A person found under a train at the Ashby BART station in Berkeley died this afternoon, BART officials said. 

The station was closed after reports of a person under a train at 12:24 p.m. The Alameda Coroner's Bureau was later called to the scene, BART officials said. 

Trains are now running through the station on one track. The Richmond to Fremont line is now running through the station, BART officials said. However, the Millbrae to Richmond line is still turning back at the MacArthur BART station, where riders are encouraged to transfer lines, BART officials said. 

 

The death was later determined to be a suicide.

The Berkeley Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) is holding a special hearing on the 18 story apartment building proposed for 2211 Harold Way on Wednesday, September 30th at 7:00 pm, Berkeley City Council Chambers, 2134 MLK Jr Way - 2nd floor. It is very important for Berkeley residents to express their views at this ZAB meeting. 

Developers and the city council are putting heavy pressure on the Zoning Adjustment Board to approve the Harold Way high-rise project. Note that Zoning Adjustment Board members are appointed by the City Council, and six of the nine members are connected to the real estate and development industry. If there is to be a suit appealing their decision, the case for the suit must be presented to the ZAB beforehand. 

Many Berkeley residents think that this tall building is the wrong design, the wrong size, and in the wrong place. It increases Berkeley density, traffic, water and infrastructure usage, and is not environmentally sound. It is located within the Berkeley High School student zone. The building includes few parking places, the developers hoping that people will use our already overcrowded public transportation system and will not drive on our already overcrowded streets. Berkeley residents have many questions about the validity of the Environmental Impact Report. 

Berkeley citizens want every new Berkeley building to be green, energy efficient and in-scale, as when they voted on Measure R in 2010. At 2211 Harold Way, the very successful Shattuck Cinemas that bring business to downtown Berkeley restaurants will be replaced with smaller theaters. The historic view from the UCB Campanile designed by John Galen Howard, founder of the College of Environental Design and a gift of Jane Sather in 1914 would be blocked by this multi-story apartment building. For more information, contact 510 325-1218 or kellyhammargren@gmail.com.

University police detectives arrested a former University of California at Berkeley employee Thursday on suspicion of more than 24 counts of invasion of privacy, police said.  

Police allege 49-year-old Joseph Barbir mounted a covert camera inside a restroom in the Unit I residence hall central building between April and early May, allegedly recording more than 100 people, according to police. 

Allegedly, at least two of the victims were minors, police said.  

The camera was discovered May 8, police said. 

Barbir allegedly posted signs that redirected victims to that restroom, according to police.  

Officers have identified many of the victims, police said. If anyone else believes they were a victim, police are asking them to get in touch with Detective Pete Odyniec at (510) 642-1606 or odyniec@berkeley.edu.  

0

Two men sexually assaulted a female victim early Thursday morning on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, police said. 

The assault took place at about midnight near Frank Schlessinger Way and Oxford Street, according to police. 

The victim met one man whom she knew and the other man late Wednesday on a Berkeley street just west of Oxford Street, police said. 

The two men offered to walk the victim home, but forcibly assaulted her shortly after entering the campus at Frank Schlessinger Way, according to police.  

Police are describing one man as Hispanic or white, 5 feet 9 inches tall, 23 to 29 years old with a medium build, dark eyes and curly brown hair down to his shirt collar. The suspect was wearing a yellow jacket or shirt, baseball cap and red pants, police said. 

Police are describing the other suspect as white, 5 feet 9 inches tall, in his 30s with a medium build. He was wearing all black and carried a backpack, according to police.

The North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library was closed this morning after bedbugs were discovered in several areas, library officials said today.  

The bedbugs were discovered Friday morning after bedbug-sniffing dogs searched the library and found them in the downstairs men's restroom, under the desks of the public computer area and in a chair in the adult reading area, officials said.  

Library materials do not appear to be involved.  

The branch library at 1170 The Alameda will remain closed through Monday for heat and steam treatment and will reopen Tuesday, officials said. An event scheduled for Saturday, the Art of HOWL program, has been postponed.  

The bedbug-sniffing dogs will be checking other library locations over the next week, library officials said.  

The Berkeley closure comes on the heels of a similar closure of the Mitchell Park Library branch in Palo Alto on Wednesday.  

Bedbugs were found on two chairs in the first floor of that library at 3700 Middlefield Road.  

Dogs are also inspecting other libraries in Palo Alto, and some libraries will be closed during inspections or open late over the next week, according to officials there.  

Bed bugs are parasitic insects that feed on the blood of mammals and birds, according to the California Department of Public Health. They live in mattresses, bed linens and headboards, walls, flooring and other furniture.  

They feed at night, and most people do not feel their bites, but might notice itchy welts that appear a few days later.  

Bed bugs are not considered a public health hazard because they do not spread disease. They are considered a nuisance, however, and should be removed by a license pest control operators.  

 

Berkeley police today said they have arrested an Oakland man in a hammer attack that occurred during a series of protests in December.  

The alleged assault occurred on Dec. 7, 2014, when the victim, a 55-year-old man, attempted to stop some protesters from damaging a Radio Shack store at Shattuck Avenue and Dwight Way, according to police.  

One of the people on the scene struck the victim with a hammer on the head, causing serious injuries. The victim was taken to a local hospital for treatment, police said. 

The incident was captured on videos and store surveillance, but the suspect was initially unidentified.  

During an interview, however, police obtained a description and street name and put the information out to patrol officers. 

On Aug. 30, an officer made contact with Jayne Waller, a 20-year-old Oakland resident and identified him as a possible suspect in the hammer attack.  

Investigators interviewed Waller, who was arrested on an unrelated crime at the time, and police say that he confessed to the hammer attack at that time.  

He was arrested on Sept. 21 in the 2100 block of Shattuck Avenue on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, felony battery and burglary after police obtained an arrest warrant.  

Police estimate damage to the Radio Shack store at $6,000, with a loss of $8,000 in merchandise. 

The December protests were part of a series of such events around the country in response to the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the death of Eric Garner in New York from an officer's chokehold.  

The Berkeley protests included numerous reports of vandalism and violence, and police were later criticized for their heavy-handed response, which included the use of tear gas, smoke grenades and batons. Police in turn alleged that objects were thrown at officers including sandbags, pipes and bricks.

It's time (long past time, actually( for a planet-wide shout-out to Stanislav Petrov.

September 26 should be recognized globally as Petrov Day.

If it hadn't been for Stanislav Petrov, you and I -- and billions of other people -- would not be alive today.

Petrov was the Russian officer whose finger was on the nuclear button on September 26, 1983, the fateful day that Russian radar mistakenly reported an incoming flight of US ballistic missiles. 

Petrov was in command. He had less than 30 minutes to make a decision and respond. 

Surrounded by panicking soldiers urging him to act and launch a "retaliatory strike," Petrov balked. He ignored his training and disobeyed orders. 

He thought the radar signals might be bogus. 

He took his finger off the nuclear trigger. 

And the world did not end. 

Thirty-two years later, Petrov remains virtually unknown when, by rights, his name should be as familiar as Lincoln, Jesus, Gandhi or Malala. 

Petrov's time may finally have come, thanks to a new movie that's just begun showing in limited release—in New York and Los Angeles. Some of the folks involved in "The Man Who Saved The World," the film honoring Petrov, are well-known names—Matt Damon, Robert De Niro and Kevin Costner. 

When you look at the trailer (below), there's a funny/chilling moment in a scene showing Petrov (long retired) sitting down on a sofa to relax in front of his TV. He opens up a beer bottle and ... spills it on the floor. (I think the filmmaker's message here was: "Accidents happen.") 

