agency] has bought on our behalf will once again be worth a fortune.”  

He denounced the “recklessness that impelled banks to lend hundreds of millions to builders to whom most of us would hesitate to lend a bucket.” In Ireland, Nama bought up these bad loans in order to keep such banks afloat. A similar plan has been proposed to save U.S. banks but was never implemented.  

Our Hertz van broke down midway across the country, so the six of us (grandparents, parents, grandkids) were forced to take refuge in one of the “guest-less hotels” for a night while we waited for a replacement. We got a good deal on the rooms, about a third of the published rates in what was advertised as a luxury hotel. We had the place pretty much to ourselves, except for a TV crew that was using it as a filming location. The on-site “fine dining” restaurant seemed to be closed, perhaps permanently, a casualty of the burst bubble like many of Ireland’s former foodie shrines. 

Kelly’s analysis seemed also to apply also to what’s been going on in our city, and in San Francisco, Oakland and the rest of the United States. He concluded that: 

“While there has been considerable speculation about dark motives for bailing out developers and banks, I do not believe the government’s behavior has been corrupt: it has been far worse. At least corruption implies a sense that you are doing wrong, and need to be paid in return. Our government actually thought it was doing the right thing in risking everything to safeguard the interests of the developers who had given us an economy that was the envy of Europe. 

“Instead of recognizing bankers and developers as parasites on our national prosperity, the government came to see them as its source.” 

It all sounds depressingly familiar. When we left Berkeley the City Council was moving quickly to revise the downtown plan in order to make it even more developer-friendly. Similar developer-motivated zoning changes were being touted by city staff for West Berkeley. A for-profit developer who seemed to have come on hard times with his lenders was proposing to change his project to senior housing in order to replenish his capital from the city’s housing trust fund.  

But just as in Ireland, there’s no reason to believe that our own government’s behavior—local, state and national—is corrupt: it’s just irrational and poorly informed. We don’t have a net shortage of buildings, we have existing buildings poorly allocated because of a malfunctioning market. Downtown Berkeley buildings are empty because rents are too high. Residents are being evicted from nice houses with pleasant yards in East Oakland and Richmond because they’ve been sold toxic mortgages at usurious interest rates. Yet Berkeley councilmembers continue to be enablers for the over-building addiction.  

Kelly again, predicting the future: 

“The reality is that, because of our surfeit of empty housing, there will be almost no construction activity for the next decade. Empty apartment blocks in Dublin will eventually be rented, albeit at rates so low that many will decay into slums. However, most of the unfinished housing estates [subdivisions] that litter rural Ireland—where the only economic activity was building houses—will never be occupied.” 

Substitute Berkeley (or Oakland or San Francisco) for Dublin, and Stockton for rural Ireland, and you get the picture. At least our guest-less hotels are on hold for the moment. Berkeley is trailing Ireland in the boom-bust sweepstakes, and it’s possible that informed citizens who recognize that developers are parasites on our local prosperity will be able to pull back on the reins before government goes any farther in foolishly pandering to development interests.  

 


Cartoons

Gov. Schwarzenegger's Deficit

By Justin DeFreitas
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:30:00 AM


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:58:00 AM

HOW BERKELEY CAN YOU BE? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am sad to announce that the “How Berkeley Can You Be?” Parade and Festival will not be happening this year. There simply is not enough money to produce it. For the first 10 years I produced the event along with Karen Hester. Because I was the founder of the event, and I considered it a labor of love, I worked for free and Karen was paid a modest fee.  

A few years ago, Epic Arts took over the event and did a splendid job, but after losing their home on Ashby and MLK and the staff having to get full time jobs to support families, they decided this year that it was no longer feasible for them to produce the event. In addition, whereas the City of Berkeley has always been extremely supportive in supporting the event with a $10,000 grant, they have also felt obliged to charge for city services provided, and so we got hit with an $8,000 bill for police and public works.  

So what we received with the one hand was taken away with the other. As you can imagine, it takes an incredible amount of time, energy, and money to produce an event with the scope of “How Berkeley.” Unfortunately, we were missing all three ingredients this year. So perhaps it will happen next year, perhaps not. We’ll see.  

But if you have any ideas as to how we can raise sufficient money in the future to hire proper staff and pay performers, I would love to hear them. Feel free to e-mail me at john31245@gmail.com. Since 1996, I feel that the “How Berkeley” Parade and Festival added much to the fabric of the community and I hope that over the years there was something you enjoyed, that made you laugh, that was stimulating or that even outraged you. I know I will miss marching up University Avenue with all the other celebrants. I hope you will miss us too. 

John Solomon 

 

• 

BERKELEY CITY BUDGET 101 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to congratulate Victoria Peirotes on her detailed and comprehensive June 25 commentary, “Berkeley City Budget 101.” As a Cal graduate, I am distressed at the kinds of cuts the City of Berkeley has enacted, especially to many social service programs, without looking first at their own budget for city employees. I concur with Ms. Peirotes that the City of Berkeley needs to address the “disproportionate number of city employees in Berkeley” and their generous salaries and benefits. When the California Citizens Compensation Commission voted to cut state lawmakers and elected officials salaries by 18 percent, couldn’t the City of Berkeley consider even a 12 percent reduction in city employees as proposed by Ms. Peirotes? To have a city employee for roughly every 62 residents should jump out at once as something to be addressed. Also when a retired city manager will enjoy an annual compensation of about $270,000 as stated in Ms. Peirotes’ commentary, something needs to change. I hope that these kinds of issues will be addressed moving forward in the budget process. 

Marilyn Smith 

 

• 

CITY COUNCIL ARROGANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to commend you for publishing Ms. Peirotes’ commentary. That, and the three following letters to the editor based on her op-ed are all good ones—ones which the City Council ought to have embedded in their Tuesday night folders. 

I was out of town and only just got a chance to read the above, but am struck by the thought expressed in all of them: no input from citizen’s groups seems to be listened to, entered into the discussions about budget, and never show up in presentations by council members. 

Along with Ms. Peirotes, I attended two councilmembers’ district budget meetings. A total of 40 people attended —seven in one district, 33 in the other. In neither case were minutes kept, no offer of conferring with other councilmembers came from either councilmember, nor were any of some of the very good ideas presented visible in City Council’s Tuesday’s charade discussions. 

I’ve asked why more neighbors didn’t attend the meetings, and received the reply, “What meetings?” On the other hand, why announce a meeting if you’re not going to pay any attention to what is said, or spread the good ideas presented? If the process is a forgone conclusion, why not just say so? Just say “We know best how much money you should pay us, and we certainly know better than anyone in Berkeley on what projects to spend it.” 

Our city’s budget process is probably a good one—on paper but not in action. I’m ashamed of our City Council for many things, but not really listening to willing constituents about their budget ideas takes the cake of arrogance. 

Tim Wallace 

 

• 

TED VINCENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for publishing Paul Gackle’s fine tribute to Ted Vincent, a true working stiff’s renaissance man. I knew Ted from the 1970s as middle-age jocks with the Dolphin South-End Runners in San Francisco, a fun club for the average bloke. DSE’s motto and main coaching tip was “Start slowly and taper off.” We also had a common interest in labor history and political activism, besides our Sunday morning schlepping, sometimes called running. I must confess I’ve never read Ted’s important scholarly books on African-Americans and on the black influences in Mexican history. But I did enjoy his Mudville’s Revenge on the commercialization of sports. Ted was a good-natured chap who was always a pleasure to hang out with. I’ll miss his informed commentary in his letters and op-ed opinions to the Daily Planet. I know I won’t be the only one. 

Harry Siitonen  

 

• 

POOR BUGGERS LIKE US 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It seems to me that one of the latest, greatest, ironies, too thick to cut even with a chain saw, is the long drawn-out lawsuit against the EPA by the Center for Biological Diversity, saying that the use of pesticides (74 of them), is endangering certain species of newts, foxes, shrimps, etc. Insecticides, fungicides and herbicides, as we all should be aware, are used rampantly, to grow all our vegetables, all our livestock, fruit, etc. My heart goes out to the kit fox and the shrimp, but, our species, homo sapiens, is certainly threatened as much as these other species! Question is: how come there’s no Agency, say the “Center for Poor Buggers Like Us,” which would insist on banning lethal pesticides that we ingest each day? Is it because corporate farming would loose money? The use of the word “green,” as in the “Green Revolution,” is another great irony. What it actually means is the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizer to grow cheap crops and thus maximize profits in a way detrimental to our health.  

Robert Blau  

 

• 

LEFT-LIBERAL IDIOTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Another incredibly stupid column by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor on Oakland crime. 

First we are treated to the profane rantings of street “poets” and then, as always, the apologies for the criminal youth element. 

It’s everyone’s fault except the criminals who commit the crimes! For years the same columnist had windy op-eds celebrating the violent sideshow culture which resulted in mayhem and death as any sane person could have predicted. We are supposed to be neighbors and partners (!) with people who get their kicks out of hurting others? No thanks, Jesse. 

I have always opposed Three Strikes as well as the death penalty and feel that prisons are yet another failed socialist program. However we cannot have barbarians freely walking the streets looking for victims. Maybe swift street trials with immediate public hangings is the answer. Obviously a death penalty that takes 20 years to enforce is not a deterrent. One thing is guaranteed, when a particular killer is executed he will not be killing again. It’s a 100 percent sure thing. 

Allen-Taylor is right that we do need to consider radical (fundamental) alternatives to the current failed policy. However the endless apologias of left-liberal idiots do not constitute the desired radical change. 

Michael P. Hardesty 

Oakland 

 

• 

SLEEPING ON THE STREETS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What is humane about allowing people to sleep on the curbs and sidewalks of public streets? This has been one of the worst summers for the overflow transient population from People’s Park coming into the neighborhoods at park curfew. The sanitation has become unmanageable with dumpsters and stairwells becoming bathrooms. The 3AM domestic disputes, aggressive behavior and personal items strewn down the street have made living here a daily exercise in frustration. I’m embarrassed to have out of town visitors see this degradation because I have always been very proud of Berkeley and its diversity. I’m sick and tired of the few ruining it for the many. Let’s clean up our streets. 

Gary Cooper 

 

• 

CHILDREN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have a vision that in this country no child will grow up to feel unwanted by the community in which he or she lives. But I wonder if, during this time of shrinking budgets, investment in the caring for and encouragement of children will remain a high priority. How can we teach our children to show caring for others and practice mutual support of one another unless we go out of our way to show caring for them? Remember our children don’t just need to learn the skills to become employable, they need to learn how to make one responsive community out of differences in wealth, race, gender and ethnicity. Cutting education budgets today will create social alienation tomorrow. 

Let us resolve that even in this tense economic time we will make the nation indivisible by investing in the education and well-being of our children. 

Romila Khanna 

Albany 

 

• 

SOCIALISTS! 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Because the care for Earth cannot be achieved in a for-profit, competitive system, the Peace and Freedom Party of California is holding a meeting at its regular State Central Committee meeting, to bring together people to put socialism on the ballot throughout the United States. The National Organizing Conference to advance this effort urges your participation. Please join us. 

We well understand that we cannot win socialism via the ballot box. We want to enable it to rise from all of us. As well as being on the streets and in the meeting halls, we use the popular, conventional device, elections to contribute to people knowing what socialism is, defusing it—from the people’s standpoint, and getting people to agree that whatever we call it, work for the justice we seek is socialist. 

On the ballots, as candidates, we are interviewed , present our ideas at forums, are given a bit more air- and media- time besides our usual work. 

We are preparing an agenda for the day, directed at enabling the people who come to begin to form a foundation for our work. While building socialist struggle, putting it on the ballots, is our only stated intention, the many facets of doing this will be the basis of our plans. Contribute your ideas. Let us include them in our program. Come and put them together with others’. 

We expect an exciting result. Our work is to bring forward people’s goals so we can ALL live lovely lives, live as well as The Rich in gentle care of Earth, no one excluded; no distribution of the results of our labor by merit, but just by our being here, being together, working through toward fulfillment of these goals. We want to share our resources that will enable more of us to work toward attaining ballot status for socialist movements for the 2010 election cycle. 

Aug. 1 at the Hiram W. Johnson State Building, Milton Marks Conference Center (Lower Level), San Diego Rooms, A, B and C, 455 Golden Gate Ave., San Francisco. Wheelchair accessible. 

Norma J F Harrison


Will High-End Condo Project Doom Courthouse?

By Robert Brokl
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:59:00 AM

The Oakland City Planning Commission that was appointed by Jerry Brown (the two new commissioners from Dellums are no improvement) wasn’t dubbed the Approval Commission for nothing—the commissioners supported Condomania developers with unbridled passion. Some market rate condo projects were built, some are half-built—the most notorious being “CityWalk” in the shadow of City Hall with its torn Tyvek wrapping flapping in the breeze.  

In my neighborhood, Temescal, where the condo development pressures were especially strong, the hurricane has passed and most of the proposed projects are “on hold,” the sites of approved projects with entitlements are for sale, attractive and affordable cottages, small businesses, and apartments, once presumed toast, are being rented out. Even the beloved Kingfish Pub is about to reopen with a new operator. 

But local tornadoes threaten “sites” like the Courthouse Athletic Club at 2935 Telegraph at the foot of Pill Hill, in the stretch between Uptown and Temescal. The Courthouse, with its unusual Colonial Revival facade is a forlorn, empty landmark, soon to be (if we’re not lucky) one of the highest profile victims of the ongoing impact of the Commissioners’ unthinking zeal—condomania slamming up against the economic reality of overproduction and sated demand for a niche market. 

Trammell Crow Residential, a Dallas-based housing developer, bought the site for $7.7 million, closing down the gym in the former mortuary—eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. TCR submitted plans for a five-story, 142-unit, high-end condo project. The City of Oakland tends to pick the pockets of out-of-town developers by giving them a higher bar to jump over, so TCR even conducted an EIR. (Only one, for the Global Video condos, was required of all the Temescal projects, and again for unlucky out-of-towners.) The project and the EIR were dutifully approved by the Planning Commission in August, 2007. The EIR did note that the Courthouse was in an area of several distinguished period revival mortuary businesses—including others facing uncertain futures—which constituted a potential landmark district.  

That was so yesterday. TCR, realizing their project was going nowhere, quietly shopped it around. TCR’s good fortune was to find an eager new buyer—the Oakland Housing Authority. OHA was willing to pay $9 million for the site with entitlements, a sale that would have flown completely under the radar had not TCR resisted a $30,000 mitigation fee. TCR also wanted one of the conditions of approval from 2007 modified, at the demand of OHA. TCR now wanted to clear the site before obtaining the building permits. Only these issues caused the radical change of developers and plans to publicly surface. Instead of being approved administratively as first planned, the Planning Commission and Landmarks Advisory Board weighed in two years later. Unfortunately, they flubbed their chances for a do-over. 

But OHA isn’t just any deep-pocked developer still standing while others lost their shirts. Hugely controversial, as the largest landlord in the city, they’ve been sued by the city attorney over the “condition of unabated criminal activity (including drug sales and prostitution) at some sites,” and by their own calculations have some $75 million in deferred maintenance, for which they got a $10.6 million federal stimulus grant. They resisted onsite managers for years, and flatlands neighbors of their projects (redundancy since OHA is only IN the flatlands) must monitor their projects.  

OHA’s participation, now revealed, was problematic, especially since the project grew from one costing $25 million under TCR to a $40 million, 115-unit, “workforce housing” OHA project with the same footprint. TCR had done an EIR, OHA would undoubtedly need federal funds and therefore more (federal) review was required. This was pointed out to them by noted environmental attorney Susan Brandt-Hawley, HUD, and the State Office of Historic Preservation. Rather than comply, OHA dropped out. Or did they? 

But inertia can keep even phantom projects moving forward. TCR decided to go through the motions of compliance with the 2007 conditions, thereby rendering moot the neighbors’ appeal to the City Council of the Planning Commission’s renewed go-ahead. TCR is completing plans and permits for their original market rate condo project and demolition nears.  

First, they will ante up close to $500,000 in fees—”two staff positions,” according to one City employee—so no questions are likely to be asked about whether TCR will simply put the lot up for sale post-demo, or whether OHA will suddenly reappear with rekindled interest and money. Who other than OHA could meet TCR’s price, especially considering the additional costs of demolition and site cleanup? And, despite OHA’s strategic “withdrawal” while the building stood, will the feds indulgently relent and open their vault to OHA once it’s gone?  

The Courthouse sits in District 3, and that district’s Councilperson Nancy Nadel has raised (in June 3 e-mails we’ve obtained) the important questions to staff:  

“We are very concerned because community folks who had used public records to look into the housing authority’s plans for the site, saw that Trammell Crow is financially stressed and there was some info that their bank was about to foreclose. Therefore it seems like we can do some research just like we do on individual homes to see if they are moving to foreclosure and see if we have some authority to prevent a project from turning into another CityWalk... 

