Berkeley police have held a homeless person in connection with shots which were fired at Martin Luther King Civic Center Park in downtown Berkeley Wednesday night.  

At approximately 9:45 p.m. a gunshot was heard in the vicinity of the park, which is located next to Berkeley City Hall, across the street from Berkeley High School to the south and the Maudelle Shirek building (old City Hall) and Berkeley Police headquarters in the Public Safety Building to the west. 

Within minutes at least 7 Berkeley Police Department cars with sirens blaring reached the site and handcuffed a group of homeless men inside the park. 

A woman who had been sleeping in the park ran away to the safety of the Maudelle Shirek building lawn, at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

"I heard gun shots," said the woman, refusing to give her name fearing retribution. "I jumped and got down in the dirt. I was just passing through and I heard the shots. I am from Brooklyn--you hear shots, you get down." 

At the park Berkeley police officers were questioning two men they had handcuffed. 

BPD police officer Lt. Hong told the Planet that a group of homeless men were arguing in the park, when one of them pulled out a handgun in the heat of the argument and fired a shot. 

"I don't think he was targeting anybody," Hong said. "Nobody is hurt. We have him in custody and the firearm as well." 

Hong said a few other homeless men had been detained for questioning. 

At least two fire department rescue trucks arrived at the scene 30 minutes later and paramedics brought a stretcher to the park. Around 10:24 p.m. paramedics carried a handcuffed man from the park into the van on the stretcher .

Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff announced at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting that he has decided to retire, effective as soon as the board can appoint a replacement. 

Orloff, 66, who has been in the office nearly 40 years and has headed it for the past 15, recommended that the board act next week to appoint Chief Assistant District Attorney Nancy O’Malley to fill the rest of his four-year term, which expires at the end of next year. 

The district attorney’s position will be on the ballot next year. 

Orloff told the Board of Supervisors, “If you select Nancy, next year the voters will decide if your choice of Nancy was correct. I am confident they will affirm your selection.” 

Orloff’s announcement seemed to take the board by surprise. 

After the meeting, Orloff said he had simply decided that “it’s time” to retire. 

“I still have my good health, and there are some things I want to do,” he said. 

Orloff said, “My grandson is one year old and I want to spend time with him so he gets to know his grandfather.” 

Supervisor Gail Steele told Orloff, “You’ve done a good job and have represented the county well.” 

Supervisor Alice Lai-Bitker said, “We’re very fortunate to have had your leadership the last 15 years.” 

In his announcement to the board, Orloff said, “Over the past 15 years as district attorney I have been called on to make many decisions. Many have received little or no public attention. A few have been scrutinized in the public eye.” 

One such decision was the question of whether to charge former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle in connection with the shooting death of Oscar Grant III at the Fruitvale station on Jan. 1. 

Some community leaders criticized Orloff for taking too long to file charges against Mehserle. Orloff did file a murder charge against Mehserle on Jan. 13. 

According to Mehserle’s lawyer, Michael Rains, it is the first murder prosecution in California of a police officer for an on-duty homicide. 

On Feb. 10, a civil rights group delivered a petition to Orloff with more than 20,000 signatures asking that he charge a second BART police officer, Tony Pirone, in connection with Grant’s death, but Orloff has declined to do so. 

O’Malley, 55, has been in the District Attorney’s office for 25 years and has been chief assistant district attorney for 10 years. 

She said Orloff’s retirement “is a great loss” and said “Tom has been a great leader.” 

Less than four hours after Berkeley police asked the community to keep an out for Eva Pena, a developmentally disabled Berkeley woman who was missing since Sept. 2, the department issued a press release saying she had been found. 

Berkeley Police Department spokesperson Mary Kusmiss said in an e-mail message that Pena had been located in Oakland after having “wandered away” from a family friend near the 7-11 store at College Avenue and Russell Street around midnight Sept. 2.

The new CEO for the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce has left before he even arrived.  

In an e-mail to chamber members Friday, Sept. 4, chamber vice chair Rod Howard announced that Gian Paulo Mammone will not be taking the job offered to him a month ago.  

“I regret to inform you that Gian Paulo Mammone, our recent selection for the CEO position of the Berkeley Chamber, due to personal reasons, has decided not to take the position,” said Howard, who is also serving as the chair of the CEO search team. “Although we were disappointed in his decision, we wish Mr. Mammone all the best in his future endeavors.”  

The Daily Planet reported Aug. 13 that the chamber had appointed a new CEO after a four-month search for a replacement.  

Mammone was scheduled to take over from interim CEO Kevin Allen, who was filling the position after the chamber suddenly removed the previous CEO, Ted Garrett, in March.  

Few reasons were given for Garrett’s dismissal, except that the chamber was aspiring to move in a new direction.  

The same reason was given by Oregon's Lincoln City Chamber of Commerce, when they decided to terminate Mammone’s position as its executive director.  

Berkeley Chamber of Commerce Chairman Jonathan DeYoe told the Planet during an interview in August that the chamber’s hiring committee was aware of Mammone’s termination from his earlier job and had talked to Lincoln City chamber officials about the reasons behind his dismissal.  

“We are confident that the issues that he [Mammone] had in Lincoln City, which is a very small city, will be deeply embraced in Berkeley,” DeYoe said. “We are very excited to have him here.”   

In an e-mail to the Daily Planet Tuesday, DeYoe said that the chamber “believed that Gian Paolo would have been an excellent fit and still understand that sometimes we each must make difficult choices. It just so happens that one of his difficult choices was to make the decision, for personal reasons, to pass on the Berkeley Chamber opportunity.” 

  DeYoe said the chamber’s Executive Committee will reform the search team and start over on the search. 

  “We continue to believe that the right candidate is out there and we look forward to making their acquaintance,” he said. 

E-mails to Howard were not returned by press time. Mammone could not be reached for comment immediately.  

Howard said in his e-mail that the chamber’s executive board will convene Sept. 8 to plan a new search process to “find the right CEO for this special role in this special city.”  

Howard said that he was confident that the chamber’s support staff would be perfectly capable of running the office and serving the needs of its members as the hiring team “re-starts the search process once again.”  

“We also have a phenomenal, active board at this time, so we will continue to be strong advocates for you and for business, and a positive force for thoughtful change in the city,” Howard said. “Thank you again for your support during this transition, and we will keep you up to date on our new pursuit of this important role.”  

Marni Posey replaced Chef Ann Cooper as Berkeley Unified School District’s director of nutrition services Tuesday. 

Cooper, who was hired by the school district on a three-year contract with the help of a grant from the Chez Pannisse Foundation in October 2005, left the school district in June to work for the Boulder Valley Unified School District. 

Posey was previously the district’s manager of nutrition services under Cooper as well as her assistant for the past three years. 

“I was her right hand,” Posey said during a telephone interview Wednesday. “I helped her with everything she did here.” 

Cooper’s efforts to ban frozen lunches and replace them with farm-fresh ingredients won her accolades in the national media, including a profile in the New Yorker—big shoes to fill, but Posey’s not worried.  

“I am very prepared for it,” she said. “Anne has taught me everything she knew. I am confident everything is going to be fine. I am prepared to enhance the programs, if not make them better.” 

Posey has worked in Berkeley Unified’s Nutrition Services department for the last nine years. Before joining Berkeley Unified, she worked at Mount Diablo Unified School District. She has a total of 15 years of experience in food services. 

Posey worked with Cooper on revamping Berkeley’s school lunch program, helping to incorporate changes to the menu and setting up the dining commons at King Middle School. 

Her new job will put her in charge of a staff of 50, including the district’s executive chef Bonnie Christensen and two sous chefs. 

Though the Nutrition Services department has reached its goal of being budget-neutral, Posey said, and is finally paying for itself, it is still receiving a contribution from Berkeley Unified, but the department has managed to whittle down the amount considerably.  

“We were going to get a contribution of $310,000 from the district’s General Fund this year, but we were able to chip away at it and bring it down to $23,000,” she said. 

Posey said she wanted to focus on getting more Berkeley High School students to take part in the school lunch program, which had posed a challenge for Cooper during her time in Berkeley. 

For now, Posey is concentrating on introducing new dishes to the school lunch menu. Her latest creations include spicy apricot drums for middle schoolers and beef barbacoa, a slow-cooked beef Mexican dish.

Berkeley planning commissioners face a full agenda when they return from their summer break Wednesday night. 

Major items on their plate for the 7 p.m. session include:  

• A report from UC Berkeley development staff on plans for the new undergraduate housing building slated for construction at the site of the Anna Head parking lot, a 1.25-acre site west of Bowditch Street between Channing Way and Haste Street north of People’s Park. The building will contain 200 beds in double-occupancy rooms in a sophomore residence hall and 224 beds in four-bedroom units for upper-division students. 

• Approval of a tract map that will allow conversion of five residential apartments at 2217-2219 California St. into condominiums. 

• Discussion of the proposed revision of the city's General Plan Housing Element chapter on constraints on development of new units, and 

• Revisions to the city’s columbarium ordinance that would extend the right to build enclosures for human ashes to non-profit groups other than religious groups, which are currently the only authorized organizations allowed to build structures to house what morticians have renamed “cremains.” 

The meeting will be held in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

The agenda and copies of the supporting documents are available online at http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=43480.

Faced with falling revenues, AC Transit is proposing a series of cuts and adjustments of service throughout the two-county bus district.  

In a complicated proposal, some lines are being eliminated altogether, with much—but in some cases, not all—of their service picked up by other lines. In addition, the frequency of bus service and the hours of service are being changed. And in some cases, where bus lines are being split apart, bus riders will have to transfer from one line to another on trips for which they now only have to use one line. This may mean an extra expense for some passengers who then have to transfer to a third line, as AC Transit bus transfers are currently valid for only one transfer.  

District officials say that the changes are necessary in order to keep the bus district solvent over the next several years, as well as to plug a $9.74 million shortfall in the 2009-10 fiscal year budget. If the proposed service cuts and line adjustments are approved by the board, the district will drop 905 hours of bus service per day across the two-county district, 458 hours on weekends, for an estimated annual savings of $18 million. 

The district is planning a series of public outreach meetings to inform the public about the proposed changes. The first meeting will be held 6:30–8 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 8 at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave.  

Informational meetings on the proposed changes will also be held 2–5 p.m. and 6–8 p.m.Wednesday, Sept. 23, at the AC Transit General Offices at 1600 Franklin Street, Oakland, in the second-floor board room. 

At the end of the public meeting process throughout the district, the AC Transit Board will hold at least one public hearing on the proposed changes during a regular board meeting, and then will vote on the proposals later this fall. If approved, implementation of the proposed changes are scheduled for December. 

A full list of the AC Transit line reduction/re-adjustment proposals is available at www.actransit.org. 

AC Transit has also posted a chart with the complete listing of all the proposed changes in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. In addition, the district has provided a map of all of its bus lines, including the proposed changes.  

Below is a summary of the line changes proposed for the Berkeley area only.  

Line 7 

No changes appear to be contemplated by AC Transit in the Berkeley portion of Line 7, running between Solano Avenue and Rockridge BART. Reduced frequency of opereration is planned for the northern portion of the line, between Solano Avenue and El Cerrito Del Norte BART. 

Line 9 

No route changes are planned for this line, which runs a circuitous route up and down through Berkeley between the Claremont Hotel and the Berkeley Marina. However, AC Transit plans reduction of the frequency of buses during the morning hours and on weekends. 

Line 12 

Line 12 currently comes down Pleasant Valley Avenue and 51st Street from the Oakland hills, turning south at 55th Avenue and Martin Luther King to terminate at the MacArthur BART Station. Under the new configuration, Line 12 will turn north at 55th Avenue and Martin Luther King instead of south, running into Berkeley and turning at Center Street to terminate at the Downtown Berkeley BART Station. The service along Martin Luther King between 55th and downtown Berkeley will replace Line 15, which is being eliminated. Service on the 12 line currently ends at approximately 7:45 p.m., but will be extended to 10 p.m. under AC Transit’s new plans. 

Line 15 

To be eliminated. The Berkeley portion of the line is being replaced by Line 12. 

Line 18 

This is another line which AC Transit is proposing to break in two parts. In this case, the southern portion of the line—between downtown Oakland and up Park Boulevard to Montclair—will retain the designation of Line 18. Frequency will be reduced on the portion of this line between MacArthur Boulevard and Montclair. The northern portion of this line—from downtown Oakland down Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Telegraph Avenue, and Shattuck Avenue into downtown Berkeley and then down Shattuck and Solano into Albany—takes on the new name of Line 10. 

Line 19 

To be eliminated. The Berkeley portion of the line, which runs between the Emeryville Amtrak Station, through West Berkeley west of San Pablo Avenue, and up Cedar Street to the North Berkeley BART Station, will be replaced by Line 25. The portion that runs between Emeryville Amtrak and Alameda is being replaced by Line 31. 

Line 25 

This is a new line operating in a loop in both directions. It will run from the Downtown Berkeley BART down Cedar Street, then through West Berkeley north to Central Avenue, then east up Central past the El Cerrito Plaza BART Station, then south along Colusa, The Alameda, and Martin Luther King back to the Downtown Berkeley BART Station. Limited service along this line would run to Bulk Mail Center on Rydin Road. The portion of this line between University Village and El Cerrito Plaza BART will replace Line 52L, which will no longer run that portion of its route. 

Line 51 

There will be no line numbered 51 under AC Transit’s proposed changes. Instead, Line 51 is being divided into two parts, with new line numbers, and with the dividing line at Rockridge BART. The new Line 4 will run the route of the old Line 51 from University Avenue and 3rd Street, through downtown Berkeley, up to College Avenue, and out College to the Rockridge BART. The new Line 3 will run from Rockridge BART down Broadway to downtown Oakland, and then through the Posey Tube into Alameda. Besides dividing Line 51 into two separate parts, with new line numbers (4 & 3), the two new lines will run at reduced frequency of operation. 

Line 52L 

The line currently operates between the University of California and El Cerrito Plaza BART. The portion of this line between the University of California and University Village will stay the same, but the line will now terminate at University Village. The portion of this line between University Village and El Cerrito Plaza BART will be eliminated, to be replaced by Line 25. Frequency of operation and service hours will be reduced on the weekends. 

Line 88 

This line currently runs from the North Berkeley BART Station, south along Sacramento and Market to downtown Oakland, ending at the Lake Merritt BART Station. Under the new proposal, the portion of the line between University Avenue and the North Berkeley BART Station will be eliminated. Instead, Line 88 will begin at the Downtown Berkeley BART Station, run west on University Avenue, and turn south on Sacramento towards downtown Oakland. AC Transit plans to eliminate completely any bus service along the small portion of Sacramento Street that runs between the North Berkeley BART Station and University Avenue. No changes in frequency or hours are proposed..

Kate Trimlett is bringing biofuels into Berkeley High School’s science curriculum. 

Armed with eight weeks of biofuels research experience from the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) in Emeryville, the Berkeley High science teacher is ready to take this controversial topic from the lab to the classroom. 

Trimlett, lead teacher at the School for Social Justice and Ecology, a small school at Berkeley High, won a fellowship from the Synthetic Biology Engineering and Research Center and JBEI to spend the summer with two of her students inside JBEI’s Deconstruction Division. 

A collaboration between three national labs, public and private universities and industrial and federal agencies, JBEI is engineering bacteria to convert plant waste-material into petroleum products. 

As part of the eight-week Introductory College Level Experience in Microbiology (iCLEM) program, the three joined four other East Bay high school students and Oakland Unity High School science department head Rowan Driscoll to study 23 strains of bacteria found in compost piles. The students picked out 12 samples they wanted to inspect further, using them to produce the enzyme cellulase. Cellulase can be used to convert cellulose, or plant material, into glucose, which can then be used to make ethanol. 

If it sounds complicated, it’s because it is. Enzyme analyses can take weeks, if not months, and even then results are not guaranteed. 

Trimlett and her group were still analyzing enzymes at the end of their seventh week in the program, but nobody seemed discouraged. If anything, the students were excited at the prospect of getting a chance to share their discoveries with scientists at JBEI a few days later. 

Four days before their final presentation on Aug. 12, the group found some time to break from their intensive lab schedule and have fun during a JBEI barbecue. 

Sitting on the campus’s plush green lawns, with 15-foot-high fountains dancing in the background, Trimlett laid out her plans for the future. 

“We don’t teach students about biofuels at Berkeley High,” she said. “I didn’t learn about it when I was in school. The idea is to develop a curriculum and take it back to the classroom. We have never done any lab work or experiments—this is the first time I’ll teach it.” 

When students return to Berkeley High this week for fall classes, they will collect bacteria from compost heaps and test their ability to break down cellulose. Then they will analyze the bacteria’s DNA. 

Trimlett is aware of all the debates surrounding biofuels, but is quick to point out that at JBEI, the focus is to produce fuel from food crop “leftovers” instead of the edible parts. 

“We have gone on tours of labs where they are getting their fuel from sugar cane and corn, and it definitely came up in the discussion,” she said. “It’s really easy to get biofuel from corn and sugar cane, but if you take them away from people, then that’s really bad. That’s why at JBEI they are trying to get glucose from corn husk and corn stalk and all the stuff that you won’t eat.” 

Karla Loaiza, 17, from Unity High, sat chatting with Clem Fortman, a post-doctorate researcher at JBEI who founded iCLEM along with James Carothers, another scientist at the institute. 

Karla said that she fell in love with science after watching countless episodes of CSI Las Vegas, and confessed a desire to become a forensic scientist.  

Claudia Portillo, a junior from Richmond’s Salesian High School, and Dzenifa Velic, a senior from Oakland Tech, joined the discussion on DNA sequencing while nibbling coleslaw and barbecued chicken. 

All six iCLEM interns have good grades in science, but they also fulfill another important criteria for getting an internship at iCLEM: They all have little or no family history of attending college and come from low-income backgrounds. 

Ruty Miyazaki-Smith, a junior at Berkeley High, comes from a family of craftsmen who carve stools and tables from cherry wood for a living. 

Originally from Japan, Ruty decided to apply for the internship to figure out whether he should take up biological or mechanical engineering in college. 

“I wanted to meet actual scientists and do actual labs,” Ruty said as he labeled samples after returning to the lab from lunch. “We didn’t do much labs in school and it wasn’t much fun.” 

Ruty’s lab partners for the day were Esteban Bolden, who attends Berkeley Unified School District’s Independent Study program, and Edgar Ulu, who moved to the Bay Area as a high school junior last year. 

“It’s my first time working in a lab,” said Edgar. “All the scientists here treat us like co-workers. I feel very grown up.” 

Esteban said he applied because of his interest in the local Spare the Air days. 

In its second year now, iCLEM hopes to become an annual feature for students from all over the Bay Area. 

“iCLEM’s vision is to offer an opportunity to young adults that they would not be able to get in their school or in their community,” Driscoll said. “The students are chosen in part due to their effort and enthusiasm and proactiveness to apply and to chase this opportunity, but also on the basis of how privileged they are. I think there’s a real disconnect between the students that I serve and research jobs like this one.” 

A public charter school in East Oakland, Unity High exists in a “no frills, meat and potatoes kind of setting,” and is often unable to offer its students—85 percent of whom take advantage of the school’s free or reduced-cost lunch program—the kind of opportunities they need to succeed. 

“I don’t think many of my students can envision that they are completely capable of getting a job working at a lab,” Driscoll said. “As a biology and chemistry teacher, I want to make education as real and as practical as possible. When my students ask me ‘Why do I need to learn this?’ I tell them that five miles down the road, there are jobs, even in this time of economic difficulty. I want to open doors, open their eyes and help them find avenues to use science to make themselves useful to society.” 

Besides picking up valuable research skills, iCLEM interns also receive a $2,500 stipend, help with college applications, personal essays and résumés and a chance to meet the top names in bioscience. 

On a recent Friday, the group was paid a visit by JBEI CEO and UC Berkeley bioengineering professor Jay Keasling, who was named Discover magazine’s 2006 scientist of the year. Esquire magazine recently included Keasling on its list of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century. 

Keasling’s lecture, “Life 2.0: From Bugs to Drugs to Fuels,” covered everything from U.S. dependence on foreign oil to synthetic biology to his efforts to create a cheap supply of the malarial drug artemisinin through genetic manipulation, and even found time for a few jokes. 

Fortman said it was Keasling’s enthusiasm that had made iCLEM possible in the first place. 

“Training is a big part of JBEI,” Fortman said. “It’s not a fluke that these kids are here. They are here because they have some capacity and we want them to take advantage of that and of us.” 

Listening to his students brainstorm ideas of how biofuels might provide an answer to solving global issues like war, starvation, pollution and global warming one day, Driscoll, like Trimlett, admitted that it was impossible to ignore its critics. 

“How far do we go, how much do we allow? I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t answer that question right now. What I do know is that the students I have now are going to be making those decisions. They are going to be voting on how much genetically modifiable engineering should be allowed. Should we just let it all come crashing down because we don’t want to mess with nature? We have already been messing with nature. We have been messing with nature since humans became agrarians.” 

Driscoll said that he wanted his students to be stewards who would use their knowledge for the benefit of mankind. 

“I would be doing my students a disservice if I didn’t expose them to different avenues,” he said. “I honestly think that if my students are not informed, they are going to be subject to fearmongering and misconception and misguiding rhetoric that gets tossed around so quickly.”.”

A new report says that Berkeley’s student assignment plan is a model for other districts struggling to maintain diversity in their schools. 

The report, titled “Integration Defended: Berkeley Unified’s Strategy to Maintain School Diversity,” was released Tuesday.  

It was written by researchers at the Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at UC Berkeley School of Law and the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, after a year-long analysis of Berkeley Unified’s plan. 

Berkeley’s student integration plan has been challenged several times, most recently by the Pacific Legal Foundation, which sued the district on behalf of the American Civil Rights Foun-dation for violating California’s Proposition 209 by racially discriminating among students in placing them at elementary schools and in programs at Berkeley High School. 

In March, the California Court of Appeal upheld an earlier Alameda County Superior Court ruling that the plan is fair and legal.  

The UC report says that Berkeley Unified officials were successful in achieving “substantial integration in a city where neighborhoods are polarized by racial-ethnic and socioeconomic status.” 

“I think it supports the findings we have had for the program and the values of the school district which wants to have a plan that’s fair and equitable,” Berkeley Unified Superintendent Bill Huyett said. “The school district has put a lot of resources in having all our children go to all our schools but we still have to do a lot of work on closing the achievement gap.” 

According to the report’s authors, the issue of ensuring a racially diverse student population became a big challenge since a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling certified the importance of creating diversity in schools, but limited public school assignments based upon a student’s race or ethnicity. 

The court’s decision was a result of challenges posed to integration plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., school districts. 

“In the wake of that U.S. Supreme Court ruling, school districts around the country have been struggling to figure out what to do,” said Lisa Chavez, a research analyst at Berkeley Law’s Warren Institute who co-authored the report. “They are finding that they have to revamp their desegregation programs. This report suggests that other school districts should consider whether the Berkeley model might work for them as they revise their efforts at racial integration.” 

Berkeley Unified first started desegregation efforts in the mid-1960s, and the city’s racial and ethnic population has become increasingly diverse since then. 

According to the report, by 2008, 30.5 percent of the students enrolled in Berkeley’s public schools were white, 25.8 percent were African-American, 16.6 percent were Latino, 7.1 percent were Asian, and 18.7 percent either identified themselves in multiple categories or did not respond.  

The report’s authors said that in order to integrate the schools, district officials had to overcome residential segregation ingrained in the city. 

In its newest “controlled choice” plan adopted in 2004 to assign students to elementary schools, the district divided the city into more than 440 micro-neighborhoods called “planning areas,” each with a different diversity code. 

The code is based upon “the planning area’s average household income, highest level of education obtained by adults, and the percentage of students of color enrolled in grades kindergarten through 5 in public school.” 

Students in a particular planning area get assigned the same diversity code irrespective of their individual race. 

“Berkeley Unified gets credit for the innovative approach of assigning a diversity code to a planning area rather than to an individual student,” said report co-author Erica Frankenberg, research and policy director for the Initiative on School Integration at the UCLA Civil Rights Project. “That distinction is critical, and is what sets Berkeley’s integration plan apart from the ones that were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.” 

Chavez and Frankenberg warned that Berkeley’s plan might not be suitable for all school districts. 

“Desegregation is never perfect, but it tries to break the pattern of providing the weakest educational opportunities to the most disadvantaged students,” stated Gary Orfield, UCLA professor of education and co-director of the Civil Rights Project, in a foreword to the report. “The Berkeley plan isn’t a simple one, and it has not been tried in a wide variety of circumstances over a substantial period of time, but it should give the leaders of suburban and small city districts confidence that there are newer creative solutions to the bind they face.” 

The report is available online through the Berkeley Law’s Warren Institute (www.warreninstitute.org) and the UCLA Civil Rights Project (www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu). 

Is a new alternative high school the answer to closing Berkeley’s achievement gap?  

That’s the question the Berkeley Board of Education, Berkeley Unified School District officials, teachers and community members grappled with during the course of a three-hour public workshop Aug. 26.  

The meeting kicked off with Nicole Sanchez, executive director of the non-profit Berkeley Alliance, updating the board on the progress of the 2020 Vision, a district and citywide effort started last June to address the achievement gap in the Berkeley public schools. 

Sanchez said that an All City Equity Task Force had been formed to help facilitate ideas which would close the achievement gap. While task force members were brainstorming ideas, the district launched an 18-month plan over the summer to build comprehensive curriculum, strengthen staff, boost pre-school education and hire and retain teachers of color in the Berkeley schools. 

Berkeley Unified Superinten-dent Bill Huyett said that  

36 percent of the district’s  

certificated employees were now teachers of color. 

In two PowerPoint presentations, Sanchez outlined how the district’s resources and efforts would be measured in three distinct “spaces”: schools, families and services. 

Sanchez said the task force wanted to see strategies that would provide “productive, meaningful dialogue about Berkeley’s ethnic/racial diversity and the assets and challenges it presents to our community.” 

She also emphasized the need for “evidence-based research and best practices” from around the United States to support any new ideas and the need for financial stability for all plans. 

Over the next few months, Sanchez said, the task force would bring forward specific recommendations to the Berkeley City Council, the school board, the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s office and Berkeley City College. 

The next phase of the task force is scheduled to begin in November. 

Sanchez said there was consensus among stakeholders of the 2020 Vision, that the district should move toward a “community schools model” with a focus on parent outreach. 

She added that the stakeholders had not yet decided what they wanted to see in this model except that it would have non-academic support services available for students. 

Huyett interjected saying that the district was working with the Berkeley Alliance on a “communication plan” to help inform the community about the 2020 Vision.  

Board Vice President Karen Hemphill pointed out that the district had already started applying a lot of the preliminary ideas of the 2020 Vision. 

“Implementation doesn’t mean that we have to wait until the planning is over,” she said. “Implementation means that as long as we are going in the same direction, it doesn’t prevent something from happening this semester, this year.” 

Sanchez said that of the six different reform models going on around the country the two that had really gotten traction were the Harlem Children’s Zone and the Children’s Aid Society Community Schools. 

Founded by Geoffrey Canada, the Harlem Children’s Zone provides free support for thousands of poor children and their families living in 100 blocks of Harlem through parenting workshops, a pre-school program, three public charter schools, and child-oriented health programs with a goal to end generational poverty. 

Huyett said that although the Harlem Children’s Zone could not be replicated exactly in Berkeley (“Berkeley is not Harlem”), it was a community school program which had important tenets for closing the achievement gap. 

Riddle said that the Harlem project had a different financial setting than Berkeley Unified, with 80 percent of funding made possible from donations and the rest from the federal government. 