As Daniel Ellsberg has observed: "The more one learns about the hidden history of the nuclear era, the more miraculous it seems that the doomsday machines which we and the Russians have built and maintained have not yet triggered each other. At the same time, the clearer it becomes that we could and that we must dismantle them." 

 

So this Saturday, let's all pause and raise a toast to Stan Petrov. He saved us all from being toast. 

Do you feel that lately it’s been All Pope All the Time?

If you do, you’re not alone. And it’s not news.

To someone raised in Catholic schools as I was, Pope Francis is just not a big surprise. The minute that former insiders like me heard that they’d elected a Jesuit as Pope, we knew that a change gon’ come, yes it will. Though as Sam Cooke also said, it’s been a long time coming. 

Many outsiders are not aware that in addition to the Church’s ostensible hierarchy—Cardinals, Archbishops, Monsignors and the like—there’s been an intellectual caste system of which the Jesuits form the top tier. It’s possible for a bigoted ignoramus like San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone to rise through the parish ranks, but the men who choose to join the Society of Jesus are held to a higher standard if they’re accepted. 

Jesuits are expected to be smart, well-educated, witty, and just a bit more worldly than their parish priest counterparts. One can assume that Jorge Mario Bergoglio was all of those before he was elected to the papacy, but that wouldn’t necessarily make him popular with his fellow cardinals. Many priests of lesser pretentions have considered Jesuits too clever by half—“Jesuitical”, in fact. Jesuits have always prided themselves on being able to argue any side of a question. 

On the other hand, the non-Jesuit German and Polish popes who preceded Francis seemed to score low on such traits, which could be one reason he got the nod from a conclave which, still predominantly Italian, might well be tired of dour Northerners. Bergoglio was a two-fer: both from the under-represented New World and culturally Italian—what’s not to like?  

The new Pope’s characteristics which seem to surprise newsies who came of age in the 1980s and later are not so novel to those of us who were around in the 50s, 60s and even 70s. In his speech to Congress he called out (along with Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King and Thomas Merton) Dorothy Day, a radical women who was called a Communist and worse when she agitated for pacifism and care of the poor. I first ran across her work in 1957 in the library of my young ladies’ convent school in Pasadena, the female equivalent of the elite male-only Jesuit high school, or so we hoped. 

Our nuns weren’t particularly political, but our music teacher, a prim buttoned-down laywoman, was the daughter of Dorothy Day’s fellow-troublemaker Ammon Hennacy (“half-Quaker and half-Irish”, he called himself, both a pacificist and a fire-breather). She snuck The Catholic Worker, their rabblerousing leftish publication, into the library magazine rack, and it was quite an eye-opener for the girls who happened to read it, many of whose parents were anti-communist Southern California Republicans. A favorite slogan, often repeated in the paper, was the need for “blowing the dynamite of the Church”. 

A year later, along came Pope John XXIII who did his best to do just that. He made lots of changes in less than 5 years, and the explosions he started lasted through the 60s, in the person of radical civil rights activists and pacifists like the Jesuit poet-priest Dan Berrigan. Liberation theology spread in Latin America. Even parish priests in the U.S. caught the wave. In Ann Arbor, where I lived then, the local parish priest, Father Pat Jackson, was a leader in civil rights and anti-war protests, as was Father Bill O’Donnell in Berkeley.  

But eventually things went downhill, and later popes (hard even to remember who they were) reverted to a more conservative pattern, as did many of the lesser clergy. Many political people working toward a better world in the here-and-now, instead of in the hereafter, lost interest in the Church, including me. Sexual scandals didn’t help matters. 

Many of my friends these days, and many would-be pundits who’ve this week been trying to get a handle on the pope, especially those whose education was deficient on the humanities side, know very little about the less sensational parts of the history of the Roman Catholic Church. They don’t know, for example, that for good or ill the Church was long suspicious of capitalism, slow to come around to the idea that making money from the needs of the less fortunate was a social good.  

The new pope has already declared that John XXIII was a saint, bypassing the usual requirements that the candidate has to perform a miracle or two. I would say that if Pope Francis’s name comes up for possible canonization, he might be given credit for at least one and maybe two already.  

Number One: columnists have been falling all over themselves speculating about why John Boehner is quitting. But several people in my day-to-day orbit have independently come up with this dramatic explanation: He heard his Pope and he repented. 

Yes, yes, I know, that seems improbable, but just looking at the externalities, what happened? Pope speaks, tells Congress what to do to be saved, Boehner’s in tears and then he quits.  

Cause and effect? Could be. St. Augustine, St. Paul, there’s a long line of stories like this, so why not the Speaker? 

And then there’s this brilliant rhetorical feat in Pope Francis’s address to Congress, Jesuitical in the best sense of the word: 

Pope: “The Golden Rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development.” 

Republicans, anticipating abortion condemnation: Thundering Applause. 

(Pregnant pause.) 

Pope, turning on a dime: “This conviction has led me, from the beginning of my ministry, to advocate at different levels for the global abolition of the death penalty. I am convinced that this way is the best, since every life is sacred, every human person is endowed with an inalienable dignity, and society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes.” 

Many Democrats: Thundering Applause.  

Gotcha that time, didn’t he? No wonder Boehner wept. 

Historically, Roman Catholics in general have had quite an assortment of sins to atone for—they’ve generally been the Christians who have taken the position that it’s always possible to repent. They’ve needed to do so with some frequency, as Pope Francis has been doing on this trip and earlier.  

A significant percentage of my ancestors were not of that persuasion—they were from the unforgiving New England Protestant stock which as far as I know has still not officially repented for the witch trials. The Pope, on the other hand, in his prison visit suggested that we’re all sinners, including himself, and endorsed repentance of all kinds. 

And that second miracle? The wickedest Supreme, Antonin Scalia, who claims to be a devout Catholic, was recently quoted saying that (A) he thought the court might soon do away with the death penalty and (B) if his religion conflicted with the Constitution, he’d quit. This one might be too much to expect, but we can hope, can’t we? We’ll be the first to cheer if he actually repents. That really would be news. 

 

A letter to the Zoning Adjustments Board regarding its special hearing tomorrow evening on the proposed 18-story development at 2211 Harold Way (behind the landmark Shattuck Hotel):

Dear Commissioners,

Your analysis of what might constitute significant community benefits for the project proposed for 2211 Harold Way continues to be woefully inadequate.

I know this because I stayed to the bitter end of your last meeting, and the commissioners were in complete disarray as to what dollar amount was being discussed, how it is supposed to be calculated, and how much purview the Zoning Adjustment Board has over how any benefits are to be allocated.

Please finish this conversation before approving any permits.  

There’s no way you can make a decision about the project at your next meeting without first getting a clear statement together about the methodology you’re following, pursuant to the code specification that the limited number of buildings to be granted extra-height variances must provide significant community benefits in return for their marginal excess profits. 

Commissioner Pinkston in particular said that she’d been “told” that the council had mandated—not just suggested, but *mandated*—that this particular project would be allowed to substitute a minimal cash payment for any other form of benefits. 

Who told her that, and why? What’s so special about this one? You need to clarify this. 

What did the council pass? An “ordinance”? A “resolution”? A “suggestion”? This must be clearly articulated before going forward, or you’ll open the ZAB up to charges of undue influence. 

And the rest of the commissioners had very different ideas about how any benefits, in whatever amount, should be allocated, with no obvious standard for making the decision. 

Do you believe that this particular applicant is entitled to a bargain basement price for his extra stories, despite the obvious economic loss to the city because it displaces thriving cultural enterprises, notably the theaters? 

Some commissioners seemed to be confused about whether repairing damage to such enterprises done by the project should be considered a benefit or just a mitigation. This needs to be settled before moving forward. 

