A nursing strike at Bay Area hospitals is over today, but participating nurses at Sutter hospitals and Children's Hospital in Oakland have been told they cannot report back to work before Tuesday, officials said today. 

The California Nurses Association is calling the action by the hospitals a punitive lockout, but hospital officials denied the charge, saying they had to sign five-day contracts with nursing staffing companies that provided temporary nurses for the strike. 

Thursday's one-day strike involved an estimated 23,000 nurses at Sutter Health hospitals, Children's Hospital in Oakland and Kaiser Permanente. Contract negotiations are in progress at many of the affected hospitals, including those in the Sutter chain, but Kaiser nurses went out on strike in sympathy. 

Today, Kaiser nurses are back at work, but Sutter and Children's Hospital say they will continue to use temporary staff through Tuesday, when contracts with staffing companies expire. Erin Goldsmith, a spokeswoman at Children's Hospital, said the union knew in advance that this would be the case. 

"It's not a lockout, a lockout means that no members of a union are allowed into the hospital," Goldsmith said. "Nurses that chose to cross the picket lines are allowed into the hospital." 

"We had to contract with our nurse replacement agency for a total of five days," Goldsmith added. "We had to give them five days for the replacement nurses to provide a good incentive for them to come." 

Of the approximately 700 nurses at Children's Hospital, around 125 crossed the picket line to work during the strike, Goldsmith said. The remaining 575 nurses will not be able to work until Tuesday, although many may not have been scheduled to work before then anyway. The hospital has hired around 120 contract nurses. 

Union spokesman Charles Idelson called the claim that the hospitals had to contract for five days "ludicrous," and pointed to the fact that Kaiser was able to return the nurses to work after just one day. 

Idelson said the willingness of the hospitals to spend large amounts of money on contract nurses belied their claims in contract negotiations that they needed to save money. 

"It's obviously an unwarranted and unnecessary lockout," he said. "It certainly reflects the mentality of Sutter and Children's. It's indicative of the way Sutter has treated their communities and their employees and patients for years." 

At Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, nearly 40 percent of the hospital's 1800 nurses chose to cross the picket lines, hospital spokeswoman Carolyn Kemp said. The hospital has contracted with 500 temporary nurses through Tuesday. 

"We didn't choose for [nurses] to not come in to care for their patients, so we had to do whatever we can to care for our patients," Kemp said. "We have excellent nurses on a regular basis here and we compensate them with excellent compensation and benefits, so I think the whole thing is unfortunate. We'll welcome them back on Tuesday." 

Unions have said the hospitals are seeking to roll back RN rights and limit nurses' input regarding patient care, in addition to cutting benefits. 

Sutter hospitals have countered by noting that nurses in the chain are "among the highest compensated in the country," with the average nurse there earning a $136,000 salary.

Two people were arrested on the University of California at Berkeley campus Thursday night during protests of the UC system's proposed plan to hike tuition by as much as $10,000 per year.

Students and other demonstrators gathered at noon in Sproul Plaza to express their frustration over the university's plan to require more money from students because of wavering funding support from Sacramento. 

Some 60 sixty protestors later occupied Tolman Hall, which is located on the northern edge of campus near the UC Chancellor's House. 

Both people who were arrested were not students, campus police Lt. Marc DeCoulode said this morning. 

One person was arrested after a confrontation between demonstrators and campus police in which an officer became penned in by students blocking the building's doors. 

DeCoulode said that the protestors allegedly grabbed the officer's gun belt and removed the magazine from her service weapon. At that point, officers used pepper spray on the demonstrators in self-defense, according to DeCoulode. 

The second arrest occurred as demonstrators exited the campus building at about 9:30 p.m. DeCoulode said the person arrested had attacked an officer from behind. 

Callie Maidhof, a UC Berkeley doctoral student speaking for "Resistance Social," the group that organized Thursday's protest, recounted the events differently.  

The protestors inside Tolman Hall were in the building's lobby at about 9 p.m. and Maidhof said that she and others noticed police lining up outside the glass doors. 

"People started panicking and were trying to leave, but police officers were pushing the doors shut and wouldn't let us leave," she said. 

About half of the 60 people were able to leave, but she said in the confusion that one person ended up in a chokehold and was screaming "please stop hurting me" before he was arrested on suspicion of obstruction and battery against a police officer. 

"They were shouting 'Leave, the building is closed,' but they were standing in front of the building with their sticks," Maidhof said. "I was terrified. If I moved toward them, they would hold up their stick menacingly." 

According to DeCoulode, police never told students that they needed to exit the building. 

"There may have been some confusion during the scuffle," DeCoulode said. 

He said that people outside Tolman Hall had been throwing rocks, pieces of concrete and chairs at officers and at the doors so officers blocked the building's exit "in part for (the safety of the people inside) and for the officers' safety." 

One officer was hit in the head with a large piece of hard rubber -- a traffic cone base -- and sought medical treatment at a hospital, DeCoulode said. 

Campus police requested aid from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, which coordinated the resources for the request, he said. Officers from nearby UC campuses in San Francisco and Davis also responded, as well as Oakland police officers. 

DeCoulode said campus police monitored the area for several hours after the protestors vacated the building and that they would remain vigilant today. 

Last week, the UC Board of Regents met in San Francisco to weigh a proposal on how to close a budget deficit projected to grow to $2.5 billion over the next four years. 

The university is seeking renewed assurance from the state that it will provide long-term funding to address $1.5 billion of that deficit. The remaining $1 billion in solutions would be provided through expansion of funding streams -- such as corporate sponsorships -- and through implementing academic efficiencies. 

If the state does not increase funding it provides to the UC system, the $1.5 billion would come from a 16 percent annual tuition hike for the next four years, according to the proposal. 

Otherwise, the gap would be patched from a combination of tuition hikes and state funding, depending on how much the Legislature pledges to provide. 

Student, staff, and community demonstrators kicked off a fall season of budget cut and fee increase protest at the UC Berkeley campus on Thursday, September 22, 2011, with a modest but spirited noontime rally, followed by a march through campus and occupation of classrooms.

At day’s end some of the group was gathered, watched by campus police, in part of Tolman Hall, the sprawling Education / Psychology building in the northwest corner of the campus along Hearst Avenue.

I watched part of the Sproul Plaza demonstration and march that fell during my lunch hour. An array of speakers focused on placing the campus protests in the context of national efforts to stop budget cuts, protect labor rights, and reverse growing economic inequality in the United States.

I arrived when Professor of Geography Dick Walker was speaking. “This is not a pay for play institution”, he told the crowd. “It is a public institution.” 

“If high administrators and high faculty don’t think their salaries are good enough, let them go somewhere else”, he said, drawing some of the loudest applause of the mid-day. “We have to restore our public purpose.”

“This is a political question. It is not going to be solved by a technical fix. It ‘s not going to be solved by a political fix.” 

“You are absolutely the moral compass of this institution”, he told the crowd, that appeared to be largely students. “It’s always been the students who have led the way. You have to do it again.”  

“Defend the great idea of public education”, Walker concluded. 

There were perhaps 300-400 people who were part of the rally or were standing on the fringes watching. Sign-carrying protestors formed a line across the Savio Steps in front of Sproul Hall. “Stop the war on students and workers”, “Chop from the top”, “It’s easier to buy a gun than to pay for my education”, “Say No to ‘Cost Effective’,” and “Dare to struggle, Don’t be afraid,” read some of the hand-lettered signs. 

UC Police watched from the edges of Sproul Plaza, but stayed back from the steps. One woman in the crowd showed me a blue and gold card police officers had been handing out; it promulgated a series of protest rules, ranging from “Free expression is encouraged but must not, interfere with the University operation, teaching and other’s rights to expression and may not damage/impede University property”, to “People may not…climb on or rappel from University buildings or trees…” to “Do not grab, rattle, lean on, move or otherwise disturb physical barricades or barricade tape.” 

“Physical resistance and assaultive behavior will not be tolerated and will be prosecuted”, the card warned. 

“These protests are not the problem. They are the beginning of the solution”, said the next rally speaker, a Kaiser nurse, who tied the campus demonstrations in with local labor struggles; nurses were out on strike at East Bay hospitals the same day. 

“The UC system was built on a fundamental principle of access to higher education regardless of income”, he said. “Like Kaiser, this institution seems to have lost its core values.” 

“The message you have at UC Berkeley is you are not alone.” “You must be steadfast in your determination to organized.” “You are engaged in a struggle which is a nationwide attack on workers from the Right”, he concluded. 

“Your cause is righteous.” 

“What we’re facing right now in the UC campus is a systemic issue”, said undergraduate Gabriel Cortez. “I want to keep the excitement going, this excitement for community solidarity on the UC campus.” 

He read a poem around the theme of protest. “Protest like you can’t call in sick…Protest like that Cal Dining T-shirt isn’t a fashion statement…protest like you’re willing to shatter your apathy and use the splinters for picket signs…” 

“Protest like this is your birthday song…” 

Another speaker called out to the passing students who eddied around the ragged back edge of the crowd. “All you people walking by, if you think that a lucrative career is going to save you from paying almost $30,000 a year for a public education…” 

“This is a problem that we hold in common,” said a woman who was introducing speakers. “We’re under attack by a single entity, that is wealth for wealth’s sake.” 

Molly Noble, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, told the crowd about the protests that grew in that state as a Republican governor and legislature cut budgets and labor rights. “This is a moment that teaches everyone”, she said. “This is your school, and this is our country. We have the power to decide.” 

The final speaker, student Andrea Barrera, said, “I am here on my own behalf to say I’ve had enough of the fee increases, layoffs, departmental cuts…” “It is clear that the people who are in control (of the University) now have no idea what they are doing. We should take control.” 

Some of the sign-carriers on the steps had signs indicating they were from San Francisco State University. As the last speakers were talking, a new group filed across the back of the steps. Numbering about fifteen, they had cloths or scarves tied around their faces.  

They all carried vertical signs similar in shape to police officer riot shields, colorfully emblazoned with book titles, from “Limits to Capital” and James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time”, to Ursula Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed”, and Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”.  

As the march through campus got underway, this group formed a tight line across the front of the crowd. This was a new tactic; usually campus protest marches are led with a cloth or paper banner carried by two people. This march front made a fairly effective simulacrum of an advancing police line; people ahead stepped aside, because the “shields” were held edge to edge, forming a near solid wall. 

The march went north through Sather Gate and Dwinelle Plaza, pausing briefly in front of California Hall, with police officers in ones and threes flanking it. The marchers turned down between California Hall and Moffitt Undergraduate Library and I turned back. 

I did not count the numbers of marchers, but the group was smaller than the crowd at Sproul Plaza, probably under 200 individuals. 

Later in the afternoon some of the demonstrators occupied classrooms at Tolman Hall. Tolman is one of the two academic buildings closest to the residence of Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. 

The Daily Californian website has been providing a running account of events there on its live blog .  

As of about 8:00 pm on Thursday night the blog reported one incident of police using pepper spray, and one protester arrested. 

According to the Daily Cal: 

“As Tolman Hall's closing time -- 9:00 p.m. -- drew closer, protesters decided to leave the building. Around the closing time, scuffles occurred between the UCPD officers and protesters outside and inside the building. A protester was arrested inside the building and carried away by his arms and legs.” 

The protest is expected to resume at 10:00 this morning.

Commentary on the 9/11 Anniversary wasn't confined to the news pages and editorial section of our daily papers. It also flew smack into the middle of the Sunday comics. The various ways America's mainstream cartoonists addressed the anniversary tells us something about how the nation continues to process the trauma of that day. In most cases, the response was a retreat into unquestioning patriotism; in other cases, there was simply a sense of fatigue; in a few rare instances, there were surprising expressions of dissent. 

The San Francisco Chronicle set the tone in the September 11 Sunday comics by booting Doonesbury off its traditional keystone perch at the top of Page One. In its place, the Chron ran a large, single-panel from Blondie titled: "Never Forget." 

Blondie 

Sunday's 9/11 Blondie showed the Bumstead family, their neighbors and supporting characters gathered around an American flag flying on a pole in a suburban front yard. In the background, the mailman and Dag's greasy-spoon cook are saluting (indicating they once served in uniform) while everyone else holds their hands over their hearts — including Dagwood's boss, J.P. Dithers (clearly a draft-dodging, Capitalist chicken-hawk, like Dick Cheney). Many of the faces in the crowd wear expressions of sadness and incomprehension. Dagwood and the kids look stunned and empty-headed. Blondie, unaccountably, has her hands clasped in delight, as if she's looking at someone's adorable baby. The only other character wearing a smile is the Bumstead's dog, Daisy. (Perhaps she's admiring the pole.) 

The overall message reeks of Orwellian Doublethink, where "Never Forget" is actually understood to mean "Don't Try to Remember" and "Don't Ask Questions." 

Doonesbury 

The first line in Sunday's Doonesbury is "Don't turn it on, please." BD, the football-coach/amputee-war-vet turns his back on the TV coverage and reflects: "If you were there, you don't need to be reminded of what happened. We get to relive it every night. Go see 'Cowboys and Aliens' instead. Something that makes sense." 

Zits 

Jeremy's parents have wrapped him up in a python-like group-hug. They look reverential; he looks uncomfortable. He asks impatiently: "Do we have to do this EVERY September 11^th?" 

Wizard of Id 

Rodney and the King are floating towards the castle in a hot-air balloon. Rodney speaks admiringly of "Patriot's Day," where citizens gather "in schools, parks, community centers, places of worship" and, most importantly in "our hearts." The last panel shows the King's usually disrespectful rabble greeting him, not with stones, but with up-thrust candles. A flag flies at half-staff in the distance. 

Hagar the Horrible 

Hagar's son, Hamlet, asks: "Dad, what is a hero?" The red-bearded Viking explains that a hero is "loyal," "brave" (illustrated by Hagar's daughter Honi fighting a dragon) and "puts others first." And where are heroes found? "You can always find them in your heart and your memory," Hagar replies as he walks toward a sunset over a closing line that reads: "Remember our heroes! 9-11." 

Sally Forth 

Ted is sprawled on a sofa with Sally resting her head in his lap. They barely speak. "Quiet day," Sally says. They reach out and hold hands. "Sad day," they agree. And, in the last panel they simply say: "I love you, Ted." "I love you, too, Sal." 

Baby Blues 

The MacPhersons stand solemnly around baby Wren, who has assembled two mini-Twin Towers with wooden building blocks. No one speaks. 

Rhymes with Orange 

A simple line below the joke reads: "Remembering September 11 on the Tenth Anniversary." 

Lio 

Lio and his father hold hands, standing against a solid black background with the words: "A toast to the memory of those who were lost ten years ago today.…" Lio is holding a mug of root-beer. His father is grasping a can of beer. 

Curtis 

Ray Billingsley offers up the Official Line as Curtis' father rolls out the clichés: "It was a day that would forever change America and the world." On 9/11 "terrorists coordinated attacks on American soil in an attempt to make us cower in submission." "What they didn't count on was that from the ashes, the people of America would arise stronger than ever!" And so: "We come together on this anniversary as a people, a nation, to remember those lost, that they didn't die in vain. That we may FOREVER remember." The last panel may — or may not — be ironic. It shows the entire Wilkins clan piled onto a sofa-chair in front of a TV set, staring, unblinking at the glowing box. 

Luann 

This strip keeps it simple. The only commemoration is a small box at the bottom with two characters in firefighter garb and the message: "9-11. We all remember." 

Mutts 

At the end of his leash, Ozzie's pet mutt barks the word, "Heal." 

The Family Circus 

Little Jeffy is saying his bedtime prayers. After praying for his parents, siblings and relatives (who appear overhead in "thought balloons"), he pauses and adds another prayer. The final balloon shows a drawing of the Planet Earth 

Candorville 

Berkeley-linked Darrin Bell defiantly honors the First Amendment by taking near-heroic exception to the prevailing platitudes. He places Lemont Brown and BFF Susan Garcia on a rooftop. "What were you thinking about when you went to bed on 9/11?" Lemont asks. "I was praying I'd wake up… and it'd all be just a dream. What were you thinking…?" Lemont replies: "I was hoping we'd rise to the occasion and honor the dead, the survivors, and the heroes by failing to rebuild the Twin Towers, by curtailing our own civil liberties, by calling each other 'un-American,' by torturing prisoners, mocking the French, invading the wrong country, and having our airports inspect kids' and old peoples' underpants." Susan's response: "I don't think sarcasm's allowed on 9/11 day." 

The Elderberries 

The elderly denizens of the retirement home find a jigsaw puzzle with the New York City skyline. "At least 11 years old," one observes. "Looks like some pieces are missin'," says another. "Well, we'll just have to rebuild with what we have, I suppose." 

Apartment 3-G 

Paul drops down on one knee and proposes to Lu Ann. The crowd begins to chant "Yes, yes, yes!" The final panel reads: "Your friends at Apartment 3-G join you in honoring the memory of September 11^th, after ten years." 

Beetle Bailey 

Beetle looks into a barrack's door and asks: "Where is everyone?" "They went to remember the victims of 9/11," says a fellow soldier who is emptying a trashcan. "I do that every day," he weeps. The rest of the strip is taken up with a drawing of smoke pouring from the Twin Towers and each of the strip's characters (including Sarge's dog) in tears. "All of us are suffering for the friends and families of those who were killed at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001." 

Barney Google 

Snuffy Smith is reading a newspaper headline about the Tenth Anniversary. In a string of touching poetry, he tells his nephew the "hole left in my heart by the victims of 9/11" is "deeper than ol' man Dowdy's pond, bigger than the rock on top of Mount Tippy-Top, tugs on you stronger than a big bass on yore fishin' pole… an' it lasts longer than ferever!!" 

Funky Winkerbean 

Two young passengers in a plane are flying into New York where their high school band is scheduled to perform at Carnegie Hall. "It doesn't really sink in," the young man says, "until you see that skyline." But the New York skyline outside the plane's window still includes the Twin Towers. The last panel is the grabber. It's ten years later, the young man is now the plane's pilot, the Twin Towers are gone, and the man's forlorn expression doesn't require words. 

Hi and Lois 

This strip stresses the positive with the message "Heroes wear many hats." Lois tells her children: "Today is a national day of service and remembrance." Each character grabs a fire hat, nurses' cap, a soldier's helmet and proclaims: "Hats off to our heroes. And remember to volunteer." 

Mallard Fillmore 

The strip's titular duck pens a pro-military note against a drawing of the burning towers: "On September 11, 2001, 11-year-old Aaron Byers' life changed forever… That we the day he decided to become a US Marine. Thank you, Aaron and all of the other boys and girls who've grown up to become our heroes." 

Arctic Circle 

Three penguins ask the question that must have confronted these comic-strip artists: "How do you pay tribute to something so monumental in a way that doesn't trialize it?" "You could try a minute's silence," says another character as he walks slowly away from his morning's work — an ice sculpture of two towers. 

Marvin 

The first panel features a US flag. The second panel shows Marvin's toy fire-engine. The last six panels show Marvin building a replica of the twin towers with colored blocks. 

Mary Worth 

Mary calls a friend in New York and leaves a message on her answering machine: "I want you to know I'm thinking of you… and that Michael's looking down from heaven, sending you love and watching over you… his dear mother!" 

Mother Goose & Grimm 

To the left, a quartet of firemen is approaching a fire hydrant to attach a hose; to the right, Grimm and a posse of other dogs. Grimm speaks: "It's the anniversary of 9/11…. Please, you first." 

Dozens of protesters are occupying Tolman Hall on the University of California at Berkeley campus today, and there has been at least one confrontation with a university police officer involving pepper spray, according to police and protest organizers. 

The protest began around noon today when hundreds of protesters gathered in Sproul Plaza to protest proposed statewide tuition hikes for the University of California system that could increase tuition by as much at 16 percent per year over four years. 

"We're protesting the radical change in the structure of the university. The tuition hikes are one very large and one very painful symptom," said Callie Maidhof, a Cal student and a spokeswoman for "Resistance Social," the coalition that organized the demonstration. 

Students then marched across campus before a large group entered Tolman Hall, the education and psychology building, Maidhof said. 

One officer was "penned in" by the protesters when they attempted to block the hall doors, and used pepper spray to escape the situation, UC police Lt. Marc DeCoulode said. 

Police estimate that there are 25 or 30 protesters in the east lobby of Tolman Hall and another 25 or 30 in a classroom there. The protesters are meeting with each other, and police were not attempting to remove them from the building as of around 2 p.m. 

"Things are fairly stable right now, the protesters are in place, we're monitoring the situation," Capt. Margo Bennett said.

Workers at Bayer’s pharmaceutical plant in Berkeley cast ballots yesterday in an election that sent the company a stinging rebuke for refusing to provide employees with job security after company officials took millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies that were supposed to protect well-paying jobs. 

By a margin of almost 4-1, workers authorized their elected negotiating committee to cancel an agreement reached three years ago with Bayer – if the company refuses to protect jobs from being outsourced 

“Workers are standing up for the community because Bayer took millions in taxpayer subsidies to protect good jobs, and now they won’t provide any assurance that those jobs won’t be sent away,” said Fred Pecker, the elected union leader from ILWU Local 6 who is helping 400 workers negotiate a new contract with Bayer. 

Bayer’s plant in Berkeley produces the highly profitable prescription drug Kogenate, which is used by hemophiliacs to improve blood clotting. Record sales of the drug totaled $1.35 billion in 2010, adding to Bayer’s total profits last year of $2.5 billion. 

Negotiations for a new contract began on July 25, 2011. Key concerns include the need for safer staffing to protect employees and ensure quality standards won’t be compromised in the plant. Also important is the need for affordable health care benefits, which have been taking a greater share of worker’s paychecks each month. Concerns over job security erupted in 2009 when Bayer threatened to outsource some of the Kogenate production to another state. Local and state officials agreed to provide Bayer with generous tax subsidies if the company would keep jobs in the community. Concern exploded again this spring when Bayer decided to close a nearby plant in Emeryville, outsourcing the 400 jobs to a foreign facility. 

“Too many companies are trying to take advantage of workers and communities during the recession,” said Pecker. “We’re asking Bayer to be more accountable to our community and taxpayers.” 

If Bayer refuses to address the community concerns about good jobs and taxpayer subsidies, workers may notify Bayer that the current agreement will be cancelled within 48 hours – opening the door for further action. 

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Editor's Note: We sometimes reprint press releases on topics of general interest, clearly labelled as such. If you have a different opinion or point of view, send it to us at opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com.

He was the unofficial "mayor of Telegraph", with a list of friends as long as his waist- length silver hair and lanky frame. Dubbed in a Planet piece, "a good samaritan" who broke up a chain-whipping in People's Park in May, he may have tried to samaritan the wrong man Tuesday. 

The mayor will be arraigned as just another perp Friday, at Manuel Wiley County Courthouse in Oakland. According to university police spokesman Lt. Marc Decaloude, the charge is likely to be "interfering with an officer, or resisting arrest or both." 

Medheads (the usual perps at the notorious Caffe Mediterraneum) tell the story from their sidewalk tables. "A cop was bicycling by when he smelled dope and stopped to check it out. The cop took one guy's license and was backing off when the mayor approached. The mayor told the officer that the officer was outside his jurisdiction and officer unexpectedly jumped the mayor, took the big guy to the ground and cuffed him. The mayor did not resist." 

That was the composite narrative from a muddle of medheads. 

Police give a different account, through Lt. Decaloude. They say the officer had asked the mayor to stay put, and stopped him when he refused to do so. They also say he resisted and interfered with an officer on a case. Decaloude likes to point out that "we don't charge; the D.A. does that." 

Medheads recall a similar incident involving the same officer and the mayor several years ago. This case was also one of interference. Good Samaritans often interfere, otherwise they wouldn't be Samaritans. Right? 

According to a booking officer at Santa Rita County jail, the mayor is being held on $5,000 bail. The mayor is homeless and with only pocket money from odd-jobs. He was recently "evicted" from a shed a few feet from the avenue. 

I am one of the friends in the the mayor's fan club. He has been a plentiful crime news source for me for years. He has broken up enough fights on Telegraph to receive his Eagle Scout badge. 