“The OHA deal has died and TC says they still have their equity partner. However, I greatly fear that we will have a gaping hole or a half finished building in yet another site for 5 years after having destroyed a viable building and an historic one at that? Is there any way to assure they have the money they need for the project before they start?” 

Not bloody likely, at last by staff, not with those fees to a financially-strapped city! A call to the Bank of the West “relationship manager” (aka loan officer) in Newport Beach discerned that the Bank was funding the demo and site cleanup. Partners with TCR since the heady days of 2005, the Bank now must ponder throwing good money after bad. The banker—innocently?—inquired about how the neighborhood would take an OHA project.  

Letters to Bank of the West President Michael Shepherd might help, though: Michael Shepherd, President/CEO, Bank of the West, 180 Montgomery St., 25th Floor, San Francisco, CA, 94104. Or bring it up with your local Bank of the West manager. 

 

Robert Brokl is a North Oakland resident.


Berkeley City Budget 102

By Victoria Peirotes
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:59:00 AM

California is insolvent and in every corner of every county and city we are feeling the pain. Draconian measures have been taken at all levels of civic governance to cut expenditures and boost falling revenues in order to balance budgets.  

Yet you wouldn’t know this from Berkeley’s upbeat rhetoric. The Berkeley Voice featured Mayor Bates on front page saying “Berkeley’s Future is Rosy.” Channel 4 televised a Berkeley employee effusing, “We are fortunate to be better off than most thanks to our city officials.” The Chronicle reported, “Berkeley’s budget will actually grow. City leaders cite a number of factors, including their own decisions.” 

This is all most self-congratulatory. But is Berkeley truly exempt from the budget ravages that plague the whole state? Or are Mayor Bates and City Manager Kamlarz just great PR people and masters of illusion? It would seem the latter.  

On June 23 the Berkeley City Council unanimously passed a new biennial budget. While this budget reflects the agenda of the mayor, it is not a fair one for our citizens. Consider this: 

• For new revenue the budget relies on increased taxes and fees, a steep reduction of services and infrastructure spending, and debilitating cuts to social service programs.  

• The adopted budget funds at 100 percent the cost of city employees’ salary, health and retirement benefits packages (including an 8 percent raise recently granted the city manager).  

Berkeley voters continue to tax themselves at among the highest levels in the state. Mayor Bates admits, “Voters have been very generous.” Others say, however, that Berkeley voters have been mislead, duped and fleeced by City Hall.  

A typical example: Last November Measure GG was put on the ballot by the City Council. It was hyped as critical for keeping our fire stations open. It was passed. What voters were not told is that funding for fire protection normally comes from the general fund and not from a bond measure. What a windfall for City Hall to get taxpayers to pony up property taxes to alleviate the strain on general fund expenditures. And what have they done with the freed-up money? Well, it helps finance city employee compensation packages. Would Measure GG have passed if the electorate had known it was taking on more tax liability, not to ensure fire protection services but rather to pay for gold-plated city employee compensation packages? It is doubtful.  

We can not sustain a situation where, as the San Francisco Chronicle points out, “The average cost of city employees is roughly $125,000 per employee including benefits while those in the private sector earn an average pay of $75,900 including benefits.” In sum, city employees make nearly twice as much as the people who pay them. 

Unlike Berkeley, most other public entities have faced up to this fact and are doing something about it. The majority have concluded “share-the-pain” concessions from labor or at the very least have begun negotiating to do so:  

“The State of California votes to slash employee pay by 18 percent.” 

“Contra Costa workers agree to major contract concessions in cost-saving agreement and new employees will no longer receive lifetime retiree health care benefits.” 

“86.4 percent of union voters in San Francisco agree to concessions and many will be laid off.”  

“Most of Oakland’s unions and the mayor agree to a 10 percent cut in compensation.”  

Now contrast those headlines with Berkeley City Hall’s recent announcement, and scratch your head: 

“Berkeley City Council approves a budget and proudly says there will be no layoffs and no union contracts singled out.” 

In the play Hamlet Shakespeare wrote “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” It was and tragedy ensued. Well, something is surely not right in the “state” of Berkeley.  

If you are one of the 52,000 people who vote in Berkeley, then make your voice heard. Demand that your elected representatives earn your vote by making your interests their first priority. Insist they balance our city budget, not by taxing more but by reducing city employee costs. Contact them, voice your opinion in the news media, or simply dialogue with your neighbors. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” 

 

Victoria Peirotes is a Berkeley resident.


United We Stand, Diverted We Survive

By Regan Richardson
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:00:00 AM

The current aspect of the “Trader Joe’s” project soon coming up for consideration before the City Council—a traffic diverter on Berkeley Way—is the last recognizable shred of the original requests the neighborhood had made in October of 2002. The mitigation of excessive traffic on a residential street with a full traffic diverter, in this case Berkeley Way, is not a special request on our part.  

The mandate for protection here is clear. It is an integral component of the Berkeley General Plan, the UASP, and Council Resolution 52,353-N.S. Section 23E.28.080 of city code, Location of Parking Spaces and Driveways, clearly states: “Access to new parking areas for commercial uses shall be oriented in such a way as to minimize the use of streets serving primarily residential uses.” The University Avenue Strategic Plan, a set of guidelines in place for all development on the UA corridor, specifies in Policy UA-21: “Implement improvements to tame traffic along University Avenue, but protect the adjacent neighborhoods from excessive traffic.” City Council Resolution 52,353-N.S. reinforces that “…it is a stated policy of said Transportation Element (Policy 2.36) to prevent to the greatest extent possible the use of local streets by through traffic,” and resolves to this end that the use of diverters on “other than major and collector streets” is accepted city policy to help protect the existing residents’ “public health and safety.”  

Certain streets like University, Ashby, Sacramento, Gilman, and Dwight have been designated by the city as “major” or traffic-bearing streets. The current theory seems to be that since we can’t figure out how fix our traffic problems, the only option left is to overrun all the local streets, including primarily residential streets, with excessive traffic and thus ruin Berkeley for everyone. This is not a viable solution. Democratic, maybe, but not very inventive! 

There is absolutely no reason Berkeley Way deserves fewer protections than current Berkeley neighborhoods with protective traffic barriers that also abut grocery stores. This project is not just a Trader Joe’s, it is a Trader Joe’s with a commercial parking entrance on a residential street and 148 apartments towering above it, the first of its kind in Berkeley. No one seems ready to dispute the fact that the single-entry/exit Trader’s Joe’s parking lot on Berkeley Way will easily be the most heavily trafficked commercial driveway in Berkeley. Those of you who might naively fantasize that we can rely on the honor system and that without a full barrier, a “No Left Turn” sign at the Trader Joe’s parking garage exit will prevent Trader Joe’s shoppers from abusing our street, please raise your hands. Anyone? Berkeley Way should be, by virtue of its name if nothing else, the most iconic street in Berkeley. Are dense five-story buildings with homogenous grocery stores really what we want our city to look like? Welcome to Anywhere, USA. 

We would like to impress upon those have recently accused us of acting merely out of self-interest that this was not a short-sighted or selfish attempt on our part to safeguard our own little patch of street in Berkeley. We may have been overly optimistic in 2002 about our chances to effect change, but we realized by the size of the proposed project, originally a whopping 186 units, that this was going to be a precedent-setting building.  

We entered into a dialogue with the developer with the stated intent to help overhaul the entire development process, to help assure that in future, none of our Berkeley neighbors would have to fight a block-by-block battle for their neighborhoods ever again. Our mission statement, written in October 2002, was a call to arms to all Berkeley residents, specifying not only our neighborhood goals in relation to this particular building, but also a very specific list of longterm goals for the safeguarding of small residential neighborhoods like ours from inappropriate mega-projects. We did not commit to spending countless hours and precious personal resources poring over code and zoning laws to win one small skirmish. Seven years later we’re still here trying to make a difference for all of Berkeley. Selfish, indeed.  

To those who would actually dare to suggest that we are “lucky” to get a traffic diverter, I say the following: this is not Christmas in July for us. The barrier is no triumph, it is a last-gasp survival tactic to save our neighborhood. It is the very monument to the fact that we were not allowed to help shape a neighborhood-appropriate building for this site. We have spent 7 long years earning what you perceive to be our “serendipity.” 

The question is not why this neighborhood should be protected. City zoning policy and law clearly indicates that we have every right to expect to be protected by all means available that the city will grant us. The real question is this: why is Berkeley not enforcing the policies and laws so thoughtfully put in place over decades that require the protection of existing residents? Why is Berkeley so eager to reward developers with the policy-busting, excessive variances that destroy local residential neighborhoods? Why are the neighbors being forced to enforce policy and law themselves? In a developer-friendly city, who is going to protect us, if not ourselves? It is not private Berkeley residents who have created the untenable, development-giddy scenario here. The traffic barrier is the last valiant stand of this particular skirmish, in a protracted war waged for the fate of all of Berkeley.  

I recently came across an excerpt from a May 25, 2006 letter to the Zoning Adjustments Board which is still woefully pertinent in this context: “It’s time to decide: Are we going to do this the Berkeley Way, and do what’s right for the future of our fair city, or are we going to do it the developers’ way, in the name of the almighty dollar, and seriously reduce the quality of life for all concerned? A member of the Transportation Commission recently had the audacity to ask us why we think we are so special and should be spared the severe detriment of the Triple Threat of traffic from Trader Joe’s, the 64-unit residential entrance on Berkeley Way, and the residential trash pick-up. Our answer to that is simple: we are not special. We don’t think anyone should be asked to live this way, including the people who will live in this project, and we will continue to fight to make sure that the lowest common denominator dictated by the developer’s bottom line doesn’t become the standard for living in all of Berkeley.” United we stand, diverted we survive. 

 

Regan Richardson is a Berkeley Way resident. 

 

 

 


The Settlements Are the Real Barrier

By Tracie De Angelis Salim
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:02:00 AM

“We are taught from a young age not to see Palestinians, because to see Palestinians would only complicate our lives.” Yahav, our guide from the Israeli Coalition Against House Demolitions (www.icahd.org), said this to us on the first day of a recent delegation to Palestine-Israel with the Interfaith Peace Builders. 

With Yahav, we took a tour of settlements in East Jerusalem and heard about the plans in place for future expansion. The most striking part of this trip was our visit to Ma’ale Adumim, a settlement in the Occupied West Bank of Palestine. Ma’ale Adumim is the largest settlement bloc in the Territories. It is 30 square miles and home to at least 40,000 Israeli settlers. Ma’ale Adumim was established illegally in 1975 by 23 Israeli families on a hilltop. It would be virtually impossible to remove this settlement. As stated, it is 30 square miles; in comparison, the city of Manhattan is 33.77 square miles when you combine the areas of land and water. Ma’ale Adumim has its own college, two large-scale shopping malls (complete with Ace Hardware and Office Depot), a library, medical center, sports center, four swimming pools and an array of beautiful palm trees and landscaping. This is not a settlement outpost; it is a settlement, a city unto itself. It is one of only four settlements in the West Bank classified by Israel as a “city.”  

Settlers began building settlement outposts in the early 1990s in an effort to expand Jewish presence on territory the Palestinians claim for part of a future state. These settlers had no government sanction, but former Cabinet ministers, settler leaders and lawmakers have all confirmed the squatter camps went up with the full knowledge of the state. Many of these outposts are small, flimsy encampments, but others are permanent structures built near government-sanctioned settlements, in effect extending their reach.  

There are about 100 illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank, which Israel is required to dismantle under the internationally backed “roadmap” peace plan.  

According to both Israeli and Palestinian NGO’s, since 1967, Israel has established at least 214 settlements in the West Bank. As of May 2002, over 400,000 Israelis live beyond the “Green Line:” 200,000 in the West Bank, and other 200,000 in East Jerusalem. These settlements criss-cross the West Bank and are generally off-limits to Palestinians. 

Ma’ale Adumim is illegal under both International and Israeli law and is in violation of article 49 under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The article clearly states that Israel is prohibited from establishing settlements: “The Occupying Power shall not transfer parts of its own civilian population into territories it occupies.”  

Further, the problem with Ma’ale Adumim is that it is situated in such a way that it literally cuts the West Bank in half. Clearly, this settlement has great political significance. It is part of a larger plan which has two parts: The Ring Road and the E-1 plan. E-1 is short for “East 1,” the administrative name given to the stretch of land northeast of Jerusalem, to the west of the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. Israel has long sought to expand Ma’ale Adumim westward to incorporate the so-called E-1 area of land that would link it to Jerusalem, but has frozen this project in the face of U.S. pressure.  

When our guide, Yahav, was asked why Israel would respond to pressure with regards to E-1 and not to President Obama’s insistence on halting all settlement activity, his answer was, “Even for Israel, this violation would be too blatant.” Construction of E-1 would jeopardize the hopes for a two-state solution. The E-1 plan would, by design, block off the narrow undeveloped land corridor which runs east of Jerusalem and which is necessary for any meaningful future connection between the southern and the northern parts of the West Bank. The plan involves about 12 KM of land, a significant part of which is privately owned by Palestinians. Most of the area was declared “State Land” by Israel in the 1980s (land that is not owned by any individual and is thus the property of the State). Completion of E-1 would thus break the West Bank into two parts— north and south. It would also sever access to East Jerusalem for Palestinians in the West Bank, and sever access to the West Bank for Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. Both of these situations are antithetical to the achievement of any real, durable peace agreement and the establishment of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.  

As for the Ring Road, Israel plans to construct a road within East Jerusalem, again on confiscated Palestinian land. The road will seal off the main access road from the town of Sur Bahir to Jerusalem, isolate the town of Um Laysoun, and require demolition of numerous Palestinian homes, among other injustices. The Eastern Ring Road is intended to facilitate Israeli access to settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, linking them directly to each other and to West Jerusalem.  

While President Obama views the removal of the settlement outposts and the freezing of all settlement activity as vital to the peace process, he does not go far enough. In order for a viable two-state solution to exist, all future settlement activity must cease now and a discussion about what will happen to the large settlement blocs inside the West Bank is crucial.  

For President Obama to gain the backing of the U.S. Congress and citizens of America to push this issue, it is incumbent upon Mr. Obama to paint a realistic picture of what a settlement outpost is, what a settlement is and what the settlement blocs are. Ma’Ale Adumim is not something Israel is going to easily give up. While settlement outposts may be on the chopping block, the dismantling of strictly these is in no way, a road map to peace. It is the large settlement blocs, such as Ma’Ale Admuim that need to be discussed in order for the United States to be an honest broker for peace.  

The E-1 plan, along with Netanyahu’s resistance to curtailing natural growth will make it impossible to reach an agreement on the question of permanent borders and will grab the last area of open land available for Palestinian development and a two state solution. As Yahav stated towards the end of our tour, “The framework of this occupation is what is important; the occupation is not for security, it is a land grab and the heart of the matter is control of the land, the people and the resources.” 

 

Tracie De Angelis Salim is a Berkeley resident.  


Columns

Public Eye: Where Are the Jobs?

By Bob Burnett
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:46:00 AM

More than 14 million people are unemployed in the United States, 9.5 percent of the workforce. While there are a few signs of economic recovery, employment isn’t one of them. The Obama administration must address the jobs crisis. 

In the June 27 Republican radio address, House Minority Leader John Boehner blamed the Obama administration for the high unemployment rate. While that’s a stretch—7.5 million Americans have lost their jobs since November 2007, when the recession began on George Bush’s watch, and only 1.6 million of these job losses occurred under Obama—the fact remains that unemployment is at historic highs. And even worse than it looks. 

The most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics summary has a “realistic” unemployment rate of 16.5 percent. That figure includes “Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.” 

While one in six American workers are effectively unemployed, a growing number are chronically underemployed, working part-time but desiring full-time work. Citing a report from the Northeastern University Center for Labor Market Studies, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert notes, “The overall labor underutilization rate in May 2009 had risen to 18.2 percent, its highest value in 26 years.” These are workers, such as teachers or carpenters, whose hours have been cut back and are forced to take additional jobs as waiters or taxicab drivers in order to make ends meet. 

The bottom line is that one out of every three Americans who wants to work has inadequate employment. What actions should be taken to fix this problem? 

First we have to understand the factors causing this crisis. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, many segments of the American economy are shrinking. Since the fourth quarter of 2008 only “education and health services,” and “government” has increased employment. There have been huge losses in “manufacturing,” “construction,” and “professional and business services.” When the housing bubble burst, most construction stopped. There was a financial meltdown and many white-collar workers lost their jobs. In parallel, there was a disaster in the automobile industry and orders for durable goods fell, resulting in additional job losses. Consumers spent less, depressing retail sales and causing widespread business failures and layoffs. 

In a typical recession, we might expect these jobs to reappear as the economy rebounded. Unfortunately, most economists don’t expect this to happen. Not all laid-off workers at Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors are going to be rehired. Neither are those carpenters and real-estate agents who lost their jobs. Nor are Wall Street accountants, bankers, financial analysts, and lawyers miraculously going to regain their positions. In many segments of the economy, the lost jobs aren’t coming back because there’s going to be a “structural adjustment.” 