If you don’t first agree on a fair and transparent method for making this decision, you’ll be opening the city up to lawsuits galore from subsequent applicants who will want the same deal. And that would not be only for the five buildings mentioned in the plan, but others as well, if the decision methodology can be shown to be inequitable. 

Please get this situation cleaned up before granting permits. Take the time to make your chosen method public before you apply it, so interested citizens (and subsequent potential applicants as well) have adequate opportunity to comment on whether they think it’s fair.

Again we're trying a rolling roll-out of today's issue. Keep checking: more to come, probably including a new editorial.

Having served on the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB), Planning Commission, City Council and in the office of Mayor, I have some understanding of the problems you are facing when you are considering action on a highly controversial subject such as 2211 Harold Way. When the voters approved the construction of two new residential buildings in the Core Downtown, no specific site was ever mentioned. The voters did not grant an entitlement to construct the proposed building at 2211 Harold Way and none was ever inferred, as this site is not listed as one of the 33 residential opportunity sites in the Core Downtown in the General Plan. These new buildings were to considered through the Use Permit process which specifically gives you authority to approve or to deny depending upon the particular circumstances of the site.

In considering those circumstances, you may feel so overwhelmed by the many details that are hearing about, that you just want to vote and move on. I urge you to avoid doing that. You are the gatekeepers for the direction that Berkeley will take. If built on the Harold Way site, this proposed building will not only be the most prominent building in Berkeley, it will be the dominant building for all the land on the Bay shore that stretches north of the Bay Bridge. This project is that important. Please, think about your responsibility to the future, and ensure you have a complete understanding of the project before you take action. And, there is much unfinished business in the application before you at this time. 

1. The Total Height of the Building is Unknown: 

In November 2010, the voters were promised that the two new residential buildings and the one hotel to be constructed in the Core Downtown would be "no higher" than existing buildings. The proposed hotel building has cut back its height to meet that promise, but not 2211 Harold Way which continues to be presented at an actual height that exceeds that of the Great Western/Chase building, the tallest existing building in the Downtown. In the attachment to the Staff Report, the Design Review Committee continues to request that the height of 2211 Harold Way be determined by the city. 

2. The Geo-Technical Feasibility Remains Clouded:  

The applicant has submitted a letter from a respected structural engineer, S. Tipping who states that the construction of the building is feasible. However, from a reading of the Tipping letter, it is clear that Mr. Tipping did not visit the site. He reviewed the Geotechnical Feasibility Study done by ENGEO and original records.  

The ENGEO report done in January 2013 is obsolete as determined within the report itself to be valid for only two years. Additionally, the ENGEO report was done on the basis of a different design, one which is no longer before you. Further, it specifically recommends that "a site specific Geotechnical exploration" be done to confirm that "the potential for liquefaction at the site" was negligible.  

Another letter from structural engineers, Tuan and Robinson, specifically states in their inspection they did not inspect and determine the condition of the Strawberry Creek culvert that lies on the north side of the project.  

The applicant still proposes that the baseline condition of the foundations of the Shattuck Hotel be determined after the project is permitted. He states that this is not uncommon in construction. The circumstances of this particular project do not fit into what might be defined as "common" construction practices. This is what is not common: the existence of an existing and active hotel built on top of aged foundations on a site within two miles of an active earthquake zone capable of an 8+ intensity and designated as a fault likely to break; a location that is also an existing designated liquefaction zone that includes an uninspected aging creek culvert; a site that is within a short distance of a tragic accident that might have been prevented from occurred from happening for a variety of reasons which should inspire this city to take stronger precautions.  

For these reasons, the city should take the time to more thoroughly examine the geo-feasibility of construction of this magnitude at this site before considering permitting. 

3. Water Conservation Issues Have not been Addressed: 

The applicant projects a population of 517 people living in this project. Given 394 bedrooms in the project, a more realistic projection is 827, about a 68% increase over the applicant's projection. If all of those people conserve water (the current standard of 35 gallons per person) that equals over 10 million gallons per year, plus about 4 million gallons used during its construction. None of this has been discussed and there has been no consideration of requiring individual metering. This flies in the face of expert warnings that even if rains occur in December, the drought will not be over, and that extended droughts will occur in California's future. Recent studies show that the depth of the snowpack (not rain) is the most important indicator and that tree-ring studies indicate that the 2015 snowpack is the lowest it has been in 500-years! Planners simply cannot ignore these facts, particularly with a potential 5,000 to 10,000 new residents in our Downtown. This is unfinished business. 

4. Wind Studies are Non-Existent and there are Questions Regarding Open Space Requirements: 

The Wind and Comfort Analysis is dated January 20, 2014 and based on an old design that existed before height was added to the "south shoulder." It basically was concerned with downdraft wind at the pedestrian/street level. The Infill Environmental Checklist repeats much of that analysis, again with the concern focused on street-level impacts. However, these documents state that the only area "potentially subject to a substantial increase in winds that could affect comfort levels would be the rooftop decks of the project itself." It further states that since this is "private space" there would be a "range of options" to "provide shelter" and the impacts are therefore simply dismissed as "less than significant."  

One independent analysis of winds at the highest rooftop could be as high as 85 mph. This goes beyond simply bolting furniture to the floor. How can this be counted as open space for those tenants who don't have private balconies, or even shared in-house community space? No one knows for sure what the number is or the frequency of such winds. Even if the wind speeds are not that high, no one even knows whether the rooftops meet city requirements for only the tenants who have no other open space options. This is unfinished business. 

5. Construction Mitigation for Sensitive Receptors are Incomplete and the proposed Traffic Construction Plan (TCP) is Too Late: 

It is good that the applicant's team has met at last with the BUSD as a sensitive receptor site. I understand there is still concern about the noise level being too high, higher than the level required by State law. That needs to be addressed, but the Berkeley Main Library is also a sensitive receptor site and they have not been consulted. People of all ages, children to seniors, use this site and use it heavily and it is closer to the project site than the High School. What will the noise level be there? This is unfinished business. 

Additionally, it is proposed that a TCP be developed that will include such essential as street and sidewalk closures, traffic diversions, and staging areas. This is to be done in the future and under such strictures as is feasible. Again, it is shocking that the Main Library has not been included as participating in these discussions, but besides that there is still absolutely no indication of where the construction staging area will be located. Where will materials be stored, construction vehicles parked when not in use, where will the large cranes stand? Any of you that were around when the Gaia Building, which is less than half the size of the proposed project, was constructed will remember the extended problems around the staging area for that building. At a minimum, the staging area, and probable potential sidewalk and street closures should be identified along with a time frame, as part of the consideration of the feasibility of constructing such a large building at this particular site. This is unfinished business. 

6. Design Review Should be More Complete: 

The attached items from the Design Review Committee that are listed in your attachment to the Staff Report are far too sketchy. What do they mean? Does ZAB mean to say the design is not important enough to be more sure of the answers to the questions posed by the DRC? While the DRC might tweak the final design, that is not to say that the design must be more exact than it is at this time.  

Even John King, Architectural Critic of the San Francisco Chronicle has called to question this design. Given the prominence of this project, the DRC should be given the chance at another look to flesh out their concerns before approvals are considered. This is unfinished business. 

There are many more things to be said, but with the time constraints to get this letter to you, I will end by saying that the above are six reasons, of possibly many others, that are unfinished business and that should be considered before making your decision regarding permitting. 

Thank you for the opportunity to submit this. 

 

 

 

 

 

There are certain levels of corruption that folks get away with because the linkage is too tenuous… but in this case, the connection doesn’t seem to be all that tenuous. Laurie Capitelli, broker at Red Oak Realty and Berkeley City Council member (and our Tom Bates-anointed next mayor) claims to be retired, but apparently that didn’t stop him from pushing a deal through the city council that appears to have benefited himself personally.

