In a landmark achievement, Caltrans announced Tuesday a billion dollar settlement agreement with disability rights advocates to improve sidewalk access. -more-
Miles Wang, 6, and his sister Kyra, 9, of Oakland, pick out a Christmas tree Tuesday afternoon from the tree lot at the corner of Ashby and Telegraph avenues. “We’re running out of time and we saw the lot,” Paul Wang said as he watched his children evaluate the trees. The family had a fake tree last Christmas. “It’s still in the box,” Kyra said. “This year we want a real tree. Real trees smell good.” -more-
A new report warns that funds belonging to the city’s mental health clients could be in danger of being lost, stolen or misused due to a lack of oversight by city officials. -more-
Fred Medrano has been a constant presence in Berkeley civic life for the last 30 years. But this week Medrano will be stepping down from his position as director of Berkeley’s Department of Health Services after 14 years, during which time he oversaw California’s only independent health and mental health jurisdictions. -more-
For Berkeley resident Rash Ghosh, every day for the last two years has been a fight to win back his home. But last week, Ghosh may have finally received a sliver of hope. -more-
The Alameda County Transit Board of Directors voted unanimously Wednesday, Dec. 16, to cut bus services by 8.4 percent beginning March 2010 to offset a $57 million budget deficit next year. -more-
A new assessment of the condition of state roadways ranks Highway 13—including Ashby Avenue—as the second most-deteriorated section of roadway in the San Francisco–Oakland metropolitan area. -more-
The Berkeley Chamber of Commerce has selected Mark Berson of Alabama as the chamber’s new CEO. In a statement released Dec. 16, the chamber announced that Berson “would lead the organization through a new era of growth and expansion.” -more-
Preliminary data released by the state Employment Development Department Friday, Dec. 18, show that Berkeley’s unemployment rate is the lowest since May. -more-
Proponents of Berkeley’s first public charter school presented their proposal to the Berkeley Board of Education at its Dec. 16 meeting. -more-
A policy subcommittee of the Berkeley Board of Education once again took up the issue of equality in Berkeley High School’s governance at a Dec. 16 meeting. -more-
In my book, Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley, I presented the stories of 17 culturally important but largely forgotten local people of the 19th century. Other captivating stories I came across were not right for use in the book but are nonetheless very meaningful. -more-
A new assessment of conditions of state roadways ranks Highway 13—including Ashby Avenue—as the second most-deteriorated section of roadway in the San Francisco-Oakland metropolitan area. -more-
The Alameda County Transit Board of Directors voted unanimously Wednesday to cut bus services by 8.4 percent beginning March 2010 to offset a $57 million budget deficit next year. -more-
The Berkeley Chamber of Commerce has selected Mark Berson of Alabama as the chamber’s new CEO. In a statement released Dec. 16, the chamber announced that Berson “would lead the organization through a new era of growth and expansion.” -more-
James Fang, the longest-serving member on BART’s board of directors, was selected Thursday by a unanimous vote to serve as the board’s president for the third time. -more-
Gary Cornell could have lived the easy life with the fortune he made publishing information technology books. -more-
The Berkeley City Council postponed discussion of the most controversial item on its Dec. 15 agenda. -more-
Berkeley is getting ready for another landmark brawl. -more-
The Berkeley High School Governance Council (SGC) voted last week to approve the latest school redesign plan, including a controversial proposal to eliminate science lab instruction that is currently offered before and after regular school hours. -more-
An attack on UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s house and conflicting reports as to why students were arrested at Wheeler Hall Friday, Dec. 11, have added a new twist to ongoing protests against university budget cuts. -more-
After months of debate, BART’s board of directors joined the Port of Oakland in awarding a contract for the construction of an Oakland Airport connector. -more-
The final hurdle for creating enterprise zones in West Berkeley has cleared, paving the way for more than 1,000 local businesses to receive tax credits. -more-
In response to state budget cuts, UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff in the Department of Landscape Architecture are pitching in to help on-campus environmental restoration efforts and gardening programs at local schools. They call themselves the Landscape Progress Administration, an echo of the Depression-era Works Progress Administration that provided public-sector jobs and left a legacy of public works in the Bay Area and across the nation. -more-
Three UC Berkeley alums detained in Iran since July 31 will stand trial, according to Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, U.S. media reported Monday. -more-
In the 1960s Euell Gibbons was the man to consult for a back-to-nature approach to food, and Ruth Stout was the expert in a more natural way of growing it. Since one Gibbons title is Stalking the Healthful Herbs, in which is a recipe for pine-needle tea (“almost enjoyable”), when in January it was time to wonder what to do with one’s Christmas tree, the answer was, send it to Euell. -more-
Just in time for holiday gift giving, the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association has brought out a long-awaited new edition of 41 Berkeley Walking Tours. -more-
Happy 18th birthday! Congratulations, you are now officially an adult. You can vote, you can drink, you are independent.” -more-