That grim reality suggests that traditional palliatives, such as unemployment checks, aren’t going to get America through this recession. There has to be massive retraining. But it’s unclear what jobs American workers should be prepared for. 

Economist Robert Reich notes that manufacturing jobs are disappearing everywhere, not just in the United States. In general, as routine jobs disappear new technical occupations are taking their place. Reich defines these as “symbolic analytic” work because most of it has to do with analyzing, manipulating and communicating through numbers, shapes, words, ideas. Yesterday’s assembly-line worker must become today’s computer technician. 

Writing in The Nation, businessman Leo Hindery and labor leader Leo Gerard recognize the nature of America’s employment crisis and call for bold action to end the jobless recovery. “The Obama administration... must [enact] a national manufacturing and industrial policy that puts American workers first.” Hindery and Gerard see four critical elements of this program. 

First, it must “pick winners” in the economy. Rather than rely upon the market to determine what economic sectors most benefit the United States, the Obama administration has to take the lead. Prime examples include clean energy technology, “green” transportation including high-speed rail, and health-care and security software. 

Second, Hindery and Gerard call for the Administration to “fund a 10-year program of significant public investment to upgrade and rebuild our nation’s infrastructure.” There should a public works program on the scale of that initiated by FDR during the Great Depression. 

Third, the authors recommend that federal procurement policies be guided by “Buy American” requirements. They note, “Federal purchases make up about 20 percent of the economy, yet America is the only nation among the major developed nations and China without a significant ‘buy domestic’ procurement program.” 

Finally, Hindery and Gerard argue for corporate tax reform, “incentives for corporations to create jobs here [and not] relocate manufacturing and services abroad.” 

Several malignant factors combined to produce the current severe recession. Foremost among them was the “hands off” policy of the Bush administration, which was guided by the naïve belief that the market would remedy all problems. That philosophy has been repudiated. 

The Obama administration’s number one priority must be seizing control of the economy with a bold policy to create meaningful jobs for American workers.  

 

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


UnderCurrents: The End of OUSD State Control: A Tale of Two Legislators

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:47:00 AM

It seems somewhat odd, doesn’t it, that our good friends at the Oakland Tribune waited until the State of California officially turned (back) over the keys to the Oakland Unified School District Administration Building to write one of the better articles summing up the damaging effects of the state takeover.  

Oakland could have used the help of the city’s major media local newspaper during a time when many residents (and some of the city’s political leaders) were fighting to regain local control. Still, better late than never. I suppose. 

It has been so long ago, you have to be reminded that the sole reason the state took over OUSD in the first place in 2003 was, supposedly, to put the district’s finances in order. You only have to quote from Katy Murphy’s Tribune article to see how … um … unsatisfactorily that particular endeavor turned out for the locals. 

“Although financial problems triggered the Oakland school district’s takeover,” Ms. Murphy writes, “the state administration appeared to be more focused on redesigning schools and overhauling central office services than on stabilizing the district’s finances. None of the three state-appointed administrators had strong financial backgrounds, and the district has had three chief financial officers since 2007. … In 2008, Oakland Unified balanced its budget for the first time since before the state takeover. The budget is balanced again this year, but because of deep state funding cuts-including several announced in late May-the district’s surplus cash reserves are all but depleted. The district also plans to spend the rest of the $100 million state loan in the coming year, leaving the schools with no cushion and a debt that could take decades to repay.” 

Ms. Murphy writes that at the time of the state takeover, estimates of Oakland Unified’s debt “ranged wildly” between $35 million and close to $100 million (my information at the time was that the actual debt was closer to the lower figure), and the Tribune story adds that coming out of state receivership, the district is $89 million in debt, with an additional $18 million deficit forecasted for the 2010-11 school year. Even if you take the highest figure—$100 million—as the OUSD shortfall that triggered the 2003 takeover (and, as I said, I believe the actual shortfall figure was lower), the combined $89 million/$18 million debt-deficit figure means that Oakland Unified is in worst financial shape—by $7 million—after the state takeover than before. 

Astonishing, it would seem, for a state takeover whose rationale for coming into being was solely to put Oakland Unified’s finances back in order. 

Of course, it’s not as if (some) people didn’t see the problem while it was going on, and tried to do something to correct it. One of those was Sandré Swanson, who is now in his second term as California Assemblymember from Oakland. 

As Mr. Swanson tells the story, he heard numerous citizen complaints about the state’s handling of Oakland Unified’s affairs while Mr. Swanson was campaigning door-to-door throughout Oakland during the 2006 Democratic primary. At that time, the state had been running the Oakland schools for three years, and were making something of a mess of it. Mr. Swanson promised folks that if elected, he would do something about the problem.  

Mr. Swanson is the rare political office-seeker who exceeds expectations. He did more than “something.” He introduced a return-Oakland-Unified-to-local-control bill on the day of his swearing-in as a member of the Assembly, a day when most new Assemblymembers are enjoying the welcoming parties and trying to find out where their offices are located. Mr. Swanson did not stop there, but instead dogged State School Superintendent Jack O’Connell every time Mr. O’Connell dragged his feet on giving pieces of the school district power back to Oakland residents. At one point, when the funds ran out for continued Fiscal Crisis Managmeent Assistance Team (FCMAT) assessments of the Oakland schools—without which, the state legislation prevented return to local control—Mr. Swanson had more money for the assessments put into the state budget. 

And earlier this year, after Mr. O’Connell simply ignored FCMAT’s recommendation that Oakland regain local control of its finances—as Mr. O’Connell had simply ignored all of the previous FCMAT recommendations concerning returning Oakland’s local control—the Assembly passed Mr. Swanson’s AB791 “to complete the transition to local control.” The 44-26 Assembly vote for Mr. Swanson’s bill supporting Oakland local school control had to be an embarrassment to Mr. O’Connell, and certainly one of the major reasons why the State Superintendent eventually gave up and gave back to Oakland our schools. 

In fact, without Mr. Swanson’s dogged persistence on the Oakland school issue over the last three years, it is probable that local control would still be years away. Mr. O’Connell gave every indication that unless he was forced to do so under pressure, he would hold onto the Oakland schools indefinitely. 

So what is the point of this column? Not to praise Mr. Swanson for his actions on the Oakland school issue—although, yes, I’m praising Mr. Swanson, because praise is due—but to contrast Mr. Swanson’s actions in this matter to those of another state officeholder from Oakland, former State Senator Don Perata. 

Unlike Mr. Swanson, Mr. Perata actually did have some responsibility for the Oakland school takeover. In fact, some people have argued—myself included—that Mr. Perata was the driving force behind the 2003 state seizure of the Oakland public schools. 

Mr. Perata—as everyone knows—was the author of SB39, the 2003 legislation that stripped the Oakland School Board of its governing powers and ended the tenure of Oakland School Superintendent Dennis Chaconas. What most observers forget—or never knew—is that SB39 was actually the second Oakland school takeover bill introduced by Mr. Perata. The State Senator introduced the first school takeover bill—SB564—in 1999 as part of a coordinated effort by Mr. Perata and then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown to get the Oakland School Board to fire then-OUSD superintendent Carole Quan. SB564 would have allowed Mr. Brown to appoint a trustee to run the schools, rather than the state.  

The pressure play worked, Ms. Quan was forced to resign, and the school board appointed Assistant Oakland City Administrator George Musgrove to take her place. Mr. Brown was able to run the Oakland schools through Mr. Musgrove for a brief period, until the school board hired Mr. Chaconas as the permanent superintendent. 

Whether or not there was sufficient justification for a threatened Jerry Brown takeover of the Oakland schools in 1999 or the eventual state takeover in 2003 is a long subject for another time. 

The point is that in the respective years immediately preceding the introduction of his two takeover bills—SB564 in 1999 and SB39 in 2003—Mr. Perata displayed and intense public interest in how the Oakland schools were being operated by the Oakland School Board and their selected superintendent. And a San Francisco Chronicle article, published immediately after Ms. Quan’s announced resignation, reported that “[d]espite Quan’s announcement, Perata said he will proceed with his bill, but he added the district can avoid a takeover ‘altogether if it simply admits there is a crisis, takes responsibility and proves it can implement radical reform.’” 

Mr. Perata’s intense public interest in the running of the Oakland Unified Schools appeared to last only so long as the district schools were seized by the state in 2003. At that point, all mention of any Perata concerns about reforms and fiscal responsibility for the Oakland schools disappeared from the local press. 

One should remember that Mr. Perata was elected president pro tempore of the California State Senate in December of 2004—one of the three most powerful positions in California state government—and continued in that position for the next four years. He certainly could have used that position to monitor the state takeover of OUSD and make sure it was run right, but there is no evidence that Mr. Perata did.  

It was during those four years that massive evidence of the state mismanagement of the Oakland Unified School District was exploding all over, both in statements of members of the Oakland school board members or representatives of local parents groups or the Oakland Education Association, in certain sections of the local press, and—significantly—in reports from the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team, the education professionals called in by the state takeover legislation to monitor the situation in the Oakland schools.  

In its 2006 report on Oakland Unified, for only one of many examples, FCMAT wrote that The reforms undertaken by the district [under state control] have not always been compatible with the goal of fiscal recovery and the return to local governance.” FCMAT then added ominous detail of the direction the state takeover was taking Oakland Unified’s financial situation: “The size of the district’s long-term debt has increased and the district has not remedied its previous pattern of deficit spending,” the report continued.  

Expenditures surpassed revenues in the 2004-05 and 2005-06 budget years. Although the district was still closing its books at the time of FCMAT’s visit, district reports showed deficit spending of $2.9 million and an undesignated unrestricted fund balance of -$8.3 million. The draw down of the remainder of the state loan, while perhaps necessary, will tend to inflate the district’s revenues for the 2006-07 budget year with one-time funds that will not support ongoing operational expenditures.” 

These were red flags that something was seriously wrong with the state’s management of OUSD’s affairs, and such warnings continued throughout the many FCMAT reports. But if Mr. Perata was listening, there is no public evidence that he did anything to intervene. 

At one point, the state superintendent had failed so long to create a fiscal recovery plan for Oakland Unified-a necessary step spelled out in the takeover legislation for return to local control-that demonstrators had to get themselves arrested in the office of OUSD State Administrator Randolph Ward in order to get Mr. O’Connell to write the recovery plan. 

In the spring of 2006, Sandré Swanson was hearing these concerns as he walked door-to-door in Oakland, campaigning for the Assembly, and even more so after he was elected.  

When the original state money ran out for FCMAT to continue its evaluation of Oakland Unified, another necessary step for making sure the district was on track towards fiscal solvency and local control, it was Assemblymember Swanson who stepped in and had more money put in for the evaluations in the state budget. 

Meanwhile Mr. Perata—the author of the state takeover legislation and the man who had howled so loudly about the situation in the Oakland schools—sat silently on his hands and appeared to do nothing to help the OUSD situation. 

But we have seen this type of disappearing act from Mr. Perata many times over the years, making headlines and noise when it is to his political (or economic) advantage, and then ducking out when the important work needs to be done for the public good. 

It is one of the reasons I wonder why so many people seem to think Mr. Perata, as mayor, would be good for Oakland. But perhaps they’ll let me know. 


Wild Neighbors: Woodpecker Wars: Free the Fort Collins Twenty!

By Joe Eaton
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:15:00 AM
A male acorn woodpecker near Groveland.
Steve Ryan
A male acorn woodpecker near Groveland.

Last fall in this space, I wrote about the Rossmoor acorn woodpecker controversy. Homeowners there complained that the birds were drilling acorn storage cavities in their houses, and the Homeowners’ Association (HOA) had obtained a depredation permit from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to kill 50 of the woodpeckers. The actual dirty work was farmed out to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, an agency with a long and inglorious history of exterminating “nuisance” animals. 

The picture has changed somewhat since then. The Mount Diablo Audubon Society, which has members in Rossmoor, had been involved from the beginning in educational efforts on behalf of the birds. Audubon California organized a petition campaign at the state level. In apparent response to that, Fish and Wildlife Service suspended the killing after at least 22 woodpeckers had been shot. The depredation permit expired at the end of May. 

However, it seems that the Rossmoor HOA and the federal agencies have quietly executed an end run. Mount Diablo Audubon’s publication The Quail reports that FWS authorized Wildlife Services to collect 20 acorn woodpeckers from Rossmoor for research purposes. (For details, see the Mount Diablo Audubon Society’s July-August newsletter at www.diabloaudubon.com.) 

The birds were captured in May and taken to the National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, Colorado. According to a USDA response to California Audubon, the woodpeckers will be experimental subjects in a study “to evaluate the effectiveness of several deterrent calls for use in a nonlethal electronic deterrent device.” When the research is completed, they will be euthanized. 

There are so many things wrong with this that it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s not surprising that the Rossmoor residents were able to pull the necessary strings to have the woodpecker pogrom completed in the name of research. I’ve tried to avoid words like “arrogance” and “privilege” when writing about Rossmoor, but it’s getting harder. These are folks who were always good at getting things done, and they haven’t lost their touch in retirement. 

Bear in mind that these are your federal tax dollars at work. Wildlife Services is supposed to deal with economically significant wildlife damage: predation on livestock, aircraft collisions, water birds raiding fish farms, blackbirds feeding on sunflowers and grains. It’s hard to make the case that acorn woodpecker damage to residential structures merits federal attention. Is it considered a problem anywhere else, and if so what dollar amount are we talking about? Or is this just a favor to Rossmoor? 

It’s interesting to consider the evolution of Wildlife Services, previously called Animal Damage Control; I’m not sure when it was rebranded to sound more benign. Founded in 1886 to deal with house sparrows, it took on rodent and predator control missions in 1913-14. Under various titles, the agency killed wolves, coyotes, bears, and mountain lions and was responsible for a great deal of collateral damage, including the near-extinction of the black-footed ferret. Its Colorado research arm developed an arsenal of traps and poisons.  

Several outside review committees, including one chaired by the legendary UC wildlife biologist A. Starker Leopold, were harshly critical of the agency’s methods. Likewise the Government Accountability Office. But it has had powerful friends in the livestock industry, and has survived several Congressional attempts to give it the axe. According to the advocacy group Predator Defense, Wildlife Services “has recently been branching out to increase its programs to remove wildlife from urban areas…”  

But put that history aside for the moment and look at the woodpecker research on its own merits. If you’re working on nonlethal control technology, why not conduct field studies to see how the birds respond under normal—that is, non-laboratory—conditions? You’d think the Rossmoor residents would consider the recorded deterrent calls a small price to pay. 

The rationale for euthanizing the research subjects is equally flimsy. USDA says they can’t ensure the birds’ “isolation from other species or pathogens during the course of our study. Therefore releasing the birds back into the wild is not allowed under our permit.” The agency’s concern for the well-being of the wild woodpecker population is touching. There are well-established protocols for medical screening of rehabilitated wild birds before their release, but that must be more than Wildlife Services’ veterinarians can be bothered with. 

This isn’t really about research, of course. It’s lethal control with a thin veneer of science. And it reeks of blatant favoritism toward well-connected folks who are determined to have their way, environmental values and public opinion be damned.  

If you’d like to comment on the Rossmoor woodpecker atrocity, you can write to Gail Keirn, Public Affairs Specialist, U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, National Wildlife Research Center, 4101 LaPorte Avenue, Fort Collins, Colorado, 80521-2154. Phone: (970) 266.6007. Fax: (970) 266.6010. E-mail: gail.m.keirn@aphis.usda.gov .


Architectural Excursions: Beltane Ranch: From ‘Dusty Place’ to ‘Mammy’s Place’

By Daniella Thompson
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:13:00 AM
The Southern-style house built by Mary Ellen Pleasant at Beltane Ranch in Glen Ellen is now a bed-and-breakfast inn.
Daniella Thompson
The Southern-style house built by Mary Ellen Pleasant at Beltane Ranch in Glen Ellen is now a bed-and-breakfast inn.
The Beltane Ranch living room.
Daniella Thompson
The Beltane Ranch living room.
The dining room retains much of its original flavor.
Daniella Thompson
The dining room retains much of its original flavor.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of two articles on the Sonoma County village of Glen Ellen. 

 

Before there was a Glen Ellen, much of Sonoma County’s Valley of the Moon was part of the 18,833-acre Rancho Los Guilucos. The rancho—its name was later corrupted to Guilicos—was granted in 1837 by Gov. Juan Bautista Alvarado to John Wilson and his wife, Ramona Carrillo, sister-in-law of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. 

In his book California Place Names, Erwin G. Gudde asserted that Guilucos is derived from the name of an Indian tribe, mentioned in 1823 by the missionary Padre Juan Amorós as la nacion Guiluc. In the language of the Lake Miwok tribe, the word wíilok meant “dusty.” 

Wilson, who never occupied his rancho, sold it in the 1850s to the merchants William Hood and William Pettitt. Hood’s brother-in-law, James Shaw, settled in the Valley of the Moon in the 1860s, establishing Wildwood Vineyard (now Kunde Family Estate). In the late 1870s, Shaw acquired a neighbor in the person of Captain John Hamilton Drummond. 