Last time I looked council folk were supposed to recuse themselves from any legislation that personally benefited themselves. Usually they themselves don’t vote while getting all their pals to vote in their interest, but it seems Councilmember Capitelli didn’t think he needed a fig leaf to hide his nakedness on this transaction. When Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan needed a loan for his new home, he turned to our city council to pick up the bill and Councilmember Capitelli was only too willing to lead the charge… apparently Capitelli listed the property that Meehan wanted to purchase at the same time he voted in favor of the council subsidizing the chief’s loan!

That, of course, garnered Councilmember Capitelli (or at least the realty firm in which he’s a partner) a hefty fee, and guaranteed the deal would close. 

According to a news story that ran recently in the Contra Costa Times (too bad Berkeley no longer has its own daily newspaper): "This newspaper found that local Bay Area agencies provide housing assistance to 19 city managers, as well as police chiefs in Atherton, Berkeley and Richmond, San Rafael's fire chief, department heads in Sunnyvale, a government lawyer in San Mateo, a recreation director in Cupertino and others.” 

So did Laurie Capitelli profit from the City’s $500,000 loan to Police Chief Meehan? 

On November 10, 2009, Laurie Capitelli joined the rest of the Berkeley City Council in approving the appointment of Michael Meehan as the City’s new police chief, effective December 13, 2009. The resolution of approval authorized “a housing assistance loan of up to $500,000 for the purchase of a residence within the City of Berkeley”. 

In 2010 Chief Meehan and his family moved into a home in the Thousand Oaks neighborhood in north Berkeley and Meehan used the $500,000 loan from the City to purchase that property, which was sold on June 23, 2010 for $1,185,000. The listing agent was Anita Thede of Northbrae Properties; the buyer’s agent was Laurie Capitelli of Red Oak Realty. 

The website of the National Association of Realtors states that when it comes to commissions, “most areas have a standard percentage that agents expect to receive. This amount usually is 6 percent of the sales price, but you fill find agents who accept 5 percent and agents who ask for 7 percent.” The website also explains that every “real estate agent must work for a real estate broker”; that both the seller’s and buyer’s agent are paid by the broker for whom they work; and that “generally the agent and the broker split the commission that is paid to the seller’s and buyer’s broker upon the sale of the house.” Commonly, the listing broker shares the commission with the buyer’s broker, though the split is not always equal. 

Was Capitelli both the agent and the broker on this deal? 

If the commission on the Meehan house was 6 percent of the sales price, it would have been $71,100. If Northbrae and Red Oak split the commission equally, Red Oak would have received $35,550. Laurie Capitelli is [or was] a Red Oak Realty Partner. If Capitelli didn’t personally pocket the $35,550—or whatever Red Oak received—the business in which he is a principal did. 

Do Berkeley voters think this is how their elected representative (and especially their presumed next mayor) should use public office?

I write to urge that, as elected and appointed City of Berkeley officials, you conceptualize the consequences of allowing this huge project to go forward and that before your vote you take the time, as a matter of personal and civic responsibility, to visit the Shattuck Cinemas, especially noting the hand-painted murals and other decorative elements that enhance the four larger theaters. Tours of the site and theater interiors are scheduled for Sunday Oct 11 at 11:00 am, when the artist Ed Monroe and Architect William Simpson will be present, and Oct 25 at 11:00 am. Information: 510 325-1218.

The developer who wants to demolish the theaters and Habitot has recently proposed replacement of these ten theaters with ten mostly smaller theaters with fewer seats, most of them underground, without the beautiful aesthetic embellishments, and in advance of any rigorous testing of the soils under this landmarked block. This is at best a very poor mitigation of an incredible detriment to the interests of the residents of Berkeley and the East Bay, who patronize and place a high value on the existing cinemas. At the least, replacement theaters would not be available for two or three years. And there is no guarantee that the present very successful management, which has seen a 25% increase in patronage since 2008 to annual ticket sales of 275,000 to 300,000 per year, would be in place and able to continue the kind of programming with that has achieved this success and invigorated downtown Berkeley in recent years.

Another aspect of due diligence regarding this project is to consider deeply its many destructive effects on downtown Berkeley commerce beyond the demolition of the Shattuck Cinemas and Habitot. For two to three years the most vital area of our downtown would be turned into a dangerous construction zone with gridlocked traffic. Since there is no open space for a staging area, streets as well as sidewalks would have to be closed, hindering access to our main library, to our Post Office, to the YMCA, and to Berkeley High School. For these obvious reasons, this is not a site identified in the Berkeley Housing Element as among the Downtown Area Opportunity Sites. Rather, according to the Downtown Plan, as a landmarked block it should be protected, not targeted as a demolition site. 

Finally, what should be foremost in your consideration of this and all new residential projects is whether they address Berkeley's most urgent need—for inclusionary low income, family, affordable housing built to rigorous zero net energy standards. As ABAG announced last month, Berkeley is well ahead of its quota for market rate and luxury housing and shamefully behind in providing new affordable units. The state will require zero net energy for new residential construction in fewer than five years. Rather than allowing for-profit developers to take up our available sites before these higher standards go into effect, Berkeley should be advancing these standards and applying them now, in light of the damage we're seeing already in California as a consequence of global climate change. The 2211 Harold Way proposal serves neither our need for affordable housing nor for the more rigorous energy conservation and efficiency standards that Berkeley residents expect our city government to require. 

Sincerely,

Good news! Minimum wage Berkeley employees receive on October 1 a one dollar increase in wages, which comes to $11 an hour. And the increase applies to tipped employees as well. Wage victories are being won in many cities in the Bay Area. These achievements represent not only moral gains. They are essential to building a sound economy. Consumer spending, which is mainly worker spending, makes up 70 percent of the domestic economy. Without boosting the income of working people, the economy will continue to languish. 

But winning good minimum wage laws are not enough. Too many employers are not obeying these laws. So not only well over a billion dollars are stolen from California workers through minimum wage violations, 83% of workers who win judgments for wage theft never get a dime. Since government is lackadaisical, working people and their allies must take charge. Among our options, we need to develop strategies that persuade the public to avoid establishments that violate the law. 

The civil rights activist, Frederick Douglass was right when he said that "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will".

This summer Republicans have garnered a huge amount of media attention. That was true at the September 16th Republican presidential debate where they spewed lie after lie. Now, Democrats must go on offense and counter the deluge of GOP falsehoods and misstatements.

Unfortunately, in modern politics, it’s an accepted tactic to repeat a lie over and over until it is accepted as the truth. By now, the notion that Barack Obama is a Muslim should have been discredited; nonetheless, a recent poll found that 43 percent of Republicans believe this untruth. On September 17th, Donald Trump had an opportunity to set the record straight when he took questions from his audience and a participant began, “We know our current president is [a Muslim].” Trump didn’t respond. Two days later he tweeted, “Am I morally obligated to defend the president every time somebody says something bad or controversial about him? I don't think so!” Trump’s evasiveness is self-serving as 66 percent of Trump supporters believe Obama is a Muslim.

During the Republican debate the candidates spewed a torrent of misinformation. A record 23.1 million viewers watched the September 16 program and certain falsehoods were repeated over and over. Because there was no direct Democratic response, the possibility exists that some lies were accepted as truth. Here are some egregious examples: 

1. Planned Parenthood: During a lengthy discussion about whether or not it is a worthwhile objective to shutdown the government in order to deny funding for Planned Parenthood, there were several notable Republican lies. Carly Fiorina said, “As regards Planned Parenthood, anyone who has watched this videotape… Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, it's heart beating, it's legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” After the debate, numerous sources confirmed there is no such videotape. Moreover, even though this was the most discussed topic in the debate, no participant mentioned the obvious: it’s illegal to use federal funds for abortions. There’s no reason to block funding to Planned Parenthood unless Republicans want to deny access to health services to millions of women. 