Highlights of the Children’s Aid Community Schools included parent involvement and leadership, after-school and summer enrichment, Early Head Start, on-site clinics, crisis intervention and counseling and community and economic development. 

“This is the model that the task force is centering their work around,” said Huyett, “and the model we as a school district see as coherent with our 18-month plan.” 

Huyett gave the example of Rosa Parks Elementary School as a model of a community school within Berkeley Unified. 

Board President Nancy Riddle said she found the name “community school” troubling because the district did not have a neighborhood school assignment system. Berkeley’s student assignment plan divides the city into three sections, with each running from the bay to the hills. Students are assigned to schools within their section based on a system that takes into account race, parent income and parent education level.  

Sanchez stressed that there was no definite “community schools model” at this point. She said that a recent study by the school district based on the 2000 Census shows that 30 percent of Berkeley’s African-American children and youth live in poverty, according to the report. A higher percentage of children living in poverty reside in Southwest Berkeley. The area also had a higher percentage of adult population who did not have a high school diploma.  

Huyett said that one of the strategies of the 2020 Vision’s 18-month plan was to reform secondary education. 

He said that members of Berkeley Organizing Congregations in Action (BOCA) had met with him over the summer to talk about REALM, an alternative high school for students who were not achieving success at Berkeley High School or Berkeley Technology Academy, the district’s continuation high school. 

Calling the district’s current secondary education model a “vertical failure model,” Huyett said that in spite of the various reforms going on at the high school, it did not meet the needs of all students. 

Huyett said that when students failed at the high school, they were either “pushed out” or transferred to the continuation school. 

“A lot of kids go to continuation school of their own choice, but largely if you go to continuation school at B-Tech—and as good as that program is—there is this feeling that ‘we got kicked out of the high school.’” 

Huyett spoke of a new secondary model, where parents of struggling middle schoolers would be invited to send their children to an alternative academic program for intervention in seventh grade. 

B-Tech Principal Victor Diaz presented a PowerPoint presentation on the proposed Revolutionary Education and Learning Movement (REALM) Technology High School, which would provide ninth through 12th graders—especially youth of color from South and West Berkeley—with an intimate small public school learning environment  

The Planet reported June 25 that REALM was proposed to be a charter school focused on inculcating resiliency skills in students through innovative, culturally relevant and rigorous educational programs.  

Diaz said that when parents brought their children to B-Tech for the first time, their first response was “how quickly can I get out of here and go back to Berkeley High School?” 

“They want to know if the school is safe—they come up with every stereotype you can imagine that one would have about B-Tech,” he said. “Those are the challenges our staff faces on a daily basis. Those are the discomforts the parents and the students begin there first day of school with.” 

Diaz said that standardized tests should not be the only measure of success for students, and that the emphasis should be on project-based learning. 

“One of the things I want to challenge myself as an educator is to eliminate the achievement gap within four years—and I want to start saying that publicly,” Diaz said. 

A majority of the school board members responded that they wanted Diaz to return with a more comprehensive plan before commenting on the feasibility of a new charter school. 

Riddle said she had “pages of questions,” and most of them related to finances. Board member Shirley Issel said she wanted more information on how a charter school fits into the 2020 Vision. 

Huyett said that he would like the district to visit similar programs in neighboring districts, establish an advisory group and develop plans for curriculum and housing over the next few months. 

“We are in very tough economic times and clearly we need to have a financial plan before getting into governance,” he said. 

For the June 25 story on REALM Technology High School visit: www.berkeleydaily.org/issue/2009-06-25/article/33217?headline=Community-Educators-Plan-City-s-First-Public-Charter-School

UC Berkeley police officers Friday gave a detailed account of their encounter with Phillip Garrido, the Antioch man accused of holding 29-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard captive for 18 years on his property.  

Officer Lisa Campbell, UCPD’s manager of special events, and UC Police Officer Ally Jacobs recounted during a 45-minute press conference at the Berkeley campus a chain of events that led to the capture of kidnapping suspect Phillip Garrido and his wife Nancy and freedom for Dugard, who was abducted in 1991 at the age of 11 while walking to a bus stop from her South Lake Tahoe home.  

Campbell said that on Monday, Aug. 24, she was approached by a man in the Special Events Office lobby who told her that he wanted to host some kind of religious event on campus that would reflect “God’s desire.”  

“The suspect came into my office with two young girls behind him,” Campbell said. “He started talking about his organization.”  

When Campbell asked the man how it related to UC, he was inconsistent in his answers, telling her that it involved the government and UC Berkeley and the FBI. When she asked for his name, the man willingly gave it to her.  

“I asked him if it was OK to schedule an appointment for 2 o’clock Tuesday, and he said that the event was going to change the world,” Campbell said. “My initial impression was that he was clearly unstable.”  

Campbell described the girls as quiet and subdued, wearing drab dresses which she described as “Little House on the Prairie meets robots or clones.”  

Suspicious about the man’s behavior, Campbell told Officer Jacobs that she was a little disturbed with the situation. She was especially concerned about the two children and bothered by the fact that they were not in school.  

When Jacobs ran the man’s name on the police dispatch, she discovered that Garrido was on federal parole for kidnapping and rape and was a registered sex offender.  

“Once I heard that, red flags went up,” Officer Jacobs said. “It was a little more than what we had bargained for.”  

Jacobs briefed her supervisor about the situation and, along with Campbell, met Garrido the next day at Campbell’s office.  

   “We didn’t want to alert him to the fact that we were looking for anything criminal,” Jacobs said. “We asked him how we could help him and he opened his attaché case and pulled out this book about schizophrenia and the FBI.”  

Jacobs said the book was self-published by Garrido. “It was a bunch of letters—choppy, difficult to understand,” she said.  

Garrido’s younger daughter sat next to him while his older daughter stood, Jacobs said.  

“It was really hard to understand what he was talking about,” Jacobs said, “and then suddenly he threw out that ‘Thirty-three years ago I was arrested for kidnapping and rape, but I have learned about the Lord and Jesus.’”  

Jacobs said that she was a little taken aback that he had confessed his crime in front of the children.  

“I had a hard time paying attention and I focused on the two young ladies,” she said.  

When she asked Garrido who they were, he replied, “These are my daughters,” and said that they were in the fourth and ninth grades and were being home-schooled.  

Jacobs said she noticed that the two little girls were rather pale compared to Garrido—“Blonde hair, very pale, with bright blue eyes like their father, penetrating blue eyes.... The younger daughter was looking into my eyes, penetrating my soul and she had a smile on her face,” she said.  

While the younger daughter seemed more interested in answering questions, Jacobs said, the older one was behaving like a “robot,” either looking at her father or the ceiling and giving rehearsed answers.  

“They were not behaving like normal 11- or 15-year-olds,” Jacobs said. “It was like their father was their world, their life.” It was, she said, almost like their “emotions were brainwashed,” adding that the children were “extremely submissive.”  

When Jacobs asked the younger daughter about the “tumor-like” bump under her brow, the officer said she was a little surprised at the way the girl responded. The girl said it was a “birth defect, could not be operated on, and she would have it for the rest of her life.”  

At that point, Jacobs said, her maternal instincts took over as her “police mode turned into mother mode.”  

Jacobs said she continued to quiz Garrido about their family life and found out that his wife was a teacher. At this point, the younger sister said they had a 28-year-old sister who lived with them.  

“The older sister said, without missing a beat, ‘29,’” Jacobs said. Campbell said that she was searching for any proof that would help them detain Garrido but was unsuccessful. The two officers said that although they wanted to take the children aside and question them, they knew Garrido would not have allowed that. Jacobs said Garrido was shaking nervously throughout the meeting. 

“I am just looking at the younger daughter for some kind of sign, like ‘help me,’ if she could help me with her facial expression but I wasn’t reading anything from these kids,” Jacobs said 

They told Garrido that they would hand over his book to their supervisor, and he gave each of them a copy.  

Before leaving, Jacobs said, Garrido grabbed his older daughter and said, “I am so proud of my girls. They don’t know any curse words.”  

“We knew something was going on with those girls but didn’t have any proof,” Officer Jacobs said. “It was just really frustrating.”  

Jacobs left a message with Garrido’s probation officer describing her concerns.  

When the parole officer called Jacobs Wednesday morning, Aug. 26, to find out what was going on, Jacobs mentioned the little girls.  

“He stops me when I said he brought in his two daughters,” she said. “He says he [Garrido] doesn’t have any two daughters, and my stomach is sick. I said he had two daughters, they had his blue eyes, they were calling him Daddy, and that I had no reason to believe that they were not his daughters. In fact they had talked about an older sister.”  

Jacobs said that after talking to the parole officer she decided she would tell Garrido that he could not come back on the UC campus on condition of his parole, and that “the matter had come to an end.”  

But a few hours later she got a call from the parole officer saying that the FBI was involved. “And that’s the last time I heard from them,” she said.  

Campbell, who joined UCPD in Jan. 2009, said that as the story started to unfold, “I was at a loss for words.”  

“I am grateful that we were at the place we were and that we were able to take the actions we took,” she said. I am in awe of how many lives have been affected, that these girls have a chance at life and that he’s behind bars.”  

Before joining UCPD in January, Campbell worked as a background investigator for the Los Angeles Police Department and with the juvenile court and corrections system in Chicago.  

Both officers said they had no second thoughts on how they had handled the situation.  

“I couldn’t believe it was something so huge. At that time it didn’t seem like it was something that was going to turn into something this big,” said Jacobs, who has been with UCPD since 2001. “I am glad that this horrible ordeal for Jaycee is over, sad that it took so long. This was a life-altering experience.”.”

California’s High School Exit Exam results released today show a higher success rate in English and math for first-time test takers in the Berkeley public high schools compared with the rest of the state, but the achievement gap persists. 

The numbers are an improvement over last year, when passing rates for those taking the exit exam for the first time in the Berkeley Unified School District were lower than the state numbers in math and only slightly higher in English.  

California public school students must pass both sections of the CAHSEE to get a high school diploma and are required to take it for the first time in 10th grade. 

If students fail to pass the test during their first attempt, they can take the test twice in 11th grade, and, if they are unsuccessful, they get five more opportunities as seniors.  

Students who do not pass both the English language and math sections of the exit exam by the end of their senior year can continue to take the exam until they meet both requirements.  

Data posted on the state Department of Education website shows that of the 836 Berkeley Unified 10th graders who took the English test in 2008-09, 678 or 81 percent passed, compared with 79.2 percent statewide. 

In 2007-08, 779 Berkeley 10th graders tested in English, out of which 623 (80 percent) met the CAHSEE requirement compared with 78.8 percent statewide. 

The state department reports that of the 831 Berkeley Unified 10th graders who tested in math in 2008-09, 663 or 80 percent passed, compared with 79.8 percent statewide. 

In 2007-08, of the 772 Berkeley sophomores who tested in math, 578 (75 percent) passed compared with 78.3 percent in California. 

Berkeley Unified Superintendent Bill Huyett said that he was happy that the exit exam results were “overall a little better,” but added that a lot of work still needed to be done to close the achievement gap. 

“The exit exam is a very important indicator of having basic academic skills,” he said. “We can’t afford to take the results lightly.” 

At Berkeley High, of the 817 who took the English test in 2008-09, 671 or 82 percent passed. This is a jump of one point from last year. 

Ninetey-seven percent of white 10th graders passed the test this year, followed by 85 percent of Asian, 70 percent of Hispanic or Latino and 65 percent of black 10th graders. 

Of the 815 Berkeley High sophomores who tested in math in 2008-09, 655 or 80 percent passed. Last year only 76 percent of 10th graders met the math CAHSEE requirement. 

Ninety-eight percent of white 10th graders passed the math test this year, followed by 89 percent of Asian, 74 percent of Hispanic or Latino and 57 percent of black sophomores. 

Of the 12 10th graders who tested in English at Berkeley Technology Academy in 2008-09, only one student passed. 

Of the 22 sophomores who tested in the English language in 2007-08, 13 met CAHSEE requirements. 

The California Department of Education website did not report pass rates for the 10 B-Tech sophomores who took the math test in 2008-09 because privacy issues prevent the state from publishing results for 10 or fewer students. 

In 2007-08, 18 sophomores tested in math, out of which eight passed the test.  

When asked about the low numbers of test takers at B-Tech for both subjects, Huyett said that the school had fewer 10th graders than 11th or 12th graders. 

Approximately 90.6 percent or 432,900 California public school students in the class of 2009 passed both the English language and math portions of the CAHSEE by the end of their senior year, which is slightly higher than the 90.4 percent pass rate for the class of 2008. 

About 45,000 students in the class of 2009 have not yet met the CAHSEE requirement. 

Although the state data shows that an increasing number of students are passing the exam on their first attempt, the achievement gap continues to exist. 

Data from the graduating class of 2009 in California indicates that African-American and Hispanic students continue to fall behind their Asian and white fellow students when it comes to passing the CAHSEE. 

However, one bright spot is that when comparing first-time test takers of the class of 2008 with those of 2011 statewide, there is a slight narrowing of the achievement gap. The achievement gap between Hispanic and white students decreased in English by 3.6 percent and in math by 5.2 percentage points. 

The gap between African-American and white students in English decreased over the same period by 2.2 percentage points and in math by five percentage points. 

State Superintendent of Public Education Jack O’Connell said that the billions of dollars in state education budget cuts meant that school districts would now have to do “more for less.” 

O’Connell also criticized the agreement made between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state Legislature during July’s budget negotiations, which says that special education students will no longer have to take the CAHSEE as a graduation requirement.     

“This action represents an irresponsible and shortsighted shift in education policy that threatens to shortchange the quality of education for our students with disabilities,” O’Connell said. “Eliminating this requirement for students with disabilities who are on a diploma track does nothing to help prepare them for success after high school.”

While public policy storm clouds have hovered over downtown Berkeley development in recent months, a large mixed-use commercial and residential project has quietly been in the planning stages further south along more tranquil south Shattuck. 

Although it’s not the first infill development proposed in recent years for that area, it is one of the largest and on a prominent site. If carried through to completion, it will set a tone for the district. Thus, it merits considerable scrutiny. 

Citycentric Investments, owned by Ali Kashani and former City of Berkeley planner Mark Rhoades, is proposing the infill apartment (and partially future condo) development on the west side of Shattuck where the Honda dealership now stands between Carleton and Parker. “Parker Place” would incorporate that full block frontage on the west side of the street, as well as a corner lot across the street on the northwest corner of Parker and Shattuck. 

The southern two thirds of the development—about 133 units—would perch on a site of about one acre, atop James Plachek’s 1923 auto showroom, originally built for Ford and Studebaker dealerships. Four new-construction residential floors would sit (the developer says they would “float”) above the existing retail facade along Shattuck.  

Across the street on the smaller, northern lot a five-story infill condominium building with some 28 units would be constructed, with some ground floor commercial and common space. The developers also propose narrowing Parker just west of Shattuck and incorporating a slightly elevated “speed table” into the street to slow east-west traffic and provide a pedestrian crossing between entrances and open spaces in the two developments. 

On Aug. 21, the city’s Design Review Committee (DRC) had an informal “preview.” The general feeling among committee members and public speakers seemed to be that that many of the project components are promising, but the currently proposed design package is not striking, but shocking. 

After hearing criticism of everything from the way the new building would connect to the old structure to the choice of exterior colors (there was no enthusiasm for “bean soup black”) project architect David Baker sarcastically remarked the meeting was a “fest of negativity.”  

It’s perfectly understandable for designers to be dismayed when people don’t applaud their aesthetic vision. And Baker was graciousness itself compared to the developer of a different project who, earlier in the evening, launched a red-faced diatribe when the committee approved his project, but had the temerity to request a different color for the window frames. 

But Baker, and developer Mark Rhoades, would be wrong to think people are trying to throw out the Parker Place baby with the bathwater. It’s the bizarre bathtub that’s the primary problem here, not necessarily the development they’re trying to birth. 

In a caustic letter read at the meeting, committee member Bob Allen, who wasn’t present, wrote that the street facing character of the project resembled a “morose new neighborhood in Emeryville.” The “floating cubes emphasize the brutality of the concept,” although the site “demands a facade with rhythm, depth, and handsome details.” 

He hit the nail on the head. In essence, most people, at this meeting at least, seemed responsive to the contents, but hated the way the structure is wrapped in an Emeryville/San Francisco SOMA aesthetic. 

This project also illustrates many of the troubling conceits of Modern design as it’s now often practiced: an emphasis on horizontality, even when there’s considerable height involved, with the result that big buildings look heavy and squat, not soaring; office-park bands of windows; asymmetrical chaos on facades, as if a computer virus had seized control of the architectural AutoCAD program, randomly punching a hole here, attaching a wart-like pop out there; bland exterior finishes (concrete, metal, hardie board), with swatches of bright color masquerading as design detail. 

The staff report to the DRC referred to the project having “varying facades that respond to adjacent context; the facade facing commercial uses on Shattuck has an industrial and ‘thick skin’ look.” 

But South Shattuck is not “industrial”—unless you go way back to the era of coal sellers and rail road freight yards—and this design approach is entirely out of place, especially in relation to the gracious adjacent residential neighborhoods and the scattered surviving older commercial buildings.  

Many designers—and a tiny, but outspoken, portion of the general population—seem to think an “industrial” look belongs almost everywhere.  

What irony, with the United States now well into its post-industrial age. Most of us never will set foot in a real factory during our working lives, but those who advocate “honesty” in design also often tell us we should live in fake factories. 

Some also argue that edgy new architecture is a pre-requisite for “vibrant” urban spaces. Nonsense. Look at Berkeley’s most active commercial districts, and Oakland’s too, for that matter. Grand Avenue, North Shattuck, the Elmwood, Lakeshore…hardly a trendy new industrial-style building in the lot but the streets ooze with “vibrancy” nonetheless.  

Good walkable neighborhoods result from many factors; architecture best suited for a warehouse district is not high on the list. 

There are a lot of nearby places where developer Mark Rhoades and Baker can look for more refreshing design inspiration. A few blocks north on Shattuck there’s Daniel Solomon’s Deco style Fine Arts Building, one of the larger and among the best, infill housing developments in Berkeley.  

Nearby, a building by Baker himself, the university’s Manville Apartments, has a facade that trends towards the vertical and is creatively manipulated to resemble separate structures. 

A block south of the Parker Place site another James Plachek structure, the refurbished, five story, UC Storage building, offers subtle detailing and big, multi-light, windows; beyond that there’s the original Berkeley Bowl, a sinuous Moderne creation that’s now well into its third lifetime of commercial use. 

The key is not to “imitate” a particular design style, as architects like to say, but to design something that is solid, balanced, and serene; the modern-day equivalent of Berkeley’s older apartment and mixed-use blocks which packed relatively large volumes into elegant, balanced, finely scaled, well-detailed, envelopes. 

Committee members pushed back hard in this direction. David Snippen asked for a revised design that makes a “solid, dignified, presentation to the street.” Terry Doran said, “there’s no relief of the horizontal walls.” Carrie Olsen said it was “not a welcome structure” and a revised design “should look like it fits.”  

One neighbor told the Committee, “the materials are horrible” and “this might look great in L.A. by the L.A. airport.” Another, an architect, said her “neighborhood is not a candy box,” referring to the garish color splashes. Another, “I think the industrial look is wrong for the neighborhood.”  

South Shattuck may have been an auto row, but it’s useful to remember that when it took on that character, in the 1920s, automobiles were elegantly tooled machines, sold in gracious spaces in retail districts, rather than metal and stucco boxes by the freeway. 

Enough justifiable criticism, though. Beyond the atrocious “skin,” there are substantial elements of the project to praise. 

Infill housing is certainly appropriate for much of South Shattuck. There was a lot of talk about how the project is designed to accommodate the existing, unionized (and tax producing) Honda car dealership if it decides to stay. Retail and resident parking is hidden below ground and doesn’t dominate and deaden the ground level, as is the case with many newer Berkeley infill buildings. 

There’s an intriguing collaboration with the Ed Roberts Campus that would develop the northern, freestanding, building as a model residential community for the physically disabled. “Green” elements like rainwater cisterns and photovoltaics are proposed.  

The project team does appear to have worked hard on the neighborhood interface. The existing building has a high concrete wall on the rear property line. They propose to cut the upper six feet or so off the wall, and top the remaining structure with a row of gable-roofed one bedroom “micro cottages” with tiny west-facing patios.  

These could effectively mediate between the freestanding dwellings to the west and the five-story bulk of the main new building to the east. It’s a thoughtful plan and a design approach at which Baker excels, with his background in efficient and creative design of small units.  

Another interesting aspect of the project is the plan to include a number of tiny retail spaces, perhaps as small as 100 square feet, where very small businesses-maybe a juice bar, a take out café, an artisan selling handicrafts—could have a real “storefront” without the crushing capital outlays and ongoing rental and operational costs of a larger commercial space.  

This is creative thinking in an era of economic austerity, especially when Telegraph, University, Shattuck and San Pablo—not to mention extensive areas of Oakland and Emeryville—are now pocked with large, recently built, infill developments containing generic, conventional, ground floor retail spaces that are echoingly empty and have never had a tenant.  

There’s another issue with this project that has broad city policy implications. In the hoorah about adding infill housing, somehow public open space needs consistently get lost. This project will add some 155 units—250-300 actual residents, one would guess—to a fairly compact site.  

While many of the units will have small patios or balconies and there’s some outdoor circulation space, those residents will be arriving in a part of Berkeley where the City operates no public parks and has no apparent plans for the creation of any.  

From downtown almost to the Berkeley border, and from Telegraph to Martin Luther King, Jr. Way—a huge area of town with several thousand residents—there are no public parks, and no recreational facilities such as swimming pools or gymnasiums, except for the lamentably shuttered Iceland and a fenced, pay-by-the-hour, sports practice field. 

This is a big problem, and it will worsen. If this density of development were continued along South Shattuck at the scale of Parker Place, thousands of new residents will arrive.  

Where will they walk their dogs, shoot a few hoops, take their toddlers to play, or just spend some quality of time out of doors on a park lawn? Nowhere nearby, they’ll discover. 

The current city attitude towards public amenities in areas like these seems to be, let them recreate in sidewalk cafes, or trek two neighborhoods away to a scattering of existing parks which are already heavily used.  

There is a direct and sensible way to rectify this. The entire stretch of Shattuck and Adeline from Ashby on the south to Dwight on the north is wide enough to accommodate both four lanes of traffic and a linear park in place of the current suburban style diagonal parking bays, little strips of greenery, and street trees swimming in concrete. 

The resulting park would be like the Ohlone Greenway along Hearst, also above the BART tubes. Not wide enough to have big playing fields, but certainly spacious enough to accommodate pockets of lawn, children’s play yards, basketball courts aligned parallel to the street, public art, a dog park, and masses of tree plantings. 

If the city approves decent infill projects along South Shattuck and Adeline it should also partner those approvals with a good plan and funding for open space. To do otherwise would border on public policy malfeasance and undermine the neighborhoods city officials and developers both profess to enhance. 

Note: David Baker + Partners architects has a page of images of the proposed development at their website, www.dbarchitect.com. If you click on any of the graphics, a lengthy stream of images will appear on the left, and can be individually enlarged.

The 2009 SAT college entrance exam results released by the College Board last week showed increased participation but a widening achievement gap for California public school students. 

Berkeley Unified School District’s Director of Evaluation and Assessment Dr. Rebecca Cheung said that data about individual high schools, including Berkeley High, has not yet been released.  

Last year’s numbers showed a sharp decline in English and math scores for Berkeley High School. 

A large number of Berkeley sophomores took the Preliminary SAT in 2008 because an anonymous donor paid for the school’s 900 10th graders to take the test, but African-Americans lagged behind in participation. The 2009 PSAT will be administered this fall for Berkeley High students. 

Cheung said that the anonymous donor had decided to pay for the tests once again this year. 

“Last year was the first time the donation happened,” Cheung said in an e-mail. “I think the data revealed a participation [gap] that will now be addressed. I hope to see improved participation this year.” 

Last year, seventy-six percent of white 10th graders scored in the top 50 percent nationally in the PSAT, followed by twenty percent of Latino students and five percent of African-Americans. 

2007-08 SAT verbal scores for Berkeley High showed a 28-point decline from four years ago, while math scores recorded a 40-point drop in the same period, a matter of concern for district superintendent Bill Huyett. 

This year, 49 percent of public high school graduates statewide took the test, up from 48 percent last year. Of these, 37 percent were minority students, and 47 percent were the first in their family to go to college. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 10 of the 15 fastest growing jobs in the country require the applicant to have some postsecondary education—either a two- or four-year college degree or certificate training—despite the current recession. 

“The downturn we’ve experienced in our economy has seen California’s unemployment rate rise to a record high of 11.9 percent as we saw last week,” said State Superintendent Jack O’Connell. “With increased unemployment comes increased competition for jobs, so it is encouraging to see that more and more students continue to take the SAT. This means more students are strongly considering pursuing a college degree, which will significantly enhance their marketability in the workforce.” 

California public school students scored 495 in critical reading, up one point from 2008; 493 on writing, similar to the year before; and 494 on mathematics, a decrease of one point from 2008.  

The California Department of Education said that state public school students who took more demanding honors or Advanced Placement courses scored higher in the SAT. Students taking English honors or AP courses scored 55 points more in critical writing than the average of all students in California, and 56 points higher in writing. 

Students taking math honors or AP courses were ahead by 86 points compared with the state’s average SAT mathematics score. 

  Hispanic students showed the highest increase in number of test takers among all ethnic groups—jumping from 46,956 test takers in 2008 to 49,498 in 2009.  

“Even with test scores generally improving, we still have a long way to go,” O’Connell said. “The achievement gap continues to persist between students who are white or Asian and African-American or Latino students.” 

The SAT scores, like those for ACT—a rival college entrance exam—showed that too many students of color continued to fall behind academically. 

Some Berkeley High teachers suggested at a school board meeting in June that the school’s falling math scores might be attributed to the fact that more students were taking the ACT, a different college entrance test, resulting in fewer of them taking the SAT. 

However, Berkeley Unified officials said that because ACT had not reported Berkeley High School’s participation rate to the district for the last two years, there was no way to know for sure. 

According to the state education department, a record number of California students took the ACT this year, outshining their peers nationwide on average ACT scores across all subjects. 

O’Connell pointed out that there was a significant achievement gap when it came to students preparing for college.

In decades past, education in California was a top priority for government, and the state’s schools were “the cutting edge of the American Dream.” Today, spending per pupil in the state has fallen to 47th in the country. Due to deep budget cuts, California school districts have been laying off teachers, expanding class sizes, closing some schools, and canceling bus service and summer school programs. 

As for future funding of public education—the state of California is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. The current dilemma stems from a provision in California’s Education Code that can be interpreted as ruling out the use by state officials of test scores to evaluate teacher performance and compensation. On the one hand, the Obama administration has informed state officials that this provision represents an unacceptable “firewall between students and teacher data” and must be removed if California is to be eligible to receive an educational grant from the administration’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top stimulus fund. On the other hand, California teachers are making it clear through their unions that the use by state government of student test scores to evaluate teachers would be detrimental to education and is an idea that must be rejected. 

Taking up this issue has been the Senate Committee on Education, which held a hearing on Aug. 26 chaired by Senator Gloria Romero. The Committee is considering amending California law to ensure that the state qualifies for federal funding. “It is my goal,” Romero says, “to do everything possible to ensure that the Golden State has access to precious federal dollars that can help provide our students the best possible education.”  

Another member of the Committee, Senator Loni Hancock from Berkeley, concurs with this aim, but said during the hearing that what we need is “effective support to teachers and principals.” Hancock is concerned that using test scores to evaluate teachers may provide misguided incentives: “Why would any effective teacher want to teach in a low-performing school if the evaluation model is tied to student scores?” 