I've been wanting to feature our friend, but he always demurs. Now that he's in the can he can't object. You see, the mayor is a little shy. He often drifts away from conversations, as he fatally drifted away from the officer. He plays good samaritan not for fame and glory, but just because he's the mayor. 

The mayor likes the avenue to be well maintained, orderly. That's why what befell him makes no sense. He supports the police. I think he was joking with the officer. If he said what Medheads heard ("you're out of your jurisdiction") that would be his wry sense of humor. I can see the smile on his face as he said it. But, this wasn't my operation, as the police say. 

Perhaps all parties were having that universal bad day that bewitches our daily encounters. 

Stay tuned for updates to this story. 

 

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Ted Friedman reports on South side crime for the Planet. The mayor has contributed to some of those stories. The mayor now finds himself the story itself.

Tens of thousands of Northern and Central California nurses are striking today to protest hospitals' proposed labor concessions and other grievances that they say are unnecessary and unwarranted.

As picketing RNs in the Bay Area held rallies and marches, hospital officials said their facilities are still functional with the aid of replacement nurses and those who have crossed the picket lines in the 24-hour strike.

Nurses are striking at the region's two largest hospital chains, Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health(including Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley), and at Children's Hospital in Oakland, among other hospitals. 

Many of the estimated 23,000 workers striking today -- including those in the Sutter system -- are in the middle of contract negotiations, while Kaiser nurses walked off the job today in a sympathy strike, according to a California Nurses Association statement. 

"The picket lines are huge," CNA spokesman Charles Idelson said this morning, as thousands of nurses geared up for a march and rally at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley and a 2 p.m. rally at Mills-Peninsula Medical Center in Burlingame. 

Idelson said the RNs who are picketing today are protesting hospitals' proposed cuts to health care and retiree coverage for themselves and other hospital workers, plus restrictions on their ability to advocate for patients. 

Yet Bay Area hospital officials said this morning that there has been no major impact on operations. 

Dr. Steve O'Brien, Alta Bates' vice president of medical affairs, said that both the Oakland and Berkeley campuses are operating just as well, if not better, than usual. 

"Things are running very smoothly, we're very well-staffed," he said, noting that the replacement nurses helping to fill striking workers' shoes today are all experienced RNs, many of whom have worked at the local Sutter hospitals before.  

A number of the Sutter-affiliated hospitals' nurses also crossed the picket lines today, he said. 

Erin Goldsmith, a spokeswoman for Children's Hospital and Research Center Oakland, said that while about 700 of the hospital's nurses are California Nurses Association members, about 125 of them crossed the picket line today. 

Elective surgeries at the hospital have been postponed today, but emergency services are fully functional, she said. 

Idelson said hospitals' "long list of demands" under current contract negotiations include an attempt to roll back hard-won RN rights and to limit nurses' input regarding patient care, in addition to cutting benefits. 

O'Brien said he is puzzled by today's strike and said that Sutter's nurses are "among the highest-compensated in the country," with the average nurse there earning $136,000 yearly.  

He said Sutter nurses who want a "Cadillac (health care) plan" are being asked for the first time to contribute $14 per pay period, but that other benefits would still be fully employer-funded. 

"We're going to welcome them back when they come back -- this is a temporary thing," he said. 

LauraDixon1213p09/22/11

Some 23,000 registered nurses throughout much of the state are expected to rally during a one-day strike today in a bid for RN rights 

California Nurses Association officials said yesterday that nurses would hold a walkout at 34 Northern and Central California hospitals to protest a range of issues, including restrictions on nurses' rights to speak out for patients and cuts in nurses' and other hospital workers' health care and retiree coverage. 

The strike will affect the Bay Area's biggest hospital chains, Sutter and Kaiser, plus Children's Hospital Oakland. 

Picketing was slated to begin at 7 a.m. today, and will continue throughout the day, with the largest turnout expected at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland and Mills-Peninsula Medical Center in Burlingame. 

Speaking on behalf of many striking nurses in a statement, Children's Hospital RN Martha Kuhl said these hospitals "are taking advantage of the economic times and trying to roll back improvements we have won over many years." 

Meanwhile, Children's Hospital officials called the strike "irresponsible and misguided" and pledged to keep the hospital open during the planned walkout by contracting with replacement nurses. 

Many of the RNs set to take part in the strike are in the midst of ongoing contract negotiations with their employers, hospital officials said. 

"The CNA leadership is out-of-touch with changes occurring throughout the country related to wages and healthcare benefits, and out of touch with the fact that Children's (Hospital) is financially strained," said Nancy Shibata, the hospital's chief nursing officer, in a statement. 

For a full list of the 34 hospitals where nurses plan to strike, head to http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/pages/860/.  

LauraDixon0747p09/21/11

The thirty grieving friends who attended Gina Sasso's 50th birthday party Friday were greeted at the door by Gina's three-year old "granddaughter," who gleefully announced, "it's Gina's birthday; it's Gina's birthday." Sasso died May 25 of complications of pneumonia. But "she" returned from the grave to appear later at the party. 

Sasso, a beloved People's Park and Disability worker, left a loyal group of friends, colleagues, 231 Face Book "friends," and one reporter. Her husband of twenty-one years said that as the daughter of alcoholics, Gina had mastered the art of the sunny quip; "always light and airy." 

At the Friday night birthday party—to have been Gina's 50th—Michael Delacour, Sasso's husband of twenty-one years, delivered a rambling, but mesmerizing eulogy in which he recounted his early romance with Sasso. Delacour had seemed shaken days earlier at the Caffe Mediterraneum after getting an angry call from Sasso's mother, and said he'd been having difficulty sleeping. 

Growing increasingly agitated and grief-stricken at the party, Delacour displayed Sasso's ashes in a wooden box. He lifted a plastic bag containing her fine ashes from the box, and held it, pausing, above his head—before dropping the ashes angrily to the floor. 

Kneeling, and in tears, encircling the bag of ashes in his enormous hands, he stated directly, "this is Gina. (pause) This is my wife, Gina." 

Later, a party of fifteen reconvened at Sasso and Delacour's favorite spot in Emeryville ("Gina's People's Beach") to scatter ashes. 

Her death is yet another Southside crime story. It was treated as such by the police and a doctor whose specialty, reportedly, is autopsy reports in unexplained deaths. 

The possible homicide suspects include a dog, a masseur, Michael Delacour, a three- year-old child (her "granddaughter"), her brother and sisters, her former employer (Easy Does It), Michael Diehl, (Sasso"s co-worker at B.O.S.S), the medical system, Facebook. Gina herself, tobacco, and even though its a stretch, this reporter. 

It would take an Agatha Christie to sort this out. The Planet's Sasso crime scene investigation was the main topic of conversation at a dinner Sunday night at Tai San Chinese restaurant, on lower Telegraph Avenue with Michael Delacour, Michael Diehl, and this reporter. 

THE CRIME SUSPECTS: 

A dog. This dog may have contributed to Gina's death, according to Delacour, by head-butting her in the the ribs in bed while she struggled with pneumonia for a week. 

The masseur may have contributed to Sasso's death, with a violent massage. Delacour spoke of blood pooling in Gina's body from the dog's head-butting, and the massage which left her in pain. 

The 3 year old grandchild, whom Sasso and Delacour were regularly caring for, kicked Gina in bed at night when she was ill. 

HER BROTHER-IN-LAW AND SISTER AS SUSPECTS: 

According to Delacour the two were attending the brother-in-law's concert in Berkeley four days before Sasso's death and could have stopped by. The sister, Alice Carter, did stop by four days before Sasso's death, Carter told me in May, but was unsuccessful in convincing Sasso to go to the hospital—despite the fact Sasso was having difficulty breathing. Delacour has said he wishes her sister had "thrown her in the car and taken her to the hospital." 

FACE BOOK SUSPECTED: 

Gina had 231 followers at FB some of them from around the world, who were unavailable to her in her hour of need, according to Delacour. Gina spent a lot of time on FB, especially after losing her job, according to Delacour, "but none of these friends were there for her when she needed them." 

Michael Diehl, a community organizer at B.O.S.S noticed that she had not been around but didn’t follow up. 

THE MEDICAL SYSTEM, AND HER FORMER EMPLOYERS AS SUSPECTS: 

Sasso lost her health insurance when fired from her nine-year post as executive director for Easy Does It, a Berkeley 24-hr. emergency care service for the disabled. Lacking health coverage, Sasso believed she would be excessively billed if she went to the emergency room. Her loss of employment at Easy Does It, may have disrupted her treatment for an auto-immune disorder, which was listed as a contributory cause of death in the coroner's autopsy report. 

HER LAST DAYS: 

Sasso and Delacour were hounded by neighbors, who, according to Delacour cared more for a dog than for Gina. They tried to get the couple to give up the dog, who was disturbing them. The situation added to Sasso's stress while she struggled with her auto-immune disorder and pneumonia. 

Sasso complained of pain in the last 3 or 4 days of her life, according to Delacour. 

Sasso was treating herself with antibiotics and Chinese herbs provided by her best friend. She was also taking medicine for an auto-immune disorder, according to Delacour. 

Michael Diehl told of attending, with Sasso, a church engaged in homeless outreach, where Gina knelt and prayed—a few weeks before she died—with the minister, as tears flowed down her cheeks. "It was like she knew she was dying," said Diehl. 

Delacour and Sasso distrusted the medical system, fearing that either they would be billed for medical intervention they could not afford-or worse—slip through the triage system and wait hours for admission, according to Delacour. 

Gina had successfully kicked a drug habit but she couldn’t kick nicotine, according to Delacour. (Her autopsy report describes her as a chronic smoker). And the night before her death she was smoking on the deck of her apartment, according to Delacour. 

An argument over Sasso's smoking ensued on her apartment deck that night. According to Delacour, that argument caused a "distance" in their relationship when he needed to be tending to her needs. 

Delacour was considered a suspect: accused by the very people he had accused of neglect—her brother and sisters. On the night before Sasso was driven to Highland Hospital by delacour, Delacour took their granddaughter, for whom they were caring, to a birthday party, for which Sasso's family blames him. 

This reporter, least and last, is the final suspect; like Diehl, I noticed she was missing from the Park which she attended regularly and like Diehl did not follow up. 

THE AUTOPSY REPORT, DISTRIBUTED AT SASSO'S BIRTHDAY PARTY, EXONERATES EVERYONE: 

Even though exonerated, the suspects continue to confess their guilt. Her death was officially declared from “natural causes," even though most of her survivors believe that the cause was anything but natural. 

The autopsy report identifies cause of death as shock from a puncture wound to an artery when blood was drained by needle from an area between the chest wall and the lungs, according to Dr. Tim Lawlor, a retired emergency room doctor, who reviewed the coroner's report. According to Lawlor, the likelihood of this happening is "one in a million." 

The autopsy report states that Sasso gave her permission for the procedure. But Delacour claims his wife told him at the hospital that she didn’t consider the procedure necessary. 

The first police officer on the scene at Highland Hospital Wednesday wrote that cause of death was: "bacterial infection in her her lungs due to an auto-immune disorder that was never diagnosed." 

Dr. Lawlor speculates that her auto-immune disorder may have weakened her resistance to infection and pneumonia. 

As we left the restaurant, Delacour asked me why I was doing the piece and I said it was a great story story with a kid, a dog, a masseur, family feuds, and a death "that didn't have to happen," according to Sasso's sister, Alice Cooper. 

I'm still unsure who or what was to blame for her death. 

WE ALL KILLED SASSO: 

Still, there's plenty of blame to go around—real and imagined. Ultimately, we all killed Gina Sasso as we bumble forward with our Berkeley lives—neglecting each other's needs. 

What would Gina have thought killed her? She agreed with Delacour, he says, blaming the system—health system, and the entire eroding U.S. social support system, in which social networking media, like Facebook, and Twitter take the place of family and friends. 

"MEDICAL SUMMARY: 

"Bacterial infection due to an undiagnosed auto-immune disorder. The decedent underwent a lifesaving medical procedure that was unsuccessful. The risks were known to the decedent, and she was aware she may not live without the procedure. A CT scan later revealed blood in the decedent's chest which may or may have not have been due to the procedure." 

 

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Ted Friedman backgrounds South side crime for the Planet. Get updates on his upcoming stories and more background at berkboy@twitter.com.

This year’s Berkeley Indigenous People’s Day Pow Wow, on Saturday, October 8, is dedicated to the memory of Mark Gorrell who, with his wife Nancy, for two decades worked for the rights of native people and all people, and made profound contributions to the origin, celebration, and meaning of Indigenous Peoples Day, but now has walked on. 

This will be the 19^th celebration of the annual pow wow in Berkeley, always held on the weekend closest to the anniversary of the beginning of the European arrival in the Americas, formerly called Columbus Day. 

The pow wow is a community coming together, a traditional celebration of shared culture and values, respect for the Earth, sustainability, balance, Native culture, and brotherhood among the peoples of the world. From the first Berkeley pow wow 19 years ago, one of Mark’s annual jobs, as a trusted elder, was to handle the group finances. He was also always chosen to chalk the pow wow circle in the form of a turtle, representing Turtle Island. This was an important honor, as the circle is the spiritual center of the pow wow, representing the land and the earth, which to Native people is sacred.Turtle Island is the continent, which according to stories in many tribes, arose from the ocean during a great flood, when each of the animals dove down from the turtle’s back one by one to the bottom of the sea, brought up a handful of earth, and placed it on the turtle’s shell. 

People who knew Mark recognized his spirit. He always was an important member of the smudging circle, cleansing negative energy out of our bodies and minds, and purifying the area. We will miss his energy, smiles and long term commitment to the Indigenous Peoples Day Pow Wow, the well-being of the community and the planet. The wry humor with which Mark dealt with the world shows us that he had more than a bit of Coyote in him. Many Native tribes and nations tell stories about Coyote, who was a trickster and at the same time a very powerful creator. 

Mark and Nancy had been key members of Resistance 500, the group that in 1991 brought the idea of Indigenous Peoples Day to the Berkeley City Council to replace Columbus Day. Until that time it was not widely known that Columbus was not only an explorer, but a military leader who led the attack on Native people, invented European imperialism in the Americas, began slavery in the New World and the transatlantic slave trade, took personal leadership in the genocide of the Taino Indian nation, and organized the enslavement of the survivors in mines and plantations. 

The idea of replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day was proclaimed in 1990by representatives of 120 Native nations and human rights activists at the First Continental Conference on 500 Years of Indian Resistance in Quito, Ecuador. Upon return from the conference, participants and others began organizing in their communities. Native people of Northern California organized the Bay Area Indian Alliance, which joined in a broad coalition with non-Native people to coordinate 1992 activities with Indigenous leadership, called Resistance 500. The Bay Area had been chosen by the U. S. Congress as the national focus for the planned Quincentenary Jubilee celebration, with replicas of Columbus’s ships scheduled to sail into the Golden Gate in a grand climax (eventually canceled because of widespread opposition). The Berkeley Resistance 500 Task Force, set up by the City Council, proposed replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day, and in October, 1991, the City Council unanimously declared that Indigenous Peoples Day would be commemorated annually. The Berkeley Pow Wow quickly became a local tradition. 

This year’s head woman dancer is Aurora Mamea (Blackfeet); head man dancer, Larry Harrison (Navajo) ; head gourd dancer, Earl Naconie (Kiowa). The M.C. will be Randy Pico (Luiseno) and the arena director, Henry Johnson (Paiute). The host northern drum will be All Nations; the host southern drum, Southern Brothers. The pow wow coordinator is Gino Barichello (Mvskoke) and the vendors coordinator is Hallie Frazer. 

Here is one story told about Coyote, the trickster, in a version from the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma. It reveals a bit about Mark and the way he dealt with the world. 

In the beginning, death did not exist. Everyone stayed alive until there were so many people that there was hardly any room left. A council was held to determine what to do. One man arose and said that it would be good to have the people die and be gone for a little while, and then to return. As soon as he sat down Coyote jumped up and said no, that will not solve the problem, if people return soon there will be not enough food or room for our grandchildren to live on earth. The others objected, saying that there would be no happiness in the world if their loved ones died forever. All except Coyote decided to have the people die for a little while, and then to come back to life. The medicine men built a large grass house facing east. The next time someone died, they assembled in the medicine house and sang for the spirit of the dead. A whirlwind blew from the west, circled the grass house, entered through the east, and from the wind stepped a handsome young man. All of the people rejoiced except Coyote. The next time someone died Coyote hurried to the grass house and quietly sat by the door as the others sang. When he heard the whirlwind coming he suddenly shut the door. The spirit in the whirlwind passed by. The people were very angry, and chased Coyote away, and since then he has had to run from one place to another. But ever since then the door has been shut, and Coyote’s trick preserved the world for all the future generations. 

This year’s pow wow will take place on Saturday, October 8 at Berkeley, Civic Center Park, Allston Way at MLK Way, 10 am to 6 pm. Native crafts and foods, and raffles all day. Exhibition dancing, featuring Native California Pomo dancers, will begin at 10 am; gourd dancing at 11 am. Grand Entry will be at 12 noon; contest dancing all afternoon, and closing ceremony at 6 pm. 

Celebrate with us in honor of all our ancestors, the people continuing the spirit today, future generations, Mark, and Coyote. 

 

Two University of California at Berkeley graduates who have been detained in Iran on espionage charges for more than two years were finally released today, according to their families.

Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, and a third UC Berkeley graduate, Sarah Shourd, were arrested on July 31, 2009, after embarking on a hike in Iraq's Kurdistan region near the Iranian border.

Iran accused all three of them of espionage and last month Bauer and Fattal were sentenced to eight years in prison. 

But the hikers and their families said they aren't spies but instead were detained after they accidentally crossed an unmarked border into Iran. 

Iran released Shourd, 32, who is engaged to Bauer, last September because she was in poor health. Shourd announced in May that she would not return to Iran for a trial because she is suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Shourd and family members of Bauer and Fattal greeted the two men in Muscat, Oman, when they arrived there after being released and flown out of Iran, according to a statement issued by the three families. 

The families said, "Today can only be described as the best day of our lives. We have waited for nearly 26 months for this moment and the joy and relief we feel at Shane and Josh's long-awaited freedom knows no bounds." 

They said, "We now all want nothing more than to wrap Shane and Josh in our arms, catch up on two lost years and make a new beginning, for them and for all of us." 

The families thanked the Sultan of Oman, Qaboos bin Said Al Said of Oman and his envoy Dr. Salem Al Ismaily, for their roles in securing the release of Bauer and Fattal. 

They also thanked the hikers' lawyer, Masoud Shafii, and the Swiss Ambassador to Iran, Livia Leu Agosti. The Swiss Embassy in Iran acted as a liaison between the U.S. and Iran because the two countries don't have diplomatic relations. 

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said in a statement, "It is so wonderful that Shane and Josh are finally coming home to be reunited with their loved ones. But I deeply regret that their release has taken so long. Shane and Josh have been forced to pay too great a price by the Iranian government." 

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group, issued a statement today welcoming the release of the pair but said the U.S. government should now "address the issue of Iranian citizens detained in the U.S. with the same spirit of compassion that resulted in the release of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal."

Iran's official Press TV has reported that two U.S. hikers who have been detained in Iran since 2009 were released early this morning.  

The two University of California at Berkeley graduates who have been detained in Iran on espionage charges for more than two years were reportedly released around 4:30 a.m. PST. 

The state TV's website said in a statement released by Iran's Judiciary, an appeals court agreed to reduce the detention sentences of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, and release them on $500,000 bail each.  

Bauer, Fattal, and a third UC Berkeley graduate, Sarah Shourd, were arrested on July 31, 2009, after embarking on a hike in Iraq's Kurdistan region near the Iranian border.  

Iran has accused them of espionage, but the hikers and their families say they aren't spies but instead were detained after they accidentally crossed an unmarked border into Iran.  

Iran released Shourd, 32, who is engaged to Bauer, last September because she was in poor health.  

The Swiss Embassy represents U.S. interests in Iran and has been acting as an intermediary, according to U.S. State Department officials.

In another step to privatize Berkeley's 75 occupied public housing town-homes, billionaire Stephen M. Ross, CEO and founder of The Related Companies, and 95% owner of the Miami Dolphins, is in talks with the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) to buy Berkeley's occupied public housing units, through one of his companies. 

The BHA has entered into an exclusive negotiating rights agreement with billionaire Ross and his company known as The Related Companies of California, LLC, after the BHA's joint finance and feasibility subcommittee recommended that his company should be chosen to buy Berkeley's 75 public housing units. As of September 8, currently 66 units of the 75 units of Berkeley's public housing are still occupied. 

According to Forbes as of March 2011, 69-70 year old Stephen M. Ross is worth around $3.4 billion, and has made his fortune in real estate, is married with 4 children, and has lost around $1.6 billion in net worth during the past few years because of the crumbling real estate market. Ross resides in luxury at 956 5th Ave., in New York City. 

As recent as September 8, Tia Ingram, Executive Director of the BHA, directed the members of the Berkeley Housing Authority Board to approve the recommendations to authorize the Executive Director to enter into an exclusive negotiating rights agreement (ENRA) with The Related Companies of California, LLC, for the transfer of Berkeley's 75 public housing units to the company owned by the billionaire, Stephen M. Ross. 

BHA's Ingram, wants the ENRA to last a period of 90 days, with the possibility of a 30 day extension, to negotiate the terms of the Disposition and Development Agreement to transfer the 75 public housing units, and to designate the BHA's joint Finance/Feasibility Subcommittee as the lead to work with BHA staff during the negotiations. 

If billionaire Ross and The Related Companies gets their hands on Berkeley's public housing units, the city of Berkeley may end up subsidizing the billionaire and his company out of the city's Housing Trust Fund in the effort to renovate and rehabilitate the public housing units, but the majority of funds needed to renovate the buildings will have to be raised by the Related company. 

When asked if the BHA has another developer interested in buying Berkeley's public housing units if the negotiations breakdown, BHA's Project Manager, Kathleen Sims said, "The BHA is in negotiation with The Related Companies of California, and until those negotiations are over I cannot say more about the next step the BHA will pursue with it's public housing units if the negotiations fail. I think that finding someone to renovate and maintain the public housing units as HUD has ordered, is a good thing for Berkeley." 

Berkeley has long been known as a bastion of liberal causes and the progressive movement, and it is obscene gesture to many in the community that Berkeley's public housing units may end up in the hands of a billionaire and his for-profit corporation, and that the billionaire and his company may be subsidized with funds from the city's Housing Trust Fund. 

Former Berkeley Rent Board Commissioner, Eleanor Walden said, "The BHA has now fallen into lockstep with people like Dick Cheney and Haliburton, if this contract is not transparent or competitive. I am appalled at the record of the BHA during the past few years which has contributed to the erosion of public housing." 

Though established during 1966, in recent years the BHA has spent numerous years listed as a Troubled agency. The BHA owns and manages 75 public housing units, administers around 1,939 subsidized housing Section 8 voucher contracts, and filed papers with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Dec. 29, 2009, to dispose of it's public housing units. The approval by HUD to dispose of and sell Berkeley's 75 public housing units occurred on Dec. 22, 2010. 

As recent as May 2, 2011, the BHA released a Request For Proposals (RFP), in an effort to find one or more so-called nonprofit housing developers, or for-profit developers willing to buy Berkeley's mostly occupied 75 - three and four bedroom townhouse units, located throughout the City of Berkeley, on 15 parcels. 

Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule@yahoo.com

Four hundred workers at the Bayer Pharmaceutical plant in Berkeley, California are asking the company to honor promises made two years ago when executives accepted taxpayer subsidies in exchange for providing good-paying jobs.

Workers have been talking with the company since July 25, 2011, seeking guarantees that the company won’t get rid of good-paying jobs after getting a taxpayer bailout. Community concerns increased this spring when Bayer announced it was closing a nearby plant in Emeryville because they were outsourcing 400 jobs to a lower-cost facility overseas.

“It’s wrong for companies to take subsidies, promise good jobs to the community, then outsource those jobs after they’ve taken so much from taxpayers,” said Donal Mahon, a former Bayer veteran employee who is now helping workers negotiate a contract to protect good jobs and secure safer staffing levels at the Berkeley plant. 