If you love browsing the booths along Telegraph Avenue from the campus down to Dwight Way, the Telegraph Holiday Street Fair offers all that and much more. Held for the last three weekends in December, the entire street along those four blocks is closed to traffic and filled with about 100 craftspeople offering the most amazing variety of their creations for sale. -more-
Ever since George W. Bush rode off into the Dallas sunset, there’s been a void on the national scene. Even Dick Cheney has largely faded from sight. The other Republicans, the ones still in Congress are annoying, but predictably so. But just in time, there’s a replacement in Bush’s old slot of The Man You Love to Hate. Based on his behavior in the last three months or so, not to mention in the last several years, Joe Lieberman is the winner and new champ for that title. -more-
We read with some dismay Charles Siegel’s intemperate letter entitled “BRT and the Noisy Minority” in the Dec. 3, 2009 issue of the Daily Planet. His essential argument is that there is a “small group of naysayers” who constitute the opposition to BRT. This is simply not true. All of the neighborhood associations representing neighborhoods adversely impacted by the BRT draft plan are opposed to the current BRT plan, in addition to the Telegraph Avenue merchants and street vendors whom Mr. Siegel does mention. These neighborhood associations include the Claremont Elmwood Neighborhood Association (CENA), the Willard Neighborhood Association, the Bateman Neighborhood Association, and the LeConte Neighborhood Association. We attended a meeting about BRT this fall at Willard Middle School sponsored by the Berkeley Transportation Commission. At the meeting, one of the speakers asked all opposed to the BRT draft Locally Preferred Alternative (LPA) to stand up. My estimate is that 95 percent of the approximately 150 attendees, who filled the hall, stood up. They were indeed noisy but were a huge majority and not some small minority of naysayers. -more-
My father speaks of his undergraduate days at Dartmouth. It seems that every year the freshmen were called together and advised not to climb Mt. Washington in the winter. New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington is billed as having the worst weather on the planet and this is so. It is a dangerous place, bleak and windblown, with fierce and dramatic weather changes caused by a strange downdraft of the jet stream exactly at that spot. “And every year some damned fool would climb it and die,” he says. -more-
People who choose to move to Berkeley are aware of the importance of our local history as it has impacted global trends. As a Michigan grad, I’m especially proud of the connection between Ann Arbor and Berkeley for their parallel traditions of academic excellence and positive activism. The Free Speech Movement began as an organic movement in Berkeley in reaction to the last days of the HUAC ugliness—possibly the ugliest chapter in domestic American history. But some historians ask if the FSM would have been as dynamic or effective as it has been without the support it drew from Students for a Democratic Society, which began two years earlier in Ann Arbor under Tom Hayden. I was proud to follow in Hayden’s footsteps in Ann Arbor as a campus leader and point-man activist for important causes. -more-
I thought it might be helpful to recall that Yehoshu’a (Jesus) was a Palestinian. The district of western Asia long known as Palestine has a history which needs to be understood as we try to sort out the conflicting claims of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the present day. -more-
If you’re smart enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, literate enough to write two very good books, clever enough to gain the Democratic Party’s nomination for president and wily enough to defeat the Republican nominee, then you’ll most certainly be able to obtain the assistance of the best and the brightest. Thus, it is no surprise that President Obama, in humbly accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, would deliver a speech that was magnificent in every way. It was erudite and didactic; it had depth and breath; it was a political masterstroke that at once quieted shrill prior criticisms, satisfied nervous supporters and disquieted unattached progressives like me. -more-
AC Transit is steadily cutting local bus service, while not cutting the often empty, huge regional Rapid buses. The strategy appears to be that AC Transit is transforming their Rapids and Locals into a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system of four lines. Victoria Eisen, Susan Wengraf’s Planning Commissioner, recently asked city staff to add studying BRT for University Avenue, and on North Shattuck/Solano, to the environmental studies for the Telegraph Avenue/Downtown BRT line. -more-
During the past eight years, I have heard this question asked many times—Why are we in Afghanistan? Some of what I’m about to say here on this matter has been recently declassified, but is still not well known. During the Carter administration, National Security Advisor Zbignew Brezhinski—who currently advises Obama—proposed a covert operation to destabilize the than secular Afghan government, which was getting way too friendly with the Soviets. His idea, approved and put into effect by Jimmy Carter, was to provoke the Russians into getting involved into a Vietnam-type guerrilla war in Central Asia. The goal here was to wear down and eventually destabilize the Soviet Union. In order to accomplish this, the CIA supported and funded the most staunchly anti-Communist groups in Afghanistan, who also happened to be radical fundamentalist Muslims. Brezhinski himself said words to the effect that Islamic fundamentalism was the most effective weapon against Communism, and to this day, he speaks of having no regrets for his actions. -more-
The General Plan is the law. In California, when a city’s General Plan designation for a site conflicts with the city’s zoning for the site, the General Plan supersedes the zoning. Not only is this the law, it has also been tested in court and the court ruled that this is the correct application of the law, further establishing a legal precedent for this interpretation of the law. A few years ago in Temescal there was a lawsuit filed against an approved project over this very issue and the lawsuit failed. -more-