The Obama administration’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is putting the nation’s public schools on notice that their effectiveness is going to be scrutinized and measured. At issue, though, is Duncan’s method for improving public education: “I am a deep believer in the power of data to drive our decisions. Data gives us the roadmap to reform. It tells us where we are, where we need to go, and who is most at risk…. In California, they have 300,000 teachers. If you took the top 10 percent, they have 30,000 of the best teachers in the world. If you took the bottom 10 percent, they have 30,000 teachers that should probably find another profession, yet no one in California can tell you which teacher is in which category. Something is wrong with that picture.”  

At the hearing in Sacramento, critics of Duncan’s plan to connect teacher evaluation to student test scores acknowledged the problem of failing schools. But they argued that a one-time infusion of federal funds is by no means a solution. State government has cut $17 billion out of the budget for public education. The Obama administration’s Race to the Top will restore only $500 million in funding, half of which can be held back by the Governor.  

Gregg Solkovits of United Teachers Los Angeles says that “We spend 13 percent of our teaching time giving tests.” He testified that tying teacher evaluation to students’ test scores will only worsen public school education, “We are creating environments that are not going to keep teachers. That’s why we have the high turnover in teachers ... We are destroying the profession with all the stuff we are doing, ironically enough, to improve schools.”  

“It takes more than the ability to fill in bubbles to be considered an educated person,” says Marty Hittleman from the California Federation of Teachers. He testified at the hearing that the test regimen in schools is not helpful to most students. “We believe that the emphasis on standardized tests is misplaced and destructive. Multiple-choice tests in math and reading do not address the real goals of education. Teaching to the test not only narrows the curriculum but attempts to destroy any love of learning. When tests drive the curriculum, instruction suffers.” 

Hittleman acknowledges that the existing ways of evaluating teacher performance, including classroom visits and peer counseling and review, can stand improvement, but he believes that they are working pretty effectively. What needs much more attention, he argued before the committee, is the social context of education: “Any effort to close the achievement gap in our schools that does not address the conditions children grow up in is doomed to failure.… Until this country and this state close the gap in job opportunities at a livable wage, healthcare, and affordable housing, efforts for improvement in the schools will have limited success.” 

Secretary of Education Duncan has stated that he wants to preserve only the positive contributions of “No Child Left Behind” to education. But witnesses before Senator Romero’s committee, including Patty Scripter and Debbie Look representing the California PTA, spoke of their concern about a possible continuation of policies that were so harmful to education during the Bush years. Just prior to the hearing, Scripter expressed her view that “Evaluation of teachers and students should be done at the local level and should be based on multiple criteria.” She and Look are skeptical about the use of test scores to get rid of incompetent teachers.  

Senator Romero’s hearing has been only a first step in addressing the requirements being imposed on California schools by the Obama administration. Legislators in Sacramento will have to craft a federal grant application that reconciles—if that is possible—these new requirements with the critique being voiced by many California teachers and their allies. 

Raymond Barglow, Ph.D. (ray@barglow.com) is the founder of Berkeley Tutors Network (www.berkeleytutors.net) and tutors high school students to take the SAT and ACT exams. 

The attempt to pass state legislation authorizing a civilian oversight of the BART Police Department—which had already featured a political disagreement between BART Board member Lynette Sweet and Assembly Public Safety Committee Chair Tom Ammiano—took another turn this week when Oakland Assemblymember Sandré Swanson came under criticism for “watering down” provisions in the proposed BART police oversight bill at the request of police lobbyists.  

Swanson’s office denied making any changes to the proposed legislation and said that the provision change in question was given to the Oakland legislator by BART Board officials, who told him that the legislation had been agreed to by all parties promoting the BART police review legislation.  

The various controversies are coming with less than two weeks left for the Legislature to move forward with a bill to authorize BART civilian police oversight this year.  

As reported in the Daily Planet this week, Ammiano and members of the BART Board’s Police Department Review Committee had disagreed over whether to move forward with the BART police review bill authored by Ammiano or one agreed to unanimously this month by the BART Board. BART is moving forward with implementing citizen review of its police department in the wake of the controversy surrounding the shooting death of 21-year-old Oscar Grant last January by a since-retired BART police officer. State legislation is needed to implement any changes in BART’s police review policies.  

On Thursday, the San Francisco Chronicle’s City Insider column reported that Swanson had agreed to carry the BART legislation at the request of “BART officials,” but said that the Oakland legislator had “stripped out the provision that would have given the BART Board a role in police discipline cases” at the request of “the Peace Officers Research Association of California, a powerful lobbying force in Sacramento” which the Chronicle said had indicated “it would oppose any attempts to give elected officials the ability to discipline officers.” The Chronicle item added that “members of the BART Board said Thursday they’re not happy with the change.”  

But during a Friday telephone interview, Swanson Chief of Staff Larry Broussard said that the Chronicle account was not true.  

Broussard said that Swanson met with BART board members earlier this week and agreed to carry legislation authorizing BART police civilian oversight after being assured that the legislation “had the support of law enforcement officials, the BART Board, and the community.” Broussard said that the language for the proposed legislation was forwarded to Swanson’s office by the BART Board members and that Swanson made no changes to the provisions.  

Broussard said that after Swanson received the proposed language, the Oakland assemblymember learned that a provision had been taken out of the original language before it had been sent to him. That stricken language, according to Broussard, authorized the BART Board to recommend “appropriate discipline” against a BART police officer in cases of police misconduct.  

Broussard would not give the names of the BART Board members who met with Swanson this week.  

Swanson’s Chief of Staff said that Swanson was still willing to work with BART officials, community residents, and law enforcement officials towards the passage of a bill this year for BART police oversight, adding that the legislator would also work with Public Safety Chair Ammiano “with whom,” Broussard said, Swanson “has a close working relationship.” But Broussard added that all of the parties promoting an oversight bill had to “put aside their differences” and come up with one proposal if any bill had a chance for passage “this late in the legislative season.”  

East Bay community leaders were reported to be holding several meetings this week with BART officials and legislative leaders in a furious lobbying effort to break the impasse.

Former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle will return to court on Friday for a hearing on his motion asking that the murder charge against him for the shooting death of Oscar Grant III be dismissed on the grounds that the judge at his preliminary hearing made errors. 

Mehserle, 27, shot Grant, a 22-year-old Hayward man, once in the back with his service weapon on the platform of the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland shortly after 2 a.m. on Jan. 1 after he and other officers were called to the station in response to reports of a fight on a train. 

Grant was unarmed and was lying on the ground with his face down and his arms behind his back when Mehserle shot him. 

Mehserle’s lawyer, Michael Rains, admitted during a seven-day preliminary hearing that concluded June 4 that Mehserle killed Grant, but claimed that it was “a tragic accident” because Mehserle meant to use his Taser gun on Grant and fired his gun by mistake. 

In his motion asking that the murder charge be dismissed or reduced, Rains said Mehserle shouldn’t face murder charges because there’s no evidence that he exhibited malice during the two and a half minutes he was on the station’s platform prior to the shooting. He said Mehserle shouldn’t face anything more serious than a manslaughter charge. 

Rains said Alameda County Superior Court Judge C. Don Clay, who presided over the hearing, prejudicially denied Mehserle’s rights by not allowing him to call an expert who would have testified about Mehserle’s training to use a Taser and by limiting the testimony of a defense expert who examined multiple videotapes of the incident. 

But Senior Deputy Michael O’Connor said in a recent brief that the murder charge shouldn’t be dismissed because there is convincing evidence that “the killing was malicious and an act of murder.” 

O’Connor said Mehserle’s “claim of justification or excuse are unsupported and unconvincing” and said Rains’ allegation that Clay was influenced by outside sources is “outrageous.” 

Judge Thomas Reardon will preside over the hearing on Friday. 

Mehserle is free on $3 million bail. 

The legal battle over a controversial Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force raid on a South Berkeley countercultural icon heads for a key courtroom battle Friday. 

Officers from the UC Berkeley Police Department, the Alameda County sheriff’s office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Long Haul Info-shop on the morning of Aug. 27, 2008, seizing computers, data disks and hard drives in search of the names of e-mailers who had sent threats to campus animal researchers. 

No arrests have ever been reported as a result of the raid, and the computers and disks were later returned to the Long Haul, a facility at 3124 Shattuck Ave. that houses several independent groups, including one news medium, the periodical Slingshot. 

On Jan. 14, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California filed suit against the UC Board of Regents, then Campus Police Chief Victoria L. Harrison and the UCPD offices involved in the raid, along with the sheriff’s officers and FBI agent, as well as the FBI itself. 

Friday’s hearing in U.S. District Court before Judge Jeffrey White will hear arguments from the federal government and FBI agents on their motion for their dismissal from the action. 

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Long Haul Infoshop and East Bay Prisoner Support, one of the groups housed in the building, seeks a permanent injunction against further exploratory raids, a ruling from the court that declares the raid violated the groups’ First and Fourth Amendment Rights, damages and legal costs. 

The hearing begins at 9 a.m. in Courtroom 11 of the U.S. District Court, 450 Golden Gate Ave.

Spontaneously combust 

A Berkeley resident learned an old lesson the hard way Saturday. 

Firefighters have long preached the gospel of proper storage of rags used for staining wood, given that stains invariably contain easily ignited compounds that can self-ignite under the wrong circumstances. 

And it was spontaneous combustion on a hot summer afternoon that ignited stain-soaked rags outside a home in the 2500 block of Martin Luther King Junior Way, reports Berkeley Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong. 

The rag fire spread to nearby and summer-dry plants, thence to a fence, which was aflame when firefighters arrived shortly after 3 p.m. 

Their prompt response kept the blaze from spread-ing and held damage to under $2,500, said the deputy chief.

Coast Guard crew members pulled a man’s body from the waters of San Francisco Bay near the Berkeley Marina Wednesday morning, and investigators are trying to confirm if the body is that of a possible suicide reported to Richmond Police Aug. 24. 

U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson Petty Officer Pamela Manns reports that a boater called her agency after he spotted the body in the water near the Berkeley Marina.  

A boat crew dispatched from the Coast Guard’s Station San Francisco recovered the body, then transferred custody of the corpse to the Berkeley Fire Department. 

Manns said the Coast Guard is waiting for a positive identification, which would enable them to determine if the body is that of a man reported missing last week. 

Richmond police contacted the Coast Guard after they discovered a 20-foot vessel washed ashore Aug. 24, near Brickyard Cove. 

Following the discovery, a Coast Guard helicopter and rescue boat searched the bay waters for a body, but the hunt was suspended when no sign of the missing man was found, Manns said.

Four heists, 20 minutes 

Robbers struck four times within 20 minutes in the south of campus neighborhood last Thursday, Aug. 27, according to campus police. 

The first stickup took place at 11:41 p.m. at the corner of Milvia and Stuart streets, according to UCPD Chief Mitchell J. Celaya III. 

Two robbers, at least one of them armed with a pistol, braced a woman and demanded her purse. Bag in hand, they departed. 

The second, eight minutes later, was a strong-arm robbery, with a pair of robbers forcing a pedestrian to hand over a cell phone in the 2300 block of Piedmont Avenue. 

Five minutes after that, yet another pair of robbers, one claiming to be packing a pistol and the other flashing a knife, confronted two pedestrians in the same block of Piedmont Avenue where the previous incident took place. They made off with a purse and a cell phone. 

Finally, at two minutes after midnight, a lone robber stole a pedestrian’s cell phone near the corner of Channing Way and College Avenue. 

Celaya asked anyone with information about the robberies to call Berkeley city police at 981-5900. 

Lone gunman 

A solo stickup artist produced a pistol and demanded a woman’s purse and cell phone as she walked near the corner of Parker Street and College Avenue at 2:09 a.m. Monday, Aug. 31.  

According to Celaya, Berkeley police searched the area but were unable to turn up the suspect, who had been wearing a heavy coat and a black beanie. 

Park arrest 

Campus police arrested a 56-year-old man Aug. 25, less than two hours after he allegedly brandished a knife at a fellow denizen of People’s Park. 

According to Celaya, officers were summoned to Bowditch Street near the park at 6:52 a.m. 

After an initial fruitless search for the suspect, the officers departed. Then at 8:41, the victim flagged down a passing campus officer at the park and pointed out the suspect, who was nearby. 

Ricardo Coleman was arrested near the corner of Dwight Way and Telegraph Avenue and taken into custody on suspicion of brandishing a deadly weapon.

Carl Wilson, the beloved Berkeley Historical Society docent, archivist and “lone” forest ranger, has ridden into the sunset on his horse named Copper. Born in the small town of Halfway in eastern Oregon, he died Aug. 21 in Oakland at the age of 94. He had been a professional forester for almost four decades and, yes, he did ride a big-toothed horse named Copper (not Silver!) while covering territory as District Forest Ranger of the Angeles National Forest.  

Carl first worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps in Idaho. He earned a B.S. in Forest Management from the College of Idaho in 1939 and an M.S. from UC Berkeley in 1941. After serving in the Navy, he joined the U.S. Forest Service in 1946 and then moved to Berkeley in 1956 to become chief of the Division of Forest Fire Research at the Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked on the development and application of chemical fire retardant, airtanker, Helitack, and fuel-break concepts. He became National Fire Specialist for the Washington D.C. Cooperative Fire Protection staff from 1973 to 1978. In 1975, Carl was assigned to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome where he developed fire management plans for the Mediterranean Region, Central America, and Central Africa.  

He was a lecturer in fire at UC Berkeley, Riverside, San Diego, and Santa Cruz and elsewhere, including Freiburg University/United Nations University (UNU) in Germany. Johann G. Goldammer of The Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC), Fire Ecology Research Group in Freiburg recalls, “He introduced me to the world of fire management in the U.S.A. back in the 1970s. He constructed a bridge between the U.S.A. and Europe—and the results are an atmosphere of fruitful collaboration and friendship.” After his retirement, he served as part-time consultant for the California Department of Forestry and for the Ontario (Canada) Ministry of Natural Resources. He received outstanding awards in Forest Fire Management from the Forest Service, the American State Foresters Association, and from the California Department of Forestry. During his career, Carl Wilson authored or co-authored more than 40 professional and technical publications on forestry and forest fire matters. In 1998, he co-authored with James B. Davis Forest Fire Laboratory and Fire Research in California: Past, Present and Future. 

Carl built his home on Maybeck Twin Drive in 1971 and became an active president of their neighborhood association. After the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm, Councilmember Betty Olds appointed him to the Berkeley Fire Assessment Commission from 1992 to 2000, where he worked to get rid of the highly combustible eucalyptus trees in the hills. Mayor Shirley Dean proclaimed Carl Wilson Day in his honor on Nov. 10, 1998. 

Carl volunteered for the Berkeley Historical Society in 1983 and served three terms as board president from 1988 to 1991. Burl Willis notes that he kept a sense of optimism during the long search for a permanent home for the society, which ended with the Veterans Memorial Building. “Carl was our first ‘pro bono’ docent. Working with him was always a joy. He was a favorite with all our regular visitors, including Country Joe McDonald.” He served as archivist and docent at the Berkeley History Center from 1993 to 2001. He wrote the BHS columns “50 Years Ago” and “75 Years Ago” for the Berkeley Voice from 1986 to 2001 and made a mark as a wry and witty author. He also led numerous sold-out walking tours of his beloved “Nut Hill” neighborhood. Linda and Steve Rosen remember Carl as a man of charm, confidence, and a gentlemanly manner, who was blessed with an outstanding memory. He teased and reminisced with us in a loving way.” Son Craig Wilson sums up his father: “He was known for his unquenchable sense of humor and kindness.” 

Carl is survived by his wife of 67 years, Barbara Wilson, a son, Craig (and wife Kim) Wilson, a daughter, Wendy Wilson, a grandson, David Wilson, his sister, Elaine Gunning, his aunt Estella Summers (age 98), and four nephews and nieces. 

A memorial service will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 19, in the Fellowship Hall of Lake Park Retirement Home, 1850 Alice Street in Oakland. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Idaho Youth Ranch. 

Condolences and cards for Carl can be sent to Barbara Wilson, Lake Park Retirement Residency, 1850 Alice St. #313, Oakland CA 94612 and to Craig B Wilson, 507 Kearney St., El Cerrito, CA 94530-3520.  

Information about the life and acomplishments of Carl Wilson provided by Craig Wilson, Linda and Stephen Rosen, Carl Wilson Oral History, STEFEN, and Burl Willis. 

The Zoning Adjustment Board’s recent approval of plans by a new company in which Berkeley and San Francisco entrepreneurs have combined to revive the old UC Theater as a music venue has been universally applauded. In this very space last February we suggested that someone around here should learn from the example of Oakland’s recently reopened Fox, and lo-and-behold, it seems to be happening. That stretch of University Avenue is an ideal location for a music club—some of us old-timers remember hearing Jerry Garcia, on his nights off from the Grateful Dead, playing Keystone Berkeley across the street where yet another boring condo-to-be now rises.  

Michael Kaplan, one of the few people in Berkeley’s city bureaucracy with any imagination, deserves credit for bringing the deal together. So does commercial broker John Gordon, who’s got a good track record for spearheading creative re-use of old buildings, even though he occasionally steps on some toes in his zeal for some of his projects. And while we’re handing out kudos, a special award should go to John English, retired planner extraordinaire who serves downtown Berkeley’s shadow cabinet, the relatively few local citizens who see the area as more than just a building site for soul-less warehouse apartments.  

The only reason that there’s still a UC Theater to revive is Berkeley’s long-time Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, the very same one that Mayor Bates and his gang of seven wanted to torpedo a couple of years ago. They tried to replace it with a toothless substitute that undercut citizens’ power to trigger landmarking of a beloved building, but after a protracted ballot battle the ordinance was saved.  

The LPO allows 50 citizens to petition the Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate a threatened building as a historic resource which can’t be torn down without reviewing the environmental consequences of demolition. In 2002 some building industry speculators had the bright idea of building a heap o’ condos where the UC now stands. A local agitator named Howie Muir collected the 50 citizen signatures and recruited John English to write it up for LPC consideration, with special attention paid to the still-usable auditorium space. The city’s planning department, as usual, sided with the developers’ tear-it-down plan, but the citizens prevailed after a long struggle. (I was on the LPC at the time, pre-Planet, when I still had time for public service activities like that.)  

Berkeley is probably the world leader in the green-washing industry, the effort to make anything anyone wants to do to make money look good by cloaking it in environmental rhetoric. The most recent demonstration of that technique was the council’s effort to undercut the Downtown Area Plan drafted by the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission. (One more time, with feeling: The greenest building is the one that’s already built.) But for the prompt response of 9,000 referendum petition signers, the weak council version would be law today, complete with weasel words that allow all the good provisions of the plan to be overridden if the developer can claim that he or she can’t make enough profit on a proposed venture.  

In the next couple of weeks council members will have the opportunity to decide what to do about the referendum. What are their options? The legalities are murky, but they could rescind the new plan, which would leave the existing pre-DAPAC downtown plan in effect. If they did nothing, the latest plan would be on the ballot at the next regular election to be voted up or down.  

It’s likely that someone will suggest that council members try to mollify voters by making a few changes, such as lowering some of the height limits, and thereby avoid the election. But according to some activists’ reading of state law any new version passed within one year must be substantially different from the last one to take effect, so cosmetic alterations probably won’t work.  

A sensible-seeming course of action might be to adopt the original DAPAC plan as a substitute. Even that one, however, could encounter resistance, since it embodies a number of compromises that some referendum activists might now oppose as too generous.  

Some unresolved issues bother many progressives about both the council plan and the DAPAC plan. New buildings in Berkeley inevitably add to our greenhouse gas emissions, contrary to voter-passed Measure G’s requirements, so mitigations should be built into any plan that calls for new construction. Even LEED-gold buildings create more gases than older buildings that they replace, and the council plan has been accused of not requiring LEED-gold for buildings under 85 feet anyway. Labor unions that represent service workers want fair labor standards to be required in return for height bonuses for hotels. Building heights and creeks provide more controversy.  

The Berkeley City Council had the opportunity to hear about all these gripes before they passed their plan, but they chose not to listen. Regrettably, the Council as it’s presently constituted seems unable to learn from experience.  

The LPO and DAPAC debacles evidently weren’t enough grief. Now the Planning Commission, which the council has packed with shills for the building industry, might be hareing off on a plan to gut the existing West Berkeley Plan. That plan was carefully balanced by its citizen-authors to preserve opportunities for small businesses, artists and residents to co-exist in harmony, but some proposed changes would unbalance it in favor of big-parcel developers. However there’s still time for commission and council to avoid new mistakes in West Berkeley, accepting citizen input in order to avoid a ballot confrontation.  

Will the council be able to come up with a sensible plan for downtown this time which could pass public scrutiny? A good start might be to hold a new round of public hearings in which citizen testimony is given proper respect by the Mayor. If he still can’t manage to be civil to members of the public who’d like to bring forward good ideas for solving our downtown problems, perhaps another council member would be willing to preside for an evening or two.  

P.S.: One last request, for the adventurous producers who will run the UC Theater as the newly constituted Berkeley Music Group LLC. During the long time the theater was vacant, there was a lot of discussion about the need for a performance space that could support occasional classical music audiences of about 600–1,000. The Berkeley Symphony in particular (full disclosure: I’m on its advisory council) could really use an affordable venue for three or four concerts a year, though it couldn’t pay the cost of rehabbing the theater. Zellerbach Auditiorium is big, expensive and hard to book. It would be a nice gesture on the part of the new management to make the UC Theater available occasionally for other kinds of performances, if it’s able to operate profitably most of the time with concerts for its core pop audience. 

STUDENT PARTIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The students are back and are outside screaming and partying all hours of the night. Late last night—a Monday—I called the police to ask them to come quiet down the street—I didn’t even have an address there were so many parties with people roving outside. 

The dispatcher was unbelievably rude. I asked her if she was one of the dispatchers that earn over $100,000 per year. Amazingly, she actually told me she was. So—remember that I was experiencing noise as if I were at a college theme park of “let’s get drunk, smash bottles in the street and do anything we’re not allowed to do at home”—I asked her if a bit of civility could be purchased at that price. 

By the way, as far as I know the police never showed up. While one expects students to party when returning, this type of behavior crosses the line. What does it say about a city and the university that condone this type of behavior? What message are we imparting to our young people? I don’t see a big difference between corporations that are ruled by greed and young people who demonstrate unrestrained narcissistic, rude behavior. In neither case are there civilized restraints which acknowledge and protect the rights of others. 

Michelle Pellegrin 

• 

DOWNTOWN FARM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With the apparent success of the referendum petition, let’s take advantage of the Downtown Plan pause and consider a “vertical farm” for downtown Berkeley, as recently proposed in a New York Times op-ed piece by Columbia University public health professor, Dicksen Despommier. “Imagine a farm right in the middle of a major city,” Despommier writes. “Food production would take advantage of hydroponic and aeroponic technologies. Both methods are soil-free. Hydroponics allows us to grow plants in a water-and-nutrient solution, while aeroponics grows them in a nutrient-laden mist. These methods use far less water than conventional cultivation techniques, in some cases as much as 90 percent less.” He’s looking for the first city to give it a try. Why not Berkeley? 

Tom Miller 

President, Green Cities Fund 

• 

REMAINS AT UC 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I love how such a hoopla is being made over Japanese remains when the university is currently holding 43,000 Native remains under the women’s swimming pool. www.berkeleycitizen.org/indigenous.html 

Think about it. 

John Stamford 

• 

BERKELEY GUIDES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It has come to my attention that the City of Berkeley has allocated $200,000 per year in order to operate the Berkeley Guides program (the brown-shirted “ambassadors”). For the life of me I cannot figure out how paying people to do absolutely nothing is going to help the city which screams about its budget every time someone has a constuctive idea to improve the social service programs that the City of Berkeley offers. The hardest work that I have seen any one of those guides doing is slipping a fresh DVD into a movie player while they’re sitting in the Caffe Mediterraneum. 

Let us get this straight—the City of Berkeley is paying these people $200,000 per year to do abolutely nothing, but it cannot afford to take on the maintenance contract for People’s Park? According to university employees, $200,000 is the operating budget for People’s Park for a year, but no, the City of Berkeley just doesn’t have that money around. I guess it’s a better idea to have the university in there refusing to work constructively with this community in order to provide such things as 1.) functional recycling kiosks. 2.) publicly accessible green waste bins and a functional composting program for the community gardens. 3.) A free clothing box that the university doesn’t keep destroying. 4.) Desperately needed maintenance on the entrance pathways. 5.) A viable policy for facilitating user-development, and for removing the UC Regents as the private owners of that very public and precious community resource. 6.) Park employees who do more than sit around in the office all day long calling the cops and not much else. 7.) Bathrooms that don’t make you nauseous. 

What is even worse, the Berkeley Guides have been brazenly sauntering around for more than six months now, and nobody else has gotten disgusted enough to complain. 

Arthur Fonseca  

• 

UC AT GITMO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Why does UC Berkeley have such a vested interest in supporting John Yoo and his torture memos? Starvation, dehydration, sleep deprivation techniques, threatening detainees with death at gun point, a detainee collapsing and being denied even basic medical care; is this a description of Guantanamo Bay or the former Oak Grove tree-sit? The military and police worlds are too intertwined. It was never assumed that torture would be contained in distant military bases. The Right was counting on a trickle down effect. Soldiers who torture become, or influence, police officers who torture. The police officers who expressed the most violence at the tree-sit are the same officers who stand at John Yoo’s every beck and call. An entire squadron of officers, paid by the state, just standing at his house or in front of his classroom like a bunch of stormtroopers.   

John Yoo is not some legal genius. There is nothing he brings to the Bay Area but shame. UC values John Yoo because if his memos can be validated through Eric Holder’s unwillingness to prosecute, then torture programs used against ecological and political protesters can be expanded.   

Given that the horrors of Guantanamo were partially orchestrated by a UC professor, and are upheld by UC police, the prison should be commonly refered to UC Berkeley Extension at Guantanamo Bay. People died at Gitmo. Many more were brutalized mentally and physically. John Yoo must be prosecuted. 

Nathan Pitts 

• 

RACIAL PROFILING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It seems so simple but I guess it isn’t. You’re walking down the street, a man of color approaches. You get nervous. Ask yourself if you are being rational. 

Is it a dark street? Or is it Saturday afternoon in front of Chez Pannisse? Is the man carrying a weapon or a bag of groceries? Is the person following you or simply behind you on the time space continuum? Are they swimming or hovering near the changing area? Are you at the opera? Are you in Prague? Most of these are examples are my having evinced panic mode which is hurtful as well as insulting. Random crime can strike at any time. Mr. Madoff stole more money than every purse-snatching in the history of the world. There has never been organized and sustained black-on-white crime in America. Too bad you can’t say that the other way around. Some sensitivity on this would be a truly magnanimous gesture. 

Zac Morrison 

• 

CORRECTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his excellent piece on James Keller (An ‘Articulate Enthusiast’ Aug. 27) Ken Bullock refers to the “late stage director, Albert Takazakis.” As an actor I had the privilege of working with Albert in several productions, and in the interest of remembering him with historical accuracy, I would point out that he spelled his name Takazauckas. 

Jerry Landis 

• 

JAMES KELLER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Many thanks to Ken Bullock for his fine in-depth profile of James Keller in this week’s Daily Planet. As a regular attendee at Keller’s Tuesday afternoon movie series at the North Berkeley Senior Center, I heartily agree that he is, indeed, an “articulate enthusiast.” This man knows everything there is to know about the world of theater and films. 

He presents films that are often little known, quite often foreign, but always thought-provoking—ones you think about long after you’ve left. His commentary before and after the movie reflects his broad experience and involvement in theater (i.e., as a teacher at the International Film School in London). I recall his discussion of Marlene Dietrich and her service to this country during World War II, a fact not well known. 