Drummond’s history is shrouded in haze. His stepson, UC Professor of Viticulture Frederic T. Bioletti, wrote in the Cyclopedia of American Horticulture (1909) that Drummond was born in Ireland about 1850. This version is borne out by the 1880 U.S. Census. Later accounts by other biographers maintain that Drummond was a Scotsman born in 1830. 

According to Bioletti, Drummond “was the second son of David Drummond, a well-known banker and merchant and philanthropist, of Dublin, Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He served in the 34th regiment of the regular English army in England and India until 1877, when he came to California and became a sheep-raiser in Sonoma County, near Cloverdale. Soon after, he purchased the Dunfillan Ranch, near Glen Ellen, Sonoma county, and was very active in importing new varieties of wine grapes from France, and of table grapes from English hothouses. He was one of the first to graft over the old Mission vineyards with fine varieties. He did much to improve the quality of California wines.” 

In the 11 years during which Drummond engaged in viticulture (he died in 1889), his Dunfillan Vineyard acquired national prestige for its high-quality wines. Drummond planted the North Coast’s first documented Bordeaux vineyard in 1878. He imported Cabernet Sauvignon cuttings from Château Margaux, Château Lafite Rothschild, and the Hermitage in Bordeaux. His 1882 Cabernet Sauvignon was the most admired wine at the California Viticultural Convention. 

Drummond imported several varieties of Pinot noir and made a blush wine called Oeil de Perdrix (eye of the partridge). He was one of the few early winegrowers to show an interest in Chardonnay, which he imported in 1880. He introduced Merlot in 1883. In her book Wines and Vines of California (1889), San Francisco Examiner writer Frona Eunice Wait called Dunfillan “one of the finest vineyards in America.” 

When Drummond died in December 1889, a neighboring vintner, Kate Warfield of the Ten Oaks Winery, was made executor of his estate. She, however, appears to have mismanaged the affair and was replaced the following year. It was perhaps the lack of proper management that brought about the sale of the Dunfillan vineyard. 

At the time of Drummond’s death, Glen Ellen was “the heart of the wine section of the county,” wrote Frona Wait, adding “the hills for miles on both sides of the valley are clad in vines.” Seven years earlier, the San Francisco & North Pacific Railway Company had extended its narrow-gauge line from the town of Sonoma to Glen Ellen, making the area attractive to vacationers and triggering a resort boom. 

When Drummond’s land was sold, it went not to a winegrower but to the wealthiest black woman in San Francisco, Mary Ellen Pleasant, widely known as “Mammy” Pleasant. Born a slave about 1814, Mary Ellen spent her youth as a bonded servant in Nantucket. Twice married, in 1852 she arrived in San Francisco, passing for white. She quickly became a celebrated cook to the town’s elite and shrewdly took advantage of business tips she heard discussed by her employers. Soon she acquired a string of laundries. 

During the financial crisis of 1858, Mrs. Pleasant traveled east, where she befriended abolitionist John Brown and is believed to have financed his failed Harper’s Ferry raid. Escaping back to San Francisco, she avowed her race after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Several years later, denied permission to board a streetcar, she sued the North Beach and Mission Railroad Company in a landmark case that eventually marked her as the “Mother of Civil Rights in California.” 

Mrs. Pleasant had a taste for intrigue and always kept her fingers in multiple pies. She owned boarding houses and possibly brothels, invested in mining operations, and backed speculative business ventures at home and abroad. For nearly 40 years, her fortunes were tied to those of Thomas Bell, a Scotsman who amassed great wealth through banking, mining, and brokerage. Some say she was his advisor. He married her protégée, Teresa. 

It was Mary Ellen Pleasant who built and furnished the 30-room Italianate mansion the Bells occupied with their six children and numerous servants at 1661 Octavia St. She lived there with them, running the household with an iron hand. 

In June 1891, Mrs. Pleasant purchased a 985-acre spread in Glen Ellen that included the 150-acre Drummond vineyard and surrounding homesteads. She named her new property Beltane Ranch, and it became a weekend home for herself and the Bells. 

The following year, she built on the ranch a two-story, Southern-style house with wraparound balconies. Teresa and the children spent much of their time here. But country living wasn’t cheap, and Mary Ellen was forced to sell some 200 acres and eventually signed the deed over to Mrs. Bell. 

In June 1893, a report to the Board of State Viticultural Commission stated that the “former J. H. Drummond place of 150 acres, once planted to superior foreign varieties and noted for its vineyard,” was “now badly infested by phylloxera, half the vineyard, or 75 acres, being entirely gone, and the other half near the end of its existence. It is proposed to clean up the entire vineyard after this year and use the land for other purposes.” Mrs. Teresa Bell was named as the owner. 

Thomas Bell died in October 1892 after falling over the stair balustrade in his Octavia Street home. The ensuing years saw Mrs. Pleasant and the Bell heirs increasingly entangled in sensational lawsuits. The newspapers took delight in publishing lurid stories about the devious, controlling “Mammy,” while the Bell mansion acquired the moniker “The House of Mystery.” 

Mary Ellen Pleasant was declared an insolvent debtor in 1898. Her creditors alleged that she had deeded the ranch to Mrs. Bell in order to avoid paying her debts. By the following year, her friendship with Teresa Bell was at an end, and she was forced out of house and ranch. She died in 1904 and was buried in Napa. At her request, her gravestone bears the epitaph “M.E.P. She was a friend of John Brown.” 

Beltane Ranch did not revert to vineyards until the 1970s. The house that Mary Ellen Pleasant built is now a charming bed-and-breakfast inn, set amidst flower gardens and ancient oaks. The ruins of the Dunfillan winery can be seen on the grounds of the neighboring Kunde winery. 


About the House: Wastewater is Not a Grey Area

By Matt Cantor
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:14:00 AM

I think it’s fair to argue that our biggest problems in saving this planet are conceptual and often simply emotional (though these two intertwine to fuzzy indistinguishability). There are few areas in which this is more true than with our sewers.  

We’re all a little nuts when it comes to what goes down the drain. We’re also a little blithe or tuned out. It’s so easy to use our wastewater system as a garbage can that we don’t generally stop to consider the global impact. Also, what goes down the drain under optimal conditions is not a topic for polite discussion. I like to joke with clients that when the sewer video camera service gives them that tape of their sewer lateral that they can pop it in at the next cocktail party once everyone has had a drink or two. Of course this is fabulously facetious since the contents of the sewer are widely agreed to be unsuitable for discussion.  

The darkness we cast over these areas makes for justified waste and keeps us from the sorts of technological advances (including incredibly simple and cheap ones) that might make huge changes in the longevity of our ecosphere.  

Case in point: Some years back, I had an awful dispute with a neighbor; the worst I ever had. I didn’t realize it when I bought but it turned out that my waste line ran right across his property and, being an aging clay line, it leaked. Now, when a water line leaks, it’s annoying and expensive. When a sewer line leaks, it’s a bit more Freudian. Not to put too fine a point on it, it felt as though I were a tiny child that had made a boo boo and daddy was mad at me. We all tried to play our roles as civilized adults (well, some of us tried) but the subliminal roles were hard to avoid and the day was ruled by sordid feelings and it took some advanced technology and the help of a very good lawyer to sanitize the situation. 

The point of my little tale of woe is that we’re not quite logical when it comes to our sewer systems and it just might be that we, as a society are using far more water and treating far more sewage than we really need to for adequate hygiene and at a very high cost. Water is one of the really big issues regarding life on Planet Earth today. Many people don’t have clean drinking water and, even where it seems abundant, the process of delivery is having an increasingly large impact on all of us. It’s reflected in your bill to some degree but, to be sure, the cost of the coal and oil needed to move water about are heavily subsidized. The carbon footprint of water delivery is a really big one and we simply cannot afford to continue to move, purify and treat water any more than we really need to.  

For example, it really doesn’t matter whether the water you use to flush your toilet is clean enough to drink, so why bother using the same water you need to have coming out of your tap? In fact, there are a whole series of tiered levels of cleanliness that we require and, exempting what you’re flushing down the toilet, you can probably make good use of all levels in some safe way. Now, notice your response as I notice mine. We love not having to think about this and there’s some subterranean discomfort that most of us feel around this issue. It’s awfully nice to simply turn on the tap and not have to wonder what’s there, but the cost of flushing drinking water down the toilet might just be melting all those nice glaciers. 

As you can probably tell, I’m leading up to a solution and the name of that solution is sullage or greywater. Greywater is wastewater we send down the drain that is not significantly unhygienic and that can be reused in some way around your property.  

Greywater systems are legal and code-approved in some areas (e.g. here in Berkeley) if properly designed and implemented and can pay for themselves in a matter of a few years. The simplest system is one in which you literally take your washing machine hose and extend it to a garden bed outside, though this will not meet with the state or plumbing code requirements. The same applies to putting a bucket under your bathroom and disconnecting the drain. Additionally, many people who have to wait for a while to get hot water at the shower will fill a bucket that can be taken to the garden. There’s no police force that will keep you from doing these sorts of things but for a more comprehensive system it is best to work from some guidelines or get help from one of the experts we have in abundance in our fair city. Some of these experts you can tap are the Greywater Guerrillas (www.greywaterguerrillas.com), Oasis Design (oasisdesign.net) or waterwisesystems.com. Waterwise Systems sells “surge” tanks and the associated equipment to built professional grade greywater systems suitable for gardening as well as recycling into your toilet. 

That last part (running your toilet off of recycled wastewater) is one that I think is really worth looking into. We use roughly 30 percent of our precious and expensive water sending human waste down the sewer and this, clearly, does not need to be fresh. A surge tank and pump system that refills your toilet tank by application of a small pump, some tubing and a simple float mechanism may pay for itself in a year, not to mention staving off hurricanes and wars over fuel. 

Greywater systems can use the water from lavatory sinks, showers, laundries pretty safely but can also use water from kitchen sinks and dishwashers with some extra effort (though these last two are the advanced course and not recommended for the casual Greywater Guerrilla). Aside from the delivery mechanism, some of the issues that one must consider in going grey include the use of laundry and dish soaps.  

Most greywater will end up in your garden (though this is not recommended for root vegetables that you’ll be harvesting) and should be kept low in phosphorus and salt; so the choice of your detergents should be more circumspect than usual. Seventh Generation’s vegetable-based laundry detergent, ECOS concentrated liquid laundry detergent and Ecover biodegradable laundry powder are three examples of detergents that are fairly benign in your garden if a little most more expensive than the Costco bucket you’re used to. 

Greywater is suitable for fruit trees as they do more to filter and biologically control what comes to the fruit. Nonetheless, it’s always important to use greywater within a day or so. Keeping greywater around fosters microbial growth and week-old greywater may be dangerous to you and your plants. 

Aside from the enormous value gained by using less water, sullage systems decrease the load on our increasingly overburdened sewer and waste treatment systems and reload groundwater at the source. The nutrients in greywater feed the soil and keep a healthy zoo of microbes abounding. Since greywater tends to be alkaline, you may find that some plants like it better and you may find yourself making some different choices in your plants over time, but this is a manageable problem. 

I’ll mention one last small idea that I think is really fun. I first saw these in Japan years ago but they’re making inroads in the United States. They’re toilet-lid sinks. This is so simple, it’s a wonder they haven’t been around forever. The water that normally fills the toilet tank is diverted to a little spout over the toilet tank lid and the lid is shaped like a sink. When you flush the toilet, the spout runs for about a minute, during which you can wash your hands. The water ends up in the toilet where it gets used the next time. Cool, eh? Real Goods is one place that sells these for around a hundred bucks. 

If greywater is something that peaks your interest, get help and contact the Ecology Center in Berkeley or one of the other groups listed above. This is a way to be of real service to the planet. It’s not a minor or token gesture. It’s also a way for us (you and your friends) to begin to make that very important conceptual turn away from entitlement to active participation in a democratic process; one in we each recognize the inherent nature of natural resources as shared commodities and use or pollution as a shared responsibility. In this sense, greywater harvesting and use becomes a meditation on equality, responsibility and harmony. 


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:05:00 AM

THURSDAY, JULY 9 

CHILDREN 

Caddwynn the Magician at 3 p.m. at the Richmond Public Library, Main Children’s Room, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. 620-6557. www.richmondlibrary.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Residency Projects I” New work by Pawel Kruk, Saantha Lautman, Chris turbuck and Lindsey White. Exhibition opens at Kala Gallery, 2990 San Pablo, and runs to Aug. 15. 841-7000. kala.org 

FILM 

Free Outdoor Movies at Jack London Square “Dead Calm” Come at 7:30 p.m., movies begin at sundown. Bring blankets and stadium seat. 645-9292. www.jacklondonsquare.com 

In the Realm of Oshima “The Man Who Left His Will on Film” at 6:30 p.m. and “Dear Sumer Sister” at 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Richard Whittaker: Works and Conversation Panel on art, nature and the environment, with Sam Bower, John Toki and Kathleen Cramer at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Cost is $7, free to artist members. 644-6893. 

Tea Party Magazine: The Free Issue with poetry readings at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Peter Jan Honigsberg reads from “Our Nation Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

“Japanese Music & Beyond” a conversation with Taki Kanno, on the power of music and the human brain at 7:30 p.m. at the Home Room, International House, UC campus. Cost is $15. To register email ihprograms@berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Farallon Recorder Quartet with Annette Bauer, Letitia Berlin, Frances Blaker, and Louise Carslake perform works from the 14th century to the present at 8 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Tickets are $15-$20.  

Ed Gerhard at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Kelly Park Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Country Joe’s Open Mic with Mugg Muggles, Man of Many Manifestations at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. Donation $5-$10. 841-4824. 

BASSment, Whiskey Hill at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Mojo Stew at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

FRIDAY, JULY 10 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “Spitfire Grill” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Aug. 16. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Jack Goes Boating” through July 19. Tickets are $28-$50. 843-4822 or visit auroratheatre.org.  

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Thoroughly Modern Millie” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through July 19. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org  

Masquers Playhouse “Copenhagen” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sat. and Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $10. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Pinole Community Players “Pump Boys & the Dinettes” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Community Playhouse, 601 Tennet Ave., Pinole, through July 11. Tickets are $17-$20. www.pinoleplayers.org 

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Peter Pan” at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joachin Miller Rd., Oakland, through July 19. Tickets are $25-$40. 531-9597. www.woodminster.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

Patricia Leslie, animal portraits, watercolor and ink, from 5 to 8 p.m. at 2427 San Mateo St., Richmond. Enter gallery around corner, on Sacramento Ave. 

“Heart of the Mountain” Poems and paintings from Heart Mountain, Wyoming relocation camp by members of the Tachibana Ginsha poetry group while interned during WWII. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at K Gallery, Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Balnding Ave. Alameda. www.rhythmix.org 

“Up Against the Wall: Berkeley Posters from the 1960s” at the Berkeley Historical Society, Veterans Memorial Building, 1931 Center St. Exhibit runs to Sept. 26. 848-0181. 

2009 National Juried Exhibition Opening reception at 6 p.m. at ACCI GAllery. exhibition runs to Aug. 23. www.accigallery.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Debra Grace Khattab and Leah Steinberg will read their poetry at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave. 

David Watts reads from “The Orange Wire Problem and Other Tales from the Doctor’s Office” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Cafe Americain, gypsy jazz, at noon at the Kaiser Center Roof Garden, on top of the parking garage, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. Free. www.KaiserCenterRoofGarden.com 

Point Richmond Summer Concert with Michael Van, Americana, at 5:30 p.m. and Still Time, groove rock, at 6:45 p.m. at Park Place at Washington Ave., Point Richmond. www.pointrichmond.com 

Gateswingers Jazz Band at 7:30 p.m. at 33 Revolutions Record Shop amd Cafe,10086 San Pablo Ave. at Central, El Cerrito. 898-1836.  

Bossa Five-O at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Sambada and Tambores Remelxo, Brazilian, at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Alexis Harte at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Real Sippin Whiskeys, The Family at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Dick Hindman at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

The Dave Stein Bub-Hub at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Terrence Brewer Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, JULY 11 

CHILDREN  

“Ciguapas” Stories from the Dominican Republic Sat. and Sun. at 12:30 and 3 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Cost is $7. 452-2259. www.fairyland.org 

“Happy To Be Girls” with illustrator Jenny Matteson at 1 p.m. from 1 to 4 p.m. at Museum of Childrens Art, 538 9th St., Oakland. 465-8770.  

THEATER 

Woman’s Will “The Taming of the Shrew” at 1 p.m. at John Hinkel Park. Free.  

FILM 

In the Realm of Oshima “Pleasures of the Flesh” at 6:30 p.m. and “Empire of Passion” at 8:20 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Moe’s 50th Anniversary Party from 3 to 8 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Bay Area Poets Coalition open reading from 3 to 5 pm. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison St. Park on the street. 527-9905. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “The Ballad of Baby Doe” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $18-$48. 925-798-1300, www.berkeleyopera.org 

Bon Singer and Diana Rowan at 8 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. Tickets are $5-$20. 548-2153. 

