The latest addition to Berkeley’s growing “popup” house collection got the go-ahead from Zoning Adjustments Board members Thursday despite nearly unanimous neighborhood opposition. 

A trio of developers won approval of their plan to turn a single-story Victorian cottage at 2901 Otis St. into the upper floor of a three-floor trio of three-bedroom condos that will rise above the other homes on the block. 

A poll conducted by neighbors counted 47 residents opposed, four in favor and one ambivalent—numbers that developer Eric Geleynse blamed on “one of the neighbors (who) has effectively whipped up the neighbors into being strongly opposed.” 

Earlier, Geleynse said, “most people were happy that blight was going to be removed.” 

“The only four residents who said they were in favor are all connected with the developer,” charged neighbor David Raymond. 

Neighbors tried to stall the project by presenting a petition calling for a landmark designation for the property, but the effort failed at a short-handed Landmarks Preservation Commission on June 6, where the proposal managed to win a majority of members on hand but failed to capture the five votes needed for passage. 

The Otis Street popup follows in the wake of ZAB’s approval last month of the “Flying Cottage” at 3045 Shattuck Ave., where another modest cottage was raised up atop a two-story plywood shell. 

Neighbors also charged that the structure was out of character with the neighborhood, overshadowed nearby homes and posed the threat of yet more parking on seriously overcrowded streets. 

In both cases, neighbors were thwarted in their attempts to stop the development by municipal zoning codes that allowed such changes. 

In the case of the Flying Cottage, the issue was zoning along the Shattuck Avenue commercial corridor, where three-story buildings can be built at will. 

In the case of the Queen Anne house on Otis, the issue was R-4 zoning, which favors multiple-family residential structures. The developers’ plans fell well within the code’s provisions, which allow three-story units without a use permit and up to six stories with a permit. 

Though some ZAB members—most vocally, architect Robert Allen—said they didn’t like the idea in concept, only Allen and Dean Metzger voted against the project. 

“If I lived in the neighborhood I’d be upset,” said Allen, “but we’re here to administer the zoning code, which is terribly inadequate... It’s clearly zoned for that height.” 

Allen ridiculed the code’s notion that inhabitants of each of the units would restrict themselves to one car, “even though we know that that’s not going to happen.” 

Finally, he found fault with a design that replaced the present home’s graceful Victorian porch and entry with a more mundane entry, flush with the wall. 

Still, he said, “the architect has done a very good job, unlike another flying house I won’t mention by name.” 

The project, developed by Geleynse and partners Xin Jin and Danny Tran, calls for 4,436 square feet of housing on a a 5,015-square-foot lot. 

Neighbor David Raymond, who lives next door to the project at 1930 Russell St., charged that the actual lot was closer to 4,984 square feet, which would make it too small to meet the 5,000-square-foot minimum the code requires. 

City records support the larger measurement. 

Geleynse defended the plan’s inclusion of only three on-site parking slots because, he said, “our belief is that the owners will be transit-oriented families” who will take advantage of the Ashby BART station two blocks to the south. 

“If that were true of our neighborhood, our neighborhood would have adequate parking spaces,” said neighbor Dean Mayeron. 

Ross Blum, who lives on Russell Street across from the cottage, charged that “with three spaces on the lot, there’s going to be more (cars) on the street,” and even more if parking fees are imposed on the BART lot. 

Geleynse depicted the project as a boon for the city, which would more than double the property taxes while removing urban blight and “adding three units of affordability with a block of BART.” 

The developer said he estimated that each of the units would sell for about half-a-million dollars. 

“Who is it that thinks this is an affordable home when you have to pay $500,000 for a condo?” scoffed ZAB member Jesse Anthony, who is African American. “Are they trying to drive us out of this town? Something is wrong when they say $500,000 is low-income. Puh-lease!” 

Critics in the audience applauded his comments. 