Keller’s classes, a Berkeley Adult School offering, will resume on Tuesday, Sept. 8, at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Avenue. The morning class, “World Drama” meets at 10:30. I’ll be attending his Classic Film series at 1:30. I would urge lovers of theater and movies to avail themselves of these outstanding classes. 

Dorothy Snodgrass 

• 

EAST BAY COUNCIL OF RABBIS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Upon returning from vacation, I was surprised and troubled to read your story (Aug. 6) stating that the East Bay Council of Rabbis condemned Jim Sinkinson. I know for a fact that the East Bay Council of Rabbis did no such thing, and indeed, did not even meet during the period in question.  

At its last meeting, in June, the East Bay Council of Rabbis unanimously agreed to send a letter to the Daily Planet supporting free speech for both the paper and its critics and upholding the importance of responsible journalism. That letter, expressing the unanimous view of the diverse members of the East Bay Council of Rabbis, was printed in the Daily Planet on June 25 and speaks for itself. 

Rabbi Jane Rachel Litman 

Past President, East Bay Council of Rabbis 

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Aug. 6 article said nothing about a meeting of the East Bay Council of Rabbis. The council was contacted for comment about Jim Sinkinson’s use of the letter that appeared in the Daily Planet. Rabbi Deborah Kohn, the council’s vice president, and Rabbi Andrea Berlin, the council’s past president and author of the letter, returned the call and characterized Sinkinson’s use of the letter as “deeply disturbing” and that he “picks and chooses” in quoting from the letter with the result that it “departs from the original intention of our letter.”  

• 

REZA VALIYEE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

So long as we are naming names and Reza Valiyee is the culprit doing business without permits, can Brenneman also fill us in with more names of employees that allow this to happen?  

The Berkeley Housing Authority was bailed out by the City Council and was rewarded for federal fraud. No one went to jail and some of the $25 million was unaccounted for, which came from HUD. Perhaps we should name the names of city employees who do favors for certain landlords. Reza never brought women over from Iran for cheap labor unlike some landlords in Berkeley. 

I was not pleased with the cruel mocking of Mr. Valiyee. I felt it was unnecessary. The only thing I know about Reza is that he consoled me when I lived on Parker Sreet and he saw the horrific conditions and violence. There were death threats against the manager by some Section 8 tenants. It seemed that the city was blaming the landlady who was fed up with those tenants. 

Just because a person owns a lot of property does not make them an enemy. He cared about my plight and I appreciated his kindness. He’s probably a genius and who knows; maybe he has discovered the perpetual motion machine? Since some Berkeley employees have committed so much fraud, perhaps Reza did not respect the local politics regarding the use of permits. Why don’t we also name the names that allowed Reza to bypass the permit process? 

Diane Arsanis 

• 

VALIYEE AND TENANTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the fall of 1979 I lived in a Valiyee residence, on Prospect Avenue at Dwight Way. Reza was up to his shenanigans even back then. Within weeks of the building filling with students, all the toilets but one in the three-story building had backed up and hot water ceased to work. He felt exempt not just from city ordinances, but from any sense of decency toward his tenants. 

He once even rented the same room to two people, who felt powerless to redress their grievance; they ended up sharing the room. 

So if Berkeley’s “heavy hand” was finally brought down on Valiyee, it was certainly a long time in coming. 

And, yes, his perpetual motion machine was just around the corner even then. Apparently some things never change. 

Ted Courant 

• 

PUBLIC OPTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It has been insidious. Over the years, somehow, the moneyed and powerful have altered our language until even the media and people that should know better are using the wrong term for the American people. 

Please listen: I am not and no longer wish to be referred to as a “consumer.” I am a “citizen” and I wish to be called that and treated as such. As a consumer I may consume whatever bogus false reform the powers that be force upon me to consume as a health care plan. But as a citizen, I deserve a public option that gives me the choice to be respected as a citizen with all the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I should have a choice whether I consume a product meant to make a profit for a corporate entity off of a gamble on my life, or participate as a citizen of my country so that all are covered by health care (life and liberty). We are the citizens, not the corporate entities. So far, only they are getting the universal guarantee of “health care” (financial) because they are “too big to fail.” 

Every citizen in this nation is too important to fail, because we are citizens, not because of how much or little we consume. The public option in universal health care is not optional. It is patriotic.  

Tobie Helene Shapiro 

• 

TED KENNEDY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ted Kennedy was wrong on every issue from gun confiscation to socialized medicine to support of Israel to apologetics for Communist tyrannies. JFK was smart, RFK was very smart and Ted was just plain dumb as he revealed in the 1980 interview with Roger Mudd when he couldn’t even give a reason as to why he should be president. Ted behaved in the most irresponsible way when he let Mary Jo drown and spent hours trying to cover his butt before he notified the police. Ted was wrong in pushing Civil Wrongs legislation that totally violated individual and property rights. Ted was always pushing for more and more and more government.  

Ted had a lock on Massachusetts politics thanks to a corrupt, hack, statist-driven media. “Prince,” my behind! As Ayn Rand wrote of his brother JFK in 1960, Ted was a highbrow lowlife. Maybe the editor should broaden her perusal of websites because a great many people thought, Good riddance! 

Michael P. Hardesty 

Oakland 

• 

KENNEDY’S DEATH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How tragic Teddy K., like his brothers, turned out to be. What his voice would have meant in this year’s health care reform morass. It even feels like another parting bunker buster by the previous ad nausea administration. 

I’m sorry the Planet didn’t have any coverage of Cynthia McKinney during her explosive week’s stay in the Bay Area. 

Arnie Passman 

• 

REFERENDUM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to correct an item mentioned on the front page of your Aug. 27 edition. Richard Brenneman mistakenly wrote that the petitions challenging the Berkeley Downtown Plan were turned in “late Friday afternoon.” They were in fact turned in on Thursday, Aug. 20. I should know because I was there. For documentation of the event, please go to www.youtube.com and search for a video titled, “Berkeley Petition Drive.” You will see interviews with the participants as well as the actual delivery of the petitions. Could you please print a correction and check your facts more thoroughly in future editions?  

Paul Griffin 

• 

SWINE FLU VACCINE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A letter writer in last week’s edition statflu vaccine may be more dangerous than the swine flu.” This is a statement with no factual foundation whatsoever. In fact, the most recent news we have indicates that the tests of the new vaccine have turned up no side effects so far. 

This statement has ramifications beyond the obvious ethical issues of spreading mis-information. The subtext of this message is that people should not get vaccinated. It is important to remember that a vaccination doesn’t just protect the person getting the vaccination. It protects all the immune compromised people in our community as well. 

When one refuses to take available measures to prevent getting sick, they become possible carriers of diseases that can be deadly to any immune compromised person they come in contact with. That includes people that suffer from AIDS, infants, diabetics, the elderly, people that are on chemotherapy and many others. Of course, available measures are not just vaccines, but also include handwashing, staying home when ill and other strategies. 

It is true that some people should not take the flu vaccine. For example, people who are allergic to eggs and infants under six months are in that group. To find out if you are one of these people, the authoritative source of that kind of information is the Center For Disease Control. www.cdc.gov. If you are not in one of the excluded groups listed by the CDC, it is very important that you get vaccinated to protect those who are prevented from using that protection. 

The writer of the letter further speculates that the drug companies are using genetic engineering to purposely infect people so they can profit from the vaccines. That kind of thinking can take its place in the cultural mythos along with Sarah Palin’s “Death Panel” conspiracy and those who compare Obama’s healthcare agenda to the Nazi extermination schemes for the “unfit.” There is no point in arguing against those fantastic assertions, but one should take them into account when assessing the quality of the writer’s information. 

Thomas Stephen Laxar 

El Cerrito 

• 

CUBAN FIVE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Just a note of appreciation for the review by Riya Bhattacharjee of the meeting celebrating the opening of the show of Tony Guerrerros’s paintings. There was a pamphlet of prints and poems by him, all recognizably humanistic, sensitive, the more remarkable considering his isolation in US Prison Colorado. Sadly but understandably, one of his paintings, one praised by author Alice Walker at the celebration—the painting of a prison door, apparently the hole—was not reproduced in the pamphlet. Being geomorphologically inclined, I enjoyed his paintings of Colorado Mountains, from his “altitude,” and the Cuban shore (Caribbean? Gulf?) altitude at sea level. One omission in the pamphlet, I think, was not identifying prints of specific mothers of the Cuban Five.  From the exhibit, they are: top across left to right: Nereida Salazar (mother of Ramon Labanino Salazar); Magaly Llort (mother of Fernando Gonzales Llort); Irma Sehweret (mother of Rene Gonzales Sehwerert). From top left to bottom, they are: Salazar; Carmen Nordelo (mother of Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo); and Mirta Rodriguez (mother of Tony Guerrero Rodriguez).  

It boggles the mind that these Five will start their 12th year in U.S. prisons on this September 12th—in U.S. prisons for acting against terrorism. A note: apparently three of the Cuban 5 (Gonzales, Llort, Guerrero) have been returned to Miami for re-sentencing in early October. Go figure.    

Fred Hayden  

• 

SMOKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Smoking or holding a burning cigarette is inappropriate behavior and should be banned.  

The key question is, if I am walking in the public domain, who decides what chemicals touch my lungs and sinuses? Should I or the person smoking or holding a burning cigarette make the decision?  

I think I and not the smoker should make the decision. 

I have never consented to allow the chemicals from burning cigarettes to touch my lungs and sinuses. 

I support banning smoking on sidewalks, malls, parks and other places. I and others have never consented to have our lungs and sinuses raped and molested by cigarettes and marijuana smokers. 

Victims of rape and molestation of the lungs and sinuses should be able to sue the offender for $1 million indexed to inflation/incident. 

Smokers should use nicotine patches, nicotine chewing gums or a device like a smokeless cannabis delivery device: efficient and less toxic. I support people’s rights to sovereignty over their bodies and my own right to sovereignty over my body. 

A lot of the time, smokers hold a burning cigarette and don’t even smoke the cigarette or breathe the cigarettes or marijuana smoke. The chemicals from the burning cigarette molest and improperly touch the lungs and sinuses of people behind them and they don’t care. 

Ghaouar Camij Toschian 

• 

DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m almost to the point of viewing the Democratic Party as nothing more important than the team that plays the Harlem Globetrotters, just there to lose in an exciting game. If you refuse to prosecute the large volume of crimes that have been committed by the Bush administration during the last eight years, you will be held complicit. 

Susan Templeton 

Oakland 

In J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s latest article about Pacifica’s moves on KPFA’s money, Grace Aaron is quoted as saying “[Brian Edwards-Tiekert] should have attempted to verify his facts.” To be clear, I asked KPFA’s Business Manager to confirm with the bank that they were under orders to transfer $100,000 out of KPFA’s account; they did. I also wrote two e-mails to Pacifica’s Interim Chief Financial Officer (ICFO) seeking clarification of the issue (Grace Aaron was copied on them). In five days, I received no response. I’m not sure what other verification efforts she wanted me to make—I guess I could have waited for the bank to actually move money out of KPFA’s account and asked for a receipt. 

I’ve worked with Pacifica’s current ICFO in various capacities for nearly four years—she normally responds to my e-mails within 24 hours. With five days to go until the transfer was to take place and no response from her or any other manager at Pacifica, I wrote a letter to my co-workers explaining the situation and asked them to sign a petition asking the Pacifica National Board to intervene. 

What’s bizarre is that, after stonewalling for a week, Pacifica’s ICFO decided to attack me for raising the concern in the first place. 

And KPFA LSB member Tracy Rosenberg accused me, in these pages, of raising the issue to score political points. 

As a staff representative on KPFA’s Local Station Board, and as that Board’s elected Treasurer, I see it as my responsibility to educate the people I represent—KPFA’s Board and Staff—about what’s happening with Pacifica’s finances. I also see it as my responsibility to organize to stop Pacifica from mishandling our listeners’ money. 

This is not new: three years ago I collected signatures on staff and board petitions to protest the National Board’s decision to create an unbudgeted paid consultancy for one of its own members. Pacifica’s current ICFO, then a member of KPFA’s LSB, was happy to sign on then. 

This past winter, I circulated a staff position against Pacifica entering into a six-figure unbudgeted “management consulting” contract that seemed to promise little of concrete value for the network. The National Board backed away from that proposal. 

This spring, when the Pacifica National Board adopted a policy that would force KPFA to devote more than 60 hours of on-air programming to our internal elections, I circulated a petition asking the National Board to re-think its position. They didn’t, but the elections supervisors they hired have—they’ve quietly cut the programming requirements by more than half. 

And this month, after more than 60 staff signed onto a petition asking Pacifica not to raid KPFA’s accounts, Pacifica’s top management broke their silence to deny they ever intended to do so in the first place. 

The point of the kind of open governance system we have in Pacifica is that, when there’s transparency around the major decisions being made, stakeholders like KPFA’s staff and board can weigh in to sway the decision-makers. That’s democracy. 

The failure in this case was a failure of transparency: Pacifica stonewalled on this issue for nearly a week, and something that could have been resolved internally turned into a public spat. Hopefully the new regime at Pacifica will handle things better in the future. The trend, however, is not promising: Pacifica has yet to produce a plan for managing its cash shortfalls that does not involve taking KPFA’s money in one form or other; and it has yet to produce a cash-flow forecast that looks past the end of this September. That’s exactly the kind of management style that produces conflict over sloppy, last-minute financial decisions. 

Brian Edwards-Tiekert is staff representative and treasurer, KPFA Local Station Board

As many Berkeley Daily Planet readers are aware, the 2009 election for the KPFA Local Station Board has now begun. Although most candidates running for the board claim to espouse progressive politics, there is a clear difference in the direction each wants to take KPFA. 

The “Concerned Listeners” (CL), who have held the majority on the board for the last three years, want to make the station more “professional and mainstream,” as expressed in their coy slogan, “quality radio with a radical edge,” which suggests they would prefer that KPFA focus on superficial technical “quality” while toning down the radical content, shifting it away from the heart of KPFA to the “edge.” They believe that the management should set station policy and make programming decisions. 

The “Independents for Community Radio” (ICR) want to put the community back in community radio; it is our belief that programming decisions and other significant station policies need to be made collaboratively. 

KPFA subscribers can see the distinct differences between the CL and the ICR by looking at two issues: programming decision-making and the status of unpaid staff. 

On programming, the CL platform says: “We think bodies like the Program Council are vital to the development of new programming at KPFA, but we think such bodies are advisory.” “If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, we shudder to think what radio station programming would be like if it was designed by the Program Council.” 

The CL seems to distrust participatory decision-making and prefers that all power be vested in management. This is the rule in commercial media, but the ICR thinks community radio should follow a more democratic process. The Program Council was a well-established institution at KPFA and included representatives of the paid staff, unpaid staff, LSB, and listeners. 

In fact, the Program Council made most of the programming decisions from 2003 until 2007, a period when the Program Director job was vacant. Among the programs the council brought to KPFA’s airwaves were APEX Express, Bay Native Circle, Education Today, Guns & Butter, Voices of the Middle East, the Women’s Magazine, and Youth Radio. The council, when it was allowed to function, was an embodiment of the principle of “fair and collaborative” decision-making required by the Pacifica Foundation bylaws. In fact, KPFA’s Local Station Board passed a resolution in 2004 formalizing the decision-making authority of the Program Council. However, the present managers have ignored that resolution, claimed the power to make programming decisions unilaterally, and halted Program Council meetings altogether. And since Sasha Lilley became Program Director in 2006, no new permanent public-affairs programs have been created at KPFA. During her tenure, our “progressive” radio station has mostly stood still—or even regressed: management canceled Youth Radio in 2007. The ICR candidates call for the Program Council to be promptly restored and its decision-making role respected.  

On the status of the Unpaid Staff Organization, the CL platform claims the UPSO’s “criteria for membership violate Pacifica bylaws.” They also insinuate that unpaid staff are “packing” the unpaid-staff organization with “people who have only a tangential relationship to KPFA, thus allowing this sectarian group to control which staff members get elected to the LSB.” 

In fact, the Unpaid Staff Organization has been around for about 30 years, during the tenure of many managers, and its standards for membership do NOT violate Pacifica bylaws. The bylaws specifically authorize unpaid-staff organizations to set their own membership criteria (Article Three, Section 1B). 

There has been no attempt to “pack” the unpaid staff organization. Although volunteers come and go, the total number of qualified unpaid staff has remained relatively constant, at slightly under 200. These KPFA workers are the majority of the staff and are responsible for a majority of KPFA’s programs and broadcast hours. They are news reporters, DJs, public-affairs hosts, and members of the KPFA Apprenticeship Program. It is shameful for the Concerned Listeners to refer to these programmers, who give generously of their time for no compensation, as “tangential to KPFA.” Without its unpaid staff, KPFA could not exist. Equally disgraceful is that the CL candidates who come from a labor background can stoop to rhetorically attacking the UPSO, a workers’ organization (and the nearest thing KPFA’s unpaid staff has to a union). 

KPFA subscribers should be concerned about the Concerned Listeners doctrine of concentrated management power, and its disrespect for the unpaid staff; this approach to radio could turn KPFA into another mainstream station and marginalize the listener community. 

The Independents for Community Radio are for putting community back in community radio. 

The candidates endorsed by the Independents for Community Radio are Akio Tanaka, Henry Norr, Banafsheh Akhlaghih, Andrea Pritchett, Eveyln Sanchez, Lara Kiswani, Adam Hudson, Rahman Jamaal, Sasha Futran, Annie Hallat and Shara Esbenshade. Read more about them at www.indyradio2009. org. 

Akio Tanaka lives in Oakland and is a member of Independents for Community Radio.

MoveOn’s Real Voices for Change campaign put together this list of healthcare reform lies that are spreading via anonymous e-mail chains. Remember when Sarah Palin bizarrely said that President Obama was going to set up a “death panel,” whatever that is. Here is MoveOn’s list of lies and their efforts to set the record straight. Spread the word. 

Lie No. 1: President Obama wants to euthanize your grandma! 

The truth: These accusations—of “death panels” and forced euthanasia—are, of course, flatly untrue. As an article from the Associated Press puts it: “No ‘death panel’ in healthcare bill.” What’s the real deal? Reform legislation includes a provision, supported by the AARP, to offer senior citizens access to a professional medical counselor who will provide them with information on preparing a living will and other issues facing older Americans. 

Lie No. 2: Democrats are going to outlaw private insurance and force you into a government plan! 

The truth: With reform, choices will increase, not decrease. Obama’s reform plans will create a health insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace for affordable, high-quality insurance options. Included in the exchange is the public health insurance option—a nationwide plan with a broad network of providers—that will operate alongside private insurance companies, injecting competition into the market to drive quality up and costs down. 

If you’re happy with your coverage and doctors, you can keep them. But the new public plan will expand choices to millions of businesses or individuals who choose to opt into it, including many who simply can’t afford healthcare now. 

Lie No. 3: President Obama wants to implement Soviet-style rationing! 

The truth: Health care reform will expand access to high-quality health insurance, and give individuals, families, and businesses more choices for coverage. Right now, big corporations decide whether to give you coverage, what doctors you get to see, and whether a particular procedure or medicine is covered—that is rationed care. And a big part of reform is to stop that. 

Healthcare reform will do away with some of the most nefarious aspects of this rationing: discrimination for pre-existing conditions, insurers that cancel coverage when you get sick, gender discrimination, and lifetime and yearly limits on coverage. And outside of that, as noted above, reform will increase insurance options, not force anyone into a rationed situation. 

Lie No. 4: Obama is secretly plotting to cut senior citizens’ Medicare benefits! 

The truth: Healthcare reform plans will not reduce Medicare benefits. Reform includes savings from Medicare that are unrelated to patient care—in fact, the savings comes from cutting billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. 

Lie No. 5: Obama’s healthcare plan will bankrupt America! 

The truth: We need healthcare reform now in order to prevent bankruptcy—to control spiraling costs that affect individuals. 

Source:  http://pol.moveon.org/truth/ lies.html?rc=tw. 

Ralph E. Stone is a retired Bay Area attorney.

Bike safety has been part of the script for every Berkeley politician since the Free Speech Movement. Unfortunately, this generation of Berkeley politicians has done nothing to improve it. They talk big about asking people to give up their cars and ride a bike but have done nothing to initiate an education program, improve existing laws, or even enforce them.   

Even if you don’t ride one, in this town as a driver or pedestrian, you have to deal with them. Hence the need for a comprehensive transportation safety improvement program. In 2008 the Daily Planet printed my commentary “Car, Bike and Pedestrian Citizenship.” That was a preliminary attempt to create a new mindset in Berkeley that is neither anti-automobile nor anti-bike. As a famous Los Angeles criminal once said, “Why can’t we all just get along?”  

My interest in these issues arises from my need to ride a bike for daily commuting and having survived a hit-and-run in 2005 and a “dooring” in 2007. As such, I enlisted as an “ad-hoc member” of the Berkeley Bike and Pedestrian Sub-Committee, which falls under the city’s Transportation Commission. In that capacity, I have found a puzzling and alarming resistance to a series of proposals to improve bike safety in Berkeley.  

The sources of resistance include Mayor Tom Bates, Councilmembers Linda Maio and Max Anderson, and some that may surprise you, such as Transportation Commissioners Marcy Greenhut and Eric McCaughrin and Eric Anderson, the city’s professional bicycle safety coordinator/ consultant! The latter three chose to not have this committee meet two months out of the last four! 

The fact that Berkeley does not have a mandatory helmet law for adults illustrates the problem. These Berkeley elected officials and commissioners have resisted my proposals for mandatory helmet legislation for adults in Berkeley, though they are required for bikers and skateboarders under 18. My proposals to improve bike safety have included the following:  

1) A comprehensive and visible public relations campaign to prevent and reduce incidents of “dooring.” This would include new signage in parallel parking areas, and a forceful and visible PR campaign (billboards, T-shirts, bumper stickers, leaflets). Ideally, this would be one facet of a comprehensive transportation-education campaign. DMV covers all the bases in the Driver’s Manual; Berkeley needs to do the same with a focus on the realities of bikes.  

2) A moratorium on the so-called “traffic-calming circles.” Maio and other politicians have championed these things for supposedly slowing traffic in residential neighborhoods. Whatever traffic slowing is actually accomplished is offset by the reality of what they bring: terror to bikers and pedestrians and confusion to drivers. 

Because these islands are too large for the narrow streets, they force vehicles into crosswalks. A bike can go in a relatively straight line through intersections with traffic circles, but vehicles must make a sharp right and then a sharp left to navigate them, encroaching into the biker’s right-of-way. A biker going straight has to stop to avoid getting hit by a veering car. Pedestrians in the intersection also experience a moment of terror when they see a car veering toward them before it makes the corrective left turn. 

Many drivers are apparently confused about how to navigate a wide traffic circle through an intersection of narrow residential streets. Most cars simply do not stop; rather, they slow down a little and then gun their engines through the intersections to get through the confusing mess as soon as possible. In the process they inevitably encroach on a crosswalk or a pedestrian’s right of way. 

3) Legislation to require adults to wear bike helmets in Berkeley. The Tour de France finally came around, but Berkeley is resisting it. 

4) Creating a program to make helmets available to low-income citizens. 

5) Fast-tracking new bike racks where parking meters have been removed, and requiring owners of apartment buildings to furnish them. Parking meters have been removed in commercial districts but have not been replaced by bike racks. 

6) An accurate study of the number of car-bike and bike-door collisions in Berkeley, with data on the nature of injuries, citations for fault, etc. An attempt by Councilmember Anderson was woefully incomplete and failed to include my accidents from 2005 or 2007. 

7) Improving pavement conditions on roads that carry heavy bike traffic. Milvia and Addison streets near City Hall have some of the worst. Small streets immediately parallel to major arteries need the greatest attention. 

8) Improving lighting conditions in residential neighborhoods. Many street lights blink on and off, and no one at the Department of Public Works seems to know why. 

9) The importance of not being “anti-automobile,” as most of the committee members admittedly are. Diminishing the space on the road by putting up barriers to eliminate parallel parking spots does not help cyclists. A narrower thoroughfare intensifies the competition between cars and bikes for space on streets, which are already narrow. Bikes lose every time.  

10) Additional punitive sanctions for drivers and passengers who cause injury by dooring. Lately, drivers have been double parking to let out passengers, who quickly open their doors without looking.   

The current crop of Berkeley politicians have done nothing to contribute to the city’s progressive and liberal tradition of thoughtful legislation. Indeed, the mayor and council are content to cruise on the accomplishments of their predecessors. Repeatedly the mayor and aforementioned council members have refused my request to attend the Bike Committee meetings or even send a representative. In public meetings, Maio urges her constituents to give up their cars and ride a bike, but public records reveal that she owns at least two cars, and I’ve never seen her on a bike. 

I hardly consider the effort to create more residential and office density to be in keeping with local political tradition. There needs to be a coordinated, comprehensive effort that accounts for car traffic, bikes and pedestrians, rather than increased efforts to build more high-rise apartments and office buildings in a small town where the vacancy rate is already high. 

H. Scott Prosterman is a Berkeley resident and bike rider.

For many years I thought that the Robin Hood Syndrome—taking from the rich to give to the poor—was a no brainer, so why make such a big deal about it? Why would anyone want to steal from the poor and give to the rich? The wealthy have the resources and the money so who would waste their time robbing people who don’t have anything?  Seems logical, right? Boy was I naïve!  

It seems that the practice of the rich taking from the poor has been the norm worldwide throughout history, crossing through most cultures, governments, and religions. Robin Hood’s crime of taking from the rich was actually compounded because he came from the aristocracy, was actually championing poor people and thereby breaking the good-old-boy tradition of getting all you can get. If people have nothing to take, put them in debt or bondage. That was the way then, and too often it’s still that way now!  

Meanwhile Prince John, I mean Governor Schwarzenegger, is reluctant to raise taxes on the rich, but has chosen to eliminate programs that help our poor, our school children, and the disabled.  

I recently watched a program titled, Untold Wealth: The Rise of the Super Rich. It was striking to learn that the Super Rich are like their own species—and that more people are becoming wealthy faster than ever before. In 1985 there were 13 billionaires in the U.S., and today there are over 1,000 billionaires. Over 49,000 U.S. households are worth between $50 million and $500 million; 125,000 households have a net worth exceeding $25 million to $50 million. The top 400 taxpayers in the U.S. have an average income of $214 million. The breadth and depth of the staggering number of super-rich households has no precedent in the history of the United States. There has never been such an explosion of wealth, extravagance and conspicuous consumption against a backdrop of unemployment and program cuts for the working class and the poor.  

Now we see politicos, especially right-wing conservatives, who have been constantly preaching their moral, religious superiority and authority, while they continue to be exposed for their corrupt and greedy behavior. These people also refuse to take accountability and resign their positions of power. They believe that they are entitled to be our leaders while enriching themselves, all the while blaming the poor for their own poverty and immigration for destroying the American Dream.   

As I watch the haves debate the economy, healthcare, taxes, the environment, and immigration, I see an uneven and deliberate strategy to take as much from the have-nots as possible to save the resources to feed the greed of the wealthy. For some enough is never enough!   

Where’s Robin Hood when you need him?   

Obama could never qualify as the next Robin Hood because he came from a low- income household to begin with and was never a part of the privileged establishment like Sir Robert of Locksley, aka Robin Hood.   

I think the closest person we’ve had in many years to fill Robin’s shoes passed away last week at a time when the folks at the bottom may need help the most. He was someone that came from the wealthy class and devoted himself to helping the poor instead of exploiting them. He was Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy.  

My father used to say, “If money grew on trees we would all be in the woods!”  Right now I’m feeling that many of us need to unite and gather in Sherwood Forest instead.  