Bob Ernst & Ruth Zaporah, improvisers, at 8 p.m. at Western Sky Studio, 2525 8th St. Cost is $20. momentsnoticeinfo@gmail.com 

Aguacero with Rico Pabon, Sandra Garcia Rivera and Lina G. Torio at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Bayside Jazz with Dan Hicks at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Baba Ken & Kotoja at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. African dance lesson at 9 p.m. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Jim Kweskin at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

David Jeffrey Jazz Fourtet at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

The Luke Thomas Trio at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Happy Hour Jazz Quintet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Joshi’z 3 at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Christopher Fairman, Pomegranate, Rocking Chairs at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $9. 841-2082.  

SUNDAY, JULY 12 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Metamorphosis” Paintings by Laila Espinoza. Opening reception at 4 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Exhibition runs to Oct. 4. 524-2943. 

Rock’N Comics Vintage rock posters, original comic book art, vintage comic books on display from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at D. King Gallery, 2284 Fulton. www.houseofcomics.com 

Meet the Museum Docent tour at 1 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200.  

THEATER 

Woman’s Will “The Taming of the Shrew” at 1 p.m. at John Hinkel Park. Free.  

FILM 

Tribute to Hayao Miyazaki “My Neighbor Totoro” at 4 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Alexandra Yurkovsky reads from her poetry collections “Wanting” and “Futile Songs” at 2 p.m. at Mo’Joe Cafe, 2517 Sacramento, south of Dwight. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Lee Goland Lives Tribute concert to the late songwriter at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $6-$12. 849-2568.  

Gina Harris & Jason Martineau at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ.  

Americana Unplugged: The Backyard Party Boys at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Rising Stars High school jazz intensive concert at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

Israeli Folkdance with Allen King at 1:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $7. 525-5054.  

Jack Williams at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

MONDAY, JULY 13 

EXHIBITIONS 

Oakland Art Association Group Show at the Alameda Library Gallery, 1550 Oak St., Alameda, through Aug. 8. 547-7777. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

El Cerrito Art Association with Michele Theberge on painting with acrylics at 7:30 p.m. in the Garden Room, El Cerrito Community Center, 7007 Moeser Lane. 526-9450. 

Subterranean Shakespeare “Henry VI, Part 3” Staged reading at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Tickets are $8 at the door. 276-3871. 

Craig Santos Perez, poet, reads from “Our Sea of Words” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Poetry Express Memorial for francEye, open mic and rememberances, at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Sharyn Dimmick and Carol Denney, folk songs, at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Free. 524-3043. 

TUESDAY, JULY 14 

CHILDREN 

Jeremy the Juggler at 10:30 a.m. at the West Side branch library, 135 Washington Ave., Richmond, and at 2 p.m. at the Bayview branch library, 5100 Hartnett Ave., Richmond. 620-6557. www.richmondlibrary.org 

FILM 

Tribute to Hayao Miyazaki “Porco Rosso” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Justin BUA, artist, on his book “The Beat of Urban Art” at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Peter Asmus discusses his new book “Introduction to Energy in California” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tee Fee Swamp Boogie at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 15 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Meet the Artist: An Evening with Evelyn Roth” on her environmental and textile art “Sedna’s World” at 8 p.m. at Firehouse North Gallery, 1790 Shattuck Ave. Donation $10. RSVP to 530-3735. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “The Ballad of Baby Doe” at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $18-$48. 925-798-1300, www.berkeleyopera.org 

The Crucible’s 9th Annual Fire Arts Festival Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Fire Arts Arena, W. Grand Ave. and Wake Ave., Oakland. www.thecrucible.org 

Fito Reinoso, Cuban, at noon at Oakland City Center, 12th and Broadway. 

Old Blind Dogs at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Whiskey Brothers, old-time and bluegrass at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Ellen Hoffman’s Showcase at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

The Mighty Diamonds with Yellow Wall Dub Squad and Itawe & King David, roots reggae, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $16-$18. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ray Cepeda Latin Jazz Band at 7 p.m. at Chester's Bayview Cafe, 1508 B Walnut Square. 849-9995. 

Mazacote at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Mojo Stew at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

THURSDAY, JULY 16 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Residency Projects I” New work by Pawel Kruk, Samantha Lautman, Chris Turbuck and Lindsey White. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Kala Gallery, 2990 San Pablo. Exhibition runs to Aug. 15. 841-7000. kala.org 

Alameda Plein Air Paintout 40 artists capture the character of the city through Sat. at various locations. For details see www.frankbettecenter.org 

“The Many Faces of Frida” Artwork by 31 artists representing an aspect, a tradition or a connection to the life of Frida Kahlo. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at Craft & Cultural Arts Gallery, State of California Office Building – Atrium, 1515 Clay St., Oakland. Exhibit runs to Aug. 28. www.vivafrida.com 

FILM 

In the Realm of Oshima “100 Years of Japanese Cinema” at 6:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tiffany Higgins, poet, reads from “And Anenas Stares Into Her Helmet” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Sandi Wisenberg reads from “The Adventures of Cancer Bitch” at 6:30 p.m. at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. 

Peter Dale Scott reads from his new book of poetry “Mosaic Orpheus” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Rafa Postel, trumpet, at noon at the downtown Berkeley BART Station. 

The Crucible’s 9th Annual Fire Arts Festival Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Fire Arts Arena, W. Grand Ave. and Wake Ave., Oakland. www.thecrucible.org 

CB3, Michael Kang, High Heat at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15-$18. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

“Crazy in Love with Patsy Cline” with Lavay Smith, Carmen Getit and Belle Monroe at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Ellen Hoffman’s Showcase at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Pam and Jerry, Jill Knight at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

The Adrian Gormley Jazz Ensemble at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

FRIDAY, JULY 17 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman, through Aug. 15. Tickets are $12-$15. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Altarena Playhouse “Spitfire Grill” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Altarena Playhouse, 1409 High St., Alameda, through Aug. 16. Tickets are $17-$20. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Jack Goes Boating” through July 19. Tickets are $28-$50. 843-4822 or visit auroratheatre.org.  

Contra Costa Civic Theatre “Thoroughly Modern Millie” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito, through July 19. Tickets are $15-$24. 524-9132. www.ccct.org  

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Peter Pan” at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joachin Miller Rd., Oakland, through July 19. Tickets are $25-$40. 531-9597. www.woodminster.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Paul Krassner, journalist/satirist, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Veronica Chater reads from “Waiting for the Apocalypse: A Memoir of Faith and Family” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “The Ballad of Baby Doe” at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $18-$48. 925-798-1300, www.berkeleyopera.org 

The Crucible’s 9th Annual Fire Arts Festival Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Fire Arts Arena, W. Grand Ave. and Wake Ave., Oakland. www.thecrucible.org 

Faye Carol, blues, at noon at the Kaiser Center Roof Garden, on top of the parking garage, 300 Lakeside Drive, Oakland. Free. www.KaiserCenterRoofGarden.com 

Bolokada Conde at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Molly Holm and Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Sukhawat Ali Khan at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Big Organ Trio, Alex Lee at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $9. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Rising Stars High school jazz intensive concert at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Justin Ancheta at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Terrence Brewer Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, JULY 18 

CHILDREN  

“Tales from Beatrix Potter” Sat. and Sun. at 12:30 and 3 p.m. at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. Cost is $7. 452-2259. www.fairyland.org 

Kathryn Rosak & Her Children’s Dance Program at 3:30 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. For ages 3 and up. Free. 524-3043. 

THEATER 

Woman’s Will “The Taming of the Shrew” at 1 p.m. at John Hinkle Park. Free.  

EXHIBITIONS 

Anthony Holdsworth:“Cityscape Paintings” On dispaly through Aug. 20 at Alta Galleria, 2980 College Ave., Suite 4. 414-4485. www.altagalleria.com 

FILM 

In the Realm of Oshima “Double Suicide: Japanese Summer” at 6:30 p.m. and “Gohatto” at 8:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Explore Classical Music” with John Reager, Prof. of Music History at Laney College at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 3rd flr Community Room, 2090 Kittredge. 981-6241. www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org 

Rosie Sorenson reads from “They Had Me at Meow: Tales of Love from the Homeless Cats of Buster Hollow” in a benefit reading for the East Bay SPCA at 1 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, Jack London Square, 98 Boradway., Oakland. 272-0120. 

Jaimal Yogis reads from “Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea” at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

“Exploring the Attic of Family Stories” A workshop with Donald Davis from 3 to 5 p.m., and storytelling concert at 7 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4409 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $15-$65. www.ddavisstoryteller.com 

James Gavin on “The Legend of Lena Horne” at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Friends of Negro Spirituals “Generations Preserving Negro Spirituals Together” at 2:30 p.m. at West Oakland Senior Center, 1724 Adeline St., Oakland. 869-4359.  

Allegro Ballroom Summer Showcase Exhibition of social dancing including: ballroom, country, swing, club and Latin dances from 2 ro 8 p.m. at Allegro Ballroom, 5855 Christie Ave., Emeryville. Tickets are $10-$20. 655-2888. www.allegroballroom.net 

Bobi Céspedes, Afro-Cuban, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $18-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Pamela Rose & Her Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tom Rigney & Flambeau at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Jazzsinger’s Collective with the Walter Bankovitch Trio at 3:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 

Stevie Coyle & the Ten-in-One Band at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

DiiGin at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Apple Pie Hopes, The Sweet Dominiques at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Wish Inflicted at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SUNDAY, JULY 19 

EXHIBITIONS 

”The African Presence in Mexico” docent tour at 2 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Admission is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Squeak Carnwath ”Painting Is No Ordinary Object” docent tour at 3 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Admission is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

THEATER 

Woman’s Will “The Taming of the Shrew” at 1 p.m. at John Hinkle Park. Free.  

FILM 

Tribute to Hayao Miyazaki “Castle in the Sky” at 2:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $5.50-$9.50. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Opera “The Ballad of Baby Doe” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $18-$48. 925-798-1300, www.berkeleyopera.org 

Midsummer Mozart Festival Program I at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, Berkeley. Tickets are $30-$60. 415-627-9141. www.midsummermozart.org 

Favianna Rodriguez, Visual Element, and Dr. Loco and his Rocking Jalapeño Band from noon to 4 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Admission is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Vukani Mawethu Choir at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Darryl Anders & Agape Soul at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Americana Unplugged: Jeanie & Chuck’s Country Roundup at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Madou Sidiki Diabate at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$12. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

John Palowich: Non-Standard Basis at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Rita Hosking & Cousin Jack at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org


Envision Presents Frayn’s ‘Copenhagen’

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:02:00 AM

Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen depicts the wartime meeting in occupied Denmark between physicist Niels Bohr, atomic structure and quantum mechanics theorist, and Werner Heisenberg, namesake of the Indeterminacy Principle, and their conversation about scientific ethics in light of the German atomic bomb program. The 1998 play will be performed this Friday through Sunday only, at the Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond, staged by Envision, a Masquers Playhouse program. 

The production features John Hutchinson, Robert Taylor and Michael Haven, and is directed by Theo Collins—Masquers all.  

Theo Collins commented on the show and on the origins and purpose of Envision: “Some actors and directors wanted to do plays not part of the regular season—no reason to run for six weeks. So Envision began in 1995 with Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, and progressed from there. A committee was formed to select the plays; that year there were three. But it was all on the basis of somebody wanting to do it, not for the purpose of filling up space. It’s not limited to the Masquers, either. It’s very open, just as the Masquers are very open. Shows can run two weekends, but usually just one. The week after they strike the previous main season show at the Playhouse, we set up, do the show, then they put up the set for the next production. There’s no competition that way. There is a limit as far as production values are concerned; we do it as much black box as we can.”  

Copenhagen is black box, almost to the limit: there’s no real set. “A buffet is on one side of the stage; a sofa on the other. It’s hard for the actors to be on their marks! And all three are on stage all of the time.” 

The three are Bohr, Heisenberg and Bohr’s wife, Margrethe. “She’s like the center. Bohr would bounce ideas off her. She typed all Bohr’s reports and knew what they were saying, but not the depth of the science behind.” 

Of Bohr and Heisenberg, Collins said, “Bohr was more intuitive, Heisenberg more mathematical—but very quick, and young, in his 20s, when he first met and worked with Bohr, who would take him out hiking and talking, studying with him for three years before going back to Germany. The play—which all takes place, as they say in it, ‘after we’re dead and gone,’ so late in the century, as Bohr died in the ’60s, Heisenberg in the ’70s, and Margrethe in 1984, well into her 90s. It moves back to the two of them hiking in the ’20s from their meeting in the ’40s, back and forth to the play’s present, after it’s all over.” 

Heisenberg came to visit Bohr; the exact nature of their meeting isn’t known. “And Bohr didn’t know why he was coming. They had apparently become estranged, but nobody seems to know why. One version is that Heisenberg asked Bohr whether it was ethical for a scientist to work in an atomic energy program that could be used for weapons, and Bohr took that to mean Heisenberg was, that he’s to be handed over to Hitler—and stopped the conversation. Heisenberg claimed he was only working on an atomic reactor, and maybe he was.”  

Collins, who decided to direct the play after a Masquer who’d seen it in New York suggested it, said she and the other committe members “were overwhelmed by the science, but the relationships, the purpose, the meaning of the play came through loud and clear.”  

In fact, the moral questions of the play parallel the scientific theories by analogy. Bohr and Heisenberg had jointly presented what was dubbed the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, Bohr having theorized how electrons should be seen as both particle and wave, as matter and energy (Complementarity), while Heisenberg stated his Uncertainty Principle, that the exact location of an electron could never be known, as the process of measurement changes the nature of location. “It’s really about communication,” Collins said. “Can one understand the other, know whether the other understands—can one understand oneself?” 

Collins said the production had expert help from “a physicist, an astrophysicist and someone who taught particle physics at Northwestern”—all Masquers. 

“It’s been fascinating to work with everybody because they’re fascinated with it, devoted to the play. The support of the theater has been very strong, too, for the Envision program. It’s not like a stepchild of the Masquers.” 

Bohr, who was half-Jewish, escaped Denmark to Sweden, later working in the American atomic energy program. 

 

COPENHAGEN 

8 p.m. Friday, July 10 and Saturday, July 11; 2:30 p.m. Sunday, July 12 at Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. $10. 232-4031. www.masquers.org. 


Woman’s Will Presents ‘Taming of the Shrew’

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:03:00 AM

“We’ve been talking about doing it since our first year,” said Erin Merritt of Woman’s Will’s production of The Taming of the Shrew. Merritt, the all-female Shakespeare company’s founder, will direct the show at John Hinkel Park to kick off its free summer season in parks around the Bay Area.  

“It’s not a modern Feminist play! Not with all that perceived sexism. But there’s so much fun in it, so much mixed in about the relationship between two people. Is it just about a man putting a woman down? If so, where’s the dramatic pay-off for the audience? Yet this play still really speaks to us. I think there’s a real connection between these two people.” 

It will also be Merritt’s farewell as artistic director to the Oakland-based company she founded in 1998. Victoria Evans Erville, who has served as managing director for the past year while Merritt has shuttled back and forth from Los Angeles, where her husband works, is succeeding Merritt in the artistic chair. There will be a celebration for both and for the company from 2-4 p.m. Saturday, July 11, after the opening show.  

Evans Erville, who has worked as education director for Marin Theatre Company, as well as artistic director for San Francisco’s African-American Shakespeare Company, said she was “super-excited, having just walked into a different door, somehow. I’ve wanted to do something different, more diverse. It’s still Shakespeare, of course, but the second show of the year isn’t. The next will be Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House. I’m looking for ways to expand on the company and what it does. I have lots of ideas.” 

“It’s been lucky for us,” Merritt commented. “She knows about niche markets, has not only Shakespeare, but educational background, the same I came in with. She gets why we were the way we were, originally, but will be a fresh eye. I first heard about her many years before I founded the company, when I was teaching tons and tons of Shakespeare classes. When I had to drop them for Woman’s Will, she often picked them up. Then I really got to know her after we both had kids a few years ago, and it clicked: someone I know, like, trust. So I was trying to find ways to pull her into the company anyway.” 

Evans Erville discussed some of her plans for the company: “The idea before was gender-bending. We all know how many roles for women there are in Shakespeare: very nice—and very few. So Woman’s Will had women playing men’s roles. It got to that level, but not much beyond. There’s more to being a woman in theater.” 

Evans Erville recalled a New York Times article that tracked the acceptance or rejection by artistic directors around the country of plays submitted under masculine and feminine names. “It showed even female directors tending to choose plays with men’s names as author. For me, that was the call to arms. That’s where we have to go.” 