Bayer reported profits of nearly $2 billion dollars last year, based in part on $1.35 billion in sales of the drug Kogenate which is manufactured in Berkeley. 

“It just seems like Bayer and so many other companies are trying to take advantage of workers and communities during the recession,” said Mahon. “We’re trying to hold them accountable on behalf of everyone in the community who depends on good jobs in this area.” 

If Bayer refuses to offer any job protection, workers will evaluate a range of options aimed at encouraging the company to be more accountable to the community.

The first two replica historic urns to grace the Thousand Oaks subdivision were dedicated before an appreciative crowd in Berkeley’s Great Stoneface Park on Saturday, September 10, 2011. 

“This has been long in the making,” said project co-coordinator Elizabeth Sklut, standing next to Trish Hawthorne, her collaborator. “Trish and I began the project in two-hundred…” Sklut said, to considerable laughter, before correcting herself with a smile, to “two thousand and three. And frankly, we were skeptical about its success.” 

“It has sometimes seemed to Elizabeth and me that the project has taken a century to complete”, added Hawthorne, the historian of the neighborhood.  

“It’s rare on the occasion of a 100^th birthday to be able to do more than offer congratulations”, Hawthorne said. “Restoring a youthful feature is usually not an option. Our neighborhood’s centennial, however, provided the opportunity to recreate some long lost features—the new urns we celebrate today.” 

The measure of success stood behind the two, a massive ornamental urn on a stepped concrete pedestal downhill from one of the iconic boulders of Thousand Oaks in the half-acre park. The second replica urn stands a block away at the intersection of Yosemite Road and The Alameda. 

More than twenty urns originally graced the neighborhood. “The masses of trees and flowers planted in the parkings, the placement of monumental cement urns on every corner, and the additional of ornamental benches, all contributed to civic beauty”, Hawthorne wrote in a Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association brochure for a tour of the neighborhood several years ago. 

“The era was a progressive one, and one way to progress toward a better life in the public arena was through beautification of public areas.” 

Mark Daniels, the landscape designer employed by developer John Spring to lay out the neighborhood a century ago, curved the streets to fit the natural topography, and preserved the picturesque boulders and rock outcroppings in small public parks and the gardens of the newly built houses, including his own, just a stone’s toss from the urn dedication site. 

Views framed the iconic urns on many corners and street edges in the district, combining with the rocks and gnarled live oaks to make the neighborhood look like a scene from a painting by Maxfield Parrish. New houses were constructed, filling in the vacant lots, for about a quarter century.  

Over the years the original urns were damaged, weathered, and ultimately removed, until there was only one left on the corner of Indian Trail and The Alameda. 

Sklut and Hawthorne credited a $7,200 grant from the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund with helping to jumpstart the effort to recreate the urns a few years ago. They also thanked UC campus landscape architect Jim Horner for partnering with the project. “This project would never have happened without Jim’s involvement”, Hawthorne said. “He was with us every step of the way.” 

Beyond the UC grant “our fundraising was done solely through the Thousand Oaks Association Newsletter”, Sklut said. Each issue carried an update on the urn project, and “we have received more than 170 checks, large and small, from every street and several businesses on Solano.” 

The co-coordinators ran through a long list of supporters of the project, including City of Berkeley staff. “We really benefitted from the City people who helped us generously and graciously with whatever we asked”, Sklut said, crediting Diane Aikenhead of the Department of Public Works in particular for helping to get project approvals. 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli arranged a fee waiver for the urns, Sklut said, and Professor Kurt Cuffey and scholar Gray Brechin of the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley were also partners in the Chancellor’s Grant process. 

A number of members of the project team were invited to stand in front of the urn to receive crowd applause. They included Sarita Camille Waite, the sculptor who designed the replica urns—as well as the bear cubs at the reconstructed fountain at The Circle on Marin Avenue—contractors Michael McCutcheon and Jim Duvall who had fabricated and installed the replicas, and designer Michael Casey. 

The Berkeley Historical Plaque Project arranged the fabrication of a pedestal plaque on the history of Thousand Oaks that was installed the same week and unveiled across a path from the Great Stoneface Park urn. The Berkeley Path Wanderers and City parks staff cleaned the area in preparation for the installation and dedication.  

Hawthorne said that when the urns were lifted into place on August 30, “it was amazing to see the reaction immediately…people with smiles” passing by. 

“The designers of the urns knew the lasting power of creating something beautiful for all to enjoy”, she added. “Such things create a community identity, a sense of place, and refresh our spirits.” 

“A century later, we respond to the urns as our earlier neighbors must have done– with pleasure and the recognition that this is right. Such experiences make us feel connected to one another and stretch us to be our best selves.” 

“We thank the creators of the urns for their vision, and we thank all of you for your help in reaffirming that vision 100 years later”, Hawthorne concluded. “Now we can once again enjoy more of these handsome works of civic art.” 

“Please take pride in our neighborhood, and the spirit of Thousand Oaks,” Sklut added. 

“We officially dedicate these new urns to the City of Berkeley, in the spirit of those who saw Berkeley as the Athens of the West and built for the generations to come”, said Hawthorne.  

Jill Martinucci, representing Councilmember Capitelli, and Pam Gray, the current chair of the Parks and Recreation Commission, formally accepted the urns. 

“I want to personally thank Elizabeth and Trish who have shown tremendous vision, grace and, in this town, tenacity in all kinds of challenges to see this through. Thank you so much!” Martinucci said. 

‘There’s a very small handful of things that we as Berkeleyites can actually agree on, is that we have a real shared love of our parks”, said Pam Gray. “What a gift it has been to have this donation…of these beautiful pieces of civic art.” 

The crowd numbered a hundred or more. After the re-dedication ceremony most adjourned to the nearby Mark Daniels home where owner John Harris had lent the garden for a celebration party.  

Cookies in the shape of urns had been prepared by “neighborhood bakers” Sklut said, and were quickly consumed along with lemonade and wine, as visitors perused a display on Thousand Oaks and Mark Daniels put together by Harris. 

(Steven Finacom is a founding member of the Berkeley Historical Plaque Project.) 

The eternal paradox about what is commonly called journalism is why so many people who commit it manage not to see what’s going on before their eyes, even as a reasonable number of others, in and out of journalism, do.

Ever wonder about what’s happening in the global economy? Well, here it is, a summary which could fit on the back of an envelope, and it’s even perversely funny:

“Quarterly GDP data don’t, on the whole, tend to make the person studying them laugh out loud. The most recent set, however, are an exception, despite the fact that the general picture is of unrelieved and spreading economic gloom. Instead of the surge of rebounding growth which historically accompanies successful exit from a recession, we have the UK’s disappointing 0.2 per cent growth, the US’s anaemic 0.3 per cent and the glum eurozone average figure of 0.2 per cent. That number includes the surprising and alarming German 0.1 per cent, the desperately poor French 0 per cent and then, wait for it, the agreeably frisky Belgian 0.7 per cent. Why is that, if you’ve been following the story, laugh-aloud funny? Because Belgium doesn’t have a government. Thanks to political stalemate in Brussels, it hasn’t had one for 15 months. No government means none of the stuff all the other governments are doing: no cuts and no ‘austerity’ packages. In the absence of anyone with a mandate to slash and burn, Belgian public sector spending is puttering along much as it always was; hence the continuing growth of their economy. It turns out that from the economic point of view, in the current crisis, no government is better than any government – any existing government.”

(From an opinion article by John Lanchester in a recent London Review of Books.)

That paragraph alone is worth column inch after column inch of sententious pieces in the American press attempting to convey what the hell the U.S. Congress is up to—yes, even in the New York Times, most of whose staffers appear not to read what Professor Paul Krugman writes on their own op-ed page. We’d be better off without this current Congress, wouldn’t we, so why not just say so? This is not an endorsement, by the way, of the Tea Party anti-government ideology, just a glum statement of observable fact. 

And why, why, was it so hard for the muckety mucks in American journalism to see that the invasion of Iraq was insane? Here’s how Bill Keller, New York Times one-time executive editor and sometime columnist, phrased the question in his recent embarrassing apologia in the Times Sunday magazine: 

“The question is really two questions: Knowing what we know now, with the glorious advantage of hindsight, was it a mistake to invade and occupy Iraq? And knowing what we knew then, were we wrong to support the war?” 

The answer to the first question is so obvious it’s not worth discussing, but so is the answer to the second one. It’s Yes, in both cases. Or as my grandchildren might say rudely, No Duh! 

My friend Ruth Rosen noted recently in these pages that Keller confessed in his piece that supporters of the invasion were “exclusively a boys' club…a little drugged by testosterone.” But I think that’s a little facile. For one thing, there’s Judith Miller, she of the non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction. 

For another, when my whole extended family of 10 or so including babes in arms marched down Market Street on a bright spring day in a vain effort to derail the invasion, the male members of the family (including one ex-NYT reporter) were right there, as were many other male friends. Blaming stupidity on gender, tempting though it is, isn’t enough. 

What I’d really like to know is why most of the conventional press (what we used to call derisively the “newsies” when I was managing political campaigns in the 60s and 70s) is so often the last to get the news. Why did we in the Bay Area see clearly from Day 1 how badly the Iraq boondoggle would turn out, and they didn’t? This kind of question frequently occupied my mind during the ten or so years when my associates and I in Ann Arbor tried to convey the problems with that era’s war, the one in Vietnam. 

The myth of press objectivity, which first surfaced in the 1920s as a ploy to lure advertisers, has largely gone by the wayside as the Internet age has added many new voices to the process of telling stories. These voices don’t have the purported authority of the magisterial newspaper, but often they reveal information that the conventional press just doesn’t have. 

All of this has been in my mind for the past year as we’ve been working on the transition from relatively conventional periodic print publication to whatever it is that we’ve got now. One thing that’s become abundantly clear is that opinionated pieces, particularly those buttressed with a few externally verifiable facts, are much more informative than “impartial” reporting, especially in the local context. 

After living in Berkeley for such a long time, I pretty much know what’s going on, and if I miss something someone is sure to volunteer to fill me in on the many back stories which lurk around the borders of normal news. 

Here’s an example of the kind of back story which might be missed: the new apartment building now under construction on the southeast corner of Ashby and Telegraph was featured on the Berkeleyside website not long ago. The plain-vanilla story, devoid of attitude, prompted many reader comments, 75 and counting, many outraged that the city had granted numerous variances for the project, but no real explanation of why this might be. 

A recent comment: 

“a Parking lot entrance/exit ON ASHBY, JUST ABOVE TELEGRAPH ??? Somebody got away with some kind of hogwash to push that through... and I'm somebody who supports much of this sort of development... THAT particular bit of POOR DESIGN will cost us all dearly- accidents, horns, aggravation, etc...NO DOUBT ABOUT IT... wow.” 

My own preference is for more formal discourse, but this reader has a point, and it’s a public benefit to provide him with a forum to make it in, particularly since I’m not volunteering to do it myself. 

And that back story I mentioned? It surfaced in none of the 75 comments that I could determine. The attorney for the project developer, not mentioned in story or comments, is City of Berkeley Planning Commission Chair Harry Pollack. Some of the “hogwash” might be connected to that factoid. Or not. 

Another relevant factoid about another story did surface in reader response to another Berkeleyside story: Berkeley’s staff Transportation Manager is also the mayor of Albany, setting the stage for who knows what kind of conflict of interest. Does it matter? Maybe. 

After a generation of almost no coverage of Berkeley news by the conventional media, we are now blessed with several respectable sources of information. Berkeleyside is a commercial site which aims to be more than just a blog, though it uses blog software. Readers often add useful information to staff stories. Articles are heavy on lifestyle content and short on analysis, but frequently interesting. The proprietors have “partnered” with many bigger enterprises in the style pioneered by high-tech corporations, so their content might pop up anywhere, including the Chronicle, the online Bay Citizen and even the New York Times. 

(The Bay Citizen, launched with money from Warren Hellman and some of his rich friends, might be hard up for cash these days, since their staffers or perhaps interns have recently been seen asking for contributions at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market.) 

The Bay Area News Group empire has often assigned a reporter to Berkeley stories, but BANG is now in the process of re-organizing its outlets (and laying off news staff). It’s not clear where these stories will be found on a regular basis, but they’re pretty decent if you can find them. 

And Berkeley now has a Patch, a local online outpost of the far-flung Huffington Post/AOL conglomerate. It’s capable of doing useful pieces too: see today’s log (puzzlingly in reverse chronological order) of a Berkeley City Council meeting called to deal with Safeway’s plans to build a megabox on the corner of College and Claremont. Just be careful you don’t get the Berkeley New Jersey Patch by mistake—there are little Patches everywhere. 

Even the Chronicle occasionally has a good Berkeley piece, often of course lifted from local outlets. The cleaned-up East Bay Express has also been doing the occasional Berkeley story. 

All this brouhaha about little Berkeley has suggested to me that with just the two of us holding down the fort here we don’t need to work quite so hard these days. Our main goal has always been to let Berkeleyans know what’s coming down before it lands on them, and it still is, so we appreciate the help from our colleagues at other publications. Another clichéd mission statement is “to print the news and raise hell”, and with help of others on the first part of that slogan we feel freer to concentrate on the second part. 

Because of our financial woes almost all of our stories are written by volunteers who share our goal of supporting the people’s right to know what’s going on. They have opinions on most of the topics they cover, and they’re free to include them as long as opinion is clearly identified as such. We also appreciate the increasing number of strictly opinion pieces we’ve been getting. Often they are structured as comments on news found elsewhere, which is fine as long as links to the original sources are offered. 

This week I’ve shifted gears to better reflect the kind of contributions we’ve been getting. My options are limited by the software I’ve inherited, but I’ve changed what I can. Instead of doing a big Wednesday roundup issue, I’ve posted whatever’s in hand as soon as it comes in, on a daily basis with a new issue date just about every day. 

This means that you should really go to berkeleydailyplanet.com every day if you can. Some days there might be just one story, on others several. If you miss these daily issues you can always find them by clicking back with the “Previous Issue” button on the upper left side of the site—as far back as you want, to see what has gone before. 

I hope this schedule will be better for the many readers who have complained that the big issues require too much scrolling down the page, and that they often don’t get to the bottom. I hope it will be easier for me, too. I’m not getting any younger. 

One more thing: for technical reasons I can’t add comments after each story, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea anyhow, judging by the garbage that appears on the Chronicle’s sfgate.com. But please do let us know what you think by writing, as always, to opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com 

 

Under the new Planet schedule, we start entering each day's news every morning in a new issue. After that, new articles are added to the issue all day long.

To find out what happened yesterday and in the last seven days, click on "The Week" button to find links to all articles posted in the past week. The "Full Text" button makes it possible to scroll back through a week's worth of complete articles.  

Of course, the "Previous Issue" button still works if you want to look back day by day. Other buttons on that line (Opinion, Columnists, News, Arts & Events) let you scroll back through a full week of links by category.

If you haven't looked at berkeleydailyplanet.com for a few days, you might be surprised to find that for the past week we've been launching a new "issue" almost daily, on an irregular basis as copy is submitted. One benefit of this plan is that you can read our sometimes lengthy, sometimes challenging pieces thoroughly on the day we put them online. Several readers have told us that the long, long Wednesday issues can be too much of a good thing, so that they never get around to reading everything.

As always, you can read previous issues, including the several which have appeared this week, by clicking backwards using the "Previous Issue" button on the top left side of the page.

And as you read these pieces, you should always be aware that comments long and short can be submitted to opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com. Long ones will be posted as "commentaries", short ones grouped under Letters. We do require you to sign your real name unless you can give us a good reason for believing that real, serious harm would come to you if you do so. 

We value your opinions. 

Let us know what you think of this new plan. 

 

 

If you haven't looked at berkeleydailyplanet.com for a few days, you might be surprised to find that for the past week we've been launching a new "issue" almost daily, on an irregular basis as copy is submitted. One benefit of this plan is that you can read our sometimes lengthy, sometimes challenging pieces thoroughly on the day we put them online. Several readers have told us that the long, long Wednesday issues can be too much of a good thing, so that they never get around to reading everything.

As always, you can read previous issues, including the several which have appeared this week, by clicking backwards using the "Previous Issue" button on the top left side of the page.

Here are some easy links to get to this week’s issues, if you haven't yet tried the "previous" button.:

9-20-11

9-18-11

9-17-11

9-16-11


And as you read these pieces, you should always be aware that comments long and short can be submitted to opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com. Long ones will be posted as "commentaries", short ones grouped under Letters. We do require you to sign your real name unless you can give us a good reason for believing that real, serious harm would come to you if you do so. 

We value your opinions. 

Let us know what you think of this new plan. 

 

 

If you haven't looked at berkeleydailyplanet.com for a few days, you might be surprised to find that for the past week we've been launching a new "issue" almost daily, on an irregular basis as copy is submitted. One benefit of this plan is that you can read our sometimes lengthy, sometimes challenging pieces thoroughly on the day we put them online. Several readers have told us that the long, long Wednesday issues can be too much of a good thing, so that they never get around to reading everything.

As always, you can read previous issues, including the several which have appeared this week, by clicking backwards using the "Previous Issue" button on the top left side of the page.

And as you read these pieces, you should always be aware that comments long and short can be submitted to opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com. Long ones will be posted as "commentaries", short ones grouped under Letters. We do require you to sign your real name unless you can give us a good reason for believing that real, serious harm would come to you if you do so. 

We value your opinions. 

Here are some easy links to get to this week’s issues, if you haven't yet tried the "previous" button.: 

9-18-11 

9-17-11 

9-16-11 

Let us know what you think of this new plan. 

 

 

A bonus contribution from regular columnist Conn Hallinan has inspired us to move to a new form of daily publication. Instead of doing a weekly roundup issue on Wednesdays, as we've done for about a year, we're going to create a new "issue" as soon as we have something new to post, including comments of all kinds. If you only check out the Planet infrequently, you'll be able to see what you've missed since your last visit by clicking the "Previous Issue" button at the top of the page as many times as you need to get back to what you last saw. Since we started this practice, there have been three "new issues". Try clicking back through the "previous issue" button to see them--it's not hard. 

To comment on this change or on anything else, just write us by clicking on opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com.

A bonus contribution from regular columnist Conn Hallinan has inspired us to move to a new form of daily publication. Instead of doing a weekly roundup issue on Wednesdays, as we've done for about a year, we're going to create a new "issue" as soon as we have something new to post, including comments of all kinds. If you only check out the Planet infrequently, you'll be able to see what you've missed since your last visit by clicking the "Previous Issue" button at the top of the page as many times as you need to get back to what you last saw. To comment on this change or on anything else, just write us by clicking on opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com.

 

Dan O'Neill

 

 

Joseph Young

 

Conn Hallinan's Article 

I would add "the domino effect" to Mr. Hallinan's lists of war phrases: "If Vietnam falls to the communists, all of Southeast Asia will fall." I was a U.S. Army officer stationed in Saigon during the 1968 Tet Offensive mentioned in the article. In 2006, I returned to Vietnam with my wife for a visit. (We also visited Cambodia and Laos.) Each of our Vietnamese guides asked if this was our first trip to Vietnam. I said I was here during the war. Our Saigon guide told us that he was in the South Vietnam army and was stationed with the U.S. Marines in Danang. After the U.S defeat, he tried twice to escape, but was caught both times. He spent 2-1/2 years in prison. Now he is an independent tour guide. He then proceeded to point out all the sites of the U.S. occupation, most of which were demolished torn to build office buildings and housing. Our Hue/Hoi An guide asked me if I had left any children behind. A bit of an indelicate question, especially in front of my wife. I said no. Later we learned that he would have offered to assist in finding these children if I had said yes. Our Hanoi/Halong Bay guide told us her father was in the North Vietnamese army and lost his leg in a landmine explosion. He still suffers pain. It seems a lot of Americans, French, and Australians come back to the scene of our collective misadventures. Vietnam even offers tours to important war sites, such as the DMZ, the Cu Chi tunnels, and the so called Hanoi Hilton where Senator Bill McCain spent seven years. And no, all of Southeast Asia did not fall after our defeat. 

Ralph E. Stone

The world's most powerful computer was given a friendly name, "Watson." Sherlock Holmes' assistant, Alexander Graham Bell's assistant, it's a helpful name. 

Watson was introduced to the public as a friendly entertainment. It beat the best human player in "Jeopardy," a friendlier game than chess. Friendly. Helpful. Entertaining. 

Now, the Watson computer is being used by the WellPoint health insurance company to determine how much health care to grant to each of its customers. This machine will determine who gets medical coverage, how much, and who doesn't. Who lives and who dies. 

So how does this machine work? It is programmed to consider a host of factors to diagnose patients' disease, then it can determine which patients will be covered. Factors like cost and probability of recovery will be calculated, and balanced against the imperative that WellPoint makes a profit. The owners of the company can have the computer reduce the amount of coverage and thereby guarantee increased profit for themselves. If the reduction is done gradually, no one will know, no one will object. A few more people will die a bit younger than before. The average age for life expectancy drops a little. Some people live longer, so its not a hard-line execution. But gradually, this machine will enable a few to become very, very rich by reducing the health and life of everyone else. It's one more weapon in the billionaires' class warfare. 

We've heard Sarah Palin and other Republican hyenas scream against imaginary "death panels" to discredit President Obama's health insurance reform. Now a private company has a machine that is programmed to run a death panel. Where are the screamers now? Bought off by the company? Will selected beneficiaries get health coverage no matter what happens? 

Watson is a death panel machine, being used by a profit making company to harvest the health of its customers. Soon, every health insurance company will be using a Watson. We need health insurance regulation now, more than ever. 

---

Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2011
WellPoint's New Hire. What Is Watson?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903532804576564600781798420.html

Los Angeles Times, September 13, 2011
WellPoint to use famed IBM supercomputer
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/13/business/la-fi-ibm-wellpoint-20110913

Last November 16, 2010, almost 11 months ago, City Auditor Ann-Marie Hogan issued a report “Employee Benefits: Tough Decisions Ahead” that concluded it was critical that Berkeley manage its liabilities to ensure long-term fiscal stability. As part of the report, Hogan requested that the City Manager report back on or before September 27, 2011 on the adoption status of her recommendations and no later than September 2012 on full implementation status of her recommendations. 

Hogan’s report addressed the City’s employee benefit costs and resultant unfunded liabilities, and her most crucial recommendation was that the City ”Reduce today’s expenses and tomorrow’s liabilities.” She also recommended that the City increase transparency on financial matters, and that it “Clearly communicate costs and liabilities to Council and the public.” 

Hogan’s report provided an apt view of the City’s current financial problem. Specifically, it presented the unfunded employee benefit liability at more than $250 million. It also made plain that in 2016, just five years from now, the City will be required to pay CalPERS close to $41 million as its share of payments to Berkeley retirees. Every day that these excesses and liabilities are not resolved, our City’s financial situation becomes more perilous. 

Hogan’s report also described a few overly generous personnel policies, such as the accumulation of sick leave benefits and payment to employees at the end of their tenure for a portion of their sick leave benefits. The financial consequences of these policies are significant. In 2009, the City paid out $1.47 million to employees leaving the City for sick leave, vacation and other benefits. 

In light of our city’s serious financial situation, it was shocking to learn recently that the response to the City Auditor’s Report will be delayed until at least January 2012 – about 14 months after the publication of the City Auditor’s report. This delay is particularly disturbing considering that five out of the six union contracts are now under negotiation since they are due to expire in June 2012. And it means that Berkeley citizens cannot vet the response to the City Auditor’s report in time to have bearing on the contract negotiations – which is unacceptable. 

Rather than increasing transparency on the issue of its unfunded liabilities, the City Manager’s office is becoming a black hole of non-response. All this from a City Manager who received a hefty raise from City Council just two years ago; the Council agreed to the raise not long before Hogan’s report revealed the extent of the City’s financial crisis. 

Already, other cities in the Bay Area are grappling with similar issues related to escalating personnel costs: San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose to list a few. By watching other cities address these matters, we can learn that the solution will not be an easy one. In fact, in November, the citizens of San Francisco will be going to the polls to vote on competing ballot propositions. It may be messy, but at least citizens are being involved in the decision making process. 