Winston Burton is a Berkeley resident.

Imagine children morphing into swarms of bugs. See fruit falling to the ground and rotting instantaneously. Many who view these images in the new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) commercials about invasive species (“They’re here and they're hungry”) will likely find them disturbing, even haunting.  

But even more disturbing than the horror-movie special effects is the way the 30-second spots are spawning distortions of the truth.  

Take, for example, the articles that have linked the commercials with the “destructive” light brown apple moth (LBAM) and repeated the latest unsubstantiated exaggeration promulgated by the state, that LBAM is “devastating Watsonville’s berry crops.”   

This untruth is a prime example of government agriculture agencies crying “wolf” about invasive species. LBAM is neither destructive nor devastating. And even though experts say “eradication” of LBAM is not feasible, the state plans to carry out a multi-year eradication program involving mass pesticide applications; that program’s first year cost an estimated $97 million.    

Is it a coincidence that USDA’s $3-million ads were launched during the public comment period for the LBAM Environmental Impact Report? Perhaps if the commercials are scary enough, we won’t question the LBAM program and others like it, or industrial agriculture’s chemical-dependent practices that leave plants especially vulnerable to pest infestations.   

Here are the facts about LBAM and the Watsonville berries: a single blackberry field sustained limited damage attributed to larvae of a leaf-roller moth species that has not been definitively identified. It is impossible to tell LBAM from other native leaf-rollers by visual examination; DNA testing of the larvae were inconclusive. Moreover, we don't know how many other moths were in that field. In the Watsonville area, 50 orange tortrix moths are being trapped for every one LBAM. Orange tortrix is a native leaf-roller with similar habits to LBAM’s. No one has proposed a mass pesticide spray campaign for it.   

A CDFA video shows the blackberry field damage was minimal. In the video, inspectors walk past rows and rows of healthy fruit to find a few individual larvae on leaves. It also shows that the blackberries were a densely planted mono-crop under plastic cover, a combination of agricultural practices that is an invitation to pests.   

One other fact: Researchers raising LBAM larvae are finding 90 percent parasitization, i.e., a predator such as a native wasp lays eggs in the larvae, hatching adult wasps, not moths. This supports what scientists have been saying since the inception of CDFA’s campaign to blanket the state with pesticides for LBAM: LBAM is well-established here, and, like its close native cousins, is already well controlled by native predators.   

Why would the state exaggerate the blackberry damage, the only example of possible LBAM damage they have been able to produce during the past two years? To justify federal funding? The federal government pays for “eradicating” dangerous pests but not for ongoing “control” programs. This is likely why California has seen annual medfly “eradications” for nearly 30 years even though all we are doing is controlling the medfly, which, like LBAM, cannot be eradicated, but, unlike LBAM and many other so-called invasive species, can do serious damage. (Food for thought: carrots, tomatoes, and honeybees are examples of “invasive species” that, today, would likely not be allowed into the country.)  

Labeling every “new” bug a “pest of mass destruction” undermines USDA and CDFA’s credibility and will make it difficult to get the public’s cooperation if a truly dangerous pest appears. Aerial spraying of the pesticide malathion for the medfly in the 1970s and ‘80s did not help the agencies’ case; malathion has since been linked to birth defects, DNA damage, degenerative brain changes, decreased immune function, and a host of other adverse health effects. And, in a sad repeat of history, hundreds were sickened on the Central Coast in 2007 after “emergency” aerial spray for LBAM before courts halted the program and demanded an environmental review.  

As for USDA’s scare campaign: that the federal government is spending millions on ads when teachers are being laid off, parks closed, and 45 million Americans lack healthcare is mind boggling. And that they are doing it to frighten us into supporting programs that are largely unnecessary, costly, ineffective, and in many cases threaten public health and the environment is unconscionable. If they are going to spend tax dollars, the money should help farmers shift to growing practices that largely eliminate the need for pesticides, not create unnecessary and unfounded fear among the public. 

Nan Wishner is Chair Emeritus of the City of Albany Integrated Pest Management Task Force and a member of the Stop the Spray East Bay Steering Committee.

To borrow terminology from Dick Cheney’s world, it’s open season for hunting Dick Cheney. 

Starting this month, the universe of human rights, accountability, legal, and social justice groups have Cheney in their sights and are optimistic that they’ll bag their trophy and bring him in to be held accountable for myriad violations of U.S. and international laws. 

Conditions are converging to make this Cheney hunting season a total success. 

First, Cheney has admitted openly to breaking the law. That should make it easy to investigate, prosecute, indict and convict him. 

Second, Cheney’s no longer working for us, so he doesn't have immunity from prosecution and we don't have to be concerned whether he’s in the executive or legislative branch. Sure, we’re still paying for his secret service detail and a hefty benefits package, and he’s got some of the media fawning all over him, but he doesn’t have the authority to command anything or anyone—in short—the way is clear, and he’s fair game. 

The National Accountability Action Network (NAAN, at www.actforjustice. 

org), ACLU, CODEPINK, Center for Constitutional Rights, MoveOn, IndictBush.org, and other groups are working to ensure accountability and justice for the fifty or so officials who, while working in the White House, Departments of Justice, Defense and State, CIA, and elsewhere clearly violated U.S. and international laws by lying us into a war on Iraq and on terrorists worldwide, by providing legal opinions and cover for torture, illegal wiretapping, suspension of habeas corpus and other human and civil rights, and by working to establish a unitary executive branch which stole power from Congress and the people and consolidated it in the hands of criminals.   

What’s the quail hunting term? Flush him out and take aim? 

Why the hunting metaphor? Well, it just sort of suggested itself, and I think it’s pretty apropos and clever. Of course, we’re not real hunters and don’t believe in violence. We’re not vigilante stalkers and don’t carry guns. We just want the proper authorities to do their jobs. 

• Attorney General Holder must order investigation and prosecution of high-ranking officials like Dick Cheney  

• State bar associations must investigate and disbar lawyers who enabled torture 

• Congress must impeach 9th Circuit Judge Jay Bybee 

• University of California must dismiss John Yoo, Stanford must fire Condi Rice, Chevron must fire Jim Haynes, etc. 

We need to keep making noise and lots of it, pointing at Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Bybee, Gonzales, Yoo, Haynes, Bradbury, Rove, and more—to ensure that accountability and justice are served.  

Whenever one of these outlaws is nearby, consider organizing a citizen’s arrest. Why? Because the more we keep the spotlight on these criminals, the more likely that they will be investigated and prosecuted. We have a role to play—identifying and “outing” the criminals. But we’re not vigilantes. Our job is simply to “finger” the outlaws and demand that the proper authorities do their jobs. 

Take a look at the “Arrest the War Criminals” campaign on CODEPINK’s website www.codepinkalert.org. Each criminal has a description. There are instructions for doing citizen’s arrests and organizing protests and other actions. Look at the “locals spotlight” to see what CODEPINK chapters have done in their areas. You’ll find “Shame on Yoo” actions, “Bye Bye Bybee” protests, arrest Karl Rove attempts, and other inspiring resources. Look too at NAAN’s website for a nationwide action calendar, list of groups working on accountability, music videos, documents providing evidence of criminal acts, and more. See also Voters for Peace, The Center for Constitutional Rights, ACLU, Amnesty International, PDA, Common Cause, MoveOn and other accountability groups and campaigns for more ideas. Take action now—we can and must win this campaign for accountability and justice! 

Cynthia Papermaster is a Berkeley resident and a member of CODEPINK Golden Gate (San Francisco Bay Area).  

cynthia_papermaster@yahoo.com

The regrettable emergence of the “Birthers” movement, in which a desperate and disenfranchised neoconservative fringe is attempting against all evidence to prove President Obama was not born on U.S. soil (and therefore has no right to office), shows once again the power of conspiracy theory to palliate those not content to live with reality.  

Right now the perpetrators of this harebrained fabrication are trying to figure out how to rationalize the Obama birth announcements that appeared in two Hawaiian newspapers back in August 1961—maybe the Islamic Conspiracy to Takeover America perfected time travel to place their “Manchurian Candidate” in the Aloha State when, according to the Birthers, he was actually delivered in Kenya…or was it Saudi Arabia? Iran? Texas? “It’s another country.” On the moon? This little exercise in Orwellian revisionist history also demonstrates how far the radical right would go to unseat a popular president legally elected by a huge majority, rather than “selected” by a compromised Supreme Court hectored by neocon power brokers. 

The poor free-market Republicans. First they get us into an unnecessary and un-winnable war in Iraq, trashing the Constitution and limiting our civil rights along the way, then they ruin the American economy, taking down most of the rest of the world with us. Or maybe it was those unprincipled, namby-pamby liberals who did that (stay tuned). One would think with all that Yale-groomed brain power going for them that they’d be able to come up with more creative fear-mongering fictions of how liberals and their wretched policies are the repositories of all evil. So, you want conspiracies? I’ll give you conspiracies: 

1. Universal public education is a liberal plot to establish socialism in America. Proof of this is the insistence by liberal educators that algebra be taught in our schools. Now every properly informed neoconservative knows that algebra is the product of the “al Gebra” terrorist movement. Why just recently a high school teacher was apprehended at SFO by the TSA trying to board an airliner with a protractor, compass, and ruler in her possession—weapons of math instruction! Just how far will these evil educators go to turn our innocent children away from true ‘Merican values? 

2. Bush really went to Vietnam! Yes, unconscionable leftists have perpetrated the myth that George W. Bush avoided military service in Vietnam by serving in the Texas Air National Guard, from which he ultimately went AWOL.  (Work with me here.) Now, the truth is that Bush actually joined the Navy, was commissioned, and captained a swift boat in the Mekong Delta where he served with valor. During the presidential campaign of 2004, the liberal-dominated press flipped Bush’s Vietnam service, attributing it to Democrat candidate John Kerry, who actually avoided Vietnam service in the Massachusetts Air Guard—from which he is still AWOL! And furthermore, it has been recently discovered that Kerry’s rich elitist liberal friends used their influence to cover this up. 

3. Science is a liberal plot to prove that global warming exists—and to establish socialism in America. Everyone knows these cowardly eggheads are all a bunch of libs on the payroll of wussy European commie pinko socialists. Like algebra, what do we need science for anyway? 

4. Community organizing is a liberal plot to establish socialism in America. As that great American hero Rudi Giuliani said at the ‘08 Republican Convention, “Barak Obama was a community organizer!” Need we say more? 

5. The nation of Canada was established as a liberal plot to force socialized medicine on the U.S.  This can’t be any crazier than the Birthers’ theory, eh? 

6. Obama’s health plan is evil and will convene “death panels” to determine who will live and who will die. Uh, wait a minute, that one’s just too far over the edge. Right, Sarah? 

7. Trees cause pollution. Whoops, ditto—and thank you, Ronnie. 

Conspiracy theorists believe that Berkeley writer David Esler was sent to earth from the planet Zeon to corrupt our youth and establish socialism in America.

The 1976 movie classic Network is best known for the scene where deranged newsman Howard Beale (Peter Finch) persuades his viewers to join his rant, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Thirty-three years later, faced with the news that the Obama administration was considering dropping the public option for healthcare, liberals finally invoked their inner Howard Beale and got angry. 

Liberals have been patient for a long time. We slogged through eight years of the Bush administration, beginning with a stolen election. Then there were tax cuts for the rich that plunged the United States deeper into debt. And who can forget 9/11, where Bush failed to protect us. Next his administration let Osama Bin Laden escape and bullied Congress into passing the “Patriot” Act. As if this wasn’t outrageous enough, Bush quit looking for Bin Laden, invaded Iraq, and burdened America with six horrific years of war. We shouldn’t forget Bush’s failed response to Hurricane Katrina. And more recently, his Administration’s lack of common sense that plunged the nation into the worst recession in 70 years. 

Through eight nightmarish years, liberals were remarkably well behaved: none of us carried assault weapons to Bush appearances, accused him of being a traitor, or shouted “kill him” at rallies. 

All the while, liberals yearned for change. Along came Barack Obama, who promised to put the White House in order and right the wrongs of the Bush administration. Obama talked about changing the tone in Washington, reaching across the isle to Republicans. He said he was a pragmatist, that he believed “the perfect should not be the enemy of the good.” Liberals believed in these sentiments, and so they cut the new president a lot of slack. They had hope. 

The Obama administration’s first major initiative was the Economic Recovery Act that liberals believed was too modest, did not allocate enough money for job creation. Still, we held our tongues. Then came revelations about Bush administration wiretapping and torture policies. liberals believed an independent counsel should be appointed to investigate these outrages, but the White House held back arguing they wanted to look forward rather than backward. Again liberals backed off. We expected the Obama White House to eliminate the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding sexual preference, but instead the Administration begged for time, said that more study was needed. Once again, liberals acquiesced. 

Then came health care reform—the number one Liberal domestic issue. During the Democratic primaries, we understood that Barack Obama did not believe a single-payer system—an extension of Medicare to cover all Americans—was a viable option. Ever the optimists, liberals backed away from our preferred solution, believing that we could get many of the advantages of a single-payer system if Americans were guaranteed access to a public option, a nonprofit, insurance plan competing with those offered by health insurance companies. 

Liberals believe an acceptable healthcare plan must have four components: 

1. Provide affordable, quality healthcare for all Americans. 

2. Guarantee choice of doctors and health plans. 

3. Cause no increase in the federal deficit. 

4. Reduce healthcare costs. 

Theoretically, the president’s proposal would accomplish all four. 

Liberals have focused on the Obama solution for cost reduction: a Health Insurance Exchange that would offer citizens healthcare options, plans that offer a few different packages. The president promised: “One of these options needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market [to] force waste out of the system and keep the insurance companies honest.” 

On Aug. 16, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told CNN the public option “is not an essential part” of reform. Press secretary Robert Gibbs indicated that while Obama’s objective of fostering competition and choice was non-negotiable, the specific mechanism designed to do so—the public option—was up for discussion. Speaking at a town hall meeting in Grand Junction, Colorado, President Obama ad libbed, “All I’m saying is... that the public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of healthcare reform.” 

Liberals correctly interpreted these remarks to mean the Obama Administration was backing away from the public option, abandoning the best hope of reducing healthcare costs. And then a miracle happened: liberals got angry. 

For eight and a half years, liberals have been patient and well behaved. We’ve been good citizens and steadfastly supported a government that often appeared to not care about us. Liberals have patiently listened to the opposition, even when their arguments seemed irrational. We’ve tried to negotiate with those opposed to healthcare reform, even when they shook their heads, stamped their feet, held their breath until their faces turned blue, and refused to consider any change to the existing dysfunctional system. 

At long last liberals have had enough. We’re not going to compromise on the public option. We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take this anymore. 

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

Our British friends have an old children’s riddle that illustrates the importance of context in the understanding of things. 

A man went off to Devonshire, 

Attending at the feast. 

Tell me how he traveled there 

West or south, north or east? 

The riddle cannot be answered, of course, unless you know the location the man traveled from. Context, as I said, is everything, something we might learn from our British friends. Or, at the very least, from their children. 

I was in my mid-20s when this idea really hit home to me. I was reading historian C.L.R. James’ “The Black Jacobins,” his tremendously important study of the Haitian Revolution. In his preface to the first edition, James wrote that “in 1789, the French West Indian colony of San Domingo supplied two-thirds of the overseas trade of France and was the greatest individual market of the economic life of the age, the greatest colony in the world, the pride of France. … In August, 1791 … the slaves revolted. … The slaves defeated in turn the local whites and the soldiers of the French monarchy, a Spanish invasion, a British expedition of some 60,000 men, and a French expedition of similar size under Bonaparte’s brother-in-law. The defeat of Bonaparte’s expedition in 1803 resulted in the establishment of the Negro state of Haiti which has lasted to this day.” 

It was some years later—perhaps while doing some study surrounding my family history, some of whom came from and through Louisiana—that I revisited an old event that I had studied in American history in both junior high and high school: Thomas Jefferson’s purchase of the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon Bonaparte. 

I’m not sure when I connected the two events—the defeat of Bonaparte’s Haitian expedition and the Louisiana Purchase—but I know the triggering mechanism. Both occurred in 1803. I remember the common dates, and the connection, hitting me much like Colonel Kurz describing his revelation in “Apocalypse Now,” like a diamond hitting me in the forehead, the idea that San Domingo was the crown jewel of French colonies in the New World—the money maker—and when San Domingo fell to the revolution of its captive Africans, France could not support the rest of its holdings in the Americas—militarily and financially—and so Bonaparte sold them to the United States. 

That the conclusion—logical and self-evident—is now drawn in the Wikipedia biography of Napoleon I: “Following a slave revolt,” the online encyclopedia notes, Bonaparte “sent an army to reconquer Saint-Domingue and establish a base. The force was, however, destroyed by yellow fever and fierce resistance led by Haitian generals Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jaques Dessalines. Faced by imminent war against Britain and bankruptcy, [Bonaparte] recognised French possessions on the mainland of North America would be indefensible and sold them to the United States—the Louisiana Purchase—for less than three cents per acre...” 

What is most striking about all of this is that the Haitian Revolution was never mentioned by any of my junior high or high school teachers while discussing the Louisiana Purchase; in fact, I cannot remember hearing about the Haitian Revolution from those teachers at all. 

But how can one understand the one historical event without understanding the context, regardless of which way you begin the equation? 

One can easily blame this “oversight” on the fact that the Haitian Revolution was conducted by African descendants and people bound in slavery—America’s tunnel vision on all things race are legendary, after all—but I believe there was another driving force at work here. American history and civics classes, at least at the public school level, tend to list toward the myopic, emphasizing the memorization of a collection of pre-fabricated facts rather than understanding the phenomena themselves. That trend has been exacerbated to the n-th degree by the brave new information world of cable television and the internet, where there is so much glut of information thrown at us every day that the flood of it can only be managed in small chunks, one chunk largely consumed in complete isolation of all the others, standing contradictory and unsupported, the conclusions drawn all out of any reasonable context, with long-lasting and detrimental effects on our current political debates. 

Confusion often comes into play when commentators try to explain the current by referring to a famous incident or epoch of the past, a practice that sometimes leads to misunderstanding of both. 

That seems to be the case in an otherwise excellent—and I stress the “otherwise excellent”—Aug. 20 Daily Planet commentary by Jean Damu, which equates the physical threats to the life of President Barack Obama to the same threats made to President Abraham Lincoln (“From the Occupied Territory: Awaiting the Assassination.”) 

In his commentary, Mr. Damu describes the famous scene on the White House balcony in April 1864, during the last days of the Civil War when, following Mr. Lincoln’s triumphant tour of fallen, the President announced to the assembled jubilant crowds his intention to urge Congress to grant citizenship to African-Americans. Mr. Damu notes that Elizabeth Kleckley—Mrs. Mary Lincoln’s African-American seamstress and confidante—“told Mrs. Lincoln she must try never to allow such a scene to happen again. ‘Anyone could have taken a shot at him,’ she said.” 

According to Mr. Damu, Mrs. Lincoln responded that she “had premonitions” about something terrible happening to Mr. Lincoln, with Mr. Damu going on to conclude that “Many are having Mrs. Lincoln-like premonitions these days. Recently we have been informed that President Obama has received more death threats in a shorter period of time than any president since the organizing of the Secret Service in the immediate aftermath of the Lincoln assassination.”  

While this comparison between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Obama may seem compelling, it is historically inaccurate. Mr. Lincoln faced far more than threats against his life. He came into office following the secession of several Southern states and the formation of the Confederacy, in a national capitol that was surrounded by slaveholding territories (Maryland and Virginia). Told that there was a plan for Confederate-sympathizing mobs to abduct him from his train and do him harm—perhaps even kill him—as he was passing through Baltimore on his way to Washington to be inaugurated into office, Mr. Lincoln was forced to take an earlier train and sneak into the capitol in disguise (the talk of the Baltimore mob was no idle threat; weeks later, similar mobs attacked federal troops on their way through the city to D.C.). 

There are two recorded attempts on Mr. Lincoln’s life when he was shot at (and both times his hat shot was from his head) while he was riding alone, on horseback, from the White House to the Old Soldier’s Home in D.C.’s northern suburbs, where he and his family stayed during the summer to escape Washington’s swampy, feverish conditions. There may have been more attempts that went unrecorded, as Mr. Lincoln kept such things quiet in order to keep from alarming his excitable wife. 

Mr. Lincoln’s eventual assassin, John Wilkes Booth, is reported to have speeded up his assassination plans because he was convinced of a second, serious plot to kill Mr. Lincoln in the wake of General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and Mr. Booth was determined to put himself in the history books by getting to Mr. Lincoln first. 

This is not meant to minimize the potential threats to the life of Mr. Obama, which Mr. Damu outlines very well in the bulk of his article. It is only to say that in equating what we can currently see in the threats to Mr. Obama to those which Mr. Lincoln faced, we minimize the threats and physical acts against Mr. Lincoln, and muddle both the past and the present. The threats to Mr. Obama need no equivalent in history to be understood. In fact, there is no precedent in history, as America has never had a president who was other than self-declared full-blooded white. 

We see a more detrimental false equivalency—practiced on both the left and the right—in the use of modern times’ most favored comparative figure, Adolph Hitler. Many of our friends on the left were fond of equating the policies of President George W. Bush to those of Mr. Hitler—many of our friends on the right are doing the same with Mr. Obama. Both equivalencies go beyond the ridiculous. The sum total of either the alleged or actual wrongs committed by both Mr. Bush the Younger and Mr. Obama combined can never and in no way be equated with the single most heinous action of the Hitler chancellory—the attempt to exterminate Europe’s Jewish population. The Hitlerization of Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama won’t stick, and the most likely result will be the eventual belief by the younger members of America’s population that the worst Mr. Hitler did was torture prisoners and attempt to socialize health care. 

The muddling of past and present in current political discourse is, perhaps, most prominently on display by our friends on the right in their attempts to discern—and thereafter disseminate—the views of America’s Founding Fathers on the proper place of religion in American life. 

The problem with this procedure is that it attempts to apply 18th-century arguments and opinions by American revolutionary activists and thinkers to modern American conditions, while making no attempt to understand the conditions that these 18th-century revolutionaries were trying to guard against. 

Every American thinker of the 18th century was keenly aware of the history of the Spanish Inquisition, a 300-year era beginning in the late 15th century in which the Church—in direct alliance with the Spanish crown and the Holy Roman Empire—tortured and murdered thousands because of allegations that they differed with official Church doctrine. 

Much closer to the minds and experiences of the 18th-century American colonists, England went through a period close to religion-state careening chaos in the 16th century when King Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church and established the Church of England. Henry’s successor—the young King Edward VI-persecuted English Catholics and moved England towards Protestantism during his brief reign. At Edward’s death his sister, Queen Mary, re-established Catholicism as the official English religion, attempted to bring the English Church back under the authority of Rome, and persecuted Protestants. When Mary’s younger sister, Elizabeth I, replaced Mary on the throne, she brought England back into the Protestant camp in which the country now firmly lies. 

This mixture of religion and state was accompanied in England by the jailing of priests and ministers and the burnings of so-called “heretics,” the targets of the term rotating on its axis depending on which religion was in power, and which was out. This religious warfare and persecution is what many of the colonists moved to the Americas to escape, and what was uppermost in mind in the revolutionary American theorists when they worked out the clause in the American governmental system to separate church and state. 

Amazingly, that British religious-state history is not studied in most American public schools, if at all, and, thus, the ignorance in our discussion on what the Founding Fathers might have meant. 

If we do not understand context, we understand nothing at all. That is what is most missing in our modern political discussions, in all of our hurry to make our various points. 

Years ago at Point Reyes, I was taking a solo hike down Drake’s Beach in the direction of the lighthouse. Suddenly, a sleek gray head, like a bowling ball with big dark eyes, popped up just beyond the surfline: a harbor seal, checking me out. It kept pace with me for half a mile or so, tethered by curiosity, until I found a break in the cliffs and turned inland. 

I’ve seen a lot of harbor seals since that first encounter: hauled out on the Castro Rocks near the east end of the San Rafael Bridge or on the rocks along the San Mateo coast at low tide, riding the currents at the mouth of the Russian River, popping up among the boats at the Berkeley Marina. And they’ve improved with acquaintance. You couldn’t call them elegant: they’re chubby creatures, like flippered bratwursts. Captain Scammon, the 19th-century whaler-naturalist, said their proportions gave them “a bloated appearance, which seems ill adapted to much activity.” But they have a certain appeal. 

Part of it is behavioral: they’re not as rowdy or raucous as other pinnipeds. A sea lion or elephant seal rookery is like a frat party or a biker bar: constant jostling for space and status, threat displays, a din of barks and honks. Harbor seals have always seemed contrastingly mellow. They just hang out in companionable groups, often in what is technically called the banana or gravy-boat posture with head and tail above the horizontal (which may help dissipate heat). 

But that laid-back demeanor is deceptive. Male harbor seals bear bite marks from territorial battles. Unlike other bull seals, which guard harems of females on the beach, the harbor seal appears to patrol an offshore property through which females pass on their way to the land. Since courtship and mating take place in the water, much of their social behavior remains obscure.  

In our region, harbor seal pups are born around this time of year and between March and May. Most northern seals give birth on sea or lake ice, and their newborns have fine-haired white coats called lanugo, making them less visible to polar bears and other predators (although it doesn’t work with club-wielding Newfoundlanders). But harbor seals use sandy or rocky beaches as pupping grounds; their pups shed their white fur before they’re born. With maternity wards right at the tideline, pups have to be able to swim away with their mothers within minutes of birth. 

In their descent from otter-like ancestors in the North Atlantic some 25 million years ago, true seals have evolved an intricate set of adaptations to life in the sea. They’re more specialized than the eared seals (fur seals and sea lions), which can get around better on land. Harbor seals, with their short forelimbs and backward-projecting hind flippers, can only lurch along on their bellies. But they’re graceful enough in their true element. 

Other adaptations include an insulating layer of blubber, thin at birth but thickening rapidly as the pup feeds on its mother’s fat-rich milk. Scammon recognized harbor seal blubber as a source of high-grade oil. Perhaps because of their small size, though, these seals were never commercially exploited as elephant seals were, and their California population has remained stable—about 34,000 at the most recent estimate. 

Harbor seal physiology is fine-tuned for a foraging strategy based on diving. They can reach depths of 1,400 feet and stay down for 20 minutes or more. The seals exhale before they dive, and once underwater their lungs collapse, forcing oxygen into the blood and tissues. This allows them to surface rapidly without suffering the bends, the illness caused by nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream. The downside of the seal’s anaerobic metabolism is a buildup of lactic acid, which has to be burned off after surfacing. 

The seal’s vibrissae, or whiskers, help it detect the motion of swimming fish at night or in murky water. A few years back, some ingenious German scientists trained harbor seals to follow a minisubmarine. Blindfolded and equipped with headphones to eliminate sonic input, they had no problem tracking the sub. But when their vibrissae were covered with a stocking mask, the seals were stumped. Each whisker can move independently as a seal scans for hydrodynamic cues by pushing its upper lip in and out. 

Harbor seals themselves may become prey to sharks and orcas. Pups are also vulnerable to eagles and sea lions and—ironically—to well-meaning humans. Don’t assume that a young seal alone on the beach is an orphan in need of rescuing. Mom may be just offshore, keeping a watchful eye on her offspring.

On Jan. 28, 1905, the first concatenation of the Order of Hoo-Hoo was held in Oakland. The ceremonies were conducted by the “Supreme Nine” of the local chapter of this lumbermen’s fraternity, many of whose officers’ titles were derived from Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem “The Hunting of the Snark.” The office of Gurdon (sergeant-at-arms) was occupied by veteran lumberman and West Berkeley resident Edward Frederick Niehaus. 