“The idea of demolishing this house is a very painful and unpleasant idea. It shouldn’t happen. It should be repaired and used as housing for a family,” said ZAB member Carrie Sprague. 

“There are no development standards for units in R-4,” lamented member David Blake. “It’s wide open.” But, he acknowledged, “by the spirit of the code, it fits the code and because it’s a corner lot, I don’t see how we’re going to change it.” 

Allen proposed delaying the vote until the developers submitted designs for an entry that was more in character with the existing structure, and Geleynse declared that he would do just that. 

Things got testy when chair Andy Katz said, “It’s really clear to me that the project falls within the inclusionary ordinance because it falls within the R-4 zone and it could support five units.” 

The inclusionary ordinance is a provision in state law that requires affordable housing units in all new developments of five of more units. 

Allen criticized Katz for raising the issue. “It’s politically motivated,” he declared. 

“It’s not motivated by anything other than meeting the goals of the General Plan and meeting the needs for affordable housing in this city,” Katz responded, adding that inclusionary standards would call for six-tenths of a unit—closer to a whole unit of affordable housing than not. 

Allen called Katz’s comments “counter to everything the neighbors have asked us to do. It’s really obscene.” 

“We know that we’re being cheated out of affordable units,” declared Anthony.  

But the conditional approval passed, with only Metzger and Allen in opposition. The rest said they felt bound by a code that clearly allowed the project to go forward.

The City Council will yet again Tuesday be asked to weigh in on the fate of 11 artisans refusing to leave their homes at an illegal live-work West Berkeley warehouse. 

In an effort to speed up evictions at the East Bay Drayage, the owner, Lawrence White, last week submitted plans to demolish the warehouse’s two dozen interior units. City officials have said the permit can be granted within a week and without a public hearing. However, Councilmember Dona Spring is asking the council to require the Zoning Adjustments Board to rule on the permit, a process which could take several months. 

Spring has failed in previous attempts to ask the council to intervene in city planning matters. 

Joan MacQuarrie, a city building official, said White’s permit submittal last week was flawed, but if he resubmitted it early this week, the city could rule on it within by the end of the week. 

Time is of the essence for both sides. Having incurred over $100,000 in city fines for not evacuating the warehouse by April 15, White is eager to obtain the demolition permit to hasten eviction proceedings. Meanwhile, the tenants hope that by stalling the process they can pressure White to accept an offer on the property from the Northern California Land Trust, which has pledged to bring the building up to code and give residents the opportunity to buy their units. 

According to Jeffrey Carter, the tenants’ legal advisor, White and the Land Trust have resumed sale negotiations after talks stalled last month. 

As for the interior demolition permits, Spring and the tenants have argued that the zoning ordinance requires that the demolition of rental units go before the ZAB. However, Berkeley Zoning Officer Mark Rhoades contends that since the residences were never legally established they are not subject to the requirement for a public hearing. 

Commissions 

The council Tuesday will also consider a new compromise plan to slightly reduce the number of meetings scheduled for several of the city’s 44 citizen commissions. The plan, submitted by City Manager Phil Kamlarz, calls for the meeting for 15 commissions to be reduced from 11 a year to nine, with the right to request a tenth meeting.  

As part of a pilot program, 12 more commissions would be permitted to prepare their own meeting minutes and agenda to relieve the burden on city staff. If the experiment proves successful, Kamlarz said, he would extend it to other commissions.  

According to Kamlarz’s report, the city spends $200 to staff a commission meeting. The proposal would also combine the Disaster Council with the Fire Safety Commission, which city officials have maintained serve similar purposes. Disaster Council members have argued that a merger would overburden them and harm the city’s preparedness for an earthquake or fire. 

Budget 

With the council required to adopt a balanced budget by the end of the month, Tuesday’s meeting features several proposals from councilmembers for initiatives they would like to see funded. Although the city is cutting expenses to close a $8.9 million general fund deficit, an unexpected windfall from property-based taxes has given the council some extra money to fund programs.  