2. National Security: The GOP candidates spent more than a hour posturing over who would be strongest on national security. Most condemned the Iran nuclear deal. Mike Huckabee claimed, “This is really about the survival of Western civilization.” Neither Huckabee nor the other candidates explained how Iran with a defense budget of $10 billion (a fraction of our $600+ billion defense budget) threatens the US. 

There was an extended discussion of who would be toughest talking to Vladimir Putin. Trump said he would be because Putin would respect him: “I will get along -- I think -- with Putin… and we will have a much more… stable world.” 

Fiorina repeated stock phrases from her stump speech:

Having met Vladimir Putin, I wouldn't talk to him at all. We've talked way too much to him. What I would do, immediately, is begin rebuilding the Sixth Fleet, I would begin rebuilding the missile defense program in Poland, I would conduct regular, aggressive military exercises in the Baltic States. I'd probably send a few thousand more troops into Germany.

In 2001, Fiorina was introduced to Putin at a trade conference; there’s no indication they had an extended discussion. Her talking points make no sense: the Sixth Fleet is the largest in the world and has hundreds of nuclear weapons pointed at Russia; America is currently conducting exercises in the Baltic; and we’ve 40,000 troops in Germany. 

3. The economy: In the course of three hours, the Republican candidates said very little about creating jobs and improving the economic wellbeing of average Americans. The closing comments of Donald Trump exemplify this: “If I become president, we will do something really special. We will make this country greater than ever before. We'll have more jobs. We'll have more of everything.” 

Other than Trump’s bloviating, the closest the candidates got to specifics was a brief discussion of raising the minimum wage. There was no general discussion and no proposals for raising the standard of living for working Americans. 

In addition, the Republican candidates spewed misinformation about global climate change, immigration, vaccines, and other topics. Democrats had no opportunity to set the record straight and the debate mediators didn’t see this as their responsibility. 

During the debate Bernie Sanders tweeted his observations. After the debate, MSNBC and other liberal outlets, discussed the debate primarily focusing on who won and lost. 

Democrats must buy a 30-minute TV slot, immediately following the debates, where they can offer their rebuttal. There, an authoritative Democrat – someone not currently running for office, such as Sherrod Brown, Dick Durbin, or Elizabeth Warren – could offer a fact-filled response, avoiding the candidate personalities but instead focusing on the true facts. Dems have to go on offense. 

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

Remember the organization “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” and its smear campaign against 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry? Named after the group, the discredited, Republican-funded campaign against Kerry became known pejoratively as “swiftboating.” 

Like Kerry, Planned Parenthood is being “swift-boated” by the Republican Party and anti-abortion groups. In July 2015, David Donaldson, an anti-abortion activist, released videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials discussing the illegal sale of fetal tissue. The videos totally misrepresent what Planned Parenthood does. In fact, the organization follows federal law, allowing women to donate fetal tissue for research, and charging small amounts to cover costs. Abortion services are only 3 percent of its services. But the videos took on a life of their own. 

Notwithstanding the fallaciousness of the videos, the Republican Party has jumped on Planned Parenthood to highlight their anti-abortion stance. On September 18, 2015, the U.S. House of Representatives voted mostly along party lines to freeze federal funding for Planned Parenthood. The vote was largely symbolic as Democrats in the U.S. Senate have enough votes to kill the legislation and, if not, President Obama would veto the bill. There is some GOP sentiment to shut down the government unless Planned Parenthood is defunded. 

Attacks on Planned Parenthood even found its way into the Republican presidential campaigns. Chris Christie, Scott Walker, and Jeb Bush bragged about defunding Planned Parenthood in their states. Ted Cruz called the group “an ongoing criminal enterprise.” And Carly Fiorina compared the organization to the threat from Iran. Even Donald Trump jumped on the anti-Planned Parenthood bandwagon saying that Republicans should shut down the government rather than fund the organization. And Ben Carson joined fellow Republican presidential hopefuls Rand Paul and Ted Cruz at a rally in Washington calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood. 

It is not coincidental that these attacks on Planned Parenthood coincide with attacks on reproductive health facilities across the country, including cyber attacks, threats, and arsons. The FBI is now investigating these attacks. 

What would be lost if Planned Parenthood went out of business? The New England Journal of Medicine sums it up best: 

“We strongly support Planned Parenthood not only for its efforts to channel fetal tissue into important medical research but also for its other work as one of the country’s largest providers of health care for women, especially poor women. It is shameful that a radical anti-choice group whose goal is the destruction of Planned Parenthood continues to twist the facts to achieve its ends. We thank the women who made the choice to help improve the human condition through their tissue donation; we applaud the people who make this work possible and those who use these materials to advance human health. We are outraged by those who debase these women, this work, and Planned Parenthood by distorting the facts for political ends.” 

Unfortunately, if a falsehood is repeated often enough, too many people will start believing there must be some truth to these accusations against Planned Parenthood. That seems to be the GOP strategy.

Darwin's "survival of the fittest" has been twisted into a cultural monstrosity. Social Darwinism as a scientific philosophy, although discredited a very long time ago, has remnants in mainstream culture that shape most people's attitudes.  

This, in terms of ignorance, is right up there with some people's religious beliefs leading them to produce as many offspring as possible. And it is a machismo thing among some men that they ought to spread their "seed" as widely as possible.  

Many people pride themselves on the "good stock" they believe they are. They might never consider that the reason they are healthy or even alive could largely be due to improved conditions modern technology has provided (such as good sanitation, a food and water supply free of parasites, hot and cold running water, heating, air conditioning, vaccines, antibiotics, numerous diseases having been eradicated, and so on…)  

Many people believe that having a biological difference is equivalent to being an unworthy human being. This is one reason why many are bigoted against people who rely on artificial assistance to survive (such as someone born with spina bifida, someone born deaf or blind, or perhaps someone who relies on psychiatric medication.)  

The above-described perception has nothing to do with reality. We're all made of the same stuff, and by virtue of being here, we have passed the genetic fitness test. If our ancestors have survived long enough to bring us into existence, something obviously worked. If we believe we have a "genetic detect," then so what? An errant band of atoms in our DNA doesn't make us unworthy human beings.  

We should not believe that we are weak products of nature if we rely on something manmade in order to function or survive. Our ancestors died much younger than modern day Americans for a multitude of reasons. If it wasn't for modern advances, ninety percent of us probably wouldn't be here.  

If we have a difficulty in life, and if there is a thing that can help, but we turn it down because of the perception that it makes us weak, this is pure foolishness. If there is a thing that can provide an advantage or that can amend a disadvantage, how foolish it is to turn it down! 

What about the runner in Australia, Oscar Pistorius, who kept winning footraces with prosthetic lower legs? For the moment let's filter out the scandal in which he shot his girlfriend. As a runner competing and winning with a disability--this is admirable.  

When I was in my twenties and early thirties and was dating (before I got married), there were a number of prospective partners who would not consider a relationship with me because of my disability. I can understand someone wanting to be with a good provider, which I couldn't be. However, there were some others who simply were bigoted, and who believed that mental illness makes someone unfit.  

I sometimes ran across the same thing in the job market. Society has outmoded and unscientific ideas about who is believed to be fit and who isn't. Ironically, these warped and ignorant concepts were spawned from evolutionary science.  

Mental Illness doesn't make someone defective. This is just the biology that the universe has handed to us. Where we go with it and what we accomplish or don’t accomplish in spite of it is up to us. We should never stop respecting and liking ourselves just because someone ignorantly believes being mentally ill is an indication of inferiority.  