Gurdon was only the latest in a long line of public and semi-public offices held by Niehaus. Beginning in 1891, he served on Berkeley’s Board of Trustees (an earlier incarnation of our city council). In 1892, he was appointed to the citizens’ committee in charge of Berkeley’s Columbian celebration. In July 1894, Niehaus, along with his brothers Otto and Ernest, was a major proponent for a municipal ferry scheme. 

Seven months later, a Committee of Twenty-Five, comprising prominent Berkeley businessmen and politicians, was appointed at a mass meeting for the purpose of advancing the ferry cause. Niehaus—together with Francis K. Shattuck, Reuben Rickard, Charles A. Bailey, Rev. H. H. Dobbins, and James L. Barker—was named to an action committee of six, whose task was “to call upon Mr. Spreckels and other of the leading figures in the new railroad proposition and press upon them the advantages of Berkeley as a terminus,” reported the San Francisco Call on Feb. 14, 1895. 

In May 1895, Niehaus was elected to the Berkeley Board of School Directors as the only candidate from the Sixth Ward. Two years later, he was appointed by the Board of Town Trustees to a committee whose charge was to investigate the possibility of extending Southern Pacific’s local train service to Gilman Street. 

The summer of 1898 was a dry one in Berkeley. On July 23 of that year, the San Francisco Call reported, “Parched and lifeless are the beautiful flower gardens of Berkeley, so attractive to visitors; clouds of dust swirl through the streets, covering the buildings with a thick coating of dull gray, sifting through doors and windows, to the sore distress of housewives and the great discomfort of everybody. Every resident is in a state of constant fear lest fire should break out and sweep unhindered from one end of the town to the other, while pestilence threatens to break out any time.” 

The Alameda Water Company, which supplied Berkeley, was able to furnish only half the quantity of water consumed by its 1,600 customers. The Berkeley Board of Trustees appointed a committee of three to seek a long-term solution to the problem. The committee members—Trustee Louis J. Le Conte, Dr. Thomas Addison and School Director Edward F. Niehaus—“reported that it is possible to develop a supply of water sufficient to provide for the needs of the city for thirty years,” announced the newspaper. On Aug. 1, the Call disclosed that the committee was “much encouraged by the success of Superintendent of Streets Guy H. Chick, who, in sinking wells in the City Hall block, and in North Oakland and West Oakland, has found plenty of water to relieve the shortage that existed in the supply for street sprinkling. This was regarded as one of the most objectionable features of the dearth of water, for Berkeley has been doing much street improving of late and to have ceased sprinkling would have caused the ruin of many thoroughfares.” 

The committee concluded that permanent relief could only be secured through city ownership of an adequate water plant. Its plan allowed for an increase of 1,000 in the population each year. Little did the three know that Berkeley’s population would triple during the next decade. 

How did Edward F. Niehaus (1852– 1910) come to be regarded as a Berkeley stalwart? One would assume that his Prussian industriousness had much do with it, although his brothers, Otto (1848–1906) and Ernest (1855–1940), never attained equal heights in the community. The three were born in Westphalia, Germany to Adolf Gerhardt and Minna Niehaus. Their U.S. census records indicate that Edward immigrated to the United States in 1863 and Otto in 1865, Ernest following in 1871. Otto settled in New Jersey, where he married in 1871 and fathered five children between 1872 and 1882. Ernest spent four years in New Jersey before coming to Berkeley in 1875. Edward may have preceded him by a year or two. 

In his book Berkeley: the Town and Gown of It, George A. Pettitt recounted that early in 1874, “John Everding consented to make a shed on his property available for a cabinet shop where Edward F. Niehaus and Gustavus A. Schuster might start producing sash, doors, mouldings, turned and scroll-sawed wood.” 

In fact, it was not until 1877 that Edward and Ernest Niehaus made their first appearance in the Oakland directory, the former as principal of Schuster & Niehaus, proprietors of the West Berkeley Planing Mill, the latter as a machine hand in the mill. In 1878, Schuster & Niehaus were assessed a property tax of $500 on improvements and $1,000 on content at their mill. The lot was described in the assessment record as “on Everding’s land.” 

The 1878 directory carried a display ad for the West Berkeley Planing Mill, offering “mouldings, brackets, frames, doors, sash, blinds, scroll sawing, turning, etc.” Bold type touted “water tanks, fences and mill work of every description to order.” Nor was their landlord’s business omitted: “Connected with the establishment is a grist mill, for grinding feed for horses, cattle, etc.” 

The mill soon outstripped Everding’s business. In later years, its catalog reached 92 pages and includes stairs and hardwood interiors. 

The Niehaus brothers and Schuster first lived on the mill site but soon found more comfortable digs at the Franklin House, operated by C. Maloney on University Avenue and Third Street. In 1880, Edward Niehaus built his first home on Sixth Street between Addison and Allston. It was the second house on the block, which is now part of the Sisterna Historic District. The earliest residence, known as the Velasco House (1877), still stands at 2109 Fifth Street. 

About 1882, Schuster & Niehaus became Niehaus Bros. when Ernest became a partner and Schuster turned into an employee. Three years later, Otto Niehaus and family arrived from New Jersey, building a house at 1728 Ninth Street. In 1886, Ernest married Minnie Werder, younger sister of Edward’s wife Mathilde, and built his home on the northeast corner of Bristol (now Hearst Avenue) and Tenth Street. Also in 1886, Otto became partner in the mill, but the three brothers’ joint business proved short-lived. Angling for bigger fish, Edward left to pursue other opportunities. 

In 1887, the first year that his name was absent from the Niehaus Bros. directory listing, Edward was assessed property tax on four substantial new houses he had built near his home—two on the 800 block of Allston Way and two on the 2200 block of Sixth Street. In 1889, he treated his wife to an opulent Stick-Eastlake villa on the southwest corner of Channing Way and Seventh Street. Designated a City of Berkeley Landmark in 1976, this ornate house is West Berkeley’s grandest surviving Victorian residence. 

Otto and Ernest may have found running the mill hard going, for Schuster returned as partner by 1888 and would serve as president until the firm’s dissolution after the mill had been destroyed by fire in 1901. 

By 1892, Edward had built seven additional speculative houses, but his business plans encompassed far more than West Berkeley development. In the late 1880s he joined John H. Dieckmann, a German-born importer of tropical woods, and managed his San Francisco business for several years. Thereafter he bought the bankrupt stock of the hardwood pioneer Straut & Company, establishing his own business at 565 Brannan Street. 

His first disaster occurred in July 1895, when a fire destroyed $25,000 worth of lumber and machinery. Undaunted, Ed-ward immediately set out for the east to select a new stock. “A contract will soon be let for the erection of a new mill on the site of the one destroyed, and it is expected that it will be finished in time for the fall trade,” reported the San Francisco Call on July 10. 

Seven years later, another fire caused a damage of $15,000 to stock and machinery on the mill’s three floors. The firemen were able to save the lumber warehouse. “The loss is wholly sustained by the firm as there has never been any insurance on the place,” reported the Call on July 18, 1902. “The owners claim that insurance rates are so high in that part of town that under ordinary circumstances it is cheaper to carry on business unprotected. The firm will be crippled to some degree in fulfilling its contracts for the present, but E.F. Niehaus, senior member of the concern, says that he does not apprehend any serious difficulties as a result of the blaze.” 

By then, the Niehaus Bros. West Berkeley Planing Mill was nothing but a memory. The fire that gutted it on August 15, 1901 wiped out three acres of buildings, lumber piles, machinery, and finished products, including 6,000 doors in the door-and-sash factory. Insurance covered a mere $16,500 of the damage, which was estimated at $164,000 during the ensuing lengthy (and ultimately lost) court battle against the Contra Costa Water Company. 

Still, West Berkeley was growing. In April 1905, Edward F. Niehaus was one of the founders and directors of the West Berkeley Bank, to be built on the corner of University and San Pablo avenues. In April 1908, he headed a West Berkeley ticket in the election for 15 freeholders to frame a new city charter. The ticket headed by U.C. president Benjamin Ide Wheeler won. 

Fire struck E. F. Niehaus & Co. for the third time on September 10, 1908. According to the Call, “The firm of Niehaus & Co. had two mills in which fine lumber was dressed and veneering made, and a dry kiln. Both of the mills were utterly destroyed. Behind and to the side of the buildings lay the lumber yard, piled with a $200,000 stock of hardwoods, cedar logs, mahogany, birch, oak, maple and other fine timbers. All went before the flames.” 

The indomitable Edward F. Niehaus had enough spirit left in June 1909 to participate in the founding of the Homestead Savings Bank of Berkeley. Then heart disease overtook him on September 2, 1910, a month before his 58th birthday. His obituary in the San Francisco Call stated, “He was for 12 years a member of the board of education of this city and was largely instrumental in securing for West Berkeley the San Pablo and Columbus schools.” 

Mathilde Niehaus continued living in the family home until her death in 1938. Her husband’s nephew, Henry Wahlefeld, managed E.F. Niehaus & Co. until 1925, when its stock was acquired by the J. E. Higgins Lumber Company, still in business today. 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA).

I can recall the first time I inspected a turn-of-the-20th-century house and noticed one of those funny little doors in the hallway closet next to the bathroom and, upon prying it open, realized that this was a little repair access panel for the shower. 

The little door (go look, you may have one) gave access to the old galvanized water pipes. It isn’t of much value since there’s rarely a repair one could make in such a place, and, more important, it’s very unlikely that a leak would occur right in this spot, but the door also gave access to the drain fittings, which is why the door is there, really: it allows access to what we might call the “waste and overflow” fittings of the tub. This is an assembly that most tubs still have and is a sort of L-shaped assembly of fittings that mounts at the tub drain and then reaches up around the end of the tub to connect to the overflow hole that sits about 14 inches up on the side of the tub—this is always a hot-button issue for tub users since most overflows are set too low to fill the tub, and many people (like me) like to block them in order to get enough water in the tub. Special suction covers are made for these drains, which allow you to fill past the overflow but still allow water to spill in at the top, thus preventing the flood the overflow is there to prevent. 

A 1920s-era plumber actually stood a fair chance of getting to the waste and overflow and its various parts through these wooden doors and might well have gotten a chance to fix one of the most common leaks found in our homes. Today, architects and builders, largely, have no conception of such prophylaxis, so a plumbing job that requires accessing the overflow fittings often involves removing plaster, drywall and perhaps even tile. 

Builders of very large buildings sometimes get smart enough to figure out what repairs are going to be done to their buildings (usually when they also own the building), and I, periodically, see a similar little hatch in modern apartment buildings, though the reasoning behind them is somewhat different. 

Again, a leak at the drain (the waste and overflow) of a shower or tub is one of the most common plumbing leaks in our homes or apartments, but in the case of the apartment (or condo), it becomes a much messier affair, especially if you’re on the fourth floor. Decades ago, smarter builders (or smarter plumbers involved in the construction process) started installing these little hatches in the ceilings below the drains of the tub upstairs.  

Not surprisingly, this is usually right over the drain of the tub in the bath in the apartment below, since stacking bathrooms is a cost-effective way to build apartment buildings and condos. 

When it leaks on the fourth floor, it usually leaks right into the little hatch, which can be opened with a screwdriver to drain away the water and perform the repair. When the repair is done, it’s very likely that we won’t have sopping, moldy sheetrock to remove and repair (unless the slumlord owner or somnambulant H.O.A. membership just can’t get it together in a reasonable stretch of time) and everyone stays a lot happier. Just as long as we’re on the subject, you can install these hatches below your own drains either before or (hopefully) after the next time your tub drain tries to show you how it feels about you and your singing. 

These hatches are not necessary for ground-floor baths, since they will tend to leak, for years and years, into the crawlspace below you, thus rotting away flooring boards and joists. If you get someone under the tub once in a while (run the water first, so you’ll see the drip), you might just catch these before they’re fung-fests that costs lots of money. Nonetheless, we don’t need hatches here and homes usually have good access below the tub, except when built on slabs of concrete. 

But as usual, I’ve wandered way around the block so let’s get to what I really wanted to talk about, which is where and why showers (and tubs) leak. It’s sort of a list, and I offer it because, first, it happens all the time, and, second, because many people haven’t a clue as to where these things may be leaking. 

The bad news is that for tubs and showers, there are many possible places that leakage can occur, especially because of the way bathrooms tend to be assembled. Rather than having lots of good flashing (the folded metal, plastic or tar-paper elements that divert water away from where they might cause harm), many baths rely upon tight fit and caulk (neither of which remain for long) to prevent leakage through floors, drains and walls. A worthy aside at this point is to say that plastic one- or two-piece tubs and showers are far less likely to leak because they have far fewer conjoinments to contend with—fewer places where parts meet. I’m no fan of these low-cost “port-o-potties” of ablution, but they are really good at keeping the water from leaking into the wall. 

So with this as our preface, let’s take a minute to look at where showers (especially the ones built over a tub) leak. 

First and foremost is one that may seem a surprise but I find them all the time, and I found one last month at the home of an ace home-repair guy, Stuart and his wildly entertaining wife Katie. A leak occurred when the shower was running, and it dripped down in the basement (is this you?), but they could not locate it. First, it’s clear that this was not on-supply piping because when you have leaks on-supply piping, they’ll run all the time, although there are parts of the supply piping, such as the shower or tub extension piping, that will only leak when you turn on the valves. These occasionally leak, but its fairly rare, due to the fact that they are open at the spouts or heads and this relieves the pressure in the pipe. But the point is, it was clearly not in the supply piping. So, the first things I like to check are the escutcheons. Escutcheons are the cups that mount around the valves or handles where you turn the water on. These need only be very slightly loose or have very tiny gaps in order to allow spoonfuls of water to enter the wall during a shower. Testing is tricky. I had Stuart use his hand and asked him to deflect the water against the valves and along the walls all around the shower enclosure. When it he did this, it started dripping like Sarah Palin’s tears all over my head. When we shower, water bounces off our bodies onto the shower walls, runs down the wall and can slide right under these seemly snug escutcheons, leading to leakage and damage. This is always the first thing to check if you’ve first established that the leak is not at the drain. If you get below the tub, mapping the location of the drain is the first thing. A careful establishing of where the leakage is occurring is very important. 

Other places leakage can occur include the gaps between shower tiles and the edges of a tub. Most modern tubs have a lip at the edge that catches water and drives it back into the tub but some early tubs  

didn’t have these, including the “captive clawfoot” tubs I sometimes see. These are found in homes from the 1920s or earlier and involve a traditional clawfoot tub that has had framing built around its ovaloid shape as well as a skirt built across the front face. These details rely upon sealant and usually have at least minor leaks. Caulk is wonderful stuff but it’s not permanent. It’s fine for short-term fixes but we shouldn’t build anything that relies on it.  

With conventional tubs using tile, water can leak through poorly installed tile, especially when tile was installed over drywall. Marine grade or “green” drywall or sheetrock was, for a short while, specified by trade groups and was, in those fabulous ’70s, a common technique (but then, think about the clothes, the hair styles and the Pinto I used to drive). Green sheetrock didn’t work out very well and I’m still finding cases where it’s mushy and water is leaking through the tile. 

With shower pans (showers not built into the bathtubs), there are generally more failures, especially the older ones built on cement pans that were poured in place. As in the case of our one- or two-piece plastic model, a precast shower pan is not likely to leak unless the plumber really couldn’t manage the fairly simple task of installing the drain fitting properly. With handmade shower pans, there are so many magic tricks involved that I won’t bother with all the possible errors, but let it be sufficient to say that it’s not for the novice and is best left to the obsessive-compulsive professional (and you know who you are). 

Let’s not forget to cover floors. Water loves to run off the edge of tubs, often as a film too thin to notice and down to the floor where it can easy penetrate an un-flashed floor that lacks a bead of caulk (again, we don’t want to rely upon caulk for construction but most of us have to assume that these gaps aren’t competent (or continent). Water often leaks slowly through the floor joint and ruins the wooden substrates. This is often avoided by fastidiousness but we don’t all have that aspect in our soul so, for some of us, caulk must remain on the menu. 

Finding tub and shower leaks can be tough and you may end up with some professional help before you figure it out, but you’ll be surprised that with a bright flashlight, a measuring tape and some deep breathing, you might just conquer against these lesser invaders. I, and the people downstairs, will be pulling for you. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 3 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Somewhere in Between” New works by Laura Borchet. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Eclectix Gallery, 10082 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Also “The Tattoon Show” tattoo and cartoon art. Exhibitions run to Oct. 4. www.eclectix.com 

“Inspiration form the Bay and Beyond” Artwork by Anthony Holdsworth, Diane Abt, Rebecca Haseltine and Charles Rhone. Opening reception at 4:30 p.m. at MTC, 101 8th St., Oakland. Exhibition runs to Sept. 25.  

“Isaura: A Life in Focus” Photographs on the Afro-Brazilian dancer, at Berkeley Pubic Library, 2090 Kittredge St. Exhibit runs to Sept. 30. 981-6240. 

“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. 

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

“A New Page: Painting in the 4th Dimension: Bedri Baykam” Opneing reception at 6 p.m. at Alphonse Berber Gallery, 2546 Bancroft Way. Exhibition runs through Oct. 17. alphonseberber.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Frederick Aldama in Conversation with Marcial Gonzalez on “Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

Poetry Flash with C.S. Giscombe and Kit Robinson at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 525-5476. 

Poetry at the Albany Library with Lynne Knight and Carolyn Miller at 7 p.m. at 1247 Marin Ave., Albany. 526-3720. 

Alison Gopnik discusses “The Pholosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

A Night of Entertainment Benefiting the Street Level Health Project, Afro-Peruvian, Bolivian, Mongolian, traditional Peruvian, and Aztec music and dance, at 8 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 533-9906. www.streetlevelhealth.org 

“Stomping the Blues” at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Blues dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Meldrum, featuring Gene Hoglan, at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

The Deep at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

FRIDAY, SEPT. 4 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “Awake and Sing!” through Sept. 27, at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $15-$55. 843-4822.  

Berkeley Rep “American Idiot” at 2025 Addison St., through Oct. 11. Tickets are $32-$86. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Central Works “Machiavelli’s The Prince” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through Sept. 19. Tickets are $14-$25. www.centralworks.org 

Galatean Players Ensemble Theatre “Rivets” A musical based on Rosie the Riveter and Richmond’s Kaiser Shipyards, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. on board the SS Red Oak Victory, 1337 Canal Blvd., Berth 6A, Richmond, through Sept. 27. Tickets are $15-$20. Rosies, WW2 Veterans and uniformed soldiers, free. 925-676-5705.  

Masquers Playhouse “Loot” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, and runs through Sept. 26. Tickets are $18. 232-4031.  

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Brigadoon” at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joachin Miller Rd., Oakland, through Sept. 13. Tickets are $25-$40. 531-9597.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Surface Strata” Paintings by Chris Trueman, Kevin Scianni, Alison Rash, Maichael Cutlip, Joshua Dildine, Jay Merryweather, and Eric Ward. Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. Exhibition runs to Oct. 31. 465-8928. 

”Heads and Tails” paintings by Julia Alvarado and and JoAnn Biagini “New Work” mixed media by JoAnn Biagini. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave., Oakland. 701-4620. w 

Robert Rickard, metal wall art at Christensen Heller Gallery, 5829 College Ave., Oakland, through Nov. 1. 655-5952.  

“You Are Here” Art about person and place and “In Memorium: Women’s Lives Taken by Violence” Group show. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru St., Alameda. 523-6957. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

La Gran Noche de la Música Argentina with Marcelo Ledesma at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $16-$18. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Quinn Deveaux & the Blue Beat Band at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10, $8 with bike. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Reptiles Reunion with David Gans, at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082.  

Todd Shipley at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Ray Cepeda at 7 p.m. at Fondue Fred Restaurant, 2556 Telegraph. 549-0850. 

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

SATURDAY, SEPT. 5 

CHILDREN  

Babes in Toyland Puppet Show at 11 a.m. and 2 and 4 p.m. at at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. 296-4433. activeartsttheatre.org 

THEATER 

Shotgun Players “The Farm” Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. at John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Ave., through Sept 13. Suggested donation $10. 841-5600. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Stone Soup Improv Comedy at 8 p.m. at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St. at Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $7-$10. www.stonesoupimprov.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

Julie Alvarado “Heads and Tails” paintings and JoAnn Biagini “New Work” mixed media. Artists’ talk at 1 p.m. at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave., Oakland. 701-4620.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Saturday Afternoon Gallery Acoustic featuring Boundless Gratitude from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts,1601 Paru St., corner of Lincoln, Alameda. Open mic signups at 1:30 p.m., music starts at 2 p.m. frankbettecenter.org 

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

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

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

Pocket Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Boatclub, Headslide, The American Professionals at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 6 

CHILDREN 

Ladybug Picnic at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Light on Lake Merritt” Digital photography by Laura Sutta, through Oct. 31 L’Amyx Tea Bar, 4179 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

John Allen Cassady and Violet Monday, music and stories at 8 p.m. at Art House Gallery, 2905 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 472-3170. 

Novella Carpenter reads from “Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

José Saavedra and Walter Morciglio present their new album “Conversos,” contemporary Puerto Rican poetry put to song at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $8. 849-2568.  

George Cole, swing, jazz, Americana, at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Americana Unplugged: Savannah Blu at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

MONDAY, SEPT. 7 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

TUESDAY, SEPT. 8 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Art in a Box” Reception at 7 p.m. at The Compound Gallery, 6604 San Pablo Ave., Oakland, www.thecompoundgallery.com 

“Sticky Earth” New ceramics by NIAD artists opens at NIAD Center for Art & Disabilities, 551 23rd St., Richmond, and runs through Oct. 30. 620-0290. www.niadart.org 

THEATER 

“Take This Recession, Please” with comedian Darryl Littleton at 9:30 a.m. at LEAP, 440 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond, and 6:30 p.m. in the Richmond Main Library, 325 Civic Center Plaza. Free. 620-6561. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Susan Schweik discusses her new book “The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. www.universitypressbooks.com 

Lang Lang “Journey of a Thousand Miles” in conversation with Sarah Cahill at 7:30 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC campus. Cost is $10-$20. 642-9988. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tom Rigney & Flambeau 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 Kelly Park at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 9 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Stephen De Staebler, The Sculptor’s Way” opens at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Bartlett Ave., Richmond. 620-6772. www.therac.org 

FILM 

Cine Cubano Film Fest “La Ultima Cena” at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $7-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

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 

Wednesday Noon Concert Music by Cindy Cox at Hertz Hall, UC campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Vocal Soiree & Benny Watson Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Agapi Mou, Balkan, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Celu’s Silver Kittens at 7 p.m. at Fondue Fred Restaurant, 2556 Telegraph. 549-0850. 

Sonic Safari at 7 p.m. at Chester’s Bay View Cafe, 1508 Walnut St. 849-9995. 

Alexis Harte at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 10 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash Anthology reading for “Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease” with contributors at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 525-5476. 

Sophia Raday “Love in Condition Yellow” the story of a Berkeley peace activist and an Oakland police officer in the Army Reserve at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Story Hour in the Library with Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, at 5 p.m. in the Morrison Library, 101 Doe Library, UC campus. 642-3671. http://storyhour.berkeley.edu 

M.J. Ryan will discuss her latest book “AdaptAbility: How to survive change you didn't ask for” at 7 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. 526-7512. 

Nami Mun, reads from “Miles From Nowhere” at 7:30 pm at Books Inc., 1344 Park St., Alameda. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Adam Bowers Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13-$15. 525-5054.  

Berkeley Old-Time Music Convention with Alice Gerrard, the Till Boys, Eric & Suzy Thompson at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage, 2020 Addison. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Rogerio Botter-Maio Group featuring Harvey Wainapel at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Twilight Hotel and Sweet Talk Radio at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

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

FRIDAY, SEPT. 11 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “Awake and Sing!” through Sept. 27, at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $15-$55. 843-4822 or visit auroratheatre.org.  

Berkeley Rep “American Idiot” at 2025 Addison St., through Oct. 11. Tickets are $32-$86. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Central Works “Machiavelli’s The Prince” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave., through Sept. 19. Tickets are $14-$25. www.centralworks.org 

Galatean Players Ensemble Theatre “Rivets” A musical based on Rosie the Riveter and Richmond’s Kaiser Shipyards, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. on board the SS Red Oak Victory, 1337 Canal Blvd., Berth 6A, Richmond, through Sept. 27. Tickets are $15-$20. Rosies, WW2 Veterans and uniformed soldiers, free. 925-676-5705. galateanplayers.com 

Impact Theatre “See How We Are” A contemporary adaptation of “Antigone.” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Oact. 17. Tickets are $12-$20. impacttheatre.com 

Masquers Playhouse “Loot” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, and runs through Sept. 26. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org 

Shotgun Players “This World In A Woman’s Hands” The story of the WWII Victory warships and the African-American women who built them, with live acoustic bass by Marcus Shelby. Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at The Ashby Stage. 1901 Ashby Ave. Tickets are $18-$25. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Woodminster Summer Musicals “Brigadoon” at 8 p.m. at Woodminster Amphitheater in Joaquin Miller Park, 3300 Joachin Miller Rd., Oakland, through Sept. 13. Tickets are $25-$40. 531-9597.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Divergence” ACCI Gallery’s annual abstract exhibition featuring the work of nine Bay Area painters: Susan Adame, Cathy Coe, Mary DePaolo, Patricia Kelly, Susan Putnam, Jane Reynolds, Mitchel Rubin, and Bob and Leslie Carabas. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527. www.accigallery.com  

“Read This Digit” Group show of digital prints on paper and canvas. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at K Gallery, Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding Ave., Alameda. www.rhythmix.org 

“Triple Threat” Solo shows of works by Patch Wright, Renee Castro, Sandra Hart. Opening reception at 7 p.m. at Autobody Fine Art, 1517 Park St., Alameda. 865-2608. www.autobodyfineart.com 

“Until the Violence Stops” a documentary about violence against women in conjunction with the exhibition “In Memorium” at 7:30 p.m. at Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru St., Alameda. 523-6957. 

FILM 

“Pizza” at 6:30 p.m. at Charles Chocolates, 6529 Hollis St., Emeryville. 652-4412, ext. 311.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“American Surveillance” A lecture by photographer Richard Gordon on the legacy of the 9/11 attacks at 7 p.m. at the Center for Photography, 105 Northgate Hall, School of Journalism, UC campus.  

Don Brennan and Avotcja will read their poetry at 7 p.m. at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Ave.  

Mike Miller reads from “A Community Organizer’s Tale: People and Power in San Francisco” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Mo Rockin’ Project, world music, 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 Whogas, funk, rock, reggae, at 5:30 p.m. and Richie Barron, blues, at 6:45 p.m. at Park Place at Washington Ave. in downtown Point Richmond. www.pointrichmond.com 

Sentimiento y Compás, flamenco, at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Amendola vs Blades, organ and drums, at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Audrey Shimkas & Her Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $15. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Tito Gonzalez y su Nuevo Proyecto at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Berkeley Old-Time Music Convention with Benton Flippen, Paul Brown, Terri McMurray and John Schwab at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage, 2020 Addison. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jazz Mojo at 8 p.m. the Art House Gallery and Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Ave. Donation $5-$10. 

Yard Sale, The Happy Clams, The Low Rollers at 9 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $10. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

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

Strange Angel, blues, at 7 p.m. at Fondue Fred Restaurant, 2556 Telegraph. 549-0850. 