At the end of a decade marked by a general failure of U.S. leadership, 2009 saw the collapse of the Senate. Confronted with an array of difficult problems, a reactionary Senatorial minority put their personal political interests above those of the nation and blocked action by the progressive majority. -more-
Houses leak. Bad news but it’s true. You knew this, so no big news flash, right? What’s not so evident to the uninitiated is why. And that’s such a large set of issues that I won’t attempt to give a quick, glib answer. That said, there are some big chunks of knowledge that experienced builders and a few architects know. So I will try to see if I can lay out some of them, especially since the rains are upon us, and many buildings are leaking now. -more-
“Romp,” according to several online lists of collective nouns, is an alternate term for a group of otters. “Bevy” is also available, but that’s too closely associated with “beauties.” And romp fits. Romp is pretty much what they do. They might even be said to rollick. -more-
When President Barak Obama laid out his plan for winning the war in Afghanistan, behind him stood an army of ghosts: Greeks, Mongols, Buddhists, British and Russians, all of whom had almost the same illusions as the current resident of the Oval Office about Central Asia. The first four armies are dust, but there are Russian survivors of the 1979-89 war that ended up killing 15,000 Soviets, hundreds of thousands of Afghans, and virtually wrecking Moscow’s economy. -more-
The time has come—wouldn’t you think?—for Oakland to stop flailing around with piecemeal “solutions” for the future of the city’s central core and begin organized work on a comprehensive development plan. -more-
I am unashamed to call myself a hippie. Though the phrase is still used in the pejorative by many and filled with untoward connotations for some, I choose to remain firmly camped among those who eschew the commonplace, dismal and colorless. I am not opposed to tattoos, public nudity or whole wheat pastry flour. Further, I would argue that, day-by-day, we are winning the war against the opposition. True, things don’t always look good for our side, but I remain hopeful. Heck, we elected a black president, and if you don’t think hippies are responsible for that, you may have taken some of the bad acid. -more-
This summer, when I wasn’t paying attention, the western tanager was determined not to be a true tanager. This was not exactly a demotion, as was the reclassification of Pluto from bona fide planet to small planet-like object, or whatever it is now; more like a lateral transfer. Still, I expect this move came as a shock to a lot of birders. -more-
The dismal failure of the Copenhagen world conference on climate change makes the current show at the Kala Art Institute acutely relevant. Taking the perilous increase in global warming as a serious reality, Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison have created major works of art for more than 30 years; their art instructs the viewer about environmental degradation as well as offering potential correctives. -more-
The Flamenco Family Fiesta, featuring Yaelisa, founder of Caminos Flamencos, will take the stage at Ashkenaz at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 27. -more-
As the holiday season advances, there’s still much to see and do, including that blowout of blowouts, New Year’s Eve. Here are a few of the highlights—and unusual sidelights—along the way, including just a few New Year’s Eve celebrations. -more-
The Bay Area’s African-American theaters’ holiday shows continue through this weekend: Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity, a gospel-infused story of the first Christmas, staged by Lorraine Hansberry Theatre Company in San Francisco; Cinderella, a Louisiana-flavored twist on a camped-up Christmas “pantomime,” at African American Shakespeare’s newly-renovated Buriel Clay Theatre in San Francisco’s Western Addition; and a solo show by comedian and author Paul Mooney, equally known for his comedy, books and being a writer for Richard Pryor, at Berkeley’s Black Repertory Theatre, through Dec. 31. -more-
Susannah Martin, who directed Threepenny Opera for the Shotgun Players, spoke about the satiric musical show she transplanted from Victorian London (and 1920s Weimar Republic) to the 1970s London of the Sex Pistols—and onstage in Berkeley today: -more-
Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble, directed by Jude Navari, with guest organist Matthew Walsh, will perform The Greenest Branch: Medieval, Romantic and Twentieth-Century Music on a Marian Theme, the ninth annual show in their Voices in Peace series, at 4 p.m. Saturday at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley in Kensington. -more-
Rain, rain, it falls for nothing.” Empty shoes tap dance atop a red ladder (under the hand of puppeteer Tim Giugni) in the old gaming salon at the Berkeley City Club, which opens like a sideshow tent for Helen Pau’s The Stone Wife: A Burlesque in Nine Acts. -more-
Berkeley’s Wilde Irish is tying on a good one at 8 p.m. tonight through Saturday: A Joycean Christmas, at the Gaia Center, 2116 Allston Way. “It’ll be like the party from ‘The Dead,’” avers producer Breda Courtney—meaning, of course, the famous yuletide tale of an epiphany (which, many will recall, inspired John Huston’s final film) from James Joyce’s The Dubliners, from which the company will enact “Araby,” as well as the Christmas table scene from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. -more-
Every holiday season, there are the classics—like The Nutcracker, A Christmas Carol, the Messiah, A Child’s Christmas in Wales—and the alternatives, some of which are on their way to becoming classics. Here are a few: -more-