This ignorant view of mentally ill people (which, by the way, is prevalent) is one of the reasons why many people afflicted with mental illness resist their diagnosis and cannot be convinced to become compliant with treatment. It is also a reason why some treatment practitioners have treated us as less than fully-fledged human beings. 

This issue is important to think about since it is a barrier against persons with mental illness having a good outcome.

Gustavo Dudamel, 34 years old, is the latest super-star among conductors. Much in demand internationally, Dudamel is Music Director of both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. This week he brings his Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela to Berkeley for an ambitious and ground-breaking series of concerts, classroom visits, open rehearsals, and master classes. Dudamel himself is a product of Venezuela’s El Sistema, the ambitious and hugely successful national system founded by conductor José Antonio Abreu in 1975 to enhance music education and social change in that country. To date, over 2 million Venezuelan children have received musical instruction, and the Simón Bolívar Orchestra’s 180 members are all graduates of El Sistema.  

Musically, the focus of Dudamel’s Berkeley concerts is Beethoven, as Dudamel conducts Beethoven’s 7^th and 8^th Symphonies in Zellerbach Hall on Thursday evening, September 24, and Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony on Friday evening, September 25, in the Greek Theatre. On Thursday, the program opened with a hearing of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Op. 84 (1810). Beethoven was commissioned to write an overture to a performance of Goethe’s play Egmont, which dealt with the brutal subjugation of the Dutch people under tyrannical Spanish rulers and hailed the people’s calls for revolution. Beethoven, who had already premiered in 1804 his opera Fidelio, with its celebration of struggle against political oppression, threw himself with zeal into the composition of the Egmont Overture. In Berkeley, under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, the Simón Bolívar Orchestra gave a stirring rendition of this brief work, emphasizing the overture’s opening gloom and foreboding right up to the moment of Egmont’s death and political martyrdom, which is followed by a moment of silence, then to a final, exhilarating song of victory as the work closes. 

Next on Thursday’s program was Beethoven’s 8^th Symphony in F major, Op. 93. Critics have long noted the similarities between the 7^th and 8^th symphonies of Beethoven. Both works exude a festal air, even one, at times, of raucous celebration. Some listeners hear in these symphonies a drunken dance or a Bacchic orgy. Beethoven himself once declared, “I am Bacchus incarnate, appointed to give humanity wine to drown its sorrows…. He who divines the secret of my music is delivered from the misery that haunts the world.” There is certainly an intoxication of the spirit in these two symphonies.  

The 8^th opens with a dance-like theme in F major. The second theme enters, surprisingly, in D major, but quickly achieves the home key of F major. The central section climaxes with one of the longest passages of sustained fortissimo in all classical music. The second movement, an Allegretto scherzando, employs pizzicato plucking of the strings to mimic a metronome’s tic-tock, accentuated by the woodwinds. This brief movement is full of humor and gaiety. The third movement, a Minuet, achieves a rich sonority featuring horns and clarinets over an arpeggiated accompaniment in the cellos. The finale is of monumental proportions, its length is nearly equal to that of the preceding three movements. It is boisterous and joyous throughout, ending with a coda that culminates in a high-spirited ending. As conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, Beethoven’s 8^th Symphony was a spirited expression of festive joy. 

After intermission, Dudamel returned to the podium to conduct Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony in A major, Op. 92. Though Beethoven considered the 8^th to be “much better” than the 7^th, it is the 7^th which has won the greater acclaim through the ages. Listeners respond to the 7^th’s driving rhythms that run throughout the work, propelling the music ever onward, and drawing the listener along with it. The work opens with a slow introduction of two themes. The first is passed down by the winds over long, rising scales in the strings. The second is a poignant melody for oboe. Out of this introduction the movement shifts gears, and proceeds up-tempo to its vivace conclusion. The second movement, an Allegretto, is a wonderful, dreamlike evocation of pure freedom. It has been described as utopian; and under Dudamel’s baton, the Simón Bolívar Orchestra made it sound utopian. This is as emotionally satisfying a movement as Beethoven ever created. The following presto is a study in contrasts of sonority and dynamics, sensitively rendered here by Dudamel’s conducting. The finale is a movement of extraordinary rhythmic drive. Dudamel tore into this music with a fierce passion. At moments he crouched low and reached forward as if to grab the sonorous low notes from the instrument played by the first cellist directly in front of the conductor. This is intoxicating music, and it reverberated in me later that night even as I slept. Talk about making an impression! 

To follow: A review of Friday’s performance by Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Orchestra of Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony at the Greek Theatre

Locally-sourced food has been all the rage for a while now, but locally-sourced opera?

Berkeley Chamber Opera is attempting to provide just that—productions which showcase the work of the Bay Area’s wealth of resident professional talent in accessible settings, at a price which is affordable for a wide range of opera fans.

Many who have been introduced to opera through the popular Metropolitan Opera films haven’t yet experienced the unique excitement of live performance.

Berkeley Chamber Opera hopes to change that. Next on its schedule is Mozart's beloved Marriage of Figaro, to be staged at Berkeley's Hillside Club on October 9 and 11. 

BCO is dedicated to presenting local professional opera singers in staged productions with a chamber orchestra in intimate venues in the San Francisco Bay Area. Founder Eliza O’Malley, who grew up in Berkeley, created BCO as an outgrowth of her work singing leading roles with such local opera companies as Verismo Opera, Handel Opera Project and Goat Hall Productions and producing concerts with the Dazzling Divas.  

The company’s first venture, Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte, was performed at the historic Berkeley Piano Club in 2012 under the baton of Bay Area luminary Jonathan Khuner. It quickly sold out and received a standing ovation. Recently BCO collaborated with William Ludtke’s Handel Opera Project on a performance of Mozart’s rarely performed La Clemenza di Tito. 

Its latest offering, another Mozart favorite, Le Nozze di Figaro (the Marriage of Figaro), can be seen in two October performances at the larger Hillside Club, just north of the U.C. Berkeley campus.  

Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto and Mozart’s infectious score combine to provide a sidesplitting tale of mischief and trickery. 

It will be sung in the original Italian with English supertitles, with 18^th Century costumes and minimal sets. 

Performances are at the Berkeley Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. (at Arch) in Berkeley; Friday night, October 9, at 7 p.m. and Sunday afternoon, October 11, at 2 p.m.  

Tickets are available in advance through Brown Paper Tickets or at the door. General admission is $30.00, Seniors and Students are $20 and children 12 and under are free. For more information see berkeleychamberopera.org , call (510)517-1820, or email BerkeleyChamberOpera@gmail.com. 

Company for Le Nozze di Figaro:

Conductor: Osvaldo de Leon
Director: Eliza O’Malley
Dramaturge: MaryAnne Stanislaw
Costumes: Emily Holtzclaw 

Cast:

Figaro: Don Hoffman
Susanna: Raeeka Shehabi-Yaghmai
Countess Almaviva: Eliza O’Malley
Count Almaviva: Spencer Dodd
Cherubino: Elizabeth Baker
Marcellina: Deborah Rosengaus
Bartolo: Richard Mix
Basilio/Don Curzio: Darron Flagg
Antonio: David Peterson
Barbarina: Emma Boss -Friday/Barbara Lim -Sunday
Two women: Dee Hoover and Liz Garfinkle
Chorus: Emma Boss, Elizabeth Butler, Cyril Drame, Liz Garfinkle, Dee Hoover, Barbara Lim, Kathleen Mock, Isabel O’Malley-Krohn, Mike O’Malley, Andrew Ross, Alexandra Williams 

Chamber Orchestra:

Felisa Simon, oboe
Leslie Tagorda, clarinet
Nicola Gruen, violin 1
Julia Birnbaum, violin2
Ilana Matfis, viola
Leighton Fong, cello/continuo
Cynthia Hanson, Bassoon
William Ludtke, piano
Osvaldo de Leon, continuo 

This remarkable show, which runs from July 28 to November 1 at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, brings together 50 or so ancient bronzes from 34 museums in 13 countries on 4 continents. It is a traveling exhibition which opened March 14 at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, then moved to Los Angeles, and will proceed in November to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Entitled “Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World,” this show is perhaps misnamed, for although it focuses primarily on Greek and Roman works of the Hellenistic period – from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to the 2^nd century AD – it also includes significant works from the 5^th and 4^th centuries BC, the so-called Classical period of ancient Greece. It offers, as one journalist noted, “the Murderer’s Row of Greek Bronzes.”  