Yes, here in Berkeley, a series of workshops have been scheduled by the Council to address a variety of topics. But a closer inspection of the agenda reveals that the issues raised by Hogan’s report won’t be discussed, at least in part, until the December workshops – again too late. 

The purpose of the Opinion is to encourage all Berkeley citizens to oppose this high-handed conduct by the City Manager’s office, and to encourage the City to embrace the reality of its current financial situation. 

(Jim Fousekis is a 40-year resident of Berkeley, a retired attorney and motivated citizen. He is a supporter of a number of Berkeley institutions, including the Center for Independent Living and the Berkeley Public Education Foundation and an active Democrat, and recently became involved with Berkeley Budget SOS – a community group committed to transparency in financial matters. He can be reached at berkeleybudgetsos@gmail.com.) 

Berkeleyside is reporting on an idea put forward by Jesse Arreguin to impose a fee on vacant retail store fronts. They write:

"Arreguin thinks that Berkeley could minimize the number of vacant storefronts by charging landlords a fee when buildings lie fallow for an extended period of time. He will ask the City Council tonight to send a directive to the city manager’s office to study the issue."

As Arreguin seems to know, a simple "vacancy tax" would be illegal under California law. Municipalities may impose fees only for the actual cost of services or facilities provided by the City specifically to that property owner on account of the vacancy. The idea of a straightforward penalty for not renting out a vacant spot has been dreamed of time and again in many cities, and it always stalls on this basic point. Vacancy is a "by right" use which municipalities are prohibited from penalizing. 

Penalties for actual blight, which is not the same thing as a well maintained vacant space, are fine. Penalties because of higher numbers of service calls are fine. Penalties simply for being vacant aren't. 

That's presumably why Arreguin is suggesting a "vacancy registration fee" - a model that has been used in other states with laws similar to California's. In theory, it could work something like this (details may vary but this is the gist): 

The city makes a finding that, in general, vacant storefronts are more likely than others to accumulate code violations (such as graffiti, weeds, broken windows) and higher numbers of service calls to the police, etc. The City has an interest in addressing the code violations that pertain to actual blight and in recovering the costs of service calls necessitated by the vacancy. 

Therefore, the city establishes a policy to step up code enforcement on those properties with more frequent inspections and so forth. 

For that purpose, the city must maintain a list of such properties and use more staff hours to inspect and enforce. 

The fee can nominally cover those extra expenses. For example, if once a month an inspector comes around and writes up violations for graffiti and such, the fee can cover the cost of those inspections and the staff time needed to process the citation. If there are legitimate service calls that can reasonably be attributed to the vacancy, the City can use fees to recover those costs. 

One reason that this end around might run into legal problems is that the city's finding that the vacant properties are a greater source of code violations and service calls must be supported by facts. Otherwise, property owners could argue in court that the City is fibbing and trying to impose an unlawful vacancy penalty -- in effect a shakedown by the city to pay for unnecessary staff hours. 

Another legal problem is that the fees charged must actually reasonably correspond to the expenses the City incurs doing the extra code enforcement. Property owners can challenge fees which are unreasonably high -- courts can order the fees to be lowered. 

Assuming that the City makes its findings, that they hold up in court, and that the fees are set to a legally justified level, there are still practical problems: 

Unless the City is, in fact, spending hundreds of dollars per month per vacant property on reasonable things, the fees will be low -- perhaps too low to provide any incentive to property owners to change. 

Conversely, if the fees are justifiably high enough, property owners have an incentive to populate vacancies with placeholder tenants that don't necessarily contribute in any significant way to the local economy. In this way, the only practical outcome might be new businesses whose ultimate function is to turn on the lights during business hours and perhaps maintain a window display. (Aside: in Berkeley, you'd think, people could get very creative about such placeholder businesses. Perhaps this would be good policy.) 

Proposing a "vacancy registration fee" can, however, win political props for a politician, even if no fee is ultimately imposed. Arreguin's action here submits the idea for consideration by City staff. That makes him look good even if the idea dies there or if staff comes back with a negative recommendation. 

In their article about a proposed vacancy fee for retail spaces, Berkeleyside presents some insights from Michael Korman of Korman and Ng. They write:

"Those kinds of businesses don’t exist in Berkeley. Instead, most of the retail space for rent is in older buildings where the space tends to be very deep. The stores were designed that way because decades ago store owners needed a lot of storage space in the back to keep their goods. Nowadays, store owners don’t need a store 50 feet deep because they can get goods delivered overnight, said Korman. They mostly just want the six feet of window space fronting the street. But they still have to pay for the larger and deeper space."

Mr. Korman has brilliantly cut to the heart of the matter, and this is a good starting point for developing public policy. To his insight about the changed nature of retail we can add observations about the changing nature of high tech businesses and culture businesses, and the restrictions imposed by Berkeley's zoning of commercial districts:

A 50 foot deep space in a desirable urban commercial district may no longer be suitable for typical retail use, but it would be ideal as an office space for many kinds of Internet-based high tech companies. Companies that run web sites or develop "apps" for smart phones start comfortably in spaces of this size and some can stay that size for long periods of time. They need space for desks and chairs and a network connection. Preferably, because these businesses often seek to attract young professionals, these offices should be located in stimulating urban environments - like Berkeley. The catch is that in our retail districts, zoning rules typically don't allow retail spaces to be converted to use by businesses that don't maintain a storefront open to the public. 

On the other hand, as the experience of San Francisco has shown, there is pent up demand for new forms of cultural space in urban environments: unconventional galleries and performance spaces, for example. The catch is that without financial support, cultural businesses are difficult to make viable in high rent districts. 

The two modes of use, offices for young urban professionals and exciting cultural spaces in an urban environment, are complementary. Cultural businesses make a location more attractive to high tech start-ups. High tech start-ups provide a core constituency for new cultural experiments. 

Rather than trying to find sketchy ways to penalize owners for vacancies, perhaps public policy would be better served by trying to enable a careful adjustment to zoning, and a new business development policy. 

Picture a 50 foot deep retail space, now vacant. In the back (which need not be walled off), what used to be for inventory storage can be converted to office use. In the front, the lobbies of these new ventures, space can be sublet to cultural businesses. 

There has been much clamor by some to convert our West Berkeley industrial zone to office park use with the hope of attracting and retaining start-ups. This is a bit of a pipe dream because businesses at that scale can find much less expensive space elsewhere in the Bay Area, and if shoved into West Berkeley would not directly enjoy the benefits of our urban environments. 

Perhaps it turns out that our "office park" already exists, right under our noses. It's been here all the while in the form of vacancies in our retail districts. We can zone to allow "offices in the back, culture up front". We can advertise and offer light incentives to venture capitalists and entrepreneurs -- as well as artists -- to begin to take up the offer.

New Clicking; Palestinian Statehood; My Thinking; Greek Debt 

New Clicking 

Too much clicking. I preferred the old method of adding new stuff to the top of the page. Letters and opinion can wait a week. Mix the analysis in at the top. 

Judi Sierra 

* * * 

Palestinian Statehood 

President Obama should follow through on his stated promise (made to the UN General Assembly on September 22, 2010) to usher in a Palestinian state in 2011. A US veto of the forthcoming vote to grant Statehood to the long suffering Palestinians would be an act of extreme betrayal and would further diminish US standing, credibility and influence in the Arab world. 

President Obama should heed the wise words of SEYMOUR D. REICH, the former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who stated “Mr. Netanyahu must step back from the brink. He should cast aside his far-right coalition members, form a government with moderate parties and add a freeze on settlement construction and offer to negotiate without preconditions. This would demonstrate seriousness. If he does not, the United States should put a deal on the table, and Israelis should vigorously push their government to accept it (NYT September 13).” If Obama continues to buckle to Israeli and local pressures he will only intensify the anger in the Arab world and further expose the blatant partiality towards Israel. This will endanger both Israel and the US. While our own fragile economy is drowning in a sea of red ink we can no longer afford to send welfare checks to Israel – whose standard of living, in many ways, is higher than our own. 

Jagjit Singh 

* * * 

My Thinking 

I hear a lot about how jobs will become available thanks to the magical power of those folks who are members of Congress now. But those who are in Congress now do not represent the weakest members of society. How long will it be before we see improvements for the poorest people? How long will it be before we provide opportunities so that poor people, too, can get educated and be able to own their own homes? If rainwater does not run down from the higher level to the ground, people living in the upper levels will not get the the food they need. We are all interdependent. All of us are not at once farmers, doctors, teachers, businessmen, builders. electricians or blacksmiths. The point I am trying to make is that we can't ignore the basic needs of our fellow human beings and abandon them to poverty with nothing to satisfy their basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. Sometimes I think that if people got a minimum to fill their stomachs and basic opportunity to work their outlook might change. Instead of creating trouble for others and joining anti-social gangs they may feel for a society which is caring and supportive during dark days in their lives. This new increment of trust will save us from social upheaval. We will be able to economize on money for building more prisons. So far we have tried punitive ways of obtaining safety. Let us try a supportive and caring way this time around. 

Romila Khanna 

* * * 

Greek Debt 

For most of the past decade, Greece has run up budget deficits well beyond limits set by the European Union, a group of 27 nations that allow goods and workers to cross their borders freely. When Greece fell into recession two years ago, bondholders worried they wouldn’t get their money back. To make sure they do, the EU is lending money to Greece, essentially allowing it to use new debt to pay off old debt. Greece looks like a bad bet. Its publicly held debt is more than 140 percent of its annual economic output, or gross domestic product. U.S. debt is 67 percent. Greece is a tiny player in Europe. It has a $305 billion economy, about the size of Maryland’s and 2 percent of the whole EU’s. And if it does default, it will have plenty of company. In the past 30 years, 20 European and Latin American countries have stiffed their creditors, some repeatedly. The list includes Turkey in 1982, Mexico in 1994, Russia in 1998 and Argentina in 2001. 

Most important: If Greece defaults, investors will worry that two much larger EU members, Italy and Spain, might follow. For the U.S., a European recession would come at an especially bad time. Europe buys about 20 percent of U.S. exports. And exports have been a big driver of U.S. economic growth recently. With the U.S. slowing, it can’t afford a downturn in such a crucial market. “It’s not just a country floating out there that happens to default,” says Steve H. Hanke, an economist at Johns Hopkins University. “The whole monetary union gets thrown into doubt.” 

Ted Rudow III, MA

When I received my notification of acceptance from University of California, Berkeley I cried. I called my father and he wept. There was screaming and cheering and days of telling everyone I could about my incredible good fortune. As if I had won the lottery. I mean, really, I’d been accepted into the best public university in the world. Best in the world. Me: a two-time community college drop-out. Me: the girl who drank through her junior year of high school. Me: small-town kid from Washington state who was considered a success because she hadn’t gotten pregnant or addicted to methamphetamines yet. Everyone got a phone call. “Ruby’s going to Berkeley!” There wasn’t a discussion, just working out the details so that I could get down there and start studying. My dad tapped into IRAs and life savings. We filled out all the forms we had to for the financial aid package that would double my debt within a year. It was worth it. It was Cal. I stayed up at night reading about courses I could take, surfing the internet for virtual tours of the campus. Over and over I found myself watching Mario Savio’s infamous December speech on the steps of Sproul Hall. I’d make friends and family watch, too, and explain matter-of-factly, “I’m going to stand on those steps. I’m going to go down there and changing the world.” 

Less than two months later my sister and I were driving a van down the I-5 corridor; heading to my new apartment in Oakland and to my incoming student orientation. We were still completely awestruck. When we saw the first exit for Berkeley we both screamed. I could see the Campanile on the hill for the first time in real life. My heart was pounding. “This is it, dude! This is where everything begins.” The opening speech at orientation made me cry all over again. 

My sister grabbed my arm and squeezed it tight. “Holy shit,” she silently mouthed to me as the professor told us what incredible human beings we are and how fantastically extraordinary we must be if we were accepted here. This theme was pounded into our heads over and over during the initiation process. “You are so lucky to be here. We could have had anyone and we wanted you.” We were to be grateful for this opportunity and we were to never question the authorities that brought us there. 

After the chaos of orientation was over, we decided to walk the three miles from campus to my new apartment. We left the towering white marble buildings and the yuppie-soaked sidewalks of Berkeley and made our way down the hill into Oakland. Ironic coffee shops and bookstores quickly faded out in favor of churches, liquor stores, and barred-up windows. The overwhelmingly white students of UCB disappeared and the majority population turned black. I started to feel sick, all clenched teeth and hard footsteps. “What the fuck, dude? I’m going to a school that the people who actually live here can’t afford to attend. How the hell are Oakland and Berkeley adjacent to each other and absolutely nothing alike? They did that on purpose. That is so fucked up.” 

A week later I started my first class. I was taking one class over the summer to get the swing of it and finish up my last admission requirement. It was an English class on the Black Arts Movement taught by an incredible graduate student. We read Amiri Baraka and Ishmael Reed. I fell in love with the honesty of an entire generation of people and the discussions that my professor facilitated were thought provoking and beautiful. The class had eleven other students and it was two hours of bliss, twice a week. This was what I’d come to Berkeley for. Learning about people that wanted to change the world and discussing it with the people who— in the not so distant future—would. I got a 4.0 that term. But I was still boggled by the fact that all my neighbors were black and all my classmates were white. 

The fact that even though I could ride my bike to my school, it was still so incredibly out of reach to anyone I spent my off time with. And I began to question why I was paying close to $30,000 of money I didn’t have to support an institution that is not only not helping their community, but actually cutting the benefits of the people that work there. How could I go home and talk to my neighbors, single immigrant parents who worked on the custodial staff at Cal, who weren’t getting a raise this year and were facing not being able to pay their rent. Where the hell was my money going? It wasn’t even my money. It was my debt that I was willingly taking on to support a system that is so profoundly broken. A system that continues to raise tuition and drop standards. While the vital workforce is denied their promised pay increases, a new football stadium is built. While the students drink coffee in the Free Speech Movement Café, no one mentions how nothing that influential has happened at Cal since. I came to this school because I foolishly believed that it practiced the things it preached. I came to this school because I thought that I was giving my time and money to an institution that wanted its students to succeed and genuinely believed in humanity. I came to this school on a forty-year-old premise and a romanticized idea. 

When Mario Savio stood on the steps of Sproul on December 2, 1964 he said, “There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.” The students and faculty of Cal all know this, but they do not live it. It’s the big-picture equivalent of standing on a street corner in Nikes, trying to get a petition to close sweatshops signed. Coming in, I knew that universities were corporations cleverly disguised as pinnacles for higher education where great minds would meet and build the future. I naively believed that Berkeley had to be different. Unfortunately, the school has had its reputation so well cemented that it no longer has to provide that difference. In a world where a Bachelor’s Degree is just another box that you are expected to check if you want to “succeed”, the premiere university to earn it at can let thousands of students pass through unnoticed without anyone raising an eyebrow. They can treat their employees badly. They can raise their tuition and fees in tandem with their administrator’s salary. They can put 500 students in a classroom and charge hundreds of dollars for a term’s worth of books. They can turn out a graduating class of privileged white kids that don’t understand a thing about the real world or why they are now part of the problem. I understand that this problem is not unique. I understand that the university system is inherently corrupt. I understand that the country is fundamentally broken. These are all things that I know—that Cal would never teach me, mind you. What I also understand is that being angry is not enough. That no matter how many students turn out to rallies about tuition hikes or talk about how Berkeley ought to take better care of its employees or how wrong it is that minority groups—even when they are in majority—are not presented with the same options and few will go to university we are still supporting it. We still take on the debt or hand over the cash to help this machine perpetuate this type of blatant corruption. 

So I had a choice to make. I could go through the next two years and continue to take on tens of thousands of dollars of personal debt to fuel this corrupt machine for a piece of a paper that may or may not do me any good. I could continue to put my life on hold and act as if I’m going to be able to be proud of the place I got my degree. Like I’m going to be able to hang it on a wall and go fight for human rights and social justice and not remember the employees on staff that were taken advantage of right in front of me while I got it. (Maybe even so I could get it.) I could act like the mountain of debt putting a choke-hold on me while I try to enter the professional world is really going to be worth the educational quality. Like there will be anything I got at Cal that I couldn’t get somewhere else for half the price and a quarter of the social injustice. Or I could leave. My parents raised me knowing that you vote with your dollar more often than your ballot. And I positively refuse to continue to support what the University of California system is doing. We’re here again, Mario Savio. It has become so odious that I must throw my body against the gears. It may not stop the machine, but my withdrawal most definitely won’t help it continue forward in this way. 



A relative of mine is a young fellow we call "The Professor" on account of his status as a grad student in economics. Lately The Professor has begun making his case against corporatism including but not limited to the horrible state of the world financial system.

Today news reached his mid-western school of protests on Wall Street. According the Wall Street Journal a group convened for the radical cause of "[drawing] attention to the role powerful financial matters play in damaging the U.S. economy." The protest was colorful and mildly eccentric. It was photogenic and provided a pleasant scene to amuse the bored police officers looking on. No one was harmed and no dinner reservations were lost. Attention was drawn to how the economy is powerfully financial and it matters.

The Professor wondered allowed, "Can't we do any better than this?"

From the other coast I sent word his way. Here is what I had to say:

Dear Professor,

That's pretty abstract to have much mass appeal, isn't it? Their goal is to "draw attention to the role powerful financial matters play in damaging the U.S. economy?" Man, that is some hard hitting bad-ass talk, right there. And what exactly is the credible threat of a successful protest on Wall Street -- the bad guys have to walk an extra block to catch a cab?

For the past several weeks in San Francisco protests have, for some hours during the evening commute, managed to mostly shut down one of the major BART stations. Initially, it was a demand that BART's transit police stop killing passengers and, in fact, disband. That demand stands. Then one of the protests didn't materialize but... where it was expected, BART turned off cell phone service in that station (to thwart "flash mobs"). As a consequence the next protest was especially well attended, successfully shutting down a station, with the added demand to "never do that cell phone thing again, asshats!"  

Then the next week a demand was added for "Spare the Fare Thursdays" -- free commute on Thursdays and they'll shut down a station each Monday during commute unless this demand is also met. The main BART spokesman, meanwhile, admitted to the press that turning off the cellphone service was an idea that came from his office. So, he's on leave of absence and the "group" Anonymous published some photos of this same spokesman at a swinging gay party showing off most of his (quite long!) Johnson. The San Francisco Chronicle is not even entirely taking sides ... more of an "a pox on both your houses" kind of position. The spokesman with the long schlong got back involved to help coordinate a press conference. He wrote scripts to have commuters deliver, rented $872 worth of SUV time (using BART funds) and directed staff to find people on the street who would read the scripts about how the protesters were endangering lives and keeping people away from sick grannies and causing small children to fall below average in their schoolwork. The recruitment attempt was mostly unsuccessful and the SUVs went unused - nearly a grand down the toilet. And the affair was leaked to the press corp who, with one voice, decried "not cricket you well endowed but reckless BART spokesman". 

So, the next one is set for Monday the TV says. 

Yeah, we can do better than that wall street thing. 

---

If you'd like to comment on this piece, write to opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com.

MOCHA and Eaton 

Thanks for the mocha/palestinian art article. I had no idea about this and now I'll certainly attend a viewing Sat 24 outside the museum. Also, the Eaton article on hummingbirds was super cool. I love that people can do serious research on this stuff and teach us something new. 

David Gibson

There are clearly different shades of green on the Richmond City Council.

There are those greens who believe global climate change is truly a crisis that we must address at every level of government – and quickly. Then there are those for whom the green of cannabis eclipses the more global meaning of green. And finally, there is the green of money – lots of it – including tens of thousands of dollars from the cannabis industry that has found its way into some council members’ campaign coffers.

Failing to pass the sustainable marijuana ordinance was a disappointment for me. The Richmond City Council has been “high” on marijuana for some time, paving the way for three licenses that are now in the application stage. At least a couple of Council members want to increase that to four, on the theory that if three is good, four is better. At least one councilmember touts marijuana dispensaries as veritable police substations, making areas of Richmond in the vicinity of a dispensary the safest of all.

Now, I really don’t care who smokes weed or why they do it, other than minors, but I remain skeptical about the hypocritical institutionalizing of an industry that characterizes itself as the epitome of healthy living and natural holistic medicine when it is really mostly about money – lots of it.

I introduced the “green” marijuana ordinance after reading a paper, “Energy Up in Smoke, The Carbon Footprint of Indoor Cannabis Production,” (April 5, 2011) by Evan Mills, Ph.D. a long-time energy analyst and Staff Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California. 

Mills finds that indoor Cannabis production results in energy expenditures of $5 billion each year, with electricity use equivalent to that of 2 million average U.S. homes. This corresponds to 1% of national electricity consumption or 2% of that in households. The yearly greenhouse-gas pollution (carbon dioxide, CO2 ) from the electricity plus associated transportation fuels equals that of 3 million cars. Energy costs constitute a quarter of wholesale value. In California, the top-producing state—and one of 17 states to allow cultivation for medical purposes—the practice is responsible for about 3% of all electricity use or 8% of household use. Due to higher electricity prices and cleaner fuels used to make electricity, California incurs 70% of national energy costs but only 20% of national CO2 emissions. From the perspective of individual consumers, a single Cannabis cigarette represents 2 pounds of CO2 emissions, an amount equal to running a 100-watt light bulb for 17 hours with average U.S. electricity (or 30 hours on California’s cleaner grid). Each four-by-four-foot production module doubles the electricity use of an average U.S. home and triples that of an average California home. The added electricity use is equivalent to running about 30 refrigerators. Processed Cannabis results in 3000-times its weight in CO2 emissions. For off-grid production, it requires 70 gallons of diesel fuel to produce one indoor Cannabis plant, or 140 gallons with smaller, less-efficient gasoline generators. 

The Richmond City Council has supported dozens of environmental initiatives designed to make Richmond a leader in sustainability and greenhouse gas reduction. For examples, see City of Richmond Environmental Initiatives. But when being green bumped up against the different shade of green of the marijuana industry, pot clearly prevailed at the Richmond City Council. 

For the entire report on this agenda item, see: INTRODUCE an ordinance (first reading) amending Richmond Municipal Code Section 7.102.060 (concerning the operations of Medical Marijuana Collectives) to require Collectives operating within the city to obtain their marijuana from those who grow outdoors without artificial lights, or who grow indoors using only solar-powered artificial lighting> 

Vice Mayor Butt (620-6851). Mayor McLaughlin and Jeff Ritterman supported the “green” marijuana ordinance, but it lost on a 3-1-2 vote. In another agenda item, the City Council reversed an administrative decision by the Police Department to allow an applicant who missed a deadline for an application fee to continue to compete for one of the three coveted Richmond marijuana dispensary licenses. This is when it was suggested that going to four licenses would mitigate the impact on those applicants who filed on time. 

Last year, I was the author of a measure to allow the voters to establish Richmond’s tax on medicinal marijuana sales at 10%, but the City Council knocked it back to 5%. That extra money would have hired more cops, paved streets and kept libraries open longer, but the Council was reluctant to erect too many barriers between a stoner and his medicine. At the same time, Sacramento and San Jose voters passed 10% taxes. 

 

San Jose is reducing its dispensaries from an estimated 140 to just ten, creating a ratio of about one dispensary for each 50,000 people. Richmond now allows three, a ratio of one per 34,000 people. As I said before, some council members want to increase it to one per 26,000 people. There must be a lot more sick people in Richmond than in San Jose.

The recent decision by the Obama Administration to sell $5.8 billion in arms to Taiwan is a bit of a head scratcher, rather like the hunter who goes into the woods with one bullet. Seeing a deer to his left and a turkey to his right, he shoots in the middle. It will annoy Taipei, irritate Beijing, stir up the China bashers in the U.S., and increase tensions in a region of the world that is already pretty tense. 

So what’s the point here? 

The plan would upgrade Taiwan’s 140 U.S.-made F-16 A/B jet fighters, plus supply Taipei with Blackhawk helicopters and anti-ballistic missiles. The Obama administration has more than doubled the Bush administration’s arms sales to Taiwan, and this sale would bring that figure to slightly more than $12 billion. 