The Works at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 12 

CHILDREN  

Dorina Lazo Gilmore introduces her picture book for children “Cora Cooks Pancit” at 3 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. www.asiabookcenter.com 

“Roti Rolled Away” with author Anjana Utarid at 1 p.m. at The Museum of Children’s Art, 538 9th St. Oakland. Free. 465-8770. www.mocha.org 

Babes in Toyland Puppet Show at 11 a.m. and 2 and 4 p.m. at at Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Ave., Oakland. 296-4433. activeartsttheatre.org 

THEATER 

Shotgun Players “The Farm” Sat. and Sun. at 4 p.m. at John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Ave. Suggested donation $10. 841-5600. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Alameda Civic Light Opera “Hair” Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at Kofman Theater, 2200 Central Ave., Alameda, through Sept. 27. Tickets are $30-$34. 864-2256. www.aclo.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

Berkeley Camera Club Group Photography Show. Reception at 2 p.m. at The LightRoom, 2263 Fifth St. 649-8111. www.lightroom.com 

“Lines” color photographs by Nicole Gim. Reception for the artist at 6 p.m. at Photolab, 2235 Fifth St. Exhibition runs to Sept. 26. 644-1400. www.photolaboratory.com 

“This Long Road” work by Derek Weisberg, Crystal Morey, and Ben Belknap. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at The Compound Gallery, 6604 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. Exhibition runs to Oct. 11. 655-9019. thecompoundgallery.com 

“It’s Gonna Be Awesome” new work by Narangkar Glover. Opening reception at 6 p.m. at Blankspace, 6608 San Pablo Ave., Oakland. Exhibiton runs to Oct. 11. 547-6608. www.blankspacegallery.com 

“Stephen De Staebler, The Sculptor’s Way” Opening reception at 4:30 p.m. at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Bartlett Ave., Richmond. 620-6772. www.therac.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Contemporary British Verse with poets Julia Bird, Roddy Lumsden and Hannah Sullivan, reception at 7 p.m., reading at 8 p.m. at Jered’s Pottery, 2720 San Pablo Ave. 845-4370. 

Kathy Walkup discusses artists’ books at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market String Band Contest with twenty old-time string bands competing from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Civic Center Park. 548-3333. 

Music on the Main from 1 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the corner of Macdonald Ave. and Marina Way, next to the Richmond BART station. www.richmondmainstreet.org 

Jonathan Sandberg and Emma Gavenda in a benefit concert for Albany School Music Programs at 7:30 p.m. at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Palache Hall, 2837 Claremont Blvd. Tickets are $25-$50 sliding scale. brownpapertickets.com. 

Giacomo Fiore Solo guitar music of Britten, Ohana, Takemitsu, Tippet and others, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “Apotheosis of the Dance” works by Hayden and Beethoven with Steven Isserlis, cello, at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $30-$75. 415-252-1288, ext. 305. 

“Reach Out and Bring Happiness!” The Oakland-East Bay Gay Men’s Chorus 10th Anniversary Celebration concert, presenting choral highlights from the past ten years with Stephanie Lynne Smith and the Lesbian Gay Chorus of San Francisco, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Alameda, 1912 Central Ave., Alameda. Tickets are $12-$20. 800-706-2389. oebgmc.org 

Kolectivo 9/11 with Chilean artists living in the US, at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Ray Obiedo & Mambo Caribe! at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $14. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Benton Flippen & The Mostly Mountain Boys at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Introduction to clogging at 7 p.m. Cost is $15, $5 for children ages 5 and up.525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Tom Paxton at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage, 2020 Addison. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Ray Cepeda at 7 p.m. at Fondue Fred Restaurant, 2556 Telegraph. 549-0850. 

Backyard Tarzans at 7 p.m. at Chester’s Bay View Cafe, 1508 Walnut St. 849-9995. 

LT3 at 10 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Mancub, Caldecott, Ansel at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Pocket Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

SUNDAY, SEPT. 13 

CHILDREN 

Mt. Diablo String Band with caller Paul Silveria at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

THEATER 

PEN Oakland Writers Theatre “A Night of Short Plays” at 4 p.m. at West Oakland Senior Center, 1724 Adeline St., Oakland. 681-5652. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Light on Lake Merritt” Digital photography by Laura Sutta. Opening reception at 5 p.m. at L’Amyx Tea Bar,4179 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Jenny Browne and Cheryl Dumesnil at 3 p.m. at Diesel, 5433 College Ave., Oakland. 525-5476. 

Opera Piccola Play Reading and open mic poetry at 4 p.m. at Opera Piccola Performing Arts, 2946 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland. Free, donations accepted. www.opera-piccola.org  

Charlie Haas reads from his novel “The Enthusiast” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Nrityanjali” an Odissi dance performance with Guru Jyoti Rout and the artists of Jyoti Kala Mandir at 5 p.m. at Julia Morgan Theater, 2640 College Ave. Tickets $12-$18. www.jyotikalamandir.org 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “Apotheosis of the Dance” works by Hayden and Beethoven with Steven Isserlis, cello, at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $30-$75. 415-252-1288, ext. 305. 

Rebecca Riots, Funky Nixons in a benefit for Tristan Anderson at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $5-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

Americana Unplugged: Old Time Cabaret from 3 to 7 p.m. at Jupiter. 843-8277. 

Nikila Badua aka Mama Wisdom at 5:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $8-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Blame Sally at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage, 2020 Addison. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

“Ashkenaz is always the place for me in the Bay Area,” said Baba Ken Okulolo. “Ashkenaz is home.” The Nigerian music master will be playing with the West African Highlife Band, 9:30 p. m. this Saturday at Ashkenaz, after an African dance lesson by Comfort Mensah. 

Along with Baba Ken, the band features Soji Odukogbe, Nii Armah Hammond, Lemi Barrow, Rasaki Aladokun and Pope Flyne. 

Vocalist, bassist, producer Baba Ken, now heads several African music groups in the East Bay—besides the West African Highlife Band, Kotoja (Afro-Beat); and the acoustic, traditional Nigerian Brothers—besides teaching and presenting school programs in African music. 

First seen in the states as bassist with King Sunny Ade’s African Beats on their 1985 tour, Baba Ken comes from Urhobo ethnic stock, born in Aladja, a fishing village in Nigeria. At 8 years old, he was sent to the city of Warri, for the Anglican missionary schools there. On short-wave radio, he began listening to a broad range of music: jazz, Afro-Cuban, rhythm & blues and Congolese. 

After apprenticing himself to his guitarist uncle, Miller Okulolo, Baba Ken sat in with the Harmony Searchers and other bands. Discovered by a talent scout for Dr. Victor Olaiya, a great Highlife bandleader, he moved to Lagos, at first one of three bassists with Olaiya’s big band, then the only one. He later started up Afro-rock band Monomono with vocalist Joni Haastrup, touring West Africa and Europe by the early ‘70s. He also performed with Steve Rhodes’ African Voices and his own group, Positive Vibrations, putting out his own disc, Talking Bass. The Nigerian Journalists Association voted him top bassist five times. 

“I first passed through Berkeley, performing at the Greek Theatre,” with King Sunny Ade’s star juju music band. “I was very, very impressed by the reaction of the audience to the music. They were very hospitable; I felt at home. I made up my mind that this was where I’d plant myself if I came to the States—and that’s exactly what I did!” 

“There were a lot of African bands in the Bay Area then,” Baba Ken continued, “Zulu Spear, Mapenzi, O.J. Komode ... the live scene was very vibrant, with most of them playing at Ashkenaz, booked two nights in a row on the weekend. The place would be packed, with everybody having a good time. It was very promising.” 

Baba Ken started Kotoja, with American and other Nigerian musicians, playing a mix of jazz, funk, Afro-beat and juju. the group has two CDs on Mesa Recordings and one on Putumayo.  

The West African Highlife Band was founded just a few years back, inspired by a request from the late David Nadel, to revive the hits of the era of Highlife. Their first CD, “Salute to Highlife Pioneers,” has been released by Inner Spirit/Stem’s. Pope Flyne was lead vocalist with Ghana’s Sweet Talks and teaches locally; Soji Odukogbe was Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s lead guitarist for five years, with a background in spiritual music; Nii Armah Hammond was a founding member of the Ghanian band Hedzoleh Soundz, who recorded with Hugh Masakela and were one of the first African pop groups residing in the Bay Area; Lemi Barrow has played traps extensively with African, Brazilian and African-American groups. 

Baba Ken plays and sings his own roots music, bringing it to the schools with the Nigerian Brothers, teaching by “emulating the village lifestyle through drumming and singing, [which] enables students to build and enjoy perfect teamwork” and “breaking music into the simplest forms, with particular examples and body language.” 

He recalls mixing different styles of music from different places from very early in his career. “When I was still back home in Africa, every song released in America was heard the first week in Nigeria. There was a direct relation. We were very familiar with the top hits released here. We’d copy them, play our own indigenous music and mix in the influence of American and European music. We called it Afro-Funk. A lot of people have been going back and forth, trying to make a new way in their music from different things. Music has been a two-way road.” 

He noted that his annual end-of-the-year Music Night Africa, an event he’s hosted for the past nine years to showcase all his groups and special guests (“It’s a long night, 8 p.m. ‘til 2 a.m.”), will be at Ashkenaz Dec. 5. 

“I’ve been here now 22 years plus,” Baba Ken said. “The tide goes up and down; I’ve seen them come and go. Some of my fans have been with me 22 years; they come, and invite other people to come with them. It’s very encouraging how dedicated they are to me. I’ve tried to branch out, to showcase African music in its various forms, from the historical past of it, the traditional acoustic village music, to cocktail music, to getting down to dance—for young and old, I’ve got all the avenues covered; I’m there, making mind, body and soul happy.” 

From disaster 

Shipwreck, whole families crawled 

To the tenements, and there 

Survived by what morality 

Of hope 

Which for the sons 

Ends its metaphysic 

In small lawns of home. 

George Oppen’s poem parallels the conflict in Clifford Odets’ first play, Awake and Sing!, now onstage at the Aurora Theatre, directed by Joy Carlin: the children of immigrants moving out of the settlements and buying into notions of respectability—and their own children bridling at it. 

Odets would revisit this theme in some of his later plays and screenplays. One variation that appears here and elsewhere: the self-sacrifice of an immigrant grandparent so a grandchild can escape what the grandparent sees as a corrupt, loveless home. 

Awake and Sing! was Odets’ first play. A frustrated actor with the Group Theater, he said whatever dramatic technique there was in the play did not get into it consciously, but through his skin. And the dialogue in particular is surprisingly supple—and not particularly linear. It’s not so easy to predict where a character will go with the train of thought and words another initiated. Speeches—which can have the cloying, if uplifting quality of an anthem—are buffered by quick exchanges and don’t seem overwrought.  

Odets also has his own way of offsetting some of the more charged lines, by a third character acting as ironic or sarcastic chorus in the interstices of what’s said, one character to another. 

Grandfather Jake—Ray Reinhardt in a wonderful depiction of the old socialist chased to kennel by his own daughter, listening to Caruso on his gramophone rather than the troubled, uncommunicative sounds of the family house—proves to be a Cassandra, and later, ironically, an atheist prophet from Scripture, as he tries to rouse the others to the commitment to life he could not fully give. 

Ellen Ratner as Bessie, the domineering mother of the menage, Jake’s daughter, leans hard on the tiller, controlling her grown children’s lives, yet speaks her piece, heavy with resentment when they rebel (“It’s no law we should be stuck together like Siamese Twins”): “Maybe you wanted me to give up 20 years ago; where would you be?” A worshipper of Mammon, but the only one with enough force of will to keep the family from flying apart. 

Even her absurd, lapdog husband (Charles Dean, playing hapless Myron with sensitivity and humor) refers to her as sick, half-admonishing the offspring. The little gems of obliviousness he scatters prove less comic relief than a pathetic burlesque of irony, whether eternally quoting Teddy Roosevelt in the days of Franklin (“When you have a problem, sleep on it!”) or reacting to a sharp remark by his daughter: “Our Henny will say anything; she takes after me.”  

There’s an asymmetric balance of power—or terror—in the household, involving Morty (Victor Talmadge), Jake’s son, a successful merchant who dismisses his father’s jeremiads; boarder and seemingly cynical veteran Moe Axelrod (Ron Gnapp); and callow son-in-law Sam (Anthony Nemirovsky, who doubles as Schlosser, neighbor and messenger of bad news, as in Greek Tragedy), who’s been dragooned unawares into marrying Hennie (Rebecca White), delivered unto him like tainted chattel. 

Hennie and Ralph (Patrick Russell), the third generation, understand each other with almost a sense of complicity. Their grandfather’s blessings stay with them, and they extend them to each other in a resolution that is also something of a reversal, an exchange of the usual end to rebellion in who escapes to a new life, who stays on and endures. There’s hope, through new understanding, that the materialistic curse of the parents and the resentment of the young have both been sloughed off. 

Carlin’s solid cast delivers an ensemble show, each coming up with their character’s special moments.  

Ron Gnapp, entering while flipping a coin—shades of George Raft—then watching the proceedings with the eagle eye of the outsider, before intervening deftly, yet wholeheartedly taking sides, joins Reinhardt and Dean in providing some of the play’s choicest moments, issuing a racy commentary on many of the others in period slang. 

“Awake and sing! ye who dwell in dust.” Grandfather Jake, who maybe just missed wrestling with the angel, invokes jubilation after lamenting, “In my day, the propaganda was for God; today, for success.” But, though unlooked for, a kind of deliverance is waiting. “In this boy’s life, the Red Sea will open again.”

Every year the Berkeley Art Center presents a juried exhibition. This year’s jurors were Rene de Guzman, curator at the Oakland Museum of California and formerly curator at the Yerba Buena Center, and Kate Eilertsen, who was director of the Art and Crafts Museum as well a temporary head of the Berkeley Art Center and is now the director of the Sonoma Valley Art Museum. Their judicious selection spared us the fare to which we have been subjected at the ubiquitous art fairs and group shows, which are based on the fashions and vulgarities of the art market. In fact, many of the pieces in this show retain the mark of authenticity. It was also a good idea to choose more than a single piece by most of the artists. 

White is the outstanding color in this show: Emily Clawson presents three pinhole drawings in which, on white sheets of paper, she manages to depict life in the depth of the ocean as experienced in her scuba diving. Henry Navarro, an artist who was trained in Cuba, shows white paper collages in which cut pieces of white paper were pasted together to form white portrait heads. Iris Charabi-Berggren has shredded large sheets of white paper which serve as woven networks for realistically drawn birds. Mariet Braakman exhibits an evocative large drawing, called Land of Memories #13 (2006) in which a large rock has fallen between two vertical forms, consisting of a multitude of small graphite lines. The rock on its downward journey is stuck in this memorable symbol of frustration. 

The first images encountered by the visitor to the show are two colorful narrative drawings by Leigh Barbier, depicting an imaginary world of gnomes and sprites wandering in a fantasy world of mountain and forests. Next to these, and in great contrast, are two consummate pencil drawings by the well-known artist, Jonathan Solo. She Loves Me (2009) is an androgynous bust of a mustachioed male head and sensitively drawn woman’s breasts. This puzzling image is placed in the lower right-hand corner of the sheet, balancing the composition with void space. In three amazing dawings by Alex Zecca he manages to create the perception of spacial illusion on a two-dimensional surface. These meticulous paintings with their perfect finish arrest the eye resulting in vibrating sensations.  

Deer Contemplating Plan B (2009) by Masako Miki is a delight to view. Here is a deer standing on a very shaky scaffolding, which is about to collapse. And Miki must have had fun when decorating this non-structure with wallpaper segments showing the French fleur-de-lis, the British lion and the Irish shamrock. None of these national ikons help the poor deer. Julie Garver took photographs from many angles of the old C&H sugar factory in Crocket and the sliced them into a weft and warp woven picture. In her artist’s statement she writes that she wanted “to show how beautiful a working industrial building can be.” Yet it resembles photographs of the ruins of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City after it was bombed in 1995. Certainly, a good work of art is open to various interpretations and is completed only by the viewer’s response. 

Juried @ BAC 2009 

Annual juried exhibition featuring works on paper, through Sept. 20. 

Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. 

644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org

In her book Long Time Passing, Susan Galleymore asks a question: “Are mothers supposed to simply sit and wait while their children are imperiled?”  

The answer seems simple, except that, when the subject is war, it never is. It is certainly an ancient question, one undoubtedly asked by Greek mothers as their sons and husbands sailed off to storm the towers of Ilium.  

For Galleymore, the question began when her son told her he was being deployed to Iraq. “I was numb with a cascade of terrifying images: my son hesitates before he shoots—how could he not hesitate—and is himself shot; my son’s body riddled with bullets; my son shooting into a crowd of civilians; my son begging for handouts like the Vietnam veterans on San Francisco’s streets.” 

Those are images that would paralyze most people, but not Galleymore. Instead of sitting at home, flinching each time Iraq came on her television, she set out on an odyssey to answer the question, not just for herself but for mothers in Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and the grim corridors of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. 

What she found was “ordinary women with families and everyday duties and jobs” bound up by “their suffering—both deeply personal and extraordinarily universal.” 

Galleymore, who emigrated to the U.S. from South Africa when she was in her early 20s, began her quest by signing on to a Code Pink trip to Iraq in order to visit her son. That is not like catching a plane back East. Her “visit” takes her through Iraq’s fearsomely dangerous roads, into hospitals, police stations, Internet cafes and Baghdad’s “green zone,” the American enclave nicknamed the “Emerald City.”  

Along the way, she gathers impressions, images and interviews. She is a careful reporter with a writer’s eye for detail, and she pays attention to what people say and how they look.  

Some of her encounters with GIs and Iraqis have an almost surreal quality. Take the encounter with a soldier at Camp Anaconda, a giant U.S. base deep in the heart of the restive Sunni Triangle. What kind of food do the solders get at base? she asks a G.I. 

“We get all kinds, Domino’s Pizza, Round Table, McDonald’s, we got it all,” he answers. 

“Do you eat Iraqi food?” 

“Nah, we don’t see any of that here.” 

“Do you ever get off the base?” 

“Nah. We can’t do that. We’d be killed if we stepped off the base without armor and weapons and lots of buddies to back us up.” 

In many ways this is a book about conversations. Galleymore talks with Iraqis, U.S. soldiers and, eventually, her son, and then sets out on a Middle East walkabout. She talks to mothers in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, refugees in Syria, and—through author and photographer Robert Darr—Afghans. She also speaks to Afghanis in the United States, as well as soldiers’ mothers. 

As a reporter, Galleymore is refreshingly low key, careful not to make herself the story—one who keeps the focus on her subjects. The drama of the book comes from how she unwinds the stories people tell. One example is a tense encounter between Israeli soldiers and Sihan Rashid. Rashid is an American–born Palestinian who now lives in East Jerusalem and works as a counselor at a Palestinian center. 

On a freezing winter day in the West Bank, she and scores of Palestinians are stopped at an Israeli checkpoint, one of the hundreds that make life a misery for the inhabitants of the Occupied Territories. For two-and-a-half hours they sit, until Rashid, admitting she is scared, leaves her car and confronts an Israeli soldier. 

He shouts at her that there was a suicide bombing the previous day and that is why the cars are being held up. She argues with him: “Yes, but I didn’t do it. You cannot blame me or these hundreds waiting here.” He repeats his statement about the suicide bombing, but she refuses to back down. He finally pleads “orders,” and calls his captain. The officer too pleads “orders,” but she stands her ground, and 15 minutes later the roadblock is lifted. 

It takes a certain grade of steel to live under an occupation. 

Long Time Passing could be a depressing book. Mothers and the death or maiming of their sons and daughters does not make for easy reading. But this is less a story about death than about life. Even in the midst of tragedy—and is there any worse tragedy than the loss of a child?—the basic humanity of people comes through, the “universality” that the author talks about. 

The book is more than a series of conversations, however. There is history and politics, and Galleymore even makes a stab at trying to understand the tension between individualist American culture and the complex communities of family and residence that typify much of the Middle East. 

For instance, she found that mothers in the Middle East are puzzled as to why American mothers let their children become soldiers, and they find the answer that an 18-year-old in the U.S. can do what he or she pleases. Incomprehensible. What each group considers common sense is, in fact, “loaded with cultural assumptions.” 

Galleymore lives in the Bay Area and sees her book as an organizing tool. She is a counselor for the G.I. Rights Hotline and hosts a radio program, “Raising Sand Radio.” She says she does house book parties “to actually engage people in storytelling as a way toward more effective activism.” She asks people to host a house party, at which she shows up to tell her story, answer questions and sell books. She sees these book parties as a springboard to creating networks of progressive activists. 

Galleymore can be contacted at susan@motherspeak.org, and her book may be purchased at mothersspeakaboutwarandterror.org or motherspeak.org.  

Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak About War and Terror 

By Susan Galleymore. Pluto Press. $21.95

On Tuesday Aug. 25, Mariah Parker's Indo Latin Jazz Ensemble packed Yoshi's in Jack London Square, and the incredible live performance had the audience roaring and screaming for more of the Indo-Latin jazz rhythms filling the celebrated jazz club during the CD release event for Mariah Parker's debut recording, Sangria.  

For her CD release concert, composer and multi-instrumentalist Mariah Parker brought together a stellar lineup of musicians including Grammy award winning woodwind virtuoso Paul McCandless (known through his work with the seminal chamber jazz groups Paul Winter Consort and Oregon), trailblazing guitarist Matthew Montfort (Ancient Future), bassist and cellist Kash Killion, (Sun Ra Arkestra, Cecil Taylor); Latin percussionist Duru Demetrius (Joe Henderson, Herbie Hancock); tabla virtuoso Debopriyo Sarkar (Kronos Quartet), and drummer/percussionist Brian Rice (Mike Marshall). 

Blending the asymmetrical meters of East India with the driving syncopations of Latin jazz to create a fresh new sound, Parker draws musical inspiration from Cuba, Brazil, India and Spain. As RJ Lanna with Zone Music Reporter put it, “If Dave Brubeck were doing something with a Latin beat, it would come out sounding like this.”  

The concert goers were so spirited and enthusiastic as the performance progressed throughout the evening, the roar of their response to Mariah Parker's compositions brought the jazz club to a feverish pitch that rocked the building to its foundation.  

"As a composer, working with such high caliber musicians is exhilarating.” Parker said. “Each one adds their own musical brilliance and cultural spice to the Indo Latin Jazz sound."  

While on stage before the performance began, guitar great Matthew Montfort warmed up the crowd by telling the audience that he will be playing a scalloped fretboard guitar and flamenco guitar once the performance began. Montfort later told me that Ervin Somogyi scalloped the fretboard on his SJ Deluxe Gibson guitar.  

Though not at the concert, world famous guitar maker Ervin Somogyi replied, "I scalloped the fretboard on Matthew's guitar years ago when John McLaughlin and Al di Meola popularized that wonderful guitar bending sound and intricate arrangements that Matthew ran with, coming up with his own great arrangements and guitar performing techniques throughout the years."  

Indeed, the thunderous applause at Yoshi's during Tuesday night's performance was a testament to the great skills of Matthew Montfort and all the other fantastic musicians on stage performing Parker’s intricate compelling compositions.  

The jazz ensemble performed ten instrumental compositions by Mariah Parker, including one composition by Matthew Montfort at the end of the concert when the exuberant crowd demanded one more piece from the musicians.  

"I went to Mariah Parker’s Sangria CD release show at Yoshi’s in August," said Jim Lynch, "and was surprised at the full-house crowd on a Tuesday night. The audience was more spirited than the usually restrained Yoshi’s audience, perhaps because the music was pure ecotopian world jazz. By that I mean that it’s a chamber world jazz sound that emanates from places like San Francisco, or Portland or Seattle and is reminiscent of groups like Oregon, Paul Winter Consort, or Paul Horn."  

"This was a fabulous show... the music was really, really hot!!" said Marguerite Rigoglioso.  

Dave Jordan and a group of friends drove all the way from Gualala to attend the concert. “They played a world-class jazz venue, turned in a world-class performance to a full house and everyone loved the music! It doesn't get any better than that.”  

Internationally acclaimed Russian-American pianist Liana Forest said afterwards, “It was an exhilarating evening. The music and everyone's performance was simply world class.” 

Sangria is available in record stores, and online at Barnes & Noble and Borders, and iTunes. For more info and to listen to tracks from Sangria, see www.mariahparkermusic.com.

On Jan. 28, 1905, the first concatenation of the Order of Hoo-Hoo was held in Oakland. The ceremonies were conducted by the “Supreme Nine” of the local chapter of this lumbermen’s fraternity, many of whose officers’ titles were derived from Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem “The Hunting of the Snark.” The office of Gurdon (sergeant-at-arms) was occupied by veteran lumberman and West Berkeley resident Edward Frederick Niehaus. 

Gurdon was only the latest in a long line of public and semi-public offices held by Niehaus. Beginning in 1891, he served on Berkeley’s Board of Trustees (an earlier incarnation of our city council). In 1892, he was appointed to the citizens’ committee in charge of Berkeley’s Columbian celebration. In July 1894, Niehaus, along with his brothers Otto and Ernest, was a major proponent for a municipal ferry scheme. 

Seven months later, a Committee of Twenty-Five, comprising prominent Berkeley businessmen and politicians, was appointed at a mass meeting for the purpose of advancing the ferry cause. Niehaus—together with Francis K. Shattuck, Reuben Rickard, Charles A. Bailey, Rev. H. H. Dobbins, and James L. Barker—was named to an action committee of six, whose task was “to call upon Mr. Spreckels and other of the leading figures in the new railroad proposition and press upon them the advantages of Berkeley as a terminus,” reported the San Francisco Call on Feb. 14, 1895. 

In May 1895, Niehaus was elected to the Berkeley Board of School Directors as the only candidate from the Sixth Ward. Two years later, he was appointed by the Board of Town Trustees to a committee whose charge was to investigate the possibility of extending Southern Pacific’s local train service to Gilman Street. 

The summer of 1898 was a dry one in Berkeley. On July 23 of that year, the San Francisco Call reported, “Parched and lifeless are the beautiful flower gardens of Berkeley, so attractive to visitors; clouds of dust swirl through the streets, covering the buildings with a thick coating of dull gray, sifting through doors and windows, to the sore distress of housewives and the great discomfort of everybody. Every resident is in a state of constant fear lest fire should break out and sweep unhindered from one end of the town to the other, while pestilence threatens to break out any time.” 

The Alameda Water Company, which supplied Berkeley, was able to furnish only half the quantity of water consumed by its 1,600 customers. The Berkeley Board of Trustees appointed a committee of three to seek a long-term solution to the problem. The committee members—Trustee Louis J. Le Conte, Dr. Thomas Addison and School Director Edward F. Niehaus—“reported that it is possible to develop a supply of water sufficient to provide for the needs of the city for thirty years,” announced the newspaper. On Aug. 1, the Call disclosed that the committee was “much encouraged by the success of Superintendent of Streets Guy H. Chick, who, in sinking wells in the City Hall block, and in North Oakland and West Oakland, has found plenty of water to relieve the shortage that existed in the supply for street sprinkling. This was regarded as one of the most objectionable features of the dearth of water, for Berkeley has been doing much street improving of late and to have ceased sprinkling would have caused the ruin of many thoroughfares.” 

The committee concluded that permanent relief could only be secured through city ownership of an adequate water plant. Its plan allowed for an increase of 1,000 in the population each year. Little did the three know that Berkeley’s population would triple during the next decade. 

How did Edward F. Niehaus (1852– 1910) come to be regarded as a Berkeley stalwart? One would assume that his Prussian industriousness had much do with it, although his brothers, Otto (1848–1906) and Ernest (1855–1940), never attained equal heights in the community. The three were born in Westphalia, Germany to Adolf Gerhardt and Minna Niehaus. Their U.S. census records indicate that Edward immigrated to the United States in 1863 and Otto in 1865, Ernest following in 1871. Otto settled in New Jersey, where he married in 1871 and fathered five children between 1872 and 1882. Ernest spent four years in New Jersey before coming to Berkeley in 1875. Edward may have preceded him by a year or two. 