The council wish list includes a $50,000 request by councilmembers Linda Maio and Darryl Moore to build a fence at a soon-to-be-constructed four-block bike path running from Delaware Street across University Avenue. The fence had been promised to neighbors concerned that the bike path would invite burglars at night, but rising steel prices have made the original design at University Avenue unfeasible. 

Councilmember Maio, in response to several neighborhood complaints of train conductors sounding their horns too loudly, is also asking for $120,000 for the city to install warning signals at train intersections that would make less noise than the train horn. 

Councilmembers Laurie Capitelli, Gordon Wozniak and Spring are asking the council to approve $80,000 to pay for the Berkeley Guides for one-half year. They hope that the Downtown Berkeley Association by then will have raised enough money to pay for the rest of the program, aimed at serving patrons of downtown businesses. If the DBA doesn’t raise the money, Councilmembers Moore and Wozniak have proposed that the city pay for the entire year at $163,000. 

Councilmembers Moore and Max Anderson are asking for $50,000 to study the creation of a youth center in South or West Berkeley. 

Also on Tuesday, representatives from city-funded non-profits will make presentations to the council regarding the budget. 

Parking  

The council will be asked Tuesday to approve $61,418 for a consultant’s report on real-time signs alerting motorists about available parking spaces in Berkeley lots. The city has been moving ahead with the program, estimated to cost $1.2 million to install and $212,000 a year to operate. The city hopes to share the costs with private lot operators and UC Berkeley. 

The council will also vote Tuesday on whether to refinance bonds for seismic upgrades of the Center Street and Sather Gate parking lots. By refinancing the bonds, issued in 1994, the city expects to save $1 million to use for parking improvements. 

›

With a proposed tax increase on wealthy Californians no longer in play and a comprehensive education plan by legislative Democrats yet to be released, education leaders are divided on what concrete commitments they actually have from State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata on education funding. 

“We got some face time for Berkeley educators with the state senator, which is always good,” incoming Berkeley PTA Council President Wanda Stewart said of a meeting earlier this month between Perata, and representatives of the Berkeley and state PTA organizations. “But the specific education legislation is still to be determined. We all agreed to work together for educational funding in a general way. It was real general stuff.” 

In an e-mail released following the Perata-PTA meeting, Berkeley PTA Council Legislation Committee Chair Cynthia Papermaster said that “Sen. Perata will let [the California State PTA Legislation Chair] know by Friday what the proposed plan is. ... We will have a very short period in which to lobby legislators, especially those who are reluctant to be associated with a tax hike.” 

Papermaster continued, “Alternatively, the plan may be to put an initiative on the November special election to ask the voters to approve the increased education funding.” 

At the end of the meeting, Perata (D-Oakland) signed the California PTA “Make California Schools Great Again” agenda which included a general call to ensure public education is the “number one budget priority” in California, preservation of Proposition 98, and support for a plan to put California schools among the top ten in the nation by 2015. 

Proposition 98 is the 1996 California voter-approved California Constitutional amendment that was supposed to guarantee minimum funding for the state’s public schools. Last year, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made what he called “temporary cuts” to those education funding guarantees. The governor is now proposing to make some of those cuts permanent. 

While Stewart called the goals of the proposed California PTA agenda “good,” the added that it was vague enough that “anybody could have signed it.”  

Perata told meeting participants that his office would release a “Make California Schools Great Again” legislative plan by the end of next week, and was working on plans to put a $2 billion to $3 billion education tax on this November’s special education ballot targeted specifically towards Californians with incomes over $250,000. 

Both the legislative plan and the proposed tax increase ballot measure were in response to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cutbacks in the state’s education budget. 

But a report in the Matier and Ross column in the San Francisco Chronicle said this week that at the request of the state’s “education lobby,” the proposed tax-the-wealthy measure will not go on the November ballot. In addition, the “Make California Schools Great Again” plan is a week late, and no details of the proposal have yet been released. 