Taipei had asked to buy 66 new F-16 C/Ds, but the White House turned that down, annoying the Taiwanese. “These years, China is showing stronger and stronger reaction to U.S.-Taiwan arms sales,” complained Taipei’s deputy defense minister Andrew Yang, and that has turned Americans “more wary with arms sales.” 

While PRC Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Beijing “firmly opposes the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan,” China’s reaction was generally low key, certainly more so than when a similar arms sales went through in 2008. Then Beijing canceled joint military consultation with the U.S. and put capitol-to-capitol relations into a deep freeze for many months. After a similar arms sale in 2010, Chinese military leaders went as far as to suggest that China cash in some of American’s $1.1 trillion debt to Beijing. 

While the White House can’t get bi-partisan agreement on the budget, it brought Republicans and Democrats together on this issue. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tx) have joined hands to introduce legislation demanding that the administration sell the new F-16s to Taiwan. The Taiwan Air Modernization Act cites the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which calls for providing defensive weapons to Taipei and resisting any effort by the PRC to forcibly reunite Taiwan with the mainland. 

Cornyn thundered that the decision to upgrade rather than sell was “capitulation to Communist China” and a “slap in the face to a strong ally and a long-time friend.” In language straight out of the Cold War, a Coryn-Menendez letter to Obama—signed by 13 Democrats and 23 Republicans—warned that a failure to sell the new fighter aircraft means “Taiwan will be dangerously exposed to Chinese military threats, aggression and provocation, which pose significant security implications for the United States.” 

A similar letter, signed by 181 House members, also demanded that Washington approve the sales of new F-16s. 

Tucked in amidst the “red dragon” scare rhetoric is pork: “We are deeply concerned that further delay of the decision to sell F-16s to Taiwan could result in closure of the F-16 production line,” the letter argues. Lockheed Martin, maker of the aircraft, has a plant in Cornyn’s Texas, and the company employs 750 workers in Menendez’s New Jersey. The company is the largest arms manufacturer in the world and has a formidable lobbying presence in Washington. 

In many ways the whole matter seems mired in the past, particularly the letter’s warning that Taiwan risked losing its “qualitative advantage in defensive arms.” Taipei has not had a “qualitative advantage” over the PRC in any category for the past two decades. Even the Taipei Timeswrites that “Taiwan would have at most only a few days to hold off China and get help from the outside, most likely the U.S., if they were going to stand any chance.” 

According to the Pentagon, the PRC’s fighter aircraft fleet outnumbers Taiwan’s 1,680 to 388, and many of the latter’s planes are obsolete. Besides the 140 F-16 A/Bs, Taipei’s forces include 1970 vintage F-4 Phantoms (an excellent fighter-bomber in its day, but that day is long past), 60 aging French Mirage 2000s (vintage 1982), and 130 domestically produced, but underpowered, Indigenous Defensive Fighter, the “Ching-Kuo.” 

The PRC’s fleet features Sukhoi-27 and Sukhoi-30—the latter a match for the U.S.’s premier fighter, the F-15—and China’s domestic fighter, the J-10. A J-20 stealth fighter is in the testing phase but will not be deployed until 2017. Upgrading the F-16s, or even selling Taiwan new ones, will not alter this balance. 

The PRC maintains that Taiwan is part of China (and virtually no country in the world, including the U.S., disagrees) and reserves the right to use military force if Taipei tries to establish independence. But “reserves the right” is very different than ramping up the landing craft. Indeed, China has carefully lowered nationalist rhetoric around Taiwan and cross-straits ties are warmer than they were three years ago. 

Current Chinese President Hu Jintao has pushed rapprochement with Taipei, but as the Financial Times points out, “his approach to Taiwan is not uncontested within the Chinese Communist Party,” and it notes that “the Party is also preparing to elect a new generation of leaders next year.” That new generation tends to be more nationalistic than the older generation. 

The PRC’s armed forces mirror currents in the Communist Party, with a wing that advocates a more assertive role—at least in local waters like the Taiwan Straits and South China Sea—and a more cautious wing that wants to avoid a confrontation with the U.S. 

Similar currents exist within the U.S. military establishment, although the Pentagon’s “caution” wing has recently gone silent because of all the talk about cutting military spending. Much of the recent “China threat” talk is aimed at derailing efforts to cut the huge military budget, and, to that end, generals and admirals have closed ranks behind “the dragon is coming, the dragon is coming” gang. One suspects the American hawks have counterparts among the Chinese chiefs of staff. 

The arms deal will make President’s Hu’s job more difficult, although he will probably portray the F-16 upgrade as a compromise. Of course, all bets are off if Congress throws a monkey wrench into the deal and insists on new aircraft that won’t change the military balance, but will worsen an already charged diplomatic atmosphere. 

The White House is nervous about January elections in Taiwan, which will pit the nationalist Kuomintang Party against the more independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The DPP’s leader, Tsai Ing-Wen, apparently had a recent falling out with Obama administration officials over the independence issue. One U.S. official told the Financial Times, “that while she [Tsai] understood the need ‘to avoid gratuitous provocations’ of China, it was ‘far from clear…that she and her advisors fully appreciate the depth of [Chinese] mistrust of her motives and DPP aspirations.’” 

DPP leader Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan’s president from 2000 to 2008 pushed for formal independence and cut off formal negotiations with Beijing during his administration. 

If this all seems like a terrible muddle, that’s because it is. 

On one hand Washington insists on a robust military presence on China’s doorstep, and continues to supply arms to Taiwan. These are not minor matters. If there is a confrontation between Taiwan and the PRC, and it pulls in the Americans, it will pit two nuclear powers against one another. 

The growth of the Chinese navy—Beijing got its first aircraft carrier this year, albeit one half the size of a U.S. flat top—is being portrayed in Washington as a threat to U.S. naval power in the Pacific and Indian oceans. But the PRC’s buildup is about protecting its oil and gas supplies—80 percent travel by sea—and recent history. 

The PRC is still smarting over having to back down when the U.S. sent two aircraft carrier battle groups into the Taiwan Straits in 1995 during a particularly tense standoff between Taipei and Beijing. The increase in China’s military spending dates from that confrontation, although Beijing’s budget is still only about one eighth of what the Americans spend. 

On the other hand, the White House is leaning on the DPP not to push independence and watering down the arms package to Taipei. 

Bi-polar diplomacy anyone? 

It is clear that Washington and Beijing are of two minds about their relationship. Both are riding conflicting internal political currents, and over the next decade, threading a path between cooperation and competition promises to be tricky. Arms sales accomplish little more than pushing China’s nationalist button. The jobs they create in the U.S. are marginal (and the same amount spent on civilian projects produce more employment), and the tensions they create are real. 

It is time to revisit the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, a piece of legislation that reflects a very different world than the one we live in now. 

Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com 

---30---Beijing, stir up the China bashers in the U.S., and increase tensions in a region of the world that is already pretty tense. 

So what’s the point here? 

The plan would upgrade Taiwan’s 140 U.S.-made F-16 A/B jet fighters, plus supply Taipei with Blackhawk helicopters and anti-ballistic missiles. The Obama administration has more than doubled the Bush administration’s arms sales to Taiwan, and this sale would bring that figure to slightly more than $12 billion. 

Taipei had asked to buy 66 new F-16 C/Ds, but the White House turned that down, annoying the Taiwanese. “These years, China is showing stronger and stronger reaction to U.S.-Taiwan arms sales,” complained Taipei’s deputy defense minister Andrew Yang, and that has turned Americans “more wary with arms sales.” 

While PRC Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Beijing “firmly opposes the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan,” China’s reaction was generally low key, certainly more so than when a similar arms sales went through in 2008. Then Beijing canceled joint military consultation with the U.S. and put capitol-to-capitol relations into a deep freeze for many months. After a similar arms sale in 2010, Chinese military leaders went as far as to suggest that China cash in some of American’s $1.1 trillion debt to Beijing. 

While the White House can’t get bi-partisan agreement on the budget, it brought Republicans and Democrats together on this issue. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tx) have joined hands to introduce legislation demanding that the administration sell the new F-16s to Taiwan. The Taiwan Air Modernization Act cites the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which calls for providing defensive weapons to Taipei and resisting any effort by the PRC to forcibly reunite Taiwan with the mainland. 

Cornyn thundered that the decision to upgrade rather than sell was “capitulation to Communist China” and a “slap in the face to a strong ally and a long-time friend.” In language straight out of the Cold War, a Coryn-Menendez letter to Obama—signed by 13 Democrats and 23 Republicans—warned that a failure to sell the new fighter aircraft means “Taiwan will be dangerously exposed to Chinese military threats, aggression and provocation, which pose significant security implications for the United States.” 

A similar letter, signed by 181 House members, also demanded that Washington approve the sales of new F-16s. 

Tucked in amidst the “red dragon” scare rhetoric is pork: “We are deeply concerned that further delay of the decision to sell F-16s to Taiwan could result in closure of the F-16 production line,” the letter argues. Lockheed Martin, maker of the aircraft, has a plant in Cornyn’s Texas, and the company employs 750 workers in Menendez’s New Jersey. The company is the largest arms manufacturer in the world and has a formidable lobbying presence in Washington. 

In many ways the whole matter seems mired in the past, particularly the letter’s warning that Taiwan risked losing its “qualitative advantage in defensive arms.” Taipei has not had a “qualitative advantage” over the PRC in any category for the past two decades. Even the Taipei Timeswrites that “Taiwan would have at most only a few days to hold off China and get help from the outside, most likely the U.S., if they were going to stand any chance.” 

According to the Pentagon, the PRC’s fighter aircraft fleet outnumbers Taiwan’s 1,680 to 388, and many of the latter’s planes are obsolete. Besides the 140 F-16 A/Bs, Taipei’s forces include 1970 vintage F-4 Phantoms (an excellent fighter-bomber in its day, but that day is long past), 60 aging French Mirage 2000s (vintage 1982), and 130 domestically produced, but underpowered, Indigenous Defensive Fighter, the “Ching-Kuo.” 

The PRC’s fleet features Sukhoi-27 and Sukhoi-30—the latter a match for the U.S.’s premier fighter, the F-15—and China’s domestic fighter, the J-10. A J-20 stealth fighter is in the testing phase but will not be deployed until 2017. Upgrading the F-16s, or even selling Taiwan new ones, will not alter this balance. 

The PRC maintains that Taiwan is part of China (and virtually no country in the world, including the U.S., disagrees) and reserves the right to use military force if Taipei tries to establish independence. But “reserves the right” is very different than ramping up the landing craft. Indeed, China has carefully lowered nationalist rhetoric around Taiwan and cross-straits ties are warmer than they were three years ago. 

Current Chinese President Hu Jintao has pushed rapprochement with Taipei, but as the Financial Times points out, “his approach to Taiwan is not uncontested within the Chinese Communist Party,” and it notes that “the Party is also preparing to elect a new generation of leaders next year.” That new generation tends to be more nationalistic than the older generation. 

The PRC’s armed forces mirror currents in the Communist Party, with a wing that advocates a more assertive role—at least in local waters like the Taiwan Straits and South China Sea—and a more cautious wing that wants to avoid a confrontation with the U.S. 

Similar currents exist within the U.S. military establishment, although the Pentagon’s “caution” wing has recently gone silent because of all the talk about cutting military spending. Much of the recent “China threat” talk is aimed at derailing efforts to cut the huge military budget, and, to that end, generals and admirals have closed ranks behind “the dragon is coming, the dragon is coming” gang. One suspects the American hawks have counterparts among the Chinese chiefs of staff. 

The arms deal will make President’s Hu’s job more difficult, although he will probably portray the F-16 upgrade as a compromise. Of course, all bets are off if Congress throws a monkey wrench into the deal and insists on new aircraft that won’t change the military balance, but will worsen an already charged diplomatic atmosphere. 

The White House is nervous about January elections in Taiwan, which will pit the nationalist Kuomintang Party against the more independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The DPP’s leader, Tsai Ing-Wen, apparently had a recent falling out with Obama administration officials over the independence issue. One U.S. official told the Financial Times, “that while she [Tsai] understood the need ‘to avoid gratuitous provocations’ of China, it was ‘far from clear…that she and her advisors fully appreciate the depth of [Chinese] mistrust of her motives and DPP aspirations.’” 

DPP leader Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan’s president from 2000 to 2008 pushed for formal independence and cut off formal negotiations with Beijing during his administration. 

If this all seems like a terrible muddle, that’s because it is. 

On one hand Washington insists on a robust military presence on China’s doorstep, and continues to supply arms to Taiwan. These are not minor matters. If there is a confrontation between Taiwan and the PRC, and it pulls in the Americans, it will pit two nuclear powers against one another. 

The growth of the Chinese navy—Beijing got its first aircraft carrier this year, albeit one half the size of a U.S. flat top—is being portrayed in Washington as a threat to U.S. naval power in the Pacific and Indian oceans. But the PRC’s buildup is about protecting its oil and gas supplies—80 percent travel by sea—and recent history. 

The PRC is still smarting over having to back down when the U.S. sent two aircraft carrier battle groups into the Taiwan Straits in 1995 during a particularly tense standoff between Taipei and Beijing. The increase in China’s military spending dates from that confrontation, although Beijing’s budget is still only about one eighth of what the Americans spend. 

On the other hand, the White House is leaning on the DPP not to push independence and watering down the arms package to Taipei. 

Bi-polar diplomacy anyone? 

It is clear that Washington and Beijing are of two minds about their relationship. Both are riding conflicting internal political currents, and over the next decade, threading a path between cooperation and competition promises to be tricky. Arms sales accomplish little more than pushing China’s nationalist button. The jobs they create in the U.S. are marginal (and the same amount spent on civilian projects produce more employment), and the tensions they create are real. 

It is time to revisit the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, a piece of legislation that reflects a very different world than the one we live in now. 

---

Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com 

Laura Wilcox, a 19-year old sophomore from Haverford College, was working at Nevada County's public mental health clinic during her winter break from college. On January 10, 2001, she and two other people were shot to death by Scott Harlan Thorpe, a 41-year old mental patient who resisted his family's attempt to seek treatment. Thorpe was found incompetent to stand trial and was sent to Atascadero State Hospital and was later transferred to California's Napa State Hospital. 

Laura Wilcox’s death was the impetus for passage of AB 1421 in 2002, an assisted outpatient treatment program (AOT), which has since become known as Laura’s Law. 

For the uninitiated, an AOT program allows court-ordered, intensive outpatient treatment for people with severe mental illnesses who refuse medication because their illness impairs their ability to make rational decisions. 

People with psychotic disorders who received court-ordered treatment for 180 days had significantly better outcomes than those who were given either intensive treatment alone, or a court order alone. Thus, AB 1421 provides for a 180 day period of intensive treatment under the supervision of the court. Currently AOT can only be used if a county’s board of supervisors enacts a resolution to implement and independently fund a discrete Laura’s Law program. Now, an AOT program is available statewide as a tool that can be, but is not required to be, used to efficiently treat the most problematic patients. 

A 2000 Duke University study demonstrated that people with psychotic disorders who received court-ordered treatment for 180 days had significantly better outcomes than those who were given either intensive treatment alone, or a court order alone. That's why AB 1421 incorporates these findings by providing for 180 day periods of intensive treatment under the supervision of the court. 

AB 1421 was modeled after New York's "Kendra's Law." Among the targeted hard-to-treat population, Kendra's Law resulted in 74 percent fewer homeless; 83 percent fewer arrests; 49 percent less alcohol abuse; and 48 percent less drug abuse. Assisted outpatient programs have also worked in Iowa, North Carolina, Hawaii, and Arizona. 

Fortunately, money should no longer be an issue since voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 63 in 2004, which established a one percent tax on personal income above $1 million to fund expanded health services for mentally ill children, adults, and seniors. Nothing in Proposition 63 prevents these funds from being used to implement Laura's Law. Nevada County, for example, is now using Proposition 63 funds to implement Laura's Law. 

Laura's Law has been implemented in Nevada County and Los Angeles County opted for a small pilot project of AOT. That means 56 of the 58 California counties have not enacted Laura's Law. In Nevada County, where the killings took place, the law has been fully implemented and proven so successful that the county was honored in 2010 by the California State Association of Counties. In announcing the recognition, CSAC said Nevada County offset public costs of $80,000 with savings estimated at $203,000 that otherwise would have been spent on hospitalization and incarceration of program participants. 

The death of Kelly Thomas, a homeless man with a long history of mental illness, has prompted the Orange County board of supervisors to look into Laura’s Law. San Francisco, Marin County, Santa Barbara County, and San Diego County are, or have considered, implementing it. 

We have heard much hand-wringing about what to do with the homeless -- many of whom are chronically mentally ill -- who are picked up off the streets. They may or may not be placed in a treatment facility, if one is available. Once they complete treatment, they are too often dumped back on the streets with no housing, jobs, money, or followup by a professional case manager. In a short time, these homeless are back on the street. Laura's Law could be invoked for those who refuse medication because their illness impairs their ability to make rational decisions, and utilize court-ordered outpatient treatment and provide for a 180 day case-managed followup. 

An estimated 3.6 million Americans suffer from untreated severe bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Oftentimes, they are too ill to recognize their own need for treatment AOT does not take away someone’s civil rights. Severe mental illness, not its treatment, restricts civil liberties. By assuring timely and effective intervention for the disabling medical condition of severe mental illness, AOT restores the capacity to exercise civil liberties and reduces the likelihood of the loss of liberty or life as a result of arrest, incarceration, hospitalization, victimization, suicide, and other common outcomes of non-treatment. 

While we as a society must safeguard the civil rights of the unfortunate, we also have an obligation to care for those who are unable to care for themselves. Laura's Law provides such safeguards. 

It is time for the 56 other California counties to implement Laura’s Law. 

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Editor's note: a factual error in an earlier version of this article has been corrected.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD,) the only disease among the top 10 causes of death for Americans that has no known cure or treatment, already affects an estimated 5.4 million Americans, at a cost of $183 billion a year.  

How do AD and dementia differ? Dementia is a symptom; AD is the cause of the symptom. When someone is told they have dementia, it means that they have significant memory problems as well as other cognitive difficulties, and that these problems are severe enough to get in the way of daily living. Dementia is a term that has replaced an out-of-date word, senility, to refer to cognitive changes with advanced age. AD is a disease marked by the loss of cognitive ability, generally over a period of 10-15 years, and associated with the development of abnormal tissues and protein deposits in the cerebral cortex. 

For the first time in twenty-seven years, clinical diagnostic criteria for AD dementia have been revised, and research guidelines for earlier stages of the disease have been characterized to reflect a deeper understanding of the disorder. The Diagnostic Guidelines for Alzheimer’s Disease outlines some new approaches for clinicians and provide scientists with more advanced guidelines for moving forward with research on diagnosis and treatments. In August, the Dept. of Health & Human Services appointed twelve members to a first-of-its-kind advisory council on AD charged with proposing a national strategy for dealing with the disease. They will be joined on the council by ten members from federal agencies. [The Alzheimer’s Disease Education & Referral Center (ADEAR) of the National Institute on Aging, April 2011.] 

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The World Alzheimer Report 2011, The Benefits of Early Diagnosis and Intervention, released on September 13, 2011 by Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI), shows that there are interventions that are effective in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, some of which may be more effective when started earlier, and that there is a strong economic argument in favor of earlier diagnosis and timely intervention. 

To prepare the report, ADI commissioned a team of researchers led by Prof. Martin Prince at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, to undertake the first-ever, comprehensive, systematic review of all of the evidence on early diagnosis and early intervention for dementia. Currently, the most people with dementia receive a diagnosis late in the course of the disease, if at all, resulting in a substantial “treatment gap” that greatly limits their access to valuable information, treatment, care, and support and compounds problems for all involved — patients, families, carers, communities and health systems. 

The new ADI report reveals that as many as three-quarters of the estimated 36 million people worldwide living with dementia have not been diagnosed and hence cannot benefit from treatment, information, and care. In high-income countries, only 20-50% of dementia cases are recognized and documented in primary care. In low- and middle-income countries, this proportion could be as low as 10%. 

Failure to diagnose often results from the false belief that dementia is a normal part of aging, and that nothing can be done to help. On the contrary, the new report finds that interventions can make a difference, even in the early stages of the illness. Drugs and psychological interventions for people with early-stage dementia can improve cognition, independence, and quality of life. Support and counseling for caregivers can improve mood, reduce strain and delay institutionalization of people with dementia. Apparently eighty-one year old Pat Robertson hasn’t heard, for he contends that "The person suffering Alzheimer's is gone, gone, they are gone ... I know it sounds cruel but he should divorce her and start all over again." Cruel… and quite sexist. 

Governments, concerned about the rising costs of long-term care linked to dementia, should “spend now to save later.” Based on a review of economic analyses, the report estimates that earlier diagnosis could yield net savings of up to US $10,000 per patient in high-income countries. 

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An estimated 500,000 Americans, about five percent of those with AD, have early-onset “young-onset” dementia, diagnosed before age sixty-five. Fifty-nine year old University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt has announced her diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's. She plans to continue working. Symptoms of early-onset AD are the same as for late-onset AD. Summitt had attributed her forgetfulness to side effects of a rheumatoid arthritis drug, until Mayo Clinic doctors told her she was showing mild signs of the dementia.  

Early-onset AD can run in families that have a hereditary component. Many people with Down syndrome also eventually develop the disease. But for other people, what causes AD is unknown. 

Typically, early-onset Alzheimer's progresses more quickly than late-onset Alzheimer's. It can also affect persons in their middle adult ages. For older patients, that may be 10-15 years; for younger ones, time to disability is usually around five years. Because it is relatively uncommon, people in their 40s and 50s with AD can have difficulty getting a diagnosis. Apathy and loss of interest in things once enjoyed can be one symptom, but that is sometimes mistaken for depression. 

Pre-clinical Alzheimer’srefers to early-onset AD. Policies are needed to prepare individuals and society for earlier diagnosis and high risk of AD. There is need to develop systems now, to navigate the challenges of a pre-clinical AD diagnosis. It is only a matter of time before it is possible to identify AD before the patient is ill, as has been done with cholesterol and heart disease. Given the unique nature of this disease, which strips people of their independence as the disease progresses, safeguards are needed to protect those at high risk or with a pre-clinical diagnosis. 

High blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, heart rhythm abnormalities and high cholesterol can reduce blood flow to the brain and lead to "vascular dementia," another form of progressive decline in memory and thinking skills. Research has shown that many people with AD also have vascular changes in the brain. 

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RESOURCES: 

ADEAR “Alzheimer’s Disease Fact Sheet”. National Institute on Aging's Alzheimer's Disease Education and Referral (ADEAR) Center http://www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers. 

Alzheimer's Association National Office. 225 N. Michigan Ave., Fl. 17, Chicago, IL 6060.  

Alzheimer's Association's 24/7 Helpline (800-272-3900). 

Chapter Headquarters: Northern California and Northern Nevada - 1060 La Avenida,
Mountain View, CA 94043. 650-962-8111. Office Website  

http://www.alz.org/norcal/ Email info@alznorcal.org 

Alzheimer's Reading Room. Site focuses on the disease and the art of Alzheimer's caregiving. 

Alzheimer's Services of the East Bay (ASEB). Berkeley Center Alternate Name ASEB (Alzheimer's Services of the East Bay) Address 2320 Channing Way Berkeley CA 94704 Phone 510-644-8292 Website http://www.aseb.org (website) Email info@aseb.org 

Center for Elders Independence Address 1497 Alcatraz Ave. Berkeley CA 94702 Phone 510-433-1150 Website http://cei.elders.org/ Email info@cei.elders.org 

Family Caregiver Alliance Alternate Name Family Survival Project (former name) Address 180 Montgomery St. Suite 900 San Francisco CA 94104 Phone 415-434-3388
800-445-8106 California only Website http://www.caregiver.org Email info@caregiver.com 

I CAN! I WILL! Stand Up and Speak Out about Dementia 

www.alzheimersreadingroom.com/ 

LifeLong Medical Care. Over 60 Health Center Alternate Name Over 60 Health Center Address 3260 Sacramento St. (& Alcatraz) Berkeley CA 94702 Phone 510-601-6060 Clinic
510-981-4100 Administration
510-704-6010 Member services Website http://www.lifelongmedical.org 

U.S. National Institute on Aging has information on early-onset Alzheimer's. 