In his book Berkeley: the Town and Gown of It, George A. Pettitt recounted that early in 1874, “John Everding consented to make a shed on his property available for a cabinet shop where Edward F. Niehaus and Gustavus A. Schuster might start producing sash, doors, mouldings, turned and scroll-sawed wood.” 

In fact, it was not until 1877 that Edward and Ernest Niehaus made their first appearance in the Oakland directory, the former as principal of Schuster & Niehaus, proprietors of the West Berkeley Planing Mill, the latter as a machine hand in the mill. In 1878, Schuster & Niehaus were assessed a property tax of $500 on improvements and $1,000 on content at their mill. The lot was described in the assessment record as “on Everding’s land.” 

The 1878 directory carried a display ad for the West Berkeley Planing Mill, offering “mouldings, brackets, frames, doors, sash, blinds, scroll sawing, turning, etc.” Bold type touted “water tanks, fences and mill work of every description to order.” Nor was their landlord’s business omitted: “Connected with the establishment is a grist mill, for grinding feed for horses, cattle, etc.” 

The mill soon outstripped Everding’s business. In later years, its catalog reached 92 pages and includes stairs and hardwood interiors. 

The Niehaus brothers and Schuster first lived on the mill site but soon found more comfortable digs at the Franklin House, operated by C. Maloney on University Avenue and Third Street. In 1880, Edward Niehaus built his first home on Sixth Street between Addison and Allston. It was the second house on the block, which is now part of the Sisterna Historic District. The earliest residence, known as the Velasco House (1877), still stands at 2109 Fifth Street. 

About 1882, Schuster & Niehaus became Niehaus Bros. when Ernest became a partner and Schuster turned into an employee. Three years later, Otto Niehaus and family arrived from New Jersey, building a house at 1728 Ninth Street. In 1886, Ernest married Minnie Werder, younger sister of Edward’s wife Mathilde, and built his home on the northeast corner of Bristol (now Hearst Avenue) and Tenth Street. Also in 1886, Otto became partner in the mill, but the three brothers’ joint business proved short-lived. Angling for bigger fish, Edward left to pursue other opportunities. 

In 1887, the first year that his name was absent from the Niehaus Bros. directory listing, Edward was assessed property tax on four substantial new houses he had built near his home—two on the 800 block of Allston Way and two on the 2200 block of Sixth Street. In 1889, he treated his wife to an opulent Stick-Eastlake villa on the southwest corner of Channing Way and Seventh Street. Designated a City of Berkeley Landmark in 1976, this ornate house is West Berkeley’s grandest surviving Victorian residence. 

Otto and Ernest may have found running the mill hard going, for Schuster returned as partner by 1888 and would serve as president until the firm’s dissolution after the mill had been destroyed by fire in 1901. 

By 1892, Edward had built seven additional speculative houses, but his business plans encompassed far more than West Berkeley development. In the late 1880s he joined John H. Dieckmann, a German-born importer of tropical woods, and managed his San Francisco business for several years. Thereafter he bought the bankrupt stock of the hardwood pioneer Straut & Company, establishing his own business at 565 Brannan Street. 

His first disaster occurred in July 1895, when a fire destroyed $25,000 worth of lumber and machinery. Undaunted, Ed-ward immediately set out for the east to select a new stock. “A contract will soon be let for the erection of a new mill on the site of the one destroyed, and it is expected that it will be finished in time for the fall trade,” reported the San Francisco Call on July 10. 

Seven years later, another fire caused a damage of $15,000 to stock and machinery on the mill’s three floors. The firemen were able to save the lumber warehouse. “The loss is wholly sustained by the firm as there has never been any insurance on the place,” reported the Call on July 18, 1902. “The owners claim that insurance rates are so high in that part of town that under ordinary circumstances it is cheaper to carry on business unprotected. The firm will be crippled to some degree in fulfilling its contracts for the present, but E.F. Niehaus, senior member of the concern, says that he does not apprehend any serious difficulties as a result of the blaze.” 

By then, the Niehaus Bros. West Berkeley Planing Mill was nothing but a memory. The fire that gutted it on August 15, 1901 wiped out three acres of buildings, lumber piles, machinery, and finished products, including 6,000 doors in the door-and-sash factory. Insurance covered a mere $16,500 of the damage, which was estimated at $164,000 during the ensuing lengthy (and ultimately lost) court battle against the Contra Costa Water Company. 

Still, West Berkeley was growing. In April 1905, Edward F. Niehaus was one of the founders and directors of the West Berkeley Bank, to be built on the corner of University and San Pablo avenues. In April 1908, he headed a West Berkeley ticket in the election for 15 freeholders to frame a new city charter. The ticket headed by U.C. president Benjamin Ide Wheeler won. 

Fire struck E. F. Niehaus & Co. for the third time on September 10, 1908. According to the Call, “The firm of Niehaus & Co. had two mills in which fine lumber was dressed and veneering made, and a dry kiln. Both of the mills were utterly destroyed. Behind and to the side of the buildings lay the lumber yard, piled with a $200,000 stock of hardwoods, cedar logs, mahogany, birch, oak, maple and other fine timbers. All went before the flames.” 

The indomitable Edward F. Niehaus had enough spirit left in June 1909 to participate in the founding of the Homestead Savings Bank of Berkeley. Then heart disease overtook him on September 2, 1910, a month before his 58th birthday. His obituary in the San Francisco Call stated, “He was for 12 years a member of the board of education of this city and was largely instrumental in securing for West Berkeley the San Pablo and Columbus schools.” 

Mathilde Niehaus continued living in the family home until her death in 1938. Her husband’s nephew, Henry Wahlefeld, managed E.F. Niehaus & Co. until 1925, when its stock was acquired by the J. E. Higgins Lumber Company, still in business today. 

Daniella Thompson publishes berkeleyheritage.com for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA).

I can recall the first time I inspected a turn-of-the-20th-century house and noticed one of those funny little doors in the hallway closet next to the bathroom and, upon prying it open, realized that this was a little repair access panel for the shower. 

The little door (go look, you may have one) gave access to the old galvanized water pipes. It isn’t of much value since there’s rarely a repair one could make in such a place, and, more important, it’s very unlikely that a leak would occur right in this spot, but the door also gave access to the drain fittings, which is why the door is there, really: it allows access to what we might call the “waste and overflow” fittings of the tub. This is an assembly that most tubs still have and is a sort of L-shaped assembly of fittings that mounts at the tub drain and then reaches up around the end of the tub to connect to the overflow hole that sits about 14 inches up on the side of the tub—this is always a hot-button issue for tub users since most overflows are set too low to fill the tub, and many people (like me) like to block them in order to get enough water in the tub. Special suction covers are made for these drains, which allow you to fill past the overflow but still allow water to spill in at the top, thus preventing the flood the overflow is there to prevent. 

A 1920s-era plumber actually stood a fair chance of getting to the waste and overflow and its various parts through these wooden doors and might well have gotten a chance to fix one of the most common leaks found in our homes. Today, architects and builders, largely, have no conception of such prophylaxis, so a plumbing job that requires accessing the overflow fittings often involves removing plaster, drywall and perhaps even tile. 

Builders of very large buildings sometimes get smart enough to figure out what repairs are going to be done to their buildings (usually when they also own the building), and I, periodically, see a similar little hatch in modern apartment buildings, though the reasoning behind them is somewhat different. 

Again, a leak at the drain (the waste and overflow) of a shower or tub is one of the most common plumbing leaks in our homes or apartments, but in the case of the apartment (or condo), it becomes a much messier affair, especially if you’re on the fourth floor. Decades ago, smarter builders (or smarter plumbers involved in the construction process) started installing these little hatches in the ceilings below the drains of the tub upstairs.  

Not surprisingly, this is usually right over the drain of the tub in the bath in the apartment below, since stacking bathrooms is a cost-effective way to build apartment buildings and condos. 

When it leaks on the fourth floor, it usually leaks right into the little hatch, which can be opened with a screwdriver to drain away the water and perform the repair. When the repair is done, it’s very likely that we won’t have sopping, moldy sheetrock to remove and repair (unless the slumlord owner or somnambulant H.O.A. membership just can’t get it together in a reasonable stretch of time) and everyone stays a lot happier. Just as long as we’re on the subject, you can install these hatches below your own drains either before or (hopefully) after the next time your tub drain tries to show you how it feels about you and your singing. 

These hatches are not necessary for ground-floor baths, since they will tend to leak, for years and years, into the crawlspace below you, thus rotting away flooring boards and joists. If you get someone under the tub once in a while (run the water first, so you’ll see the drip), you might just catch these before they’re fung-fests that costs lots of money. Nonetheless, we don’t need hatches here and homes usually have good access below the tub, except when built on slabs of concrete. 

But as usual, I’ve wandered way around the block so let’s get to what I really wanted to talk about, which is where and why showers (and tubs) leak. It’s sort of a list, and I offer it because, first, it happens all the time, and, second, because many people haven’t a clue as to where these things may be leaking. 

The bad news is that for tubs and showers, there are many possible places that leakage can occur, especially because of the way bathrooms tend to be assembled. Rather than having lots of good flashing (the folded metal, plastic or tar-paper elements that divert water away from where they might cause harm), many baths rely upon tight fit and caulk (neither of which remain for long) to prevent leakage through floors, drains and walls. A worthy aside at this point is to say that plastic one- or two-piece tubs and showers are far less likely to leak because they have far fewer conjoinments to contend with—fewer places where parts meet. I’m no fan of these low-cost “port-o-potties” of ablution, but they are really good at keeping the water from leaking into the wall. 

So with this as our preface, let’s take a minute to look at where showers (especially the ones built over a tub) leak. 

First and foremost is one that may seem a surprise but I find them all the time, and I found one last month at the home of an ace home-repair guy, Stuart and his wildly entertaining wife Katie. A leak occurred when the shower was running, and it dripped down in the basement (is this you?), but they could not locate it. First, it’s clear that this was not on-supply piping because when you have leaks on-supply piping, they’ll run all the time, although there are parts of the supply piping, such as the shower or tub extension piping, that will only leak when you turn on the valves. These occasionally leak, but its fairly rare, due to the fact that they are open at the spouts or heads and this relieves the pressure in the pipe. But the point is, it was clearly not in the supply piping. So, the first things I like to check are the escutcheons. Escutcheons are the cups that mount around the valves or handles where you turn the water on. These need only be very slightly loose or have very tiny gaps in order to allow spoonfuls of water to enter the wall during a shower. Testing is tricky. I had Stuart use his hand and asked him to deflect the water against the valves and along the walls all around the shower enclosure. When it he did this, it started dripping like Sarah Palin’s tears all over my head. When we shower, water bounces off our bodies onto the shower walls, runs down the wall and can slide right under these seemly snug escutcheons, leading to leakage and damage. This is always the first thing to check if you’ve first established that the leak is not at the drain. If you get below the tub, mapping the location of the drain is the first thing. A careful establishing of where the leakage is occurring is very important. 

Other places leakage can occur include the gaps between shower tiles and the edges of a tub. Most modern tubs have a lip at the edge that catches water and drives it back into the tub but some early tubs  

didn’t have these, including the “captive clawfoot” tubs I sometimes see. These are found in homes from the 1920s or earlier and involve a traditional clawfoot tub that has had framing built around its ovaloid shape as well as a skirt built across the front face. These details rely upon sealant and usually have at least minor leaks. Caulk is wonderful stuff but it’s not permanent. It’s fine for short-term fixes but we shouldn’t build anything that relies on it.  

With conventional tubs using tile, water can leak through poorly installed tile, especially when tile was installed over drywall. Marine grade or “green” drywall or sheetrock was, for a short while, specified by trade groups and was, in those fabulous ’70s, a common technique (but then, think about the clothes, the hair styles and the Pinto I used to drive). Green sheetrock didn’t work out very well and I’m still finding cases where it’s mushy and water is leaking through the tile. 

With shower pans (showers not built into the bathtubs), there are generally more failures, especially the older ones built on cement pans that were poured in place. As in the case of our one- or two-piece plastic model, a precast shower pan is not likely to leak unless the plumber really couldn’t manage the fairly simple task of installing the drain fitting properly. With handmade shower pans, there are so many magic tricks involved that I won’t bother with all the possible errors, but let it be sufficient to say that it’s not for the novice and is best left to the obsessive-compulsive professional (and you know who you are). 

Let’s not forget to cover floors. Water loves to run off the edge of tubs, often as a film too thin to notice and down to the floor where it can easy penetrate an un-flashed floor that lacks a bead of caulk (again, we don’t want to rely upon caulk for construction but most of us have to assume that these gaps aren’t competent (or continent). Water often leaks slowly through the floor joint and ruins the wooden substrates. This is often avoided by fastidiousness but we don’t all have that aspect in our soul so, for some of us, caulk must remain on the menu. 

Finding tub and shower leaks can be tough and you may end up with some professional help before you figure it out, but you’ll be surprised that with a bright flashlight, a measuring tape and some deep breathing, you might just conquer against these lesser invaders. I, and the people downstairs, will be pulling for you. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 3 

“Redefining Our Relationships: Guidelines for Responsible, Open Relationships” A workshop with Wendy-O Matik at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Young People’s Symphony Orchestra Auditions for ages 12-21 from 4 to p.m. For application and information see www.ypsomusic.net 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at 2402 Central Ave. To schedule an appointment go to www.helpsavealife.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. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 4 

Golden Gate Audubon Society Field Trip to Jewel Lake in Tilden Park Meet at 8:30 a.m. at the parking lot at the north end of Central Park Dr. for a one-mile, two-hour-plus stroll through this lush riparian area. Leader Phila Rogers 848-9156. www.goldengateaudubon.org 

Kensington First Friday from 6 to 9 p.m. with art, music and refreshments from the merchants of Colusa Circle and The Arlington. 525-6155. 

Meditation I: practice of the body at 7 p.m. at Center for Transformative Change, 2584 Martin Luther King Jr Way. Cost is free-$45. To register call 888-976-2426. 

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. 

Stand With Us Stand for Peace Stand with Israel vigil every Friday from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. www.sfvoiceforisrael.org 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Fri. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 5 

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. 

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

Poultry Pals Come get to know our neighborhood birds at the Little Farm from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at Tilden Park. 544-2233.  

Meet the Spirit of the Rabbit through shamanic journeying with Suzanne Savage from 1 to 5 p.m. at Rabbit Ears, 377 Colusa Ave. Kensington. Advance registration required. 525-6155. 

Whacky Weekend at Playland-Not-At-The-Beach Sat. through Mon., 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Costs is $10-$15. 932-8966. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. at 2 p.m. 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.  

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.  

SUNDAY, SEPT. 6 

Friends of Five Creeks’ Picnic on the Creek from 3 to 6 p.m. at Codornices Creek and the Ohlone Greenway, opposite 1200 Masonic, on the Berkeley-Albany border. Free; drinks and snacks provided. Bring finger foods, musical instruments, games for the big grassy area. 848-9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

Butter Churning Party Help mix up some fresh butter to spread on toast with jam, and learn all about milk and its cultured concoctions, from 10 a.m. to noon at The Little Farm, Tilden Park. 544-2233. 

Cows and Culture Learn how they have been an integral part of human civilizations for thousands of years, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at the Little Farm, Tilden Park. 544-2233. 

Single Payer Health Care Not War Planning meetings at 4:20 at Peoples Park. For more information call 390-0830. peoplespark.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. at 2 p.m. 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 Dave Abercrombie on “Putting Knowledge to Work” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 809-1000.  

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.  

MONDAY, SEPT. 7 

Open House at The Little Farm in Tilden Park from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. with wheelbarrow races, ice-cream making, and animal care. 544-2233. 

Time for Lunch Campaign to Get Real Food in Schools with Congresswoman Barbara Lee from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park. For information see www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/campaign/time_for_lunch 

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. 

East Bay Track Club for girls and boys ages 3-15 meets Mon. and Wed. at 6 p.m. at Berkeley High School track field. Free. 776-7451. 

TUESDAY, SEPT. 8 

AC Transit Community Workshop Learn about proposed service changes in AC Transit’s Service Adjustments Plan, and give your input before final decisions are made, at 6:30 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. www.actransit.org 

Tuesdays for the Birds Tranquil bird walks in local parklands, led by Bethany Facendini, from 7 to 9:30 a.m. Today we will visit Sibley Regional Preserve, Fish Ranch Road. Bring water, field guides, binoculars or scopes. Call for meeting place and if you need to borrow binoculars. 544-2233. 

Lawyer in the Library Sign up in advance for a free 15 minute consultation with an attorney. From 6 to 8 p.m. at the Albany Library, , 1247 Marin Ave. Sponored by the California Barr Assoc. 526-3720, ext. 5. 

Morris Dance Workshop at 7:30 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. No experience necessary, all welcome. www.berkeley-morris.org 

Family Storytime for pre-schoolers and up, at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Red Cross Blood Services Volunteer Orientation from 6 to 8 p.m. at 6230 Claremont Ave., Oakland. Registration required. 594-5165. blackstoneA@usa.redcross.org 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

End the Occupation Vigil every Tues. at noon at Oakland Federal Bldg., 1301 Clay St. www.epicalc.org 

Homework Help Program at the Richmond Public Library Tues. and Thurs. from 3 to 5:30 p.m. at 325 Civic Center Plaza. For more information or to enroll, call 620-6557. 

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. www.watersideworkshops.org 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 9 

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. 

Food Justice: Its What’s For Dinner Benefit for City Slicker Farms with Mollie Katzen, author of the Moosewood Cookbook, local organic buffet dinner, film preview of Food Stamped, and a panel discussion with local food justice activists at 6 p.m. at the David Brower Center. Sponsored by The Progressive Jewish Alliance. Tickets are $5-$55 sliding scale. www.brownpapertickets.com 

“Solar Energy: Saved by the Sun” A documentary on new designs, materials and technologies, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. www.Humanist Hall.org 

5th Annual 9/11 Film Festival, premiering “Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup” with guest speakers Dylan Avery, Richard Gage, David Ray Griffin from 6:15 to 11 p.m. at the Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Tickets $10. www.sf911truth.org  

Poetry Writing Workshop with Alison Seevak at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, , 1247 Marin Ave. All welcome 526-3720, ext. 16. 

Fond Farewell Series: Consumers’ Last Rights with Karen Leonard, death rights activist at 7 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. www.gracenorthchurch.org 

Green Living Project: South America A multi-media presentation on projects in Brazil, Peru and Ecuador at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Welcoming Your Jewish Baby at 2 p.m. at Lehrhaus Judaica, 2736 Bancroft Way. Cost is $36 for five sessions www.lehrhaus.org  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes. 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 the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

Teen Chess Club from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the North Branch Library, 1170 The Alameda at Hopkins. 981-6133. 

Berkeley CopWatch Drop-in office hours from 6 to 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. 548-0425. 

THURSDAY, SEPT. 10 

Berkeley School Volunteers, New Volunteer Orientation from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. Bring a photo ID and two references to the orientation. Returning volunteers do not need to attend. For further information 644-8833. 

Small-Garden Discovery Walk For walkers age 50+ to explore small, charming Albany and North Berkeley late-summer gardens that need little water or fertilizer. Meet at 9:30 a.m. at Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic. Free but numbers limited; register at Albany Senior Center. 524-9122.  

“Salute to Sisterhood” honoring African American environmental champions at 5:30 p.m. at Lake Merritt Sailboat House. RSVP to 763-9523.  

5th Annual 9/11 Film Festival “Anthrax War” with guest speakers Eric Nadler and David Ray GriffinFrom noon to 10 p.m. at Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10. www.sf911truth.org 

East Bay Mac Users Group Meeting with Clinton Gilbert and Tom Kramer on SoundStudio and GarageBand, at 7 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville. Free. ebmug.org 

Improv Acting Play fun improv games. Intro. Improv ongoing on Thurs. at 7 p.m. Intermediate Improv at 8:15 p.m. at Berkeley YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way. Cost is $12 for Intro classes, $45 for 6 Intermediate classes. www.berkeleyimprov.com  

Babies & Toddlers Storytime at 10:15 and 11:15 a.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. 

Circle of Concern Vigil meets on West Lawn of UC campus across from Addison and Oxford, Thurs. at noon and Sun. at 1 p.m. to oppose UC weapons labs contracts. 848-8055. 

Fitness Class for 55+ at 9:15 a.m. at Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

FRIDAY, SEPT. 11 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll search for spiders, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds. We will search for spiders from 3:15 to 4:15 p.m.. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 1-888-EBPARKS. 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Jill Tucker, Education Writer, San Francisco Chronicle on “East Palo Alto’s Amazing Eastside College Preparatory School” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $15, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 527-2173. www.citycommonsclub.org 

Presentation on Senior Cohousing with Charles Durrett, cofounder of cohousing in the U.S and author of “The Senior Cohousing Handbook: A Community Approach to Independent Living” at 7:30 p.m. at Builder’s Booksource, 1817 4th St. 845-6874. www.seniorcohousing.com  

Womansong Circle An evening of participatory singing for women in commemoration of September 11, 2001 at 7:15 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, Small Assembly Room, 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation $15-20. No one turned away. www.betsyrosemusic.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Children’s Hospital Outpatient Center Basement, 747 52nd St., Oakland. To schedule an appointment go to www.helpsavealife.org 

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. 

Stand With Us Stand for Peace Stand with Israel vigil every Friday from noon to 1 p.m. at Bancroft and Telegraph. www.sfvoiceforisrael.org 

Berkeley Chess Club meets every Fri. at 7 p.m. at the Hillside School, 1581 Le Roy Ave. 843-0150. 

SATURDAY, SEPT. 12 

Berkeley Farmers’ Market String Band Contest with twenty old-time string bands competing from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Civic Center Park. 548-3333. 

AC Transit Community Workshop Learn about proposed service changes in AC Transit’s Service Adjustments Plan, and give your input before final decisions are made, at 10:30 a.m. at AC Transit General Offices, 1600 Franklin St., Oakland. www.actransit.org 

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 

Walking Tour- Temescal: A Bit of Old Italy Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Genova Delicatessen, 5095 Telegraph Ave. in Temescal Shopping Plaza. Sponsored by the Oakland Heritage Alliance. Cost is $10-$15. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Friends of the El Cerrito Library Annual Book Sale Sat. from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sun. from noon to 4 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. in El Cerrito. www.ccclib.org 

Friends of Peralta Hacienda Historical Park Tasty, Touchable Tours of the East Bay’s Spanish and Mexican past from 2 to 4 p.m. at at 1870 Antonio Peralta House, 2465 34th Ave., Oakland. Tours are $2, campfire cooking activity is free. 532-9142. http://peraltahacienda.org  

Richmond Memorial Civic Center Grand Reopening with music, art center activities and fim showings of Richmond’s history, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 450 Civic Center Plaza and 27th St.  

Brooks Island Voyage Paddle the rising tide across the Richmond Harbor Channel to Books Island to explore the island’s natural and cultural history, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.. For experienced boaters who can provide their own kayak and safety gear. Cost is $20-$22. Registration required. 1-888-327-2757. 

Ardenwood Shakespeare Festival and Renaissance Faire from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets are $13-$18, $8 for children 12 and under. www.ardenwoodfaire.com 

Archeological Dig in Tilden Discover the skills you neen to become an archeologist and learn about Tilden’s past, from 2 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. For ages 7-12. 544-2233. 

Fix Your Own Double-Hung Windows A Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association Workshop at 2 p.m. at BAHA’s McCreary-Greer House, 2318 Durant Ave. Cost is $15. Advance registration required. 841-2242. http://berkeleyheritage.com  

Rabbit Adoption Day from 1 to 4 p.m. at Rabbit Ears, 377 Colusa Ave. Kensington. 525-6155. 

PeaceGames Training for educators, organizers and students of all ages to understand the intersections of war, militarism, gender, race and class fro 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Women of Color Resource Center, 1611 Telegraph Ave., Suite 303, Oakland. Cost is $75-$200, sliding scale. For information call 444-2700, ext. 305. www.coloredgirls.org 

“Disarmament Work in a Global Economic Crisis: Connecting Issues; Building Movements” with Andrew Lichterman at 7 p.m. at the Home of Truth, 1300 Grand Ave., Alameda. Sponsored by the Alameda Public Affairs Forum and Western States Legal Foundation. Suggested donation $5-$10. www.alamedapublicsaffairsforum.org 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at St. Barnabas School Hall, 1400 Sixth Ave., Alameda. To schedule an appointment go to www.helpsavealife.org 

Origami Workshop with Margot Wecksler at 2 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. All ages welcome 526-3720, ext. 16. 

Grandparents Weekend at the Beach at Playland-Not-At-The-Beach Sat. and Sun. at 10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. Costs is $10-$15, grandparents $5. 932-8966. www.playland-not-at-the-beach.org 

Free Family Dance Event from 10 a.m. to noon at Luna Kids in the Sawtooth Bldg, J2525 8th St. at Dwight Way, 644-3629.  

San Francisco Boys Chorus Auditions from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Oakand For information email auditions@sfbc.org  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. at 2 p.m. and Sun. at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. 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, SEPT. 13 

Solano Stroll from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. along Solano Ave. in Berkeley and Albany.  

Friends of Alameda Wildlife Refuge Workday Help prepare habitat for the California Least Terns. Meet at 9 a.m. at the main refuge gate at the northwest corner of the former Naval Air Station in Alameda. www.goldengateaudubon.org 

Family Hike Around Jewel Lake in Tilden Park to learn about animal groups and classifications, and what makes each group so special, from 10:30 a.m. to noon. For meeting point call 544-2233. 

Growing up Aquatic Learn to use a net to discover what insects and amphibians are growing up aquatic, and which are about to make their terrestial debut at 1:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 544-2233. 

Flowers Piece by Piece Dissect flowers and use a microscope to learn about flower families, for ages 8 and up from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 544-2233. 

Ashby Village Community Meeting Information on a grassroots organization which provides resources to seniors to enable them to remain in their own homes, at 2 p.m. at West Berkeley Family Practice, 2031 Sixth St. 208-2860. www.ashbyvillage.org 

Walking Tour- Mills College Campus Meet at 2 p.m. in front of Mills Hall on the Mills College Campus. Sponsored by he Oakland Heritage Alliance. Cost is $10-$15. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org 

Old Time Radio East Bay Collectors and listeners gather to enjoy shows together at 4 p.m. at a private home in Berkeley. For more information please email (at Yahoo, to DavidinBerkeley).  

Gone Fishin’ Family Fun Day with face painting, sing-a-long, art activities and more from 1 to 5 p.m. at Expressions Gallery, 2035 Ashby Ave. 644-4930. www.expressionsgallery.org 

Mind Power Collective’s Sunday Salon Creative on transforming and empowering our schools and communities at 3 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Friends of the El Cerrito Library Annual Book Sale from noon to 4 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave. in El Cerrito. www.ccclib.org 

Benefit for Tristan Anderson at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Single Payer Health Care Not War Planning meetings at 4:20 at People Park. for more information call 390-0830. peoplespark.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. at 2 p.m. 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 Jack Petranker on “Exploring Consciousness” 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 

Community Environmental Advisory Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 3, at 7 p.m., at 2118 Milvia St. Nabil Al-Hadithy, 981-7460.  

Landmarks Preservation Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 3, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7429. 

Planning Commission meets Wed., Sept. 9, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-7416. 

Waterfront Commission meets Wed., Sept. 9, at 7 p.m., at 201 University Ave. 981-6737. 

Commission on Early Childhood Education meets Tues., Sept. 10 , at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5428.  

Community Health Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 10, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5356. 

West Berkeley Project Area Commission meets Thurs., Sept. 10 , at 7 p.m. at the James Kenney Recreation Center, 8th & Virginia. 981-7418.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Sept. 10, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. 981-7430.