One highlight of the show is the Seated Boxer from the Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Massimo in Rome. This astonishing Greek work from the 3^rd century BC offers a larger than life-size nude man of mature age, who appears to be resting after what one infers must have been a grueling boxing match, for he exhibits cauliflower ears, a broken nose, and a swollen right cheek disfigured by a hematoma – all rendered in hard-core realism by a magisterial handling of the medium of bronze-casting. He wears fur-lined gloves wound with sharp leather thongs, the boxing gloves of ancient Greek athletes. The intrinsic brutality of this representation of a boxer is by no means minimized. Yet somehow the brutality arouses in the viewer a certain empathy for this man who gives and receives violent blows that leave deep wounds. Presumably, before being brought to Rome this statue would have been erected in a Greek sanctuary or public place in the hometown of the athlete it commemorates. Assuming that this was a victorious boxer, one has to ask, if this is how the winner looked, can we imagine how the loser looked? 

Most Greek sculpture that has survived is carved from marble. In ancient Greece, however, bronze was more highly prized. However, bronze, unlike marble, was easily melted down for recycling in armaments and coinage, with the result that most bronze pieces have been lost to us. Some of the best-preserved ancient bronzes have been retrieved from underwater as the result of shipwrecks. The greatest of all Greek bronzes, and to my mind the greatest piece of sculpture ever created, the 5^th century BC Zeus or Poseidon hurling a javelin, was found underwater off Cape Artemesion; but it is unfortunately not included in this traveling exhibition. It remains permanently installed in The National Museum in Athens. Two other underwater finds from the 5^th century BC, the larger than life-size Riace Warriors, were included in the Florence show but did not come to the Getty Center in Los Angeles. This was a major disappointment, for I have never had a chance to visit the museum in Italy’s Reggio di Calabria where they are usually on view. Several other major works from this traveling exhibition did not make it to Los Angeles, including the famed 5^th century BC Charioteer from Delphi and the 4^th century BC Marathon Boy housed in The National Museum in Athens.  

Among the far-flung contributions to this show are a Weary Herakles from the National Museum in Baghdad, Iraq; a 4^th century BC portrait head of Seuthes III from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia; and a Citizen Woman, wearing a thin chiton and himation veiled over her head, from the Miho Museum in Shigaraki, Japan. Incidentally, this latter piece is one of the few works in the show depicting a female, whether human or divine. Of these, perhaps the finest is a statuette of the goddess Athena, which is normally housed in the Getty Villa in Malibu. Another work from the Getty Villa in this show is the famed Statue of An Athlete (or The Getty Bronze), which did not travel to Italy for the show’s opening in Florence due to its being the subject of litigation in Italian courts. Yet another piece from the Getty Villa in this show is the admirable bust of the Roman poet Menander.  

Included in the show are several versions of a nude Greek athlete holding a strigil used for scraping oil from his body. This was a popular image in ancient Greece, where it bore the title Apoxyomenos, and such images remained hugely popular well into the 2^nd century AD. A life-size Apoxyomenos from Ephesos, provided to the traveling exhibition by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, is a masterpiece of restoration, for it was discovered broken into 234 fragments in the Harbor Baths at Ephesos in 1896. A second Apoxyomenos, this one almost entirely intact, was found in 1997 at a depth of 45 meters in the waters of the Northern Adriatic off the coast of Croatia. This piece, called The Croatian Apoxyomenos, was provided to the traveling exhibition by the Ministry of Culture of Croatia in Zagreb. 

Two 2^nd century BC Herms of Dionysos are on display here, one from a shipwreck off the coast of Tunisia, provided by the Musée Nationale du Bardo in Tunis, and a second from the Getty Villa in Malibu. Metal analysis has established that both of these herms were most likely produced at the same time and in the same workshop. A nearly life-size statue of Apollo found off the coast of Piombino, Italy, is an example of the archaizing style popular in the late Hellenistic period. This particular Apollo, it has been discovered, was produced at Lindos on Rhodes by two sculptors who inscribed their names on lead tablets inserted into the interior of the statue. This work was provided by the Louvre in Paris. A statue of an Ephebe or youth, (nicknamed the Idolino), was discovered in Pesaro, Italy, and was provided for the traveling exhibition by the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Florence. Last but by no means least is the famed Boy Removing a Thorn from His Foot, (nicknamed the Spinario), a 1^st century BC bronze provided by the Musei Capitolini in Rome. This ingenious work depicts a nude youth seated on a rock with his left leg crossed over his right knee as he extracts a thorn from the sole of his foot. The simple, down-to-earth grace of this much-renowned work is irresistible. 

All in all, this remarkable exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see 50 or so of the remaining large-scale bronzes (perhaps 200 in total) in existence in the world’s museums. As such, it is a must-see art show, one worth catching a plane to go see, especially when it is as close-by to us in the Bay Area as Los Angeles. This show is not to be missed by anyone interested in art, especially ancient art.

On Friday evening, September 25, Gustavo Dudamel led the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela in Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony at Berkeley’s Greek Theatre. Under Dudamel’s direction, the Simón Bolívar Orchestra has taken its place as one of the world’s leading orchestras. They just returned from performing several concerts and the opera La Bohème at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, with Dudamel conducting. Last week they opened the 2015-16 season in Los Angeles by uniting with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies. Beethoven, of course, was also the orchestra’s focus in their visit to Berkeley, and this visit was capped off in memorable fashion by an illuminating performance of Beethoven’s immortal 9^th Symphony in D minor, Op. 125. 

I use the term ‘illuminating’ quite literally. Never before have I heard so many details of this great symphonic masterpiece brought to light. For example, never before have I heard the sublime third movement, the Adagio, played in such achingly beautiful fashion as it was performed here by the Simón Bolívar Orchestra led by Gustavo Dudamel. And never before have I understood so clearly the crucial role this Adagio plays in the 9^th Symphony’s overall emotional development. If anything prepares the way for the joyous utopian outpouring of optimism of the choral finale, the Ode to Joy, it is surely the solemn yet sublime profundity of the Adagio. This is music that sets one dreaming. As such, the Adagio draws on all the inspiring moments of the work’s more extroverted first two movements, but by slowing everything down the Adagio becomes a serenely introverted reflection on everything that has come before. There is a quiet confidence underlying this Adagio, as if Beethoven were himself reflecting on all the storm and stress of his own life and of his own earlier music, only to recognize here, near the end of his creative life, that an affirmation of utopian ideals is mankind’s best hope for transcending all the struggles and sorrows that haunt human life.  

There is also in this Adagio a subtle hint of the voice-inflected song that will climax in the fourth and final movement. As Maynard Solomon writes, “In the first movement, Beethoven retains the condensed ‘heroic’ thematic treatment, de-veloping his materials from an arpeggiated common chord germ motif; and the scherzo, with its demonic dance character and rhythm-dominated thrust, is similarly far removed from song. With the two expressive and consoling themes of the Adagio, however, the speech-inflected accents of the human voice enter the Ninth Symphony, and they do so within a variation form which … takes on the character of an extended, through-composed song without words.” 