UC Davis Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. http://alzheimer.ucdavis.edu/ 925-372-2485. The ADC is funded by the State of California through the Department of Public Health and by the NIH, National Institute on Aging (NIA). UC Davis has clinical centers in Sacramento and Martinez. Martinez is supported in part by the Veterans Health Administration, Martinez. 

World Alzheimer Report 2011 - Executive Summary (PDF, 36 pages, 1128KB) World Alzheimer Report 2011 (PDF, 72 pages, 1710KB) The Executive Summary highlights the main findings, and briefly describes the evidence that supports them. The full Report documents the methodology and the sources in greater detail, and includes a careful critique of the quality, the relevance and the strength of the available evidence. 

 

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NEWS 

Approximately 28% of people living with HIV in the U.S. are over age 50. It is estimated that 15% of all new HIV infections occur in people over 50. LGBT(lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) older adults living with HIV also face other risk factors, e.g. 80% of LGBT older people with HIV live alone, compared to 67% of older heterosexuals living with HIV, and HIV prevention and intervention messages ignore LGBT older people or assume that older people are not sexually active. SAGE stands for Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders. (305 Seventh Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10001). It is the country's largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBT older adults.  

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MARK YOUR CALENDAR: September and October. Call to confirm, date, time and place. Readers are welcome to share news of events that may interest boomers and seniors. Daytime, free, and Bay Area events preferred. pen136@dslextreme.com 

 

Wednesday, Sept. 28. 12 Noon. Playreaders at Central Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge @ Shattuck. 510-981-6100. Free 

Wednesday, Sept. 28. 12:15 P.M. – 1 P.M. Noon Concert Series Performing Arts - UC, B Hertz Concert Hall. University Symphony Orchestra - David Milnes, conductor. Ligeti: Lontano. Korngold: Violin Concerto, Ernest Yen, soloist. Tickets not required. 510-642-4864. 

Wednesday, Sept. 28. 1 P.M. Urquhart Memorial Concert Band conducted by Joel Toste / Cultural Events class. Mastic Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Wednesday, Sept. 28, 1:30-2:30 P.M. Alameda County Library, Albany branch. 1247 Marin Av. Great Books Discussion Group. Morrison's Song of Solomon. Facilitated discussion. Come to one meeting, or all meetings. Books are available at the Library. Parking! 510-526-3720 x 16. 

Thursday, Sept. 29. 10 A.M. Computers for Beginners. Central Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge @ Shattuck. 510-981-6100. Free. 

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Monday, Oct. 3. 6 P.M. Evening Computer Class. Central Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge. 510-981-6100. Also Oct. 17 and 24. 

Tuesday, Oct. 4. (11, 18, 25). 11 A.M. – 12 Noon. Self-Acupressure & Reflexology Class. Helen Calhoun, Certified Acupressurist. 4-week classs. $3 per session or $12 for 4 sessions. Preregistration. MastickSenior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Tuesday, Oct. 4. 1 P.M. Mastick Book Club members review The Particular 

Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Av., Alameda. 510-747-7506, 747-7510. 

Wednesday, Oct. 5. 9 A.M. – 1:30 P.M. AARP Driver Safety Refresher Course.  

Designed for motorists who are 50+, taught in one-day. To be eligible, you must have taken the standard course within the last 4 years. Preregistration required. $12 per person fee for AARP members; $14 per person fee 

for non-AARP members. MastickSenior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Wednesday, Oct. 5. 12 Noon – 1 P.M. Playreaders. Meets weekly on Wednesdays to read great plays aloud, changing parts frequently. Intended for adult participants. Central Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge. 510-981-6100. Also Oct. 12,19, and 26. 

Wednesday, Oct. 5. 12:15 P.M. – 1 P.M. Noon Concert Series Performing Arts - UC,B Hertz Concert Hall. Felicia Chen, soprano; Daniel Alley, piano. Jason Yu, piano. Tickets not required. 510-642-4864. 

Wednesday, Oct. 5. 10:30 A.M. Mastick Senior Center. 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. Balance Your Walk with the Alexander Technique. Lenka Fejt, certified teacher. This 6-part workshop on the Alexander Technique has begun. Prepaid fee of $60. 510-747-7506. Also Oct. 12. 

Wednesday, Oct. 5 - 12 Noon. Playreaders. Central Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge. 510-981-6100.. Also Oct. 12 and 19. 

Wednesday, Oct. 5. 6 P.M. – 8 P.M. Alameda County Library, Albany branch. 1247 Marin Ave. Lawyer in the Library. Free 15 minute consultation with an attorney. Sign up in person at the Reference desk or call 510-526-3720 ext. 5 during library hours. 

Thursday, Oct. 6. 10 A.M. – 1 P.M. Lavender Seniors of the East Bay’s Annual Aging in Place Symposium & Resource Fair for Older Adults. Marina Community Center, 15301 Wicks Blvd., San Leandro. Refreshments, entertainment. Free. Dan Ashbrook at 510-667-9655 Ext 1. Email dan@lavenderseniors.org. 

Thursday, Oct. 6, 12:15 P.M. – 1 P.M. West Edge Opera presents highlights from their upcoming production of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos. Central Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. 510-981-6100. 

Thursday, Oct. 6. 6 P.M. Lawyers in the Library. Berkeley Public Library South branch. 1901 Russell. 510-981-6100. Also Oct. 13. 

Mondays, Oct. 10, 17, 24. 11:10 A.M. – 1 P.M. Introduction to Video Production. Learn to use a video camera, script writing, storyboarding, basic lighting and sound to 

produce a newscast and a short documentary. No experience required. Equipment provided. Graduate to the advanced class on October 31, 1:00 P.M.-3:00 P.M. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Tuesday, Oct. 11. 1 P.M. Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) 

Marilyn Ababio and Dorothy Ridley, POLST representatives inform about POLST, a form that spells out the medical treatment you desire during the end of your life + question and answer period. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Tuesday, Oct. 11. 7 P.M. Latin American Music, with. Rafael Manriquez and Ingrid Rubis. Kensington Library, 61Arlington Avenue. Free. 510-524-3043.  

Wednesday, Oct. 12. 12:15 P.M. – 1 P.M. Noon Concert Series Performing Arts - UC,B Hertz Concert Hall. Andrea Wu, piano. Tickets not required. 510-642-4864. 

Wednesday, Oct. 12. 6:30 P.M. – 8 P.M. Drop-In Poetry Writing Workshops. Free. Albany branch of the Alameda County library, 1247 Marin Av. 510-526-3720. 

Thursday, Oct. 13. 10 A.M. Computers for Beginners. Central Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge. 510-981-6100. Also Oct. 20 and 27. 

Thursday, Oct. 13. 10:30 A.M. New Member Orientation & YOU! Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. Guided tour outlining the various activities, programs, and services, and a coupon to enjoy a complimentary lunch provided by Bay Area Community Services (BACS)! Make a reservation by visiting the Mastick Office or calling 510-747-7506. 

Saturday, Oct. 15. 11 A.M. Landlord/Tenant Counseling. Central Berkeley Public Library. 510-2090 Kittredge. 510- 981-6100. 

Monday, Oct. 17. 9:30 A.M.- 12:30 P.M. Beaded Jewelry Making. Rose O’Neill, Custom Jewelry Designer. Beads and tools will be supplied unless you would like to go “green” and redesign beads already in your possession. Limited to 10 students. $15 per person. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. (Also Mondays, Nov 21 and Dec 19.) 

Monday, Oct. 17. 2 P.M.-3:30 P.M. Queue Rolo, M.A., M.S., Museum Studies, SFSU, will present “W.A.Leidesdorff: America’s 1st Black Millionaire.” Free for OLLI and Mastick Senior Center members. MastickSenior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Tuesday, Oct. 18. 12:30 P.M. San Francisco Gray Panthers General Meeting: Program to be announced. Location: Fireside Room, Unitarian Center, 1187 Franklin St. at Geary, # 38 bus. 415-552-8800. graypanther-sf@sbcglobal.net, http://graypantherssf.igc.org/ 

Wednesday, Oct. 19. 12:15 P.M. – 1 P.M. Noon Concert Series Performing Arts - UC,B Hertz Concert Hall. University Gospel Chorus - Another Day's Journey. Tickets not required. 510-642-4864. 

Wednesday, Oct. 19. 1:30 P.M. Alameda County Library San Lorenzo branch, 395 Paseo Grande. 510-670-6283. Social Security Administration Public Affairs Specialist Mariaelena Lemus will address older adults’ questions and present information specifically for them. Program repeats at other branches through December. No reservations required. Free. Library Older Adult Services at 510-745-1491. 

Wednesday, Oct. 19. 7 P.M. – 8 P.M. The Bookeeper’s Apprentice, by Laurie R. King. Book discussion. Alameda County Library Albany Branch, 1247 Marin Av. 510-526-3720. (On Sunday, Oct. 23 @ 2 PM, the author will read and talk. Albany Community Center.)  

Thursday, Oct. 20. 6 P.M. Lawyers in the Library. Berkeley Public Library West branch. 1125 University. 510-981-6270. Also Oct. 27. 

Sunday, Oct. 23. 2 P.M. – 3 P.M. The Albany Library (1247 Marin Av.) presents Laurie King, the author of Albany Reads book, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Community Center Hall. 510-526-3720.
Mondays, Oct. 24, 26 and 31. 10A.M. – 12 Noon. Oliver Guinn, Ph.D Economics, returns to teach “Our Damaged Economy: The Financial Meltdown and Economic Inequality.” Free. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Tuesday, Oct. 25. 1 P.M. AC Transit and YOU! Representatives from United Seniors of Oakland and Alameda County will inform about the Regional Transit Connection (RTC) Discount Card Program and the Clipper Card, route changes, and the 10-year AC Transit Fare Policy. Refreshments. Free. MastickSenior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Tuesday, Oct. 25. 3 - 4 P.M. Tea and Cookies. Central Berkeley Public Library. A book club for people who want to share the books they have read. Central Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge. 510-981-6100. 

Wednesday, Oct. 26. 12:15 P.M. – 1 P.M. Noon Concert Series Performing Arts - UC,B Hertz Concert Hall. Tony Lin, piano. Tickets not required. 510-642-4864. 

Wednesday, Oct. 26. 1:30-2:30 P.M. Alameda County Library Albany branch. 1247 Marin Av. Great Books Discussion Group. Roman Fever, Edith Wharton short story. Facilitated discussion. Books available at the Library. Parking! 510-526-3720 x 16. 

Wednesday and Thursday, Oct. 26/Sacramentoand 27/South San Francisco, 2011 .  

"Dementia Care Without Drugs - A Better Approach for Long-term Care Facilities" symposia about misuse of psychotropic drugs as treatment for dementia, difficulty in managing dementia treatment, and non-pharmacological approaches to care. CANHR staff attorney Tony Chicotel presentation, "Stop Drugging Our Elders!" California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform http://www.canhr.org. 415-974-5171. Fax 415-777-2904.  

Thursday, Oct. 27. 12:30 P.M. Celebrating a birthday in October? Cake, music, 

balloons, and good cheer. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. . 510-747-7506. 

Thursday, Oct. 27 1 P.M.- 3 P.M. Fall Dance…Halloween Stomp. Come in costume 

to be eligible for “best costume award”, enjoy door prizes, and refreshments. Volunteers enter free with volunteer badge. Cost is $2.00 per person. . Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. . 510-747-7506. 

Thursday, Oct. 27 1:30 P.M. Music Appreciation with William Sturm, Volunteer Instructor. Piano recital and discussion on “The Sceptered Isle: Music of England”. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Saturday, Oct. 29. 12:15 P.M. Halloween Bingo Bash. Patrons will receive a free Halloween dauber (ink marker) compliments of Center Advisory Board and Bingo Committee. Doors open at 10:00 a.m. with the first game at 12:15 P.M. 18 years of age+ are welcome. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Av. 510-747-7506. 

 

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The works of a man, bury them under what guano-mountains and obscene owl-droppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish. What of Heroism, what of Eternal Light was in a man and his Life, is with very great exactness added to the Eternities, remains forever a new divine portion of the Sum of Things.

—Thomas Carlyle (1795—1881), prolific essayist, satirist, historian 

I’ve never read the formidable Carlyle. I know him mainly as the archetypal pain-in-the-neck husband of long-suffering Jane, the intelligent, educated, talented Victorian wife subordinated, but not subdued, as the wife of a “genius.” 

I can’t remember when or why I copied this (some years ago) probably from some essayist or reviewer who’d used it. Maybe I was feeling low: wondering if whatever I was doing was worth anything. 

Today, having outlived a lot of people: close relatives who died too young; old family and friends who worked too hard, alone and unnoticed at humble jobs; well-known, accomplished role models now totally forgotten, I read more into Carlyle’s words. I believe he meant to apply them to all people, great and obscure. Probably that was as close as Carlyle, heralding an atheistic, icon-smashing, secular age, could come to a statement of faith. Not bad. 

 

(Send the Berkeley Daily Planet a page from your own Commonplace Book)

I spent most of my life with my mind dominated by magical thinking, and this caused me to have a lot of problems. My mind seemed to be on a different wavelength than those of other people’s. Without knowing it, I had a poor grasp of reality. When I made mistakes, ones that could create bad consequences, my mind didn’t acknowledge those mistakes. The rule was that my mind had to believe that everything was always O.K., and my perceptions of the world were warped to conform to that. Partly, I lived in a world of wishful thinking. Also, I was protecting my mind from the often upsetting nature of the truth. 

A person who suffers from magical thinking may believe that if they want something, it means that they deserve it. The person doesn’t acknowledge that work must often be performed to get whatever the thing is. Instead, merely wanting a thing is enough “work” to make one believe that they deserve it. 

I haven’t read the book, “The Secret.” However, I have read books that appear to be similar, that were popular long before “The Secret” was published. These were books that promoted the belief that a person could have everything they want by telling the universe to give it to them. 

If we lived in a society in which everyone believed that wealth and success arrive from merely asking or telling the universe to give it to them, we would all perish, probably of starvation. Good things don’t come from merely wanting them. One must do the things that are required to get things that are wanted. This is unless a person has a “sugar daddy” or “sugar mama” to bestow gifts merely for the asking. 

If a person suffers from psychosis, it is important that they remain as grounded as possible, as much as possible. By grounded, I mean being connected to the five senses, to the things that are happening in the “now” moment, and to basic, common-sense truths that will keep a person out of trouble. My involvement in a couple of cult groups, one that espoused extrasensory perception, and another that promoted loving everyone and never feeling pain, were not grounding pursuits. 

It is easy for a person who already has psychotic tendencies to have beliefs that defy common wisdom. A person who suffers from psychosis is much more likely to get sucked into the unwise and esoteric belief system, whether it is that of a popular but foolish book or that of a spiritual growth group. A psychotic person could even become a cult of one person. This means that a person can coin their own strange beliefs that don’t get them anywhere. I once believed I could control traffic lights. My belief was supported whenever the traffic lights turned green. 

The human mind is designed to prove the (believed) reality of its assumptions. It is this failing in the design of the mind that makes it possible for people to fall into these erroneous sets of beliefs. In the case of a psychotic person, this tendency of the mind can be much stronger. Although I know that in the two groups I attended there were plenty of “normal” people, with jobs even, who were thoroughly immersed in the belief systems of the cult groups. This is applicable to “Christian” fanatics just as much as it is to “new age” followers. It is not necessary to have a mental health diagnosis to be delusional. Those who are delusional but who are still able to function in society may never get a diagnosis. That doesn’t make them well. 

It is important for people with mental illness to remember that there is no free lunch, except maybe the one at Loaves and Fishes. And it is important to remember that it is never too late to overcome erroneous thought and achieve basic wisdom.

Earlier this year I reported on a study out of Finland that contended that, in Europe at least, passerine (songbird) species with relatively larger brains made out better in urban areas than did smaller-brained species. Winners included corvids (crows and magpies), tits (relatives of the North American chickadees), nuthatches, and wrens. Buntings, Old World warblers, and Old Word flycatchers were among the small-brained city avoiders. 

Well, science marches on. Now there’s another report, this time from a group of German and Czech biologists, purporting to show that large-brained passerines benefited more from the fall of Communism than small-brained passerines. 

Jiri Reif and colleagues analyzed population trends for 57 species from 1991 to 2007 in the Czech Republic, the former East Germany, and, as a control, the northern portion of the former West Germany. They looked for effects of habitat, diet, climate preference, migratory strategy, and relative brain size as a proxy for cognitive ability. 

Their conclusion: larger brain size correlated with strong population increases in the Czech Republic and weaker increases in eastern Germany. As in the broader Finnish study, the corvids and tits led the pack. Northwestern Germany, though, showed no clear trend. 

If it weren’t for the national differences, I’d wonder about spurious correlations here. Corvids, with a few sad exceptions like the Hawai’ian crow, are among the most adaptable of birds. I’m not surprised that their Czech populations have grown since the Velvet Revolution. It’s likely their populations in most places have grown since Crash of 2008, or 9/11, or the cancellation of Star Trek, the original series. 

As to why those particular patterns, the others say the years since 1989 saw an increase in parks and other green spaces in urban areas and a middle-class exodus to newly built suburbs. Corvids and tits had the smarts and behavioral flexibility to exploit both city parkland and suburban habitats; less-favored birds did not. This begs the question of what all that suburban housing replaced and displaced, but give them the benefit of the doubt. Brainier birds also coped more successfully with agricultural intensification. Northwestern Germany, they argue, didn’t undergo the same economic/demographic changes as its ex-Communist neighbors, so there were no new worlds for the corvids to conquer. 

I’d like a little more context about the underlying changes. The Soviet Union and its European satellites did not have stellar environmental records. Decision makers in centrally-planned economies were just as prone to externalize environmental (and social) costs as their capitalist counterparts. But the damage they did may have been constrained by inefficiency and inertia; consider the post-Gorbachev pillage of Siberia. 

Another, older article suggests that the old regimes may at least have been good for native birds. A couple of years ago, biologists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reported that the isolation of the Eastern bloc during the Cold War led to a decline in introductions of non-native species. Only six non-European bird species became established in Eastern Europe between 1949 and 1991, versus 52 in Western Europe. The latter group had a preponderance of parrots, finches, and other pet-trade standards. 

I hope someone does a follow-up. You have to wonder if there are flocks of wild parrots in Bucharest and Sofia these days. 

 

One week after President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress and proposed the American Jobs Act, House Speaker John Boehner responded for the Republicans. Not with a plan to address the US jobs’ crisis, but with conservative talking points that indicate how difficult it will be to pass meaningful legislation.

The Problem: The two Parties disagree on the origin of the crisis. In his September 8th address Obama indicated the crisis resulted from erosion of America’s social compact: “[belief] in a country where everyone gets a fair shake and does their fair share -- where if you stepped up, did your job, and were loyal to your company, that loyalty would be rewarded with a decent salary and good benefits.”

In contrast, in his September 15th response Speaker Boehner blamed the Federal government, “there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the economy that leads to a lot of bad decisions in Washington, D.C.” “Private-sector job creators of all sizes have been… slammed by uncertainty from the constant threat of new taxes, out-of-control spending, and unnecessary regulation.” “Job creators in America are essentially on strike.”

Neither side admitted the real problem, the American economy is broken. A healthy economy depends upon steady consumption by working Americans. But starting with Ronald Reagan, Republican ideologues have assumed that rich folks buying yachts and vacation homes would catalyze the consumer economy. This didn’t happened. In 2011 average Americans aren’t consuming because they either don’t have the money or are saving it because they are fearful. Republican dogma fractured the US economy and caused massive unemployment. 

One Solution: Cut Taxes: Obama’s plan would cost $447 billion. Of this amount, tax cuts comprise more than half. $175 billion would result from cutting employee payroll taxes in half in 2012; this would affect 160 million workers and typically result in $1500 tax savings per household. Another $65 billion in tax cuts would result from cutting employer payroll taxes in half in 2012. 

Speaker Boehner didn’t reject this aspect of the President’s proposal but he minimized it: “It strikes me as odd that at a time when it’s clear that the tax code needs to be fundamentally reformed, the first instinct out of Washington is to come up with a host of new tax credits that make the tax code more complex.” Boehner trusts business to do the right thing so long as the “threat of government” is eliminated – “[Businesses] are trying to help create more jobs, but the government is getting in their way.” The speaker called for reduction in regulations, taxes, and “the spending binge in Washington.” 

Another Solution: Rehire Workers: After tax cuts, the remaining $202 billion in Obama’s plan funds reemployment programs. Of this amount slightly less than half -- $99 billion, goes for two items: infrastructure and Unemployment Insurance. Obama proposed $50 billion for “immediate investments in infrastructure.” After infrastructure, the next largest amount, $49 billion, is allocated to “reform our Unemployment Insurance system to provide greater flexibility, while ensuring 6 million people do not lose benefits.” 

Speaker Boehner chose not to address most of the President’s specific proposals and instead spoke in generalities: “…much of the talk in Washington right now is basically about more of the same. More initiatives that seem to have more to do with the next election than the next generation… initiatives that seem to be more about micromanaging economic decisions than liberating them.” “We need to liberate our economy from the shackles of Washington.” 

Boehner did comment on the infrastructure proposal: “…if we want to do it in a way that truly supports long-term economic growth and job creation, let’s link the next highway bill to an expansion of American-made energy production.” 

The Price Tag: In his September 8th speech, President Obama proposed to add the additional $447 billion to the work of the Joint Select Committee of Congress: “The agreement we passed in July… charges this Congress to come up with an additional $1.5 trillion in savings by Christmas. Tonight, I am asking you to increase that amount so that it covers the full cost of the American Jobs Act.” On September 12th, the White House said they believed the bulk of the cost of the American Jobs Act could be raised by: “limiting the itemized deductions, such as those for charitable contributions and other expenditures, that may be taken by individuals making more than $200,000 a year and families making over $250,000 a year.” Speaker Boehner rejected this notion: “Tax increases… are not a viable option for the Joint Committee.” 

The Bottom Line: The latest NEW YORK TIMES/CBS NEWS poll indicated that Americans support Obama’s jobs plan. Strong majorities favor his proposals for small business tax cuts and infrastructure investments. Nonetheless, “two-thirds of Americans from broad majorities across party lines are doubtful that Congressional Democrats and Republicans will be able to reach an agreement on a job-creation package.” 

Obama has staked out a strong position but Republicans will do everything they can to deny him a win. That’s the nature of politics in 2011. Bad news for an economy that’s been shattered by thirty years of misguided Republican policy. 

 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net 

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To comment on this column, write to opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans age 70+ have hearing loss. According to a study led by Johns Hopkins and National Institute on Aging researchers, persons of the black race seem to have a protective effect against this loss. And older or male subjects were more likely to have hearing loss or more severe hearing loss than younger or female subjects. It is believed to be the first nationally representative survey of older adults on this often ignored and under-reported condition. Past studies have strongly linked hearing loss to such other health problems as cognitive decline, dementia, and poorer physical function. . Relatively little is known about risk factors that drive hearing loss. [Feb. 28, 2011 Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences] 

Tinnitus in the elderly is prevalent and impacts quality of life. According to another research, it is associated with such treatable health conditions as otitis media, rhinosinusitis, head injury, and hypertension. Nearly 36 million Americans suffer from tinnitus or head noises. It may be an intermittent sound or an annoying continuous sound in one or both ears. These researchers found a significant difference between the prevalence of tinnitus among "young elderly" subjects aged 65-69 (6.5%), and the older (80+ years) group (41.9 %). [October 2010 Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery.] the September 17 San Francisco Chronicle carries an encouraging report of a tinnitus discovery that could lead to new ways to stop the ringing. 

Despite the overwhelming number of older adults with hearing loss, only one-fifth use hearing aids. And only 3 percent of those with mild hearing loss take advantage of these devices. 