Evans Erville mentioned bringing more female artists and technicians into the company. “Right now, it’s pretty much all actors. We need to invite more female musicians, techs, directors, not just have everybody say goodbye at the end of a production. The second production should be written by a woman, directed by a woman. The Playfest [where playwrights and performers create short shows quickly, moving fast from writing to performance] has been successful—but do people come to see us flying by the seat of our pants or to see good plays? Modifying the idea might give a better opportunity for women to write better plays, to actually think about the process. I love the idea of it, but it doesn’t move women forward. We need more transparency, to be more open to the public, to be seen by everybody. It’s an opportunity for voices to be heard beyond 10 minutes. Shakespeare can be limiting for an audience if you’re concentrating so hard on being a guy that you lose track of the character, the relationship.”  

Merritt talked more of her reading of Shrew for this production. “It’s so much about words, how language defines reality, how people see themselves. You can read it that they have both been fighting against the world, but if they have each other, there’s no need to fight. Petrucchio doesn’t abuse her; he mirrors her bad behavior. She gains empathy for those she’s treated that way. And there are all these little, little lines scattered throughout the play that get lost; some I’d never heard before.”  

Merritt called Shrew “a sexy, sassy play,” and reminded that “kids, babies are welcome.” She called the show and the Passing of the Torch party afterwards “a great opportunity to meet the new artistic director—to meet a group of women working together.” 

 

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW 

1 p.m. July 11, 12, 18, 19 at John Hinkel Park in Berkeley; July 25 at Mosswood Park in Oakland; July 26 at Dimond Park in Oakland; and through Aug. 2 at other Bay Area parks. Free admission. www.womanswill.org. 


Stage and Street at Jewish Museum

By Peter Selz Special to the Planet
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:04:00 AM
Music, 1920, by Marc Chagall.
Music, 1920, by Marc Chagall.

Last year the Contemporary Jewish Museum opened with Daniel Libeskind’s bold elevated stainless steel cube in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena district, where it has mounted a series of pertinent exhibitions.  

Currently “Chagall and the Artists of the Rusian Jewish Theatre” offers Marc Chagall’s stage work in the context of radical theatre of Russia during the hopeful days in the aftermath of the Revolution. Designers such as Natan Altman and Robert Falk took a holistic approach to set design as Konstantin Stanislavksy revolutionized the performance of actors. The exhibition provides stage and costume designs as well as films from Russian archives of the avant-garde Jewish theatre; the Habima performed in Hebrew and the Jewish State Theatre, for which Chagall worked, staged its plays in Yiddish.  

Chagall had come back to Russia from Paris at the outbreak of World War I. In 1910 the talented young artist from the Shtetl (dimunative for Yiddish Shtot, derived from the German Stadt: City) had gone to Paris where, open to the art of the new, he learned about Cubism and assimilated the rigorous new style, innovated by Picasso and Barque, added color as Delaunay and Orphists were using and came back to Russia, where he saw the radical geometric work of Malevich and the Suprematists.  

Chagall amalgamated these new artforms to which he added to his own experience of provincial Jewish life and his vivid imagination. In 1922 he produced remarkable murals, called Introduction to the Russian Theatre, which were painted in gouache and tempera on bedsheets and installed on the walls of the small theatre. They can be read from left to right (Russian) or right to left (Hebrew). Many of the figures of fiddlers, acrobats, and dancers are upside down. Chagall employed Suprematist squares and triangles to give a sense of anchorage to this topsy-turvy world. There are wondrous panels between the original windows, like the fiddler with the green face, who the artist recalled: “represents my Uncle Neuch, who played the violin like a cobbler.” The first version of this image, Green Violinist (1918) was painted in Paris and is now in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The murals are on loan from the Tretakov Gallery Moscow. 

Less than 20 years later, in Germany the Nazis eradicated all indication of the Jews who had been living there since the early Middle Ages. Before the Enlightenment they had been segregated in ghettos (the word originated in Venice for the Jewish quarter there) with street names like “Judenstrasse” or “Judenweg.” Starting in 1938 the Nazis wiped out these street names. There was to be no memory of the presence of Jews. Then, after the occupying powers (American, British, French and Russian) clearly aware of the linguistic importance of naming and remembering, returned the original names of the streets as part of the De-Nazification process.  

In 2003 the American artist Susan Hiller, living in Britain, produced “The J Street Project” to commemorate the eradication and the restoration of the historic names. In the exhibition we see a map of Germany indicating the 303 sites identified by Hiller. While a relatively large number of Jews were concentrated in cities like Berlin and Frankfurt, many resided in small towns and villages throughout the country. Hiller in her 303 photographs re-awakens an awareness of the presence of Jews who were such an essential part of German life and culture. An installation, video and performance artist, as well as a writer and photographer, Hiller has arranged the pigment printed photographs in a grid, giving it the appearance of a wall installation. Part of the exhibition is a 60-minute film, done with a camera which was held in place to record the life in these streets: we see people walking and shopping. There are cars, motorcycles, bicycles and children on roller skates. There is no narration but we hear the rumble of cars and the tolling of the church bells. The Jews don’t live here anymore, but the restored street names honor their former presence.  

It would also be appropriate and healing if the Israelis would restore the Arab names of the Palestinian villages which have been eliminated.


Moving Pictures: Fairbanks, Gish Headline 2009 Silent Film Festival

By Justin DeFreitas
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:04:00 AM
Douglas Fairbanks in <i>The Gaucho.</i>
Douglas Fairbanks in The Gaucho.
Lillian Gish in <i>The Wind</i>, directed by Victor Sjostrom.
Lillian Gish in The Wind, directed by Victor Sjostrom.

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, now in its 14th year, screens a wide range of films each July at the Castro Theater, touching on various genres and styles from cinema’s nearly 30-year silent era. The festival starts Friday with a showing of Douglas Fairbanks’ The Gaucho (1927) and continues through the weekend with a program of a dozen screenings. 

There were many stars in the silent era, but few could rival Douglas Fairbanks. Along with Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, Fairbanks was at the pinnacle, one of the most beloved performers in the nascent medium.  

Fairbanks made a name for himself between 1916 and 1920 with a string of breezy, acrobatic comedies. His ebullience, prodigious athletic abilities and considerable charm were on display in a series of brisk films produced at a brisk pace—four or five a year, sometimes more—in which genial, dapper Doug took on the world with gusto and a good-natured smile. He was the can-do, all-American boy, a variation on the same theme adopted by Harold Lloyd in his own screen comedies.  

His first movie roles were under the direction of D.W. Griffith, the foremost filmmaker of his day. But there wasn’t much room for Fairbanks’ acrobatic and comedic talents in Griffith’s vision of cinema, so he soon set out on his own. In just a few short years he found himself at the top, one of the most universally admired screen actors.  

And when he fell in love with and eventually married Mary Pickford, the first true movie star, and still, at that time, the biggest, they became the world’s first superstar couple, the pair for whom the term “Hollywood royalty” was coined. 

It was around this time, 1920, that Fairbanks took a new tack. His ambition swelled with the creation of United Artists, an independent company he co-founded with Pickford, Griffith and Chaplin, that would give the artists greater control over the creation and distribution of their work.  

Fairbanks’ notion was to merge his acrobatic brand of comedy with costume drama. He ditched the modern clothes for period attire, donning the garb of musketeers and pirates. Abandoning the casual spontaneity of his rapid-fire comedies, he followed instead in Griffith’s footsteps, producing fewer films—just one or two a year—with greater production values, more complex plots, more costumes, more sets, more drama.  

Fairbanks had found a new formula, and he would stick with it for the greater part of a decade, enjoying great commercial success.  

There were naysayers, however. Some critics bemoaned the loss of brisk, breezy Doug; they complained that his films were becoming longer, slower and more ponderous, with the trademark Fairbanks action reduced to just one or two reels of a total of 10 or 12, even 14. The jaunty Fairbanks of the teens had become a stately, costumed, dramatic figure, his devil-may-care charm and athleticism only coming to the fore in the closing sequences.  

Fairbanks may have felt the same way, for in 1926, he began edging back toward comedy. The Black Pirate saw him costumed and swashbuckling as usual, but the old Doug was back in action; the film did not take itself too seriously and it was full of stunts, smiles, and much broad, comic acting.  

He followed with The Gaucho, a darker, more serious film, but still with much comedy and derring-do. Fairbanks shared the spotlight with Lupe Velez, making her first appearance in a feature film. And Pickford even showed up for a ghostly cameo, appearing as a vision of the Virgin Mary. 

After nearly a decade as a heroic, swashbuckling figure, Fairbanks decided it was time to say goodbye. He would make just one more film along these lines, The Iron Mask, his last silent film. He and Pickford teamed up for his first talkie, The Taming of the Shrew, but his careered tapered off and he retired from the screen in 1934. He passed away a few years later, in 1939, at the age of 56. 

Friday’s screening of The Gaucho will feature the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra performing their original score. 

 

Other festival highlights 

Bardeleys the Magnificent (1926) screens at noon Saturday. The film reunites director King Vidor with John Gilbert, who had starred in Vidor’s The Big Parade, the blockbuster that earned the director the clout to make a smaller, more personal film, The Crowd, which featured a strong and affecting performance by his wife, Eleanor Boardman. Bardeleys was made before the couple married, and features Boardman as Gilbert's love interest. Live music by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. 

Josef Von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927), one of the early gangster films, screens at 5 p.m. Saturday. The film helped cement the conventions of the genre, greatly influencing the explosion of gangster films of the 1930s. Live piano accompaniment by Stephen Horne. 

Following their success with The Scarlet Letter, actress Lillian Gish again teamed with Swedish director Victor Sjostrom (“Seastrom” in America) for The Wind (1928), a stirring melodrama showing at 7:30 p.m. Saturday that plays to the strengths of each.  

Gish, perhaps the silent era’s best actress, puts her pantomime skills to work in depicting a woman victimized by a tempestuous man and an even more tempestuous physical environment. Having left Virginia for the unruly Southwest, her tormented life is made manifest by the ceaseless and unyielding winds which batter her home and shift the sands of the desert landscape.  

Sjostrom, in his distinguished body of work in his native land, where he established himself as a master of the medium to rank with D.W. Griffith among cinema pioneers, had emphasized the landscape, shooting on location among the stunning vistas of Scandinavia. The mountains, the sea and the skies gave context to his plots and added comment to his characters; with The Wind, he employs that sensitivity to the natural world in the creation of a punishing and relentless force that nearly pounds his heroine into submission. Live Wurlitzer accompaniment by Dennis James. 

Sunday will start at 10:30 with a series of Disney shorts featuring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, predecessor to Mickey Mouse. Live piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin. 

Quickly shifting gears, Erotikon (1929), a sensual Czechoslovakian film, will screen at 1:30 p.m. Live accompaniment by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. 

It may be hard to believe, but Vaudeville veteran W.C. Fields did pretty well for himself as a silent film star, before the talkies immortalized the comedian’s snide, slurring wordsmithing. So’s Your Old Man (1926) will show at 4 p.m. Sunday. Live piano accompaniment by Philip Carli. 

There were two great adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. One was a 12-minute short, an avant garde American film that owed a great deal to German Expressionism; the other, a feature-length version that deviates from the original in many ways but stays true to Poe’s vision of existential and supernatural terror, will screen at 6:15 p.m. with live piano accompaniment by Stephen Horne. 

The festival will close with an 8:15 p.m. showing of Lady of the Pavements (1929), D.W. Griffith’s last silent. The film stars Lupe Velez, Fairbanks’ co-star from The Gaucho, in a romantic drama that proved the great director hadn’t lost his touch. Live piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin. 

 

2009 SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL 

Friday, July 10 through Sunday, July 12 at the Castro Theater, 429 Castro St., San Francisco. www.silentfilm.org.


Farallon Recorder Quartet Performs at St. Alban’s Church

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:06:00 AM

The Farallon Recorder Quartet—Annette Bauer, Letitia Berlin, Frances Blaker and Louise Carslake—will perform at 8 p.m. tonight (Thursday) at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Albany, featuring works from the 14th century to the present. 

Letitia Berlin spoke about the founding of the Quartet, as well as about the musical pieces they’ll play—and of their instrument. 

Farallon started out in 1996, “with slightly different personnel. Frances and I were living in Georgia at the time, and got together with Louise and another recorder player. The next year, we moved out here and decided to find a local player.” 

To find “the distinct aim for our own, individual group sound,” Berlin said the Quartet realized “there were not that many professional recorder groups in the world” and that they wanted to “work towards something that was not just on a project basis, but a mix of Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and modern music, written for recorder quartet.” 

Both halves of the concert will move chronologically, from the 14th century to modern times, though the second half will jump from the 14th to 17th century, then to the 20th. A piece by Blaker, “Southern Nights,” will be played. “Frances is from here, but living in Atlanta was struck by the evocative sounds—sitting on a porch at night, the noise is tremendous! A combination of crickets and bugs ...” 

The program focuses on English music—“We’re getting ready for an English recording”—including Henry Purcell; a dance, an estampie, from the Robertsbridge Codex, dating from 14th century Sussex; two from the Henry VIII manuscript—“in keyboard format ... for an organist? We added two voices”—which may include songs by the King; works by John Lloyd, William Cornish and William Byrd, plus Blaker’s own arrangement of Vivaldi; Thomas Lupo; “a little bit of [J. S.] Bach—and Mattias Maute, of Montreal. 

All four players are freelance musicians in the Early Music community; the Quartet is affiliated with the San Francisco Early Music Society. “We have a really good time together.” Berlin and Baker both direct Early Music workshops around the country; Berlin also teaches in her studio. “Louise teaches after school at Cornell School in Albany and at Oxford and Thousand Oaks in Berkeley, sponsored by the San Francisco Early Music Society and a grant from the City of Berkeley. It’s free to the kids. And Annette Bauer—who came to the Bay Area to study sarode at the Ali Akhbar School of Music, was trained in Orff Method, a great pedagogical method for teaching children movement and music; she’s taught in the Orff teacher training school.” 

Berlin and Blaker have worked together for 18 years. “Louise is also a Baroque flute player in Music’s Recreation, a group with her viol player husband, John Dornenberg.” Berlin also runs “my own private travels, taking recorder players to study music ... wherever!” 

Berlin and Blaker also make up the Tibia Duo, so named because that bone was used to make early flutes. 

“The earliest recorders were in the flute family, though not flutes, although in other languages often called a flute,” Berlin commented. “They date from the 14th century—and have been found in peat bogs and in the bottom of a latrine.” 

To be a recorder, the instrument has to have a thumbhole and seven holes on top for fingers, and direct blow, like a whistle, not across, like a flute.  

“It really is the perfect modern instrument,” said Berlin, “so flexible; it makes all kinds of sounds. In the early 20th century, Arnold Dolmetsch, an Englishman, found recorders from the 17th century, and said let’s get back to real period instruments. Recorders almost disappeared at the end of the Baroque as the symphony orchestra developed; they weren’t loud—so they were played at home by amateurs.” 

Berlin mentioned Franz Bruggen, considered the father of modern virtuoso playing. “He read the old treatises. There’s a lineage of teachers that come after Bruggen, to America. Frances studied with one of his students.” 

Berlin also spoke about the different types of recorders and their adaptation to modern music. “A recorder I own has a wide range dynamically. Normally, it’s quite small. It has a spring-loaded chin rest you can push up and down for loud or soft.” 

“I have a mission to educate about the instrument,” Berlin concluded, “To show it’s more than a kid’s plastic recorder in fourth grade, before going into band class.”  

 

FARALLON RECORDER QUARTET 

8 p.m. Thursday, July 9 at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. $15-$20. 559-4670. farallonrecorderquartet.com.


Old Friends Reunite for an Evening of Theater Improv

By Ken Bullock Special to the Planet
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:11:00 AM

Bob Ernst, co-founder of the Blake Street Hawkeyes, Berkeley’s innovative theater troupe of the ‘70s and ‘80s, and Ruth Zaporah, dancer and Ernst’s longtime improvisational performance partner, will present an evening of improvisation—”our own version of action theater,” as Ernst put it—at 8 p.m. Saturday, July 11, at Western Sky Studio on Eighth Street, the first time they’ve worked together in Berkeley in eight years. 

Zaporah spoke of her arrival in the Bay Area in 1969, “the same year the Hawkeyes—and a lot of us—were coming here”—from the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area. In a studio on Parker Street, “I was coming from dance, starting to explore improvisation,” and met Ernst, when “he was interested in moving into the physical world, me into acting. I’d taken acting lessons, but they just didn’t connect with me. I’d seen the Hawkeyes—great wild guys. The first time I saw them, they were in loin cloths, grunting! I tell my students that Bobby and I spent tens of thousands of hours together, trying to find out what this theater was we wanted.” 

“I love the dance world,” Zaporah said, “but didn’t like the way you’d build a piece, then perform it just two nights. In theater, you can run for weeks. But I wanted to be an actor from the body, not from mental training.” 