The majestic fourth movement is divided into two large parts: the first instrumental, the second with chorus and soloists. A shrieking dissonance intro-duces the instrumental recitative for cellos and basses that joins the thematic reminiscences from the first three movements. The Ode to Joy theme makes its appearance unadorned in the low strings and undergoes a set of variations. Now the shrieking dissonance is heard again; but this time Beethoven allocates the following recitative to the human voice, as a baritone (sometimes a bass) declares, “Oh friends, no more of these sad tones! Rather let us raise our voices together, and joyful be our song.” With these words, sung here by baritone Solomon Howard, Beethoven introduces his immortal setting of Friedrich Schiller’s “An die Freude” (“Ode to Joy”). At Berkeley’s Greek Theatre, the Chamber Chorus of the University of California and Alumni, led by Marika Kuzma, joined with the Pacific Boychoir Academy led by Kevin Fox, and the San Francisco Girls Chorus, led by Lisa Bielawa. This mighty chorus intoned the noble words of Schiller’s Ode to Joy as adapted by Beethoven, who used only half of the 18 sections in Schiller’s poem and freely rearranged it in his own fashion. In addition to the chorus, Beethoven included music for four soloists, here ably performed by soprano Mariana Ortiz, mezzo-soprano J’nai Bridges, tenor Joshua Guerrero, and baritone Solomon Howard. The noble words of Schiller’s Ode to Joy as set to immortal music by Beethoven resounded in the open air of Berkeley’s vast Greek Theatre, and never did these noble sentiments echo so meaningfully in the cosmos as in this magical space. It was as if Dudamel, Beethoven’s 9^th, and Berkeley’s Greek Theatre were simply meant for one another.

James Keller was longtime resident playwright at the Magic Theatre some years back, his plays and adaptations familiar to Bay Area audiences, and they've been performed in London and New York as well. For the past twenty-some years, he's also been a popular teacher at Berkeley Adult School and other East Bay venues, well-known for teaching literature, film and other cultural subjects with great vigor. Keller's still writing (both plays and poetry) and directing his own scripts for the occasional show by his troupe, Poor Players ( poorplayers.org ). His dialogue and characters engage the audience, dancing in the spectators' minds' eye.  

On October 4, Keller will give two rare solo performances in San Francisco, of his "tour" of Proust's great seven volume novel 'In Search of Lost Time' (aka 'Remembrance of Things Past'), marshaling his diverse and considerable talents--Australian-born, he was trained in theater in London, where he also received two British Arts Council Writing Grants. Accompanied only by music and 180 slides, Keller endeavours to bring the complex tale, woven of forgetting and remembering, alive in all its humor and tragedy of passing time. Author and New Yorker theater critic John Lahr has dubbed the performance "a tour de force." 

A Q & A session with Keller will follow each show.  

Sunday, October 4, two shows, 2 & 8 pm, Southside Theatre, Bldg. D, Fort Mason, San Francisco. https://wwwbrownpapertickets.com/event/2239503 

--Yakshagana is an old South Indian theatrical form, similar to Kathakali, employing elaborate costumes and make-up, music (two singers and two drummers playing a stick drum and a horizontal two-headed drum, dance and stylized movement to depict stories from the great mythic Hindu epics with tremendous energy and humor. I've written about it in the Planet before, when we've been fortunate enough to have a troupe here to perform this eminent style. 

A few days ago, there was a lecture/demo of Yakshagana at Morrison Hall on the UC campus. M. Prabakhar Joshy, both performer and scholar of Yakshagana, spoke about the form, its different styles and their history before an audience that included Dr. Martha Ashton, who Joshy hailed as "probably the first woman to perform Yakshagana onstage in full costume--and certainly the holder of the first PhD awarded on Yakshagana," as well as Katharine Kunhiraman of Kalanjali, Dances of India, the Berkeley educational project through which she and her late husband, second-generation Kathakali actor K. P. Kunhiraman, have taught and performed South Indian dance and theater for for over 35 years. 

At the end of the lecture, Joshy introduced three Yakshagana actors in costume who'd just arrived from Karnatika, South India. They gave a vigorous and charming demonstration of scenes and tableaux from their repertoire. 

Now, it's been announced that those actors will be performing with their colleagues--Shashidhara Somayali, Ashoka Upadya, Sreepada Hegade, Ganesh Shetty, Prashanth Padubidri, Aparna Ds, Lavanya Joshi-- in a--free!--performance, presented by Yaksha Kala Ranga USA this Saturday night, 8:30 till 10:30 in Sunnyvale at Sanatan Dharma Kendra, 193 Commercial Street, between the Central Expressway and Kifer Road. The story they'll present, ChandrahasaCharitre, is synopsized and discussed on WikiPedia:  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrahasa 

The Piedmont Center for the Arts was packed early evening last Sunday, the crowd spilling through the open doors into the warm, still air outside the hall where violinist Stuart Canin, pianist Janet Guggenheim--later joined by cellist Jonah Kim--played the opening program of the third season of Berkeley Symphony & Friends chamber concert series with brilliant acuity, particularly apt for a concert dedicated to the memory of Robert Commanday, dean of Bay Area music critics, who died at his nearby home September 3, age 93. 

"Bob Commanday was close to Stuart Canin, a friend of the City of Piedmont and the Center for the Arts," said Rene' Mandel, violinist and executive director of Berkeley Symphony, who introduced the program. "He'd been to these concerts and of course to the Berkeley Symphony. He was one of the great music critics of the world." 

Canin and Guggenheim played Stravinsky's Duo Concertante with great, sweeping energy, sprightly and playful, intense at moments, especially ending the final section--Dithyrambe--and the piece with sharp illumination. The middle Eclogue sections brought to mind poet Bertolt Brecht's praise of Dante's verse as being like the classical pastoral poets: "You can read it aloud outdoors"--only Canin and Guggenheim brought a breath of the outdoors into the crowded, rapt hall. 

After the Stravinsky, demonstrating what Erik Satie called his "Mozartian transparency," the pair essayed Prokofiev's Sonata in D Major, angular and peripatetic, by turns expansive and insistent--and at times a little frenetic. There was spontaneous ap[plause at the end of the Presto, second section of four. 

After intermission, Canin and Guggenheim were joined by the excellent young cellist Jonah Kim to play Anton Arensky's familiar Piano Trio No. 1. often broadly lyrical, with cello answering violin, then the two joining together.  

Bill Quillen, associated with some Cal Performances programs, spoke briefly before each piece, giving a good, condensed perspective, remarking they were all composed within about 50 years, from the end of the 19th century to the midst of the Second World War. 

Stuart Canin, co-founder of the New Century Chamber Orchestra, former concert master of the San Francisco Symphony under Seiji Ozawa and the Los Angeles Opera under Kent Nagano (who he's also worked with in the Berkeley Akademie and with NCCO), where he worked with Placido Domingo. He was the first American to win the Paganini Competition. Canin's debut on the international stage came when he served with the US Army after the Second World War in Germany, when he gave a command performance for Harry truman, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin at the Poitsdam Conference. 

Berkeley Symphony & Friends will present further chamber concerts November 15 of this year and February 21 and April 10, 2016 at the Piedmont Center for the Arts. The next Berkeley Symphony concert--featuring pieces by Berlioz, Saariaho and Ravel, conducted by music director Joana Carneiro, will be at Zellerbach Hall on Thursday, October 14. berkeleysymphony.org