 

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In 1932 The Man Who Played God was advertised as “a modern drama from real life.” George Arliss played Montgomery Royale, a concert pianist when a bomb explosion ends his career. He moves to New York with his sister, fiancée (played by Bette Davis), and a close friend. After abandoning thoughts of suicide, he discovers he can lipread. He spends his days observing people in the park from his apartment across the street. He learns of their problems, tries to help them anonymously, and becomes absorbed in his playing God game. I cried during the part where he supposedly lipreads a conversation during which fiancée tells some man that she loves him but cannot leave Montgomery because of his handicap. Montgomery ends their engagement, allowing her to follow her heart. 

In 1955 Hollywood did it again, this time with fewer implausible ingredients. Sincerely Yours starred Liberace as Tony Warrin – popular pianist who plays any style and has money, great clothes, penthouse overlooking Central Park, rich blond fiancée, loyal brunette secretary secretly in love with him, and a date at Carnegie Hall. On concert night, disease deafens him. He learns lipreading and, using high-powered binoculars, eavesdrops on conversations across the street in the park. When he finds people in need, he intercedes with aid. Fiancée falls in love with another man, secretary quits, doctors give him new hope. Da-dah. 

Lipreading is watching the lips to extract whatever speech information one can, whereas speechreading is watching the lips, tongue, teeth, cheeks, eyes, facial expressions, gestures, body language and anything else that gives clues as to what the other person is saying. Thus, speechreading encompasses lipreading and a lot more. 

To appreciate how difficult lipreading is and how much of the articulation of normal speech is not visible to an observer, it helps to watch an online video of a person speaking, “Human Articulators in Action.” (Simply Google that title.) When a normal person speaks, the tongue moves in at least 3 locations (tip, middle and back), and the soft palate rises and falls. All of these articulatory gestures are phonetically significant, changing the speech sound produced in important ways, but they are invisible to the lipreader. 

It has been estimated that only 30% to 40% of sounds in the English language are distinguishable in most English dialects from sight alone. The phrase "where there's life, there's hope" appears identical to "where's the lavender soap." 

Chicago Sun-Times editor and critic Henry Kisor, following meningitis as a child, became totally deaf. His autobiography title, What's That Pig Outdoors?: A Memoir of Deafness, references mis-hearing the question, "What's that big loud noise?" He uses this example to discuss the shortcomings of speechreading. “The term ‘lipreading’ itself is technically a misnomer, for the act involve much more than merely watching movements of the lips… Broken into its components, lipreading seems an almost impossible circus trick, like juggling Indian clubs while spinning a dinner plate on one’s forehead.” 

Exaggerated mouthing of words is not helpful and may in fact obscure useful clues when conversing with a speechreader. Other difficulties may include: lack of a clear view of the speaker's lips, moustaches or hands in front of the mouth, the speaker's head turned aside or away, a bright light source such as a window behind the speaker, and group discussions, especially when multiple people are talking in quick succession. 

There’s good news. People who play music all their lives, even as a hobby, suffer less hearing loss as they age than do nonmusicians. A new study reports that, while being a musician does not give a person super hearing, it does offer a protective benefit against cognitive decline in processing sounds. According to Universite de Montreal research fellow Benjamin Rich Zendel, “The age-related changes in auditory processing decline at a slower rate in musicians compared to nonmusicians,.. Think of the catch phrase ‘use it or lose it.’ They use their hearing at a much higher level than the average person.” The average musician at age 70 was able to understand speech in a noisy environment as well as an average 50-year-old non-musician. 

Depending on the degree of hearing loss, a person may be deemed hearing impaired, even disabled. A related condition is loss of balance, which can involve falling. Bathrooms are one of the most fall-prone spaces. Slippery floors, especially polished wood (as in Alta Bates Hospital and the new North Berkeley Walgreens) are also problematic. Likewise any senior/disabled housing lacking corridor railings on both sides of every floor! Friday, September 23 is National Falls Prevention Awareness Day. 

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RESOURCES 

‘Not a day goes by…’ declares lyricist Stephen Sondheim. And it’s how I feel about my California Telephone! The Deaf & Disabled Telecommunication Program is a lifesaver. When I began to lose my hearing, the audiologist handed me a signed form validating my condition and listing locations where I could get one of these gems as well as instruction in its use. Piece of cake. 

If you need an amplified phone, TTY, or other specialized telephone for your personal use, you can initiate the free and easy application process yourself. Go to ddtp.cpuc.ca.gov/ and print out an application form. Or, if you’re not into computers, request a certification form by mail or phone in your language by writing/phoning the State of California CTAP Contact Center at P.O. Box 30310 in Stockton, CA 95213 or 1-800-806-1191. Spanish: 1-800-949-5650; TTY: 1-800-806-4474; Mandarin: 1-866-324-8747, etc. etc. 

Part of this process requires the signature of one of several types of professionals authorized by the State of California. Licensed physicians, including Veterans Administration physicians, may sign for people with any disability. Clinical audiologists may sign for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. If you don’t have an audiologist or otolaryngologist (ear-nose-throat M.D.) on the string, initiate this process yourself. On Friday, September 23 at 11 A.M., there will be a free California Telephone Access program at South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis Street (corner of Ashby), Berkeley. 510- 981-5170. (Phone to confirm.) 

California LifeLine is another godsend program. It provides discounted basic telephone (landline) services to eligible California households. For information, call 1-877-858-7463. 

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NEWS  

The Alameda County Area Agency on Aging (AAA) periodically conducts a survey to document current needs, concerns and resources within the County’s age 55+ population. The survey helps the AAA identify and provide support for senior services in Alameda County. If you are age 55+ and live in Alameda County, take a few moments to complete the survey that is available online (Google ‘Alameda County Senior Needs Assessment’), OR inquire at your senior center. 

A new report released jointly today by AARP’s Public Policy Institute, The Commonwealth Fund and The SCAN Foundation shows some states significantly out-perform others in the delivery of long-term services and supports (LTSS) to older adults and family caregivers. The “Scorecard of State Performance on Long-Term Services and Supports Finds Wide Variation in Care and Support for Older Adults, Family Caregivers, and People with Disabilities” ranks the 51 states in terms of Affordability and access, Choice of setting and provider, Quality of life and quality of care, and Support for family caregivers. Ranking number 1 in all categories is Minnesota; lowest is Mississippi. California is not bad: number 15 and in the second quartile. 

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MARK YOUR CALENDAR: September and October 2011. Call to confirm, date, time and place. Readers are welcome to share news of events that may interest boomers and seniors. Daytime, free, and Bay Area events preferred. pen136@dslextreme.com 

 

Wednesday, Sept. 21. 12 Noon. Playreaders. Central Berkeley Public Library. Kittredge @ Shattuack. 510-981-6100. Free. 

Wednesday, Sept. 21. 12:15 P.M. – 1 P.M. Noon Concert Series Performing Arts - UC,B Music Dept., Hertz Concert Hall. Faculty Recital: Michael Orland, piano.
Tickets not required. 510-642-4864. 

Wednesday, Sept. 21. 12:30 P.M. Annual Ice Cream Social. Reservation required. $2. per person paid in advance. MastickSenior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Wednesday, Sept. 21, 1 P.M. Gray Panthers meeting. North Berkeley Senior Center, 

2001 Hearst, corner MLK. 510-548-9696 and 486-8010. 

Wednesday, Sept. 21, 1:30 P.M. Berkeley Commission on Aging meets at a senior center, probably North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst, corner MLK. #25 AC bus stops at the NBSC. Phone to confirm location. 510-981-5190. 510-981-5200. 

Wednesday, Sept. 21. 1:30 P.M. – 3 P.M. League of Women Voters hosts a free forum at the Central Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. Discussion of senior citizens’ transportation needs: “Senior Mobility and the Silver Tsunami; An Educational Forum.” 510-839-1608. www.bayareamonitor.org 

Thursday, Sept. 22. 9 A.M. – 5 P.M. Albany Senior Center Open House. Food, entertainment. 846 Masonic Av. 510-524-9122. 

Thursday, Sept. 22. 10 A.M. Computers for Beginners. Berkeley Public Library, West branch, University above San Pablo. 510-981-6270. Free. 

Thursday, Sept. 22, 1:30 P.M. Music Appreciation. William Sturm, Instructor. Piano recital and discussion on “The Sonata Form: Building Blocks of Music”. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda 510-747-7506. 

Thursday, Sept. 22. 6 P.M. Lawyers in the Library. Berkeley Public Library, West branch. University above San Pablo. 510-981-6270. Free. 

Friday, Sept. 23 Final day to vote for North Berkeley Senior Center Advisory Council members. 1901 Hearst, corner MLK. 510-981-5190. 

Friday, Sept. 23. 11 A.M. – 12 Noon California Telephone Access Program Deaf & Disabled Telecommunications program. South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis St. 510-981-5170. 

Saturday, Sept. 24. 10 A.M. OWL San Francisco General Meeting: Issues on the November SF ballot. Meeting co-sponsored by Senior Action Network and AAUW. 870 Market St.. Market St. buses; Powell St. BART. 415-989-4422 info@owlsf.org 

Sunday, Sept. 25. All day. UC,B campus, Zellerbach Hall. Fall Free for All. Music, dance, and theater for the whole community. Plus an instrument petting zoo, demonstrations, CD signings with the artists, good things to eat. No tickets required. 510-642-9988. 

Sunday, Sept. 25. 1:30 P.M. Book Into Film: The Last Station. Central Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge. Registration required 510-981-6236. Free. 

Monday, Sept. 26. 6 P.M. Evening Computer Class. BerkeleyPublic Library, Central. Kittredge @ Shattuck. 510-981-6100. Free. 

Monday, Sept. 26. 7 P.M. Kensington Library, 61 ArlingtonAve. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. Each meeting starts with a poem selected and read by a member with brief discussion following. New members welcome. 510-524-3043. 

Tuesday, Sept. 27, 1 P.M. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Av., Alameda. “Getting the Most From Your Doctor’s Visit.” Lecture by Patient Advocate Linda Garvin, RN, MSN. Register in the Mastick Office or call 510-747-7506. 

Tuesday, Sept 27, 3 P.M. Tea & Cookies Book Club. Central Berkeley Public Library. 

Kittredge @ Shattuck. 510-981-6100. Free 

Tuesday, Sept. 27, 7 – 8 P.M. El Cerrito Library book discussion group. 6510 Stockton. Come to one or all discussions. Let the Great World Spin, novel by Colum McMcCann. 510-526-7512. 

Tuesday, Sept. 27. 7 P.M. Eve Ensler, founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls. Grace Cathedral, 1100 California St. at Taylor, # 1. 27 buses. 415-749-6300, 6348, 6369. Worthy cause, but not free and no senior discount. 

Wednesday, Sept. 28. 12 Noon. Playreaders at Central Berkeley Public Library. Kittredge @ Shattuck. 510-981-6100. Free 

Wednesday, Sept. 28. 12:15 P.M. – 1 P.M. Noon Concert Series Performing Arts - UC,B Hertz Concert Hall. University Symphony Orchestra - David Milnes, conductor. Ligeti: Lontano. Korngold: Violin Concerto, Ernest Yen, soloist. Tickets not required. 510-642-4864. 

Wednesday, Sept. 28. 1 P.M. Urquhart Memorial Concert Band conducted by Joel Toste / Cultural Events class. MastickSenior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Wednesday, Sept. 28, 1:30-2:30 P.M. Alameda County Library, Albany branch. 1247 Marin Av. Great Books Discussion Group. Morrison's Song of Solomon. Facilitated discussion. Come to one meeting, or all meetings. Books are available at the Library. Parking! 510-526-3720 x 16. 

Thursday, Sept. 29. 10 A.M. Computers for Beginners. Central Berkeley Public Library. Kittredge @ Shattuck. 510-981-6100. Free. 

 

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Monday, Oct. 3. 6 P.M. Evening Computer Class. Central Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge. 510-981-6100. Also Oct. 17 and 24. 

Tuesday, Oct. 4. (11, 18, 25). 11 A.M. – 12 Noon. Self-Acupressure & Reflexology Class. Helen Calhoun, Certified Acupressurist. 4-week classs. $3 per session or $12 for 4 sessions. Preregistration. MastickSenior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Tuesday, Oct. 4. 1 P.M. Mastick Book Club members review The Particular 

Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Av., Alameda. 510-747-7506, 747-7510. 

Wednesday, Oct. 5. 9 A.M. – 1:30 P.M. AARP Driver Safety Refresher Course. 

Designed for motorists who are 50+, taught in one-day. To be eligible, you must have taken the standard course within the last 4 years. Preregistration required. $12 per person fee for AARP members; $14 per person fee 

for non-AARP members. MastickSenior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Wednesday, Oct. 5. 12:15 P.M. – 1 P.M. Noon Concert Series Performing Arts - UC,B Hertz Concert Hall. Felicia Chen, soprano; Daniel Alley, piano. Jason Yu, piano. Tickets not required. 510-642-4864. 

Wednesday, Oct. 5. 10:30 A.M. Mastick Senior Center. 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. Balance Your Walk with the Alexander Technique. Lenka Fejt, certified teacher. This 6-part workshop on the Alexander Technique has begun. Prepaid fee of $60. 510-747-7506. Also Oct. 12. 

Wednesday, Oct. 5 - 12 Noon. Playreaders. Central Berkeley Public Library. (510) 2090 Kittredge. 510-981-6100.. Also Oct. 12 and 19. 

Wednesday, Oct. 5. 6 P.M. – 8 P.M. Alameda County Library, Albany branch. 1247 Marin Ave. Lawyer in the Library. Free 15 minute consultation with an attorney. Sign up in person at the Reference desk or call 510-526-3720 ext. 5 during library hours. 

Thursday, Oct. 6. 10 A.M. – 1 P.M. Lavender Seniors of the East Bay’s Annual Aging in Place Symposium & Resource Fair for Older Adults. Marina Community Center, 15301 Wicks Blvd., San Leandro. Refreshments, entertainment. Free. Dan Ashbrook at 510-667-9655 Ext 1. Email dan@lavenderseniors.org. 

Thursday, Oct. 6. 6 P.M. Lawyers in the Library. Berkeley Public Library South branch. 1901 Russell. 510-981-6100. Also Oct. 13. 

Mondays, Oct. 10, 17, 24. 11:10 A.M. – 1 P.M. Introduction to Video Production. Jeff Cambra, producer of the Mastick movie, instructor. Learn to use a video 

camera, script writing, storyboarding, basic lighting and sound to 

produce a newscast and a short documentary. No experience required. Equipment provided. Graduate to the advanced class on October 31, 1:00 P.M.-3:00 P.M. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Tuesday, Oct. 11. 1 P.M. Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) 

Marilyn Ababio and Dorothy Ridley, POLST representatives inform about POLST, a form that spells out the medical treatment you desire during the end of your life + question and answer period. MastickSenior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Wednesday, Oct. 12. 12:15 P.M. – 1 P.M. Noon Concert Series Performing Arts - UC,B Hertz Concert Hall. Andrea Wu, piano. Tickets not required. 510-642-4864. 

Wednesday, Oct. 12. 6:30 P.M. – 8 P.M. Drop-In Poetry Writing Workshops. Free. Albany branch of the Alameda County library, 1247 Marin Av. 510-526-3720. 

Thursday, Oct. 13. 10 A.M. Computers for Beginners. Central Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge. 510-981-6100. Also Oct. 20 and 27. 

Thursday, Oct. 13. 10:30 A.M. New Member Orientation & YOU! Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. Guided tour outlining the various activities, programs, and services, and a coupon to enjoy a complimentary lunch provided by Bay Area Community Services (BACS)! Make a reservation by visiting the Mastick Office or calling 510-747-7506. 

Saturday, Oct. 15. 11 A.M. Landlord/Tenant Counseling. Central Berkeley Public Library. 510-2090 Kittredge. 510- 981-6100. 

Monday, Oct. 17. 9:30 A.M.- 12:30 P.M. Beaded Jewelry Making. Rose O’Neill, Custom Jewelry Designer. Beads and tools will be supplied unless you would like to go “green” and redesign beads already in your possession. Limited to 10 students. $15 per person. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. (Also Mondays, Nov 21 and Dec 19.) 

Monday, Oct. 17. 2 P.M.-3:30 P.M. Queue Rolo, M.A., M.S., Museum Studies, SFSU, will present “W.A.Leidesdorff: America’s 1st Black Millionaire.” Free for OLLI and Mastick Senior Center members. MastickSenior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Tuesday, Oct. 18. 12:30 P.M. San Francisco Gray Panthers General Meeting: Program to be announced. Location: Fireside Room, Unitarian Center, 1187 Franklin St. at Geary, # 38 bus. 415-552-8800. graypanther-sf@sbcglobal.net, http://graypantherssf.igc.org/ 

Wednesday, Oct. 19. 12:15 P.M. – 1 P.M. Noon Concert Series Performing Arts - UC,B Hertz Concert Hall. University Gospel Chorus - Another Day's Journey. Tickets not required. 510-642-4864. 

Wednesday, Oct. 19. 1:30 P.M. Alameda County Library San Lorenzo branch, 395 Paseo Grande. 510-670-6283. Social Security Administration Public Affairs Specialist Mariaelena Lemus will address older adults’ questions and present information specifically for them. Program repeats at other branches through December. No reservations required. Free. Library Older Adult Services at 510-745-1491. 

Wednesday, Oct. 19. 7 P.M. The Bookeeper’s Apprentice, by Laurie R. King. Book discussion. Alameda County Library Albany Branch, 1247 Marin Av. 510-526-3720. 

(On Sunday, Oct. 23 @ 2 PM, the author will read and talk. Albany Community Center.) 

Thursday, Oct. 20. 6 P.M. Lawyers in the Library. Berkeley Public Library West branch. 1125 University. 510-981-6270. Also Oct. 27. 

Mondays, Oct. 24, 26 and 31. 10A.M. – 12 Noon. Oliver Guinn, Ph.D Economics, returns to teach “Our Damaged Economy: The Financial Meltdown and Economic Inequality.” Free. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Tuesday, Oct. 25. 1 P.M. AC Transit and YOU! Representatives from United Seniors of Oakland and Alameda County will inform about the Regional Transit Connection (RTC) Discount Card Program and the Clipper Card, route changes, and the 10-year AC Transit Fare Policy. Refreshments. Free. MastickSenior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Tuesday, Oct. 25. 3 - 4 P.M. Tea and Cookies. Central Berkeley Public Library. A book club for people who want to share the books they have read. Central Berkeley Public Library. 2090 Kittredge. 510-981-6100. 

Wednesday, Oct. 26. 12:15 P.M. – 1 P.M. Noon Concert Series Performing Arts - UC,B Hertz Concert Hall. Tony Lin, piano. Tickets not required. 510-642-4864. 

Wednesday, Oct. 26. 1:30-2:30 P.M. Alameda County Library Albany branch. 1247 Marin Av. Great Books Discussion Group. Roman Fever, Edith Wharton short story. Facilitated discussion. Books available at the Library. Parking! 510-526-3720 x 16. 

Wednesday and Thursday, Oct. 26/Sacramentoand 27/South San Francisco, 2011 . 

"Dementia Care Without Drugs - A Better Approach for Long-term Care Facilities" symposia about misuse of psychotropic drugs as treatment for dementia, difficulty in managing dementia treatment, and non-pharmacological approaches to care. CANHR staff attorney Tony Chicotel presentation, "Stop Drugging Our Elders!" California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform http://www.canhr.org. 415-974-5171. Fax 415-777-2904. 

Thursday, Oct. 27. 12:30 P.M. Celebrating a birthday in October? Cake, music, 

balloons, and good cheer. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. . 510-747-7506. 

Thursday, Oct. 27 1 P.M.- 3 P.M. Fall Dance…Halloween Stomp. Come in costume 

to be eligible for “best costume award”, enjoy door prizes, and refreshments. Volunteers enter free with volunteer badge. Cost is $2.00 per person. . Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. . 510-747-7506. 

Thursday, Oct. 27 1:30 P.M. Music Appreciation with William Sturm, Volunteer Instructor. Piano recital and discussion on “The Sceptered Isle: Music of England”. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Avenue, Alameda. 510-747-7506. 

Saturday, Oct. 29. 12:15 P.M. Halloween Bingo Bash. Patrons will receive a free Halloween dauber (ink marker) compliments of Center Advisory Board and Bingo Committee. Doors open at 10:00 a.m. with the first game at 12:15 P.M. 18 years of age+ are welcome. Mastick Senior Center, 1155 Santa Clara Av. 510-747-7506.

The truism: “life is what happens while you’re waiting,” is very applicable to people who are struggling to recover from mental illness. Frequently, people are unhappy because they believe they should not be happy. A lot of people believe that before they can be happy they need to fix their perceived adverse life circumstances. This is not always true. This partial erroneous belief is present in the minds of people at large and not just those who have a mental illness. Abe Lincoln said: “Most people are about as happy as they make up their mind to be.” 

Persons with mental illness are more of a work in progress than most people. We need to enjoy the journey because, for one thing, it could end at any moment. A person can go through their life without succeeding at what they set out to accomplish, and that has to be acceptable. Living in a boarding house, which is the fate of many persons with a mental illness (also known as a board and care), certainly doesn’t seem like much of a life. Yet, even such a possibly miserable existence can have happy moments, such as a visit to the library, going out to get a cup of coffee, or spending time with another mentally ill person. Whatever someone’s circumstances are, no where is a law written that a person must be miserable at all times. 

An important step could be to acknowledge a source of misery and how one is being affected by it. For example, someone could say: “I am unhappy because I don’t have a job,” or “I am working in a low level job and I know that I am capable of much more…” And then once the offending life circumstance gets acknowledged, a person can set it aside mentally and choose to be happy about other things in life that are going well. For example: “I have a date for Friday night and I’m not going to think about my dumb job.” 

The above examples don’t follow a Buddhist model of non attachment in which a person is not supposed to get upset about anything. Instead, I am giving weight to life circumstances as possible real sources of misery. In the absence of hope, any attempt at happiness could be merely escapism. Becoming a student, a volunteer, or even a hobbyist, not to mention getting employment, are all ways to creating hope in one’s life. It is not necessarily important that one succeeds at the things one tries, as long as one keeps trying. You could have a dozen failures in a row at the things you’re trying to do, but this is better than sitting around and drinking beer while gossiping with your buddies all day. One route may or may not lead to something, while the route of sitting around definitely leads nowhere. 

Aside from a person not creating something to look forward to, lack of happiness can often be attributed to negative and self-critical thinking. If you are already engaged in some type of meaningful activity, and yet you are still unhappy most of the time, it might be a case of being persecuted by your own thoughts. A person can also naturally be unhappy due to tragedies or problems in life. One hopes this type of unhappiness is temporary and goes away when the crisis is solved. It is not reasonable to expect yourself not to have a reaction to events in life. The ones that I have heard espousing non reactivity to life circumstances were in a cult; their techniques delivered cultism but did not deliver the state of bliss that was promised. 

Concerning unhappiness due to negative thinking patterns, it might be good to explore the thinking with a written exercise. If you can identify the exact thoughts that are inflicting pain on you, you can then dismiss those thoughts individually. The more specific you are the better are your chances for getting such a release. 

Again, sometimes we may feel that we are not “allowed” to be happy because of not meeting some standard in life, such as a level of financial security that we perceive is adequate, or the perception of an adequate social life. Or we might disallow our own happiness because of thinking we are overweight, or thinking that we don’t have abdominal muscles that are good enough. The mind can invent any reason why we should not be happy. When we grant permission to ourselves to be happy, it can be like a giant relief. 

Being unhappy is sometimes an indicator that medication is needed to correct a problem in the brain that is causing pain directly. Also, unhappiness can be caused by a disturbing environment, such as if you live among people who fight. It can be caused by not heading in a positive direction in life. And it can be caused by negative thoughts. Each of these categories should be addressed in the quest for feeling better. 

 

 

Dance, music, historic architecture and culture in general are on tap in Berkeley for this weekend, September 24-25, 2011.