“What we were doing was breaking down boundaries, roles,” Zaporah recalled, “What the culture was doing in Berkeley, too. We couldn’t have done it anywhere else—not back East. We had so much support in the Bay Area—Rob Hurwitt [theater critic then for the East Bay Express, then the Examiner, now the Chronicle] and Bernie Weiner [then the Chronicle’s theater critic].”  

Zaporah couldn’t describe what the two would perform Saturday. “We set up the physical movement; the content comes from that, from movement and voice. We don’t make a plan, now. We did before, once when we did a midnight show for six weeks at the old Eureka Theatre, off Market near Castro in San Francisco. We played archetypes: the Bunny and the Flasher. I guess we were exploring sexuality and didn’t know it! I was raising four kids; I think that was part of Feminism, too.” 

Ernst recalled the first years of the Hawkeyes in Berkeley, after he and playwright John O’Keefe came here together in 1969, later joined by David Schein, all from the Iowa Theater Lab in Iowa City. They shared a warehouse at 2019 Blake St. that had been shop space for the Magic Theatre. “O’Keefe was teaching classes; Dave was crocheting hats and selling them on Telegraph Avenue.”  

O’Keefe had his play Jimmy Beam produced here; the Hawkeyes had their first show Hog’s Tale—“on Easter Sunday, in the old mortuary on Valencia Street in San Francisco that became New College!”—in 1973. Others, including George Coates and Whoopi Goldberg, joined them. “We had one whole season all improvisation, totally wide open, without any sense of structure. Ruth worked with us.” 

The troupe finally broke up; “the [Loma Prieta] Earthquake sort of took care of that in ‘89. Debbie Gwinn was doing one of her Shakespeare collage pieces, of Hamlet. Contact between the East Bay and the city wasn’t so good—and the economics weren’t so good anymore. Everybody moved away.” Ernst moved to San Rafael; in 2000, Zaporah relocated to Santa Fe, N.M. 

“The whole scene was so fertile, with improvisation at the core,” Ernst recalled. “But as money got tighter, people were less interested in being on the edge. Now, it can still be just as fertile—if not quite as funny!” 

He spoke of working with Zaporah: “You take 30 years, establish a history in characters. Nothing conscious happens. But it’s like we’ve married, divorced and married again—then the kids have gotten into trouble. We’ve done science fiction, escaping this planet into outer space. Or mystery, what’s around corner.”  

Of the content of their improvisations, Ernst said, “I wouldn’t call them scores, plot lines, scenarios—it’s what naturally recurs when you’re doing this over and over. And there’s a sense of when you don’t have a set narrative context, ritual becomes important, to let reality creep in. I’ve been doing a lot of music the past few years—drumming, playing harmonica. Ruth plays, too. We often start by just standing there, being open. Psychically, the audience plays a big part. Later, audience members will comment that the stuff that came up in improv was something they were thinking about. I think it’s like a big rope—the braid of human narrative—runs through the space all the time, and like a train, you can ride it, then get off—or get tossed off.” 

Zaporah, who has written books on improvisation—“and I get orders for them from Korea, Vietnam”—tours, teaches, performs solo most of the time. “I’ve been improvising 35 or 40 years, and Bobby’s the only partner I’ve ever had consistently, no others I’ve developed the skills with that I can always tap into. Being on the floor together, the timing, the musicality, all the most essential ways are still available to us. And there’s another reason: he still scares me! That is, he presents challenges onstage that pull me forward in ways nobody else does. That’s what keeps us stimulated. 38 years? We’ve never come offstage and talked about it.”  

 

BOB ERNST AND RUTH ZAPORAH 

8 p.m. Saturday, July 11, at Western Sky Studio, 2525 Eighth St., Berkeley. $20. momentsnoticeinfo@gmail.com.


Around the East Bay

Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:11:00 AM

LOWER BOTTOM PLAYAZ 

West Oakland’s Lower Bottom Playaz, in residence at the shady outdoor Sister Thea Bowman Memorial Theater at the Prescott Joseph Center (920 Peralta St. in West Oakland) are throwing a season-opening dinner at 8 p.m. Saturday, July 11. Dinner and red wine included with the price of the show ($10) for the first 25 paid spectators to see Marvin X’s Flowers for the Trashman and Opal Palmer Adisa’s Bathroom Grafitti Queen, with another dinner on Saturday, July 18. There’s also a block party performance at 14th and Willow from noon to 6 p.m. July 11—free if you live in the 94603 zip code—and other good deals before the troupe plays the San Francisco Theater Festival July 26. True local community theater. For reservation, call 208-1912. For more information, call 457-8999.  

 

‘THE MASTER AND MARGARITA’ AT GHOST TOWN GALLERY 

The Master and Margarita, staged from the novel by the great Russian man—and martyr—of the theater, Mikhail Bulgakov, is described by Four Larks Theatre as a “junkyard opera featuring the Devil and his retinue, a six-foot-tall [revolver-wielding] black cat, a naked witch, a mater writer and his lover, and a decapitation.” It’s a tale both uproarious and enchanting. Four Larks returns to Oakland after a season in Melbourne. Friday, July 10 through Sunday, July 12, and July 16-19 at Ghost Town Gallery, 2519 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. $10. 967-0426. info@fourlarkstheatre.com. 

 

DAN HICKS AT ANNA’S 

Dan Hicks, of Hot Licks fame, fronts the Bayside Jazz quintet and delivers standards—though “don’t be surprised if you hear some new lyrics here and there”—with “that Hoagie Carmichael kinda thing” former KPFA music programmer David Gitin ascribed to him. 8 p.m. Saturday, July 11 at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. $14. 841-JAZZ. www.annasjazzisland.com. 

 

JIM KWESKIN AND THE JUG BAND 

Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band, a name to conjure with for the Great American Songbook—and musical humor—in the 1960s, a fun, raucous combo which included Geoff and Maria Muldaur, singing “I’m A Woman,” “Never Swat a Fly,” “Mr. Christopher Columbus,” among others. Kewskin performs solo this Saturday at 8 p.m. at Freight & Salvage, $18.50-$19.50. www.freightandsalvage.org. 

 

‘PETER PAN’ AT WOODMINSTER 

Woodminster Summer Musicals begins their 42nd season with Peter Pan, flying over the 1940 WPA Amphitheatre, high above the bay atop the hills in Oakland’s Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joaquin Miller Rd. 8 p.m. Friday-Sunday, through July 19. $25-40. 531-9597, www.woodminster.com. 


Architectural Excursions: Beltane Ranch: From ‘Dusty Place’ to ‘Mammy’s Place’

By Daniella Thompson
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:13:00 AM
The Southern-style house built by Mary Ellen Pleasant at Beltane Ranch in Glen Ellen is now a bed-and-breakfast inn.
Daniella Thompson
The Southern-style house built by Mary Ellen Pleasant at Beltane Ranch in Glen Ellen is now a bed-and-breakfast inn.
The Beltane Ranch living room.
Daniella Thompson
The Beltane Ranch living room.
The dining room retains much of its original flavor.
Daniella Thompson
The dining room retains much of its original flavor.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of two articles on the Sonoma County village of Glen Ellen. 

 

Before there was a Glen Ellen, much of Sonoma County’s Valley of the Moon was part of the 18,833-acre Rancho Los Guilucos. The rancho—its name was later corrupted to Guilicos—was granted in 1837 by Gov. Juan Bautista Alvarado to John Wilson and his wife, Ramona Carrillo, sister-in-law of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. 

In his book California Place Names, Erwin G. Gudde asserted that Guilucos is derived from the name of an Indian tribe, mentioned in 1823 by the missionary Padre Juan Amorós as la nacion Guiluc. In the language of the Lake Miwok tribe, the word wíilok meant “dusty.” 

Wilson, who never occupied his rancho, sold it in the 1850s to the merchants William Hood and William Pettitt. Hood’s brother-in-law, James Shaw, settled in the Valley of the Moon in the 1860s, establishing Wildwood Vineyard (now Kunde Family Estate). In the late 1870s, Shaw acquired a neighbor in the person of Captain John Hamilton Drummond. 

Drummond’s history is shrouded in haze. His stepson, UC Professor of Viticulture Frederic T. Bioletti, wrote in the Cyclopedia of American Horticulture (1909) that Drummond was born in Ireland about 1850. This version is borne out by the 1880 U.S. Census. Later accounts by other biographers maintain that Drummond was a Scotsman born in 1830. 

According to Bioletti, Drummond “was the second son of David Drummond, a well-known banker and merchant and philanthropist, of Dublin, Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He served in the 34th regiment of the regular English army in England and India until 1877, when he came to California and became a sheep-raiser in Sonoma County, near Cloverdale. Soon after, he purchased the Dunfillan Ranch, near Glen Ellen, Sonoma county, and was very active in importing new varieties of wine grapes from France, and of table grapes from English hothouses. He was one of the first to graft over the old Mission vineyards with fine varieties. He did much to improve the quality of California wines.” 

In the 11 years during which Drummond engaged in viticulture (he died in 1889), his Dunfillan Vineyard acquired national prestige for its high-quality wines. Drummond planted the North Coast’s first documented Bordeaux vineyard in 1878. He imported Cabernet Sauvignon cuttings from Château Margaux, Château Lafite Rothschild, and the Hermitage in Bordeaux. His 1882 Cabernet Sauvignon was the most admired wine at the California Viticultural Convention. 

Drummond imported several varieties of Pinot noir and made a blush wine called Oeil de Perdrix (eye of the partridge). He was one of the few early winegrowers to show an interest in Chardonnay, which he imported in 1880. He introduced Merlot in 1883. In her book Wines and Vines of California (1889), San Francisco Examiner writer Frona Eunice Wait called Dunfillan “one of the finest vineyards in America.” 

When Drummond died in December 1889, a neighboring vintner, Kate Warfield of the Ten Oaks Winery, was made executor of his estate. She, however, appears to have mismanaged the affair and was replaced the following year. It was perhaps the lack of proper management that brought about the sale of the Dunfillan vineyard. 

At the time of Drummond’s death, Glen Ellen was “the heart of the wine section of the county,” wrote Frona Wait, adding “the hills for miles on both sides of the valley are clad in vines.” Seven years earlier, the San Francisco & North Pacific Railway Company had extended its narrow-gauge line from the town of Sonoma to Glen Ellen, making the area attractive to vacationers and triggering a resort boom. 

When Drummond’s land was sold, it went not to a winegrower but to the wealthiest black woman in San Francisco, Mary Ellen Pleasant, widely known as “Mammy” Pleasant. Born a slave about 1814, Mary Ellen spent her youth as a bonded servant in Nantucket. Twice married, in 1852 she arrived in San Francisco, passing for white. She quickly became a celebrated cook to the town’s elite and shrewdly took advantage of business tips she heard discussed by her employers. Soon she acquired a string of laundries. 

During the financial crisis of 1858, Mrs. Pleasant traveled east, where she befriended abolitionist John Brown and is believed to have financed his failed Harper’s Ferry raid. Escaping back to San Francisco, she avowed her race after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Several years later, denied permission to board a streetcar, she sued the North Beach and Mission Railroad Company in a landmark case that eventually marked her as the “Mother of Civil Rights in California.” 

Mrs. Pleasant had a taste for intrigue and always kept her fingers in multiple pies. She owned boarding houses and possibly brothels, invested in mining operations, and backed speculative business ventures at home and abroad. For nearly 40 years, her fortunes were tied to those of Thomas Bell, a Scotsman who amassed great wealth through banking, mining, and brokerage. Some say she was his advisor. He married her protégée, Teresa. 

It was Mary Ellen Pleasant who built and furnished the 30-room Italianate mansion the Bells occupied with their six children and numerous servants at 1661 Octavia St. She lived there with them, running the household with an iron hand. 

In June 1891, Mrs. Pleasant purchased a 985-acre spread in Glen Ellen that included the 150-acre Drummond vineyard and surrounding homesteads. She named her new property Beltane Ranch, and it became a weekend home for herself and the Bells. 

The following year, she built on the ranch a two-story, Southern-style house with wraparound balconies. Teresa and the children spent much of their time here. But country living wasn’t cheap, and Mary Ellen was forced to sell some 200 acres and eventually signed the deed over to Mrs. Bell. 

In June 1893, a report to the Board of State Viticultural Commission stated that the “former J. H. Drummond place of 150 acres, once planted to superior foreign varieties and noted for its vineyard,” was “now badly infested by phylloxera, half the vineyard, or 75 acres, being entirely gone, and the other half near the end of its existence. It is proposed to clean up the entire vineyard after this year and use the land for other purposes.” Mrs. Teresa Bell was named as the owner. 

Thomas Bell died in October 1892 after falling over the stair balustrade in his Octavia Street home. The ensuing years saw Mrs. Pleasant and the Bell heirs increasingly entangled in sensational lawsuits. The newspapers took delight in publishing lurid stories about the devious, controlling “Mammy,” while the Bell mansion acquired the moniker “The House of Mystery.” 

Mary Ellen Pleasant was declared an insolvent debtor in 1898. Her creditors alleged that she had deeded the ranch to Mrs. Bell in order to avoid paying her debts. By the following year, her friendship with Teresa Bell was at an end, and she was forced out of house and ranch. She died in 1904 and was buried in Napa. At her request, her gravestone bears the epitaph “M.E.P. She was a friend of John Brown.” 

Beltane Ranch did not revert to vineyards until the 1970s. The house that Mary Ellen Pleasant built is now a charming bed-and-breakfast inn, set amidst flower gardens and ancient oaks. The ruins of the Dunfillan winery can be seen on the grounds of the neighboring Kunde winery. 


About the House: Wastewater is Not a Grey Area

By Matt Cantor
Thursday July 09, 2009 - 10:14:00 AM

I think it’s fair to argue that our biggest problems in saving this planet are conceptual and often simply emotional (though these two intertwine to fuzzy indistinguishability). There are few areas in which this is more true than with our sewers.  

We’re all a little nuts when it comes to what goes down the drain. We’re also a little blithe or tuned out. It’s so easy to use our wastewater system as a garbage can that we don’t generally stop to consider the global impact. Also, what goes down the drain under optimal conditions is not a topic for polite discussion. I like to joke with clients that when the sewer video camera service gives them that tape of their sewer lateral that they can pop it in at the next cocktail party once everyone has had a drink or two. Of course this is fabulously facetious since the contents of the sewer are widely agreed to be unsuitable for discussion.  

The darkness we cast over these areas makes for justified waste and keeps us from the sorts of technological advances (including incredibly simple and cheap ones) that might make huge changes in the longevity of our ecosphere.  

Case in point: Some years back, I had an awful dispute with a neighbor; the worst I ever had. I didn’t realize it when I bought but it turned out that my waste line ran right across his property and, being an aging clay line, it leaked. Now, when a water line leaks, it’s annoying and expensive. When a sewer line leaks, it’s a bit more Freudian. Not to put too fine a point on it, it felt as though I were a tiny child that had made a boo boo and daddy was mad at me. We all tried to play our roles as civilized adults (well, some of us tried) but the subliminal roles were hard to avoid and the day was ruled by sordid feelings and it took some advanced technology and the help of a very good lawyer to sanitize the situation. 

The point of my little tale of woe is that we’re not quite logical when it comes to our sewer systems and it just might be that we, as a society are using far more water and treating far more sewage than we really need to for adequate hygiene and at a very high cost. Water is one of the really big issues regarding life on Planet Earth today. Many people don’t have clean drinking water and, even where it seems abundant, the process of delivery is having an increasingly large impact on all of us. It’s reflected in your bill to some degree but, to be sure, the cost of the coal and oil needed to move water about are heavily subsidized. The carbon footprint of water delivery is a really big one and we simply cannot afford to continue to move, purify and treat water any more than we really need to.  

For example, it really doesn’t matter whether the water you use to flush your toilet is clean enough to drink, so why bother using the same water you need to have coming out of your tap? In fact, there are a whole series of tiered levels of cleanliness that we require and, exempting what you’re flushing down the toilet, you can probably make good use of all levels in some safe way. Now, notice your response as I notice mine. We love not having to think about this and there’s some subterranean discomfort that most of us feel around this issue. It’s awfully nice to simply turn on the tap and not have to wonder what’s there, but the cost of flushing drinking water down the toilet might just be melting all those nice glaciers. 

As you can probably tell, I’m leading up to a solution and the name of that solution is sullage or greywater. Greywater is wastewater we send down the drain that is not significantly unhygienic and that can be reused in some way around your property.  

Greywater systems are legal and code-approved in some areas (e.g. here in Berkeley) if properly designed and implemented and can pay for themselves in a matter of a few years. The simplest system is one in which you literally take your washing machine hose and extend it to a garden bed outside, though this will not meet with the state or plumbing code requirements. The same applies to putting a bucket under your bathroom and disconnecting the drain. Additionally, many people who have to wait for a while to get hot water at the shower will fill a bucket that can be taken to the garden. There’s no police force that will keep you from doing these sorts of things but for a more comprehensive system it is best to work from some guidelines or get help from one of the experts we have in abundance in our fair city. Some of these experts you can tap are the Greywater Guerrillas (www.greywaterguerrillas.com), Oasis Design (oasisdesign.net) or waterwisesystems.com. Waterwise Systems sells “surge” tanks and the associated equipment to built professional grade greywater systems suitable for gardening as well as recycling into your toilet. 

That last part (running your toilet off of recycled wastewater) is one that I think is really worth looking into. We use roughly 30 percent of our precious and expensive water sending human waste down the sewer and this, clearly, does not need to be fresh. A surge tank and pump system that refills your toilet tank by application of a small pump, some tubing and a simple float mechanism may pay for itself in a year, not to mention staving off hurricanes and wars over fuel. 

Greywater systems can use the water from lavatory sinks, showers, laundries pretty safely but can also use water from kitchen sinks and dishwashers with some extra effort (though these last two are the advanced course and not recommended for the casual Greywater Guerrilla). Aside from the delivery mechanism, some of the issues that one must consider in going grey include the use of laundry and dish soaps.  

Most greywater will end up in your garden (though this is not recommended for root vegetables that you’ll be harvesting) and should be kept low in phosphorus and salt; so the choice of your detergents should be more circumspect than usual. Seventh Generation’s vegetable-based laundry detergent, ECOS concentrated liquid laundry detergent and Ecover biodegradable laundry powder are three examples of detergents that are fairly benign in your garden if a little most more expensive than the Costco bucket you’re used to. 

Greywater is suitable for fruit trees as they do more to filter and biologically control what comes to the fruit. Nonetheless, it’s always important to use greywater within a day or so. Keeping greywater around fosters microbial growth and week-old greywater may be dangerous to you and your plants. 

Aside from the enormous value gained by using less water, sullage systems decrease the load on our increasingly overburdened sewer and waste treatment systems and reload groundwater at the source. The nutrients in greywater feed the soil and keep a healthy zoo of microbes abounding. Since greywater tends to be alkaline, you may find that some plants like it better and you may find yourself making some different choices in your plants over time, but this is a manageable problem. 

I’ll mention one last small idea that I think is really fun. I first saw these in Japan years ago but they’re making inroads in the United States. They’re toilet-lid sinks. This is so simple, it’s a wonder they haven’t been around forever. The water that normally fills the toilet tank is diverted to a little spout over the toilet tank lid and the lid is shaped like a sink. When you flush the toilet, the spout runs for about a minute, during which you can wash your hands. The water ends up in the toilet where it gets used the next time. Cool, eh? Real Goods is one place that sells these for around a hundred bucks. 

If greywater is something that peaks your interest, get help and contact the Ecology Center in Berkeley or one of the other groups listed above. This is a way to be of real service to the planet. It’s not a minor or token gesture. It’s also a way for us (you and your friends) to begin to make that very important conceptual turn away from entitlement to active participation in a democratic process; one in we each recognize the inherent nature of natural resources as shared commodities and use or pollution as a shared responsibility. In this sense, greywater harvesting and use becomes a meditation on equality, responsibility and harmony. 


Community Calendar

Thursday July 09, 2009 - 09:45:00 AM

THURSDAY, JULY 9 

Creeks, Parks, & Gardens Walk for walkers age 50+ to discover community gardens, restored creeks, environmentally friendly landscaping, and a “hidden” Albany park on a level, 3.5 mi. walk. Meet at 9 a.m. at the garden next to Berkeley Bagels, 1281 Gilman, near Santa Fe. Wear comfortable shoes, bring water and snack. Walk is free but numbers are limited. Please register at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic. 524-9122, or Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin. 524-9283. 

Dog Day Thursdays Come practice your reading skills by reading to a dog. A free, drop-in program at 2 and 2:35 p.m. at the Albany Library. Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

“Solar Green Jobs” with Joshua Arce on the solar efforts in the Bayview, SF, at 6 p.m. at 2nd flr. conference room, Central Building, 436 14th St., Oakland. RSVP to jeff@baylocalize.org 

East Bay Mac Users Group With presentations of the Omni Group's OmniFocus and OmniGraffle by David Alter and Howard Cohen at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound Street, Emeryville. http://ebmug.org 

Caddwynn the Magician will present her magic show at 3 p.m. at the Richmond Public Library, Main Children's Room, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. 620-6557. www.richmondlibrary.org 

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. 

Summer Dance Party EveryThurs. at 7:30 p.m. at Live Oak Park. Teachers will lead a variety of dances from around the world. All ages at 7:30, teens and adults at 8:30. Cost is $2 children, $5 adults. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

FRIDAY, JULY 10 

Water Safety Skills Class for parents and caregivers from 10:30 a.m. to noon at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111.  

Tsukimi Kai Fundraiser with Nikkei and Latino music and dance, raffle and silent auction at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Benefit for Tristan Anderson at 7 p.m. at AK Press Warehouse, 674-A 23rd St., Oakland. 208-1700. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253.  

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kaiser Permanente Office, Dining Conference Room, 1950 Franklin St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.givelife.org 

Dating Tips Seminar with Life Coach Vanae Tran at noon at Berkeley YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way. 848-6370.  

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. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Fri. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

SATURDAY, JULY 11 

“Holistic Care for Your Dog and Cat” with practitioners, vendors and experts from 1 to 4 p.m. at Holistic Hound, 1510 Walnut St. 843-2133. 

The Crucible’s 9th Annual Fire Arts Festival Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Fire Arts Arena, W. Grand Ave. and Wake Ave., Oakland. www.thecrucible.org 

Impact Theatre Benefit Poker Tournament at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave. Tickets are $50. impacttheatre.com 

“Breads and Tortillas: Eat Your Way Through History” from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. Cost is $1. Tours of the house also available. Wear socks. 532-9142. www.peraltahacienda.org 

Walking Tour of Mountain View Cemetery Meet at 10 a.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Cost is $10-$15. 763-9218. 

Common Agenda Regional Network Meeting on the California budget crisis, U.N. Durban Review Conference, alternatives to the death penalty and John Yoo, at 2 p.m. at Gray Panthers’ office, 1403 Addison St., 527-9584. 

Rabbit Adoption Day from 1 to 4 p.m. at RabbitEars, 377 Colusa Circle. 525-6155. 

Collage Worshop for Teens at 1 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Art supplies provided, but you may bring your own. 526-3720. 

Introduction to Improv Theater and Acting with Pan Theater in downtown Oakland, from 10:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. For ages 18 and up. Free. Advance registration requested pantheater@comcast.net 

“Bamboo” Learn about the right types to plant in your garden at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. Free. 644-2351. 

Adventure Weekend at Playland-Not-At-The-Beach Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $10-$15. 932-8966. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lawn Bowling on the green at the corner of Acton St. and Bancroft Way every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. for ages 12 and up. Wear flat soled shoes, no heels. Free lessons. 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. 

Open Shop at Berkeley Boathouse from 1 to 5 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Take part in constructing a wooden boat or help out with other maritime projects. No experience necessary. First time is free, cost is $10 per day. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

SUNDAY, JULY 12 

Walking Tour of Amelia’s Airport: Oakland’s Historic North Field Meet at 10 a.m. at the Business Jet Center, 9351 Earhart Rod. Sponsored by Oakland Heritage Alliance. Cost is $10-$15. 763-9218. 

“Specter of Revolution Stalks Iran’s Theocratic Rulers” A discussion at 10:30 a.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 658-1448. 

Medicinal Plants in Strawberry Canyon Learn the historical and modern medicinal applications, from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Bring water, snacks/lunch, hat/sunscreen, a notebook, and a camera. Cost is $25. To register call 428-1810 or email bluewindbmc@yahoo.com 

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. 

Social Action Summer Forum with Antonio Medrano, Board Member for the West Contra Costa School District on “What’s Happening in the District?” at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Huston Smith on “Tales of Wonder” at 11:30 a.m. at Epworth UMC, 1953 Hopkins St.  

Silpada Designs Jewelry Show and Sale to benefit the Adult Day Service Network of Alameda County from 2:30 to 4 p.m. at Salem Lutheran Home, 2361 East 29th St., Oakland. 534-3637. 

“How to Forgive for Good” Practical ways to let go with Rev. Mary Elyn Bahlert at 9:30 a.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1255 First Ave., Oakland. Donations acepted. 465-4793. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. l 

Tibetan Buddhism with Erika Rosenberg on “Emotions in Mind” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000.  

MONDAY, JULY 13 

Reduce Your Personal and Community Carbon Footprint Four-session Climate Change Action Group, Mon. or Tues. from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Ecology Center. For specific dates and more information see www.ecologycenter.org  

Community Yoga Class 10 a.m. at James Kenney Parks and Rec. Center at Virginia and 8th. Seniors and beginners welcome. Cost is $6. 207-4501. 

Morning Meditation Every Mon., Wed., and Fri. at 7:45 a.m. at Rudramandir, 830 Bancroft Way at 6th. 486-8700. 

Small-Business Counseling Free one-hour one-on-one counseling to help you start and run your small business with a volunteer from Service Core of Retired Executives, Mon. evenings by appointment at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. For appointment call 981-6148. 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, JULY 14 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Community Barbeque with sausages, tofu, msuhrooms and oysters, and live music, from 2 to 7 p.m. on Derby St. at MLK, Jr. Way. Benefits the Ecology Center. 548-3333. www.ecologycenter.org 

Bastille Day Fundraiser for Alameda Non-Profits, including the Animal Shelter, Food Bank and Family Services League from 4 to 8 p.m. at Alameda Wine Co. 2315 Central Ave., Alameda. 21 and up only. Dogs on leashes welcome. www.alamedawineco.com 

Walking Tour of Oakland City Center Meet at 10 a.m. in front Oakland City Hall at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Bastille Day for Children from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

Early Childhood Safety Choke-Saving Skills Class  

for parents and caregivers from 10:30 a.m. to noon at Habitot Children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

Half Dome in a Day Tips for a successful hike at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Irish Social Dance Class at 8 p.m., open dance at 9 p.m. at Henry’s Pub in the Hotel Durant, 2600 Durant Ave. Free. BerkeleyIrish.com 

Jeremy the Juggler at 10:30 a.m. at the West Side branch library, 135 Washington Ave., Richmond, and at 2 p.m. at the Bayview branch library, 5100 Hartnett Ave., Richmond. 620-6557. www.richmondlibrary.org 

Family Program with Juan L. Sanchez, singer and storyteller at 6:30 p.m. at the Albany Library. Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

“Socialism and Bob Avakian’s New Synthesis” A discussion at 7 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. 848-1196. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Street Level Cycles Community Bike Program Come use our tools as well as receive help with performing repairs free of charge. Youth classes available. Tues., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. from 2 to 6 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. 644-2577.  

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991.  

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Bridge for beginners from 12:30 to 2:15 p.m., all others 12:30 to 4 p.m. Sing-A-Long at 2:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 15 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland Uptown to the Lake to discover Art Deco landmarks. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Paramount Theater at 2025 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

Free Screening of “Bamako“ as part of the Radical Film Nite with free popcorn and post-film discussion, at 8 p.m. at the Long Haul Infoshop, 3124 Shattuck Ave. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

“The Mysteries, Secrets and Solutions: Connecting with the Energy Research at Berkeley Lab” An Educator Insitute conference Wed. and Thurs. with keynote by Dr. Sally Ride. Cost is $30. To register see www.sallyridescience,com/institutes 

Family Singalong at 4:30 p.m. at the Albany Library. Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 6 to 8 p.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165. 

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. 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. 

THURSDAY, JULY 16 

“Butterflies in a Butterfly House” with entomologist Rich Kelson of Butterfly Habitat at 7:30 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. www.goldengateaudubon.org 

Dog Day Thursdays Come practice your reading skills by reading to a dog. A free, drop-in program at 2 and 2:35 p.m. at the Albany Library. Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

“The Suntrain and Mr. Swan’s Big Idea” Slideshow presentation on a solar-powered railway at 7 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. 548-3402, store@ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Simplicity Forum on “Decluttering” at 6:30 p.m. at the Claremont Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave. 

Hip-Hop Dance Class for Teens with Lateef at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St.  

Early Childhood Safety Choke-Saving Skills Class, in English and Spanish,  

for parents and caregivers from 10:30 a.m. to noon at Habitot children’s Museum, 2065 Kittredge St. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

Magic Workshop with Ordinary Objects with Heather Rogers from 6 to 8 p.m. at Playland-Not-At-The-Beach at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $20. 932-8966. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org 

Harry Potter Night with games, snacks, and lots of Hogwarts-style fun Thursday, 7/16/09, 6:15 p.m., at the Main Children's Room, 325 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond. 620-6557. www.richmondlibrary.org  

“Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry” Teach-in at 7 p.m. at AK Press Warehouse, 674-A 23rd St., Oakland. 208-1700. 

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. 

Summer Dance Party EveryThurs. at 7:30 p.m. at Live Oak Park. Teachers will lead a variety of dances from around the world. All ages at 7:30, teens and adults at 8:30. Cost is $2 children, $5 adults. 

FRIDAY, JULY 17 

Conscientious Projector Film Series “Torturing Democracy” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. Donation $5-$10. 841-4824. 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

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. 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Fri. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

SATURDAY, JULY 18 

Friends of the Albany Library Book Sale from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. For information or to volunteer contact friendsalbany@yahoo.com 

Colusa Circle Community FreeCycle Bring your castoffs too good to throw away to exchange for other treasures. No buying, no selling. Salvation Army will pick up the leftovers at the end of the day. To drop off or to reserve a space, call the Colusa Circle Merchants Assoc. 525-6155. 

Easy Tips to Save Money on Your Pets, While Treating Them really well from 1 to 4 p.m. at RabbitEars, 377 Colusa Ave., Kensington. 525-6155. 

Walking Tour of Historic Oakland Churches and Temples Meet at 10 a.m. at the front of the First Presbyterian Church at 2619 Broadway. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Greater Cooper A.M.E. Zion Church, 1420 Myrtle St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.helpsavealife.org  

Free Car Seat Checks From 10 a.m. to noon officers from the Berkeley Police Department will administer a car seat safety check on the 5th level of the Allston Way Garage, 2061 Allston Way between Milvia and Shattuck. Parking will be validated by Habitot. 647-1111.  

“How to Attract Butterflies and Beneficial Insects to Your Garden” at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. Free. 644-2351. 

Hip-Hop Dance Class for Teens with Lateef at 3:30 p.m. at West Branch Public Library, 1125 University Ave. 981-6270.  

Circus Weekend at Playland-Not-At-The-Beach Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Cost is $10-$15. 932-8966. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org 

Chocolate Chip Challah Learn to decorate and bake a treat for Shabbat at 10:30 p.m. at Jewish Gateways, 409 Liberty St., El Cerrito. 559-8140. www.jewishgateways.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lawn Bowling on the green at the corner of Acton St. and Bancroft Way every Wed. and Sat. at 10 a.m. for ages 12 and up. Wear flat soled shoes, no heels. Free lessons. 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. 

Open Shop at Berkeley Boathouse from 1 to 5 p.m. at at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Take part in constructing a wooden boat or help out with other maritime projects. No experience necessary. First time is free, cost is $10 per day. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

SUNDAY, JULY 19 

Bike Tour of Oakland for ages 12 and up with bikes, helmets and repair kits. Meet at 10th St. entrance of Oakland Museum of California. free, but reservations required. 238-3514. www.museumca.org 

Fun with Painting A children and family explorations day from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak sts. Cost is $5-$8. 238-3514. www.museumca.org 

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club, Berkeley Marina. Wear warm, waterproof clothing and bring a change of clothes in case you get wet. Children 5 and over welcome with parent or guardian. www.cal-sailing.org 

Social Action Summer Forum with Leon Litvak, Prof. Emeritus, UCB, on “Fight the Power After the Civil Rights Movement” at at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

“How to Forgive for Good” Practical ways to let go with Rev. Mary Elyn Bahlert at 9:30 a.m. at Lake Merritt United methodist Church, 1255 First Ave., Oakland. Donations accepted. 465-4793. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 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 Joleen Vries on “The Nyingma Mandala in Europe” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

Sew Your Own Open Studio Come learn to use our industrial and domestic machines, or work on your own projects, from 2 to 6 p.m. at 84 Bolivar Dr., Aquatic Park. Also on Thurs. from 2 to 6 p.m. Cost is $5 per hour. 644-2577. www.watersideworkshops.org 

CITY MEETINGS 

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Thurs., July 9, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5428.  

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., July 9, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356.  

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., July 9, at 7 p.m. at the James Kenney Recreation Center, 8th & Virginia. 981-7418.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., July 9, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7430.  

Housing Element Community Meeting Thurs., July 9, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7416.  

City Council meets Tues., July 14, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Medical Cannabis Commission meets Thurs. July 14, at 1:30 p.m. at City Hall, Cypress Room, 2180 Milvia. 981-7402. 

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., July 16, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7415.  

Fair Campaign Practices Commission meets Thurs., July 16, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-6950.  

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., July 16, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7061.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Mon., July 20 , at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7429.