On Saturday evening there’s a special chance to see the interior of the National Landmark First Church of Christ, Scientist, and hear from an author with a new book about the architect, Bernard Maybeck. Maybeck’s granddaughter will also be there to share family stories.

Sunday, the creative impulses of Cal Performances scatter and sparkle around the UC Berkeley campus in the second annual “Free for All,” with a day of gratis performances in several indoor and outdoor venues. 

Maybeck Talk 

Saturday evening, September 24, at 7:30 p.m., Mark A. Wilson will speak about Bernard Maybeck, and show slides from his new book about Berkeley’s most famous designer, with photographs by Joel Puliatti. Bernard Maybeck: Architect of Elegance (Gibbs Smith, 2011) is an extensively illustrated, large format, volume of Maybeck history and heritage. 

The central star of the show, of course, is Maybeck’s church building, where the lecture will be held. It’s a century old, and the evening light should be glowing through the mauve windows of the main sanctuary. 

There will be a reception and book signing after the event. Copies of the Wilson will be for sale, along with other local architectural tomes. Tickets are $15 at the door, 2619 Dwight Way at Bowditch. 

The event is co-sponsored by the Friends of First Church and the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 

Cal Campus Performance “Free for All” 

The UC Berkeley campus looks like it will be bursting with vocal and instrumental music and dance on Sunday. The second annual edition of this event, organized by the performing arts program spreads both University and community performing arts groups around the campus in Zellerbach Hall, Pauley Ballroom, Lower Sproul Plaza, Wheeler Auditorium, Hertz Hall, Sather Gate, Faculty Glade, and the Eucalyptus Grove. 

The program starts at 11 am and continues until 6:00, and the Cal Performances website promises, along with the performances, “instrument petting zoo, demonstrations, CD signings with the artists, and plenty of good things to eat.” 

You can see the detailed schedule on the Cal Performances website at this address. 

http://www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/community/community/ 

Some of the highlights.  

At 10:30 the California Marching Band performs an opening fanfare on Lower Sproul Plaza. The Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet plays there later, at 2:00.  

Five student-singing groups give consecutive performances, on the hour, at Sather Gate, while the UC Jazz Ensembles perform at noon in Wheeler Auditorium. Hertz Hall has the American Bach Soloists, as well as East Bay pianist Sarah Cahill.  

The Department of Music stages a Balinese Gamelan performance in Faculty Glade at noon, and the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies debuts various performances in the Eucalyptus Grove at 10:50, 12:50, 3:50, and 5:20. 

There’s the New Century Chamber Orchestra in Zellerbach Hall, along with the Berkeley Symphony Wind Ensemble and the AXIS Dance Company. 

All for free, and all open to both the campus community and the general public. 

(Steven Finacom is the Vice-President of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.)

 

Golden Thread Productions is one of the important Bay Area theater companies that has a very specific mission--to explore the culture and identity, or identities, of Middle Easterners and Middle Eastern Americans. For the past decade and a half, since Torange Yeghiazarian founded the troupe, Golden Thread's brought plays from and about the Middle East in all its diversity to stages throughout the Bay Area, including its annual ReOrient festival of short plays, as well as storytelling shows to schoolchildren. 

Night Over Erzinga, the premiere of a new play at the South Side Theatre (Magic Theatre, Fort Mason) in San Francisco by Adriana Sevahn Nichols about refugees from the Armenian genocide coming to America and what they and their descendants face, by both remembering and forgetting the past, is the first event in a collaborative National New Plays Initiative between Golden Thread, Silk Road Theatre Project (Chicago) and the Lark Play Development Center (New York), Middle East America.  

An excellent cast--Natalie Ammanian, Neva Marie Hutchinson, Terry Lamb, Sarita Ocon, Lawrence Radecker, Juliet Tanner and Brian Trybom--with the unusually clarity of Hafiz Karmali's direction has brought life to a mixed perspective of immigrants trying to escape the past, to find themselves ... assisted by Penka Kouneva's unusual original music, by designers Mikiko Uesugi (scenery), Jim Cave (lighting), Michelle Mulholland (costumes) and Mitchell Greenhill (sound). 

This is in many ways an exemplary production, bringing out the best in an ambitious, sometimes problematic script. The first part deals with refugees trying to bury the past in an effort to create a future for themselves, a dream on the terms of the society they've fled to, and the emotional price, the cultural emptiness their self-repression begets. The second part follows--at first in a way almost like a satiric burlesque of the first part--the American-born daughter of the Armenian couple who met in Massachusetts in the first part, who's fled the last vestige of her family and cultural identity to perform as a dancer, marrying a Latino, another refugee coming from a more traditional, family-oriented culture. The action is never quite chronological, following instead the logic of dreams, memory, simple association from time to time. 

There's deft role-switching by all the actors, Trybom and Tanner in particular, to portray three generations and more of uprootedness and striving for a new life, a new identity. The story touches on hardship and the atrocities of the past mainly through stories that finally get told and the evidence of emotional and mental turmoil, from unexamined habits that determine a life and its attitudes to the delusions of mental collapse. 

The play ends with a dreamlike scene around a wishing tree--a good alternate title!--its branches tied with cloths signifying wishes. On opening night, Yeghiazarian unveiled a commissioned Tree Of Life, to honor ancestors and future generations, by Bay Area artist Thomas Sepe that will remain in the lobby through the run of the show, to which audiences may tie their wishes.  

The production is one of the most lucid I've seen recently on a Bay Area stage. Karmali--himself a muslim of the Aga Khan's sect--and his players of various backgrounds illuminate the refugees' experience, show their inner lives and point to both the difference of cultural origins and the improvisatory experiment of American assimilation, revealing good and bad in the roots and in the results ... A triumph of live theater in bringing out inner strengths and transforming occasional awkwardnesses in the play, creating unforgettable dramatic--and, yes, comic--images of immigrant heritage, of our common heritage. 

Through October 9, Thursdays (8:30), Fridays-Saturdays (8 p. m.) and Sundays (2), South Side Theatre at the Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina & Buchanan Streets, San Francisco. $20--$36, Thursday nights pay-what-you-can (at the door only; in advance $20). (415) 345-7575; goldenthread.org

 

Rita Moreno, nee Rosita Dolores Alverio--one of the few performers, and the first Latino, to win Oscar, Tony, Grammy and (2) Emmy(s)--has lived in the Bay Area the past two decades, distinguishing herself locally with her very public presence. At Berkeley Rep just a few years ago, Moreno did a splendid turn as Amanda in Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie. 

She's back onstage at the Rep, telling of her life and career and performing scenes from both, in Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup, a show concocted by her and Tony Taccone, artistic director of the Rep, staged and directed by David Galligan. 

Moreno's story is particularly interesting as the roles she played onstage and screen relate to both her Puerto Rican origins and her efforts not to be merely typecast as an exotic of whatever kind. 

(On the other hand, one of the production numbers--choreographed by Lee Martino, featuring the excellent dancing of Ray Garcia and Salvatore Vassallo with Moreno--from Terence McNally's The Ritz shows how Moreno could turn that problem on its head, her character hilariously concocted of Latina malapropisms imitated from a relative.) 

There's the not-always triumphal parade of the movies she appeared in, notably The King & I, Singin' In The Rain, Summer and Smoke, Night of the Following Day, Carnal Knowledge and of course West Side Story. There're film clips projected, and her years on TV with The Electric Company are represented on projected video as well as in a funny song-and-dance routine in a big wig and dress, playing the part of a naughty little girl from that groundbreaking kids' show. 

Moreno's a trouper in life, as well as the performing arts, offering some tart anecdotes, including her "emotional sinkhole" of an affair with Marlon Brando (followed by a suicide attempt), as well as the tale of the first date with her future husband of 45 years, Leonard Gordon. Not finding her in the lobby of the theater she told him to meet her at, Gordon noticed her name on the marquee as he was leaving, rushed backstage to her dressing room and gasped out: "You're THE Rita Moreno?" (Gordon, long her manager, died only last year.) 

Her presence onstage throughout makes the two-hour show, which isn't the star vehicle some have claimed. There are some fine vignettes, mostly production numbers that reprise moments from her career, West Side Story naturally saved for last. But too much of the burden falls on her shoulders. Instead of bringing her personality and talents into the spotlight, accenting both her excellence and her humanity, Without Makeup reduces Moreno's natural dynamism onstage by lessening the concentration of the material--too much exposition, worthy of an interview or talk show, but not a stage production highlighting her life and talents.  

In the background, there could be the shadow of another, very successful star vehicle, Elaine Stritch at Liberty ... in which a raconteur's style flowed seamlessly in and out of songs and dance numbers, staged in a cabaret setting. Moreno's a good talker, by turns affecting, funny and pithy, but her own style of relating to an audience and performing doesn't really catch in this kind of staging on the Roda Stage of the Rep, despite her sincere yet very professional gestures to both informality and spectacle. 

Certainly this production will be reworked, especially if it's taken elsewhere. At the moment, however glorious it is to witness Moreno's ageless charisma as a performer and her character as a person, Without Makeup is more like an extended tribute, the kind most stars walk through, bantering cutely for the audience. But Moreno's really working, putting herself out. The theatrical fashioning, the staging of this intrinsically interesting material--her life and career--should be more suited to her exceptional strengths, her extraordinary talent. 

Tuesdays through Sundays, through November 6, Roda Stage, Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison (near Shattuck). 647-2949; berkeleyrep.org

"It's showtime!" declares the young waitress polishing a wine glass. "The restaurant is a theater. The meal's a play. And I'm the actress!" 

Kate Jopson essays the tour de force monologue, "The Waitress Who Read Proust," tart and funny, to open the quartet of plays by playwright (and director) James Keller, Remember the Ladies, last weekend at the Unitarian Fellowship on Cedar--and one performance coming up Tuesday, October 25 at Live Oak Theater for Actors Ensemble of Berkeley's staged reading series. 

That's the genius of Poor Players--with just the actors, the play itself and a minimum of means (mostly footlights and a few props: a table, a few chairs, a glass or two ... hats and scarves for costume changes), Keller's troupe makes real, live theater, almost anywhere for its stage, maybe the more satisfying for the spareness, its "back to basics" approach.  

The sparsity of effects helps create the real effect: by focusing our senses on the main course, we find ourselves more engrossed than with the appetizers. 

The shorter ensemble pieces that follow "The Waitress ... "--"That's My Chair" and "A Lifetime in Madrid"--are, respectively, almost burlesque and touchingly melancholic; the first has adult education classmates Elinor Bell, Martha Luehrman and Anne Hallinan squabbling like kids over who sits where (and more substantial issues), while the second, with the same players, narrated by Kate Jopson, act out a stylized time lapse of the lifetime of three old friends. 

"All At Sea," aptly titled, has Anne Hallinan and Martha Luehrman as an impromtu shipboard comedy team--Mesdames Prendergast and Teasdale, straight from suburban vaudeville--the second a straightlaced belle as straight-lady ingenue, the first as a long-winded, hard drinking comedienne, belting back screwdrivers in a deckchair as she favors her neighbor in the sun with the spiel of her senior adventures ... both play their cards handily, as does the author, drawing in a third, Janice Fuller Leone in a good turn, poking her nose in as the cruise's busybody. 

From a monologue by a worldly wise "entertainment-style" waitress from French Creek, California, to a three-sided glimpse inside the indolent clientele of the luxury racket of cruises--Poor Players serves up a savvy feast of people-watching, something to laugh about, something to wonder over.

--The second Fall Free For All, a remarkable free seven hour slew of music, theater and dance performances around the UC campus, put on by Cal Performances, will be held this Sunday from 11-6, featuring such performers as the New Century Chamber Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony Wind Ensemble, American Bach Soloists, Fratelli marionettes (to St-Saens music), Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet, UC Jazz Faculty, Sarah Cahill, Kirka vocal ensemble, C.K. Ladzekpo & African Music & Dance Ensemble, Los Cenzontles Mexican Music & Dance, SF Opera Adler Fellows, Axis Dance, BATS Improv, UC Departments of Music, Theater, Dance and Performance Studies--and more ... at locations from Sather Gate, Pauley Ballroom, Lower Sproul Plaza, Wheeler Auditorium, Hertz Hall, the Eucalyptus Grove, the Faculty Glade .. Free, no tickets required, food available. Information and schedule: calperformances.org/community/community 

--Inga Swearingen, first known as a regular on Prairie Home Companion, whose unusual combination of musical influences--from opera, jazz and choral music to Bossa Nova, North Indian music and Swedish and American folksongs--has resulted in her melodic "Swedish Farm Jazz" on a trio of albums, most recently "First Rain." Inga has performed with critical acclaim several times over the past few years at the Freight & Salvage, the JazzSchool, Peralta loft concerts and at local Jazz Vespers. (A clip from one of her Freight shows is at: ingaswearingen.com ) 

The vivacious singer from the Central Coast will be back in the Bay Area this Sunday, sets at 7 and 8 p. m. at the Red Poppy Art House, 2698 Folsom at 23rd, San Francisco, $12-$15, with her band, singing everything from John Jacob Niles folksongs, classics like "Skylark," to her own hit, "Brick By Brick." (A profile of Inga in the July 7, 2009 edition of the Planet can be found at: berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-07-16/article/33336?headline=from-Prairie-to-Freight-and-Salvage )

The Aurora Theatre, in its commitment to a theatre of ideas and the eloquence in drama that explores them, has selected A DELICATE BALANCE by Edward Albee.  

When we pass sixty years, the darkness we always sensed was there begins to loom larger. Since Shakespeare, Edward Albee seems to best plumb the human condition and that particular darkness as we enter the twilight. The Aurora knows its audience: 

I counted only half a dozen attendees under 50 years old. Written 45 years ago, the play is perhaps more relevant today as Boomers enter their seniority. 

As in all his plays, Albee creates characters who can believably articulate our complexity with an enthralling fugue of words.  

Director Tom Ross has convened a coterie of the better actors in our midst to give life to this soul-stirring drama. He guides them through the changing rhythms of the play masterfully, and his staging and the actors’ superb techniques aid us in the challenge to keep up with the onslaught of ideas and emotions. 

As the web of relationships is spun out for us and sorted out by the characters, there are quips that in the writing and the delivery bring seizures of honest laughter from the audience. The humor is witty, insightful, and a relief from the electric tension and internal upheavals we go through with our new-found acquaintances.  

It’s about those upper-class folks who have servants and display half a wall devoted to decanted booze and lovely glasses. They drink a lot. There is the abiding metaphor that they let they their bottled-up spirits flow free. (For good reason was the original drama done to honor the great Greek god of getting drunk.) 

Tobias and Agnes, the householders, begin the tale. Wife Agnes (Kimberly King) is one of those people who perform for you rather than converse with you, but her rants are so eloquent, her diction and inflection so perfect, that one can only play the straight man and protect oneself against her assaults, as we sense stolid husband Tobias (Ken Grantham) has done for years. Agnes’s introductory monologue is about her concern of devolving into madness; with synapses that fire that rapidly, one can see how the cerebral machinery could get overloaded and collapse.  

Enter her live-in dipsomaniac sister, Claire (Jamie Jones), her opposite: easy-going, sprawling on the floor and talking casually of sex in summers past, she has the same articulation genes as Sis, but without the stick up her ass, and functions as the outsider, giving a play-by-play philosophical and psychological deconstruction of the motives and actions of the other characters—while continuously deceiving herself. 

The news is that the domestic equation will soon be unbalanced by the return of thirty-something daughter Julia seeking refuge from her fourth failed marriage. 

Then the trademark Albee strangeness is introduced. Long-time friends (Anne Darragh and Charles Dean) stop by for an unusual, unannounced visit. The drawing room drama mode is broken with their tearful, fearful breakdown. 

After intermission number one, the action takes off with the advent of Julia (Carrie Paff) with the eruptions that children and parents bring out in one another.  

The convention of two intermissions is respected. Nobody left. Due to the intensity, one is moved to duck across the Addison to the Revival for a quick top-shelf Bourbon then rush back for more.  

There is something special about this contingent of actors who have spent a lifetime mastering their craft and have acted together. In ensemble and individual performance, this all-Equity cast is as professional and near perfect as I can imagine in casting and ability. (For those not familiar with my reviews, I always find some fault, but not here.) 

Their environment is appealing and believable in the set by Richard Olmsted, a fellow Carnegie Mellon alum who heads the tech theatre department at CSU East Bay and often designs at Aurora. 

As you walk to your seat, you have the urge to plop into the comfortable leather chair onstage. It is an arrangement for conversation without a television in sight. I’ve been in homes like this and the life of the mind is their boon and their bane. Those who think too much are dangerous—mainly to themselves. As Agnes comments, “We all manufacture our own despair.” The furniture is rich, well-used and muted in color, with a raised level at the top of the stage with a bookcase of colorful spines and designed wallpaper against a bay window; that window looks out on an autumnal tree, the lighting on which tells us the season and time of day seasonal as well as the emotional temperature change inside. 

The subtle colors and fabrics of the costumes by Callie Floor enhance our visual enjoyment, are just right for their class, character and status, and invite us to imagine ourselves in the clothing.  

Inside Skinny: Mr. Albee attended the opening. After the play, one of the actors regaled me with a story of Albee interrupting the conversation at the reception with an inspiration: “I want to change a line! Have Tobias say, “The Republicans are being ‘brutal.’“ Albee is known for his abiding enmity of the GOP.  

As the press release describes: “Albee’s 25 plays form a body of work that Albee himself describes as ‘an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen.’” 

A DELICATE BALANCE originally starred Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, and won the Pulitzer in 1967, as well as the Tony for Best Revival in 1996. 

The Aurora production has already been extended through October 16 which indicates a sell-out.  

It is one of those theatre experiences we always hope for and too seldom get; though the Aurora has delivered much more often than not in their twenty years. This is one will be remembered, and it has my unqualified recommendation. 

A Delicate Balanceby Edward Albee 

At the Aurora Theatre Company  

Through October 16 

2081 Addison St., Berkeley 

www.auroratheatre.org 510.843.4822  

Direction by Tom Ross, set design by Richard Olmsted, lighting design by Kurt Landisman, costume design by Callie Floor, properties by Mia Baxter & Seren Helday, sound Design by Chris Houston, stage management by Susan M. Reamy 

WITH:Anne Darragh, Charles Dean, Ken Grantham, Jamie Jones, Kimberly King, Carrie Paff 

Ah, yes, "the days grow short when you reach September" (Kurt Weill's beautiful "September Song", sung by Walter Huston in 1938.) So, while one "doesn't have time for the waiting game", we're happy to say that this September and October offers several memorable and very enjoyable events, as listed below: 

Berkeley's very own Rita Moreno, that 79 year old Puerto Rican dynamo with the spiked hair, is dancing up a storm and baring her soul in her one-woman show: "Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup" at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre through October 30. Tickets $14.50 - $73/00. BerkeleyRep.Org. 

Cal Performances is offering a "Free for All" Concert on Sunday, September 25, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. on five stages on the Berkeley campus, featuring over 20 different artists. (510) 642-9988. 

11th Annual Crabby Chefs Seafood Festival, September 25th, 11 a.m - 4 p.m. A dozen fine East Bay Restaurants face off in this culinary competition taking place across from Spengers Fresh Fish Grotto, 1919 Fourth St. Berkeley. 

Mill Valley Film Festival, October 6 - 16. Tickets go on sale to the general public on 9/19. (Calfillm.org.) 

Oakland Underground Film Festival, Grand Lake Theatre through September 24. (www.oakfilm.org.) 

Earthdance 211 Festival Program, September 23, 24 and 25. The Bay Area's only 3-day camp out musical festival. Over 70 acts on six stages. Solano County Fairgrounds, Vallejo. (www.earthdancelive.com) 

Eat Real Festival, Jack London Square, September 23, 24 & 25. Street food, craft food, beer and wine. (EatrealFest.com). 

Free live music in honor of International Peace Day, Preservation Park Bandstand, 13th St, between MLK and Castro Streets, Wednesday, September 21, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m. (www.listenforlifeorg/peace day. 

San Francisco Cocktail Week, September 1-25, Tessera Gallery, 1225 7th St. (a block from West Oakland Bart Station). Ten of the East Bay's Best Bartenders "round 'em up and face off" at the East Bay Showdown. (sfcocktailweek.com) 

Chocmat Ha Lev High Holy Days 2011/5772, begins September 28, First Presbyterian Church, 2407 Dana Street, Berkeley. (www.chocmt.org or (510) 704.9687. 

Quoting again from "September Song", these precious days we'll (hopefully) spend with you.

The architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro have unveiled their design for the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) on Oxford Street between Center and Addison. They were required to keep the old UC Printing Plant, and they have added a blob-shaped building coated with zinc.

The new addition is in the avant-gardist style that has been typical of museums since Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum opened in Bilbao in 1997. The Guggenheim looks like abstract art of the 1920s and is coated with titanium. It does not work very well as a museum - some visitors say it gives them vertigo - but it was so new, so different, and so shiny that it drew large numbers of gaping tourists to Bilbao.

Avant-garde architects are like teenagers who dye their hair purple to be different from everyone else, who consider themselves very original but obviously are just imitating the cool kids in their clique. Likewise, the designers of BAM/PFA consider its zinc facade very original but obviously are just imitating Gehry’s titanium.

The inept urbanism of BAM/PFA is much worse than its flashy “blobitecture.” Because the goal is to create a sculptural icon, this sort of design focuses on itself and ignores its urban context. 

On Center Street, BAM/PFA has a restaurant on the second floor that cantilevers out over the sidewalk. The south side of Center Street is very attractive because of the sidewalk seating in front of its restaurants, but the north side of the street, where the museum is, currently has very little street life.  

The museum could have added to the vitality of the street by having cafe seating on the sidewalk, but instead it put the cafe on the second floor, where it is cut off from the street life.  

Why did the architects do this? Renfro explains, "Everyone has a sidewalk cafe. We wanted an over-sidewalk cafe." In other words, he did it to be different, like the teenager who thinks, "Everyone has brown hair. I want purple hair."  

On Addison Street, the design does much worse damage. Currently, very few people walk on this block of Addison. The west half of the block has a few underused or vacant storefronts. The east half of the block has the delivery area of a faceless office building on one side and a small parking structure on the other side, which do not attract pedestrians to walk up the street. 

The Pacific Film archive will replace this parking structure, and it could have been designed to encourage people to walk up Addison Street. Instead, the only entrance to both the museum and the Film Archive will be on Center Street. No one will walk up Addison Street to the Film Archive: If they did, they would have to double back on Center Street to get to the entrance. 

The Film Archive's facade on Addison Street will be set back behind a lawn, will have no windows or doors, and will have a large video screen. The architect's drawing shows a crowd of people standing here and watching videos. In reality, very few people will walk on this street, and the video screen will not even be visible to people looking up the street from Shattuck. 

It is easy to predict what will happen to this space. In downtown Berkeley, if you design a dead space where no one walks, add a lawn where people can spread out, have no windows so there are no eyes on the street, and even add a video screen to provide entertainment for people with nothing to do, you have designed a perfect invitation to create a homeless encampment. 

Good urbanism demands that the Pacific Film Archive should have a separate entrance at the corner of Addison and Oxford Streets, to attract people to walk up Addison Street and make that street livelier and more successful economically. 

Ideally, this entrance should have a sign like the signs used in old Art Deco movie theaters, extending beyond the building line, so everyone looking up Addison knows it is a move theater. This sign would make it easier for people to find the theater when they come there for the first time, and it would connect this block visually with the arts district one block west on Addison Street. 

Of course, there is no chance that an avant-gardist would use this sort of common-sense traditional design for signage. This sort of conventional iconography makes buildings more legible to the public, but to communicate in this way, you have to use conventions rather than being totally new and different - which is as bad as having conventional brown hair instead of purple hair. 

At least, we should insist that the Film Archive have a separate entrance on Addison Street and a facade on that street that is closer to the sidewalk, so it is more visible. That minor redesign would attract large numbers of people to walk on this block of Addison Street, making it more vital and more successful, rather than giving this block a dead space and lawn that will only attract the homeless. 

---

Charles Siegel is the author of An Architecture For Our Time.