Local education leaders believe that the “Make California Schools Great Again” plan at least initially included the proposed ballot tax measure. 

Incoming Berkeley PTA Council President Stewart said that Perata told the group that “Republicans were not expected to support the tax increase on the wealthy proposal, and Democrats did not want to hold up passage of the state budget by pushing for it.” 

Stewart added that Perata reported that “Arnold said we could put it on the ballot.” 

A spokesperson for the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), the AFL-CIO affiliated state teachers union, said that his organization had asked Democratic leaders to pull the wealth-tax proposal out of this year’s budget, but only for “pragmatic reasons.” 

CFT “has always supported a fair and progressive tax policy,” CFT Communications Director Fred Glass said in a telephone interview, adding that Republican governors Pete Wilson and Ronald Reagan “both supported temporary tax increases for the rich during economic crises in the state.” 

Glass said that while his organization was in favor of a “tax on upper income Californians to fund the gap between what Gov. Schwarzenegger promised for education and what he actually put in the budget ... we weren’t going to get it passed, and that would have pushed the budget past the deadline.” 

Representatives of the 335,000 member California Teachers Association—the rival organization to the CFT—could not be reached for comment for this story, but in the past they have been critical of State Sen. Perata’s recent positions on public education funding. 

After Perata said last February that Prop. 98’s automatic funding increases was hurting other important parts of the state budget, calling it an “escalator without a pause,” the CTA sent mailers into the senator’s East Bay district stating that “In siding with Governor Schwarzenegger, Don Perata is breaking his promise to support funding for local public schools.” 

In addition, the organization put up posters on fences and telephone polls throughout the district stating “Shame On You Senator Perata. Stop Caving In To Governor Schwarzenegger And Protect Public School Funding!” 

In response, Perata sent out a letter to constituents late last month saying that while “I have always fought for increased educational funding ... California faces a five billion dollar budget shortfall. Under Proposition 98, regardless of our revenues, 40 percent of our state’s budget goes to education. ... Regrettably, Proposition 98 pits education against services for the blind, disabled and elderly. ... Currently, we are in the untenable position of choosing between providing the bare necessities to the sick and opportunity for our young.” 

That would seem to indicate that Perata still has concerns about Prop 98. But the representative of the CFT—which did not have a hand in the CTA posters, saying “we favored a more subtle approach”—said his organization believes that Perata is now a supporter once more of Proposition 98. 

While “initially it was true” that Perata wanted to cut the Prop. 98 guarantees, CFT’s Glass said, “We think he has moved off of that position. He’s now clear that Prop 98 is important, and he’s staunchly defending it.”›

Several Berkeley residents living near the railroad have a message for train conductors who blast past their homes night and day: “Don’t blow your horn.” 

“It’s a piercingly loud sort of sound, like someone leaning on the horn of an old Ford,” said Rudi Widman, who lives on Seventh Street. 

Some engineers just lean on the horn along the whole corridor, said Sandy Simon, who lives on Fifth Street. 

“Their message is ‘I’m awake and the rest of Berkeley should be too,’” she said. 

Now, Councilmember Linda Maio is proposing that the city spend $120,000 to install less invasive warning signals at three North Berkeley railroad crossings—Gilman Street, Cedar Street and Hearst Avenue. 

Currently train conductors have no option other than to sound their horns, said John Bromley, spokesperson for Union Pacific Railroad. 

Federal law requires that trains issue a warning of at least 96 decibels—slightly louder than a lawn mower—when approaching a crossing. 

Neighbors insist some conductors sound their horn louder than required. Maio said conductors quieted their horns for several months last year after the city conveyed its concerns to Union Pacific, but recently the horns have been blowing louder and complaints have been increasing. 

“There’s always this uneven response,” Maio said. “For a while it gets better, but then it’s bad again.” 

Her proposal calls for installing a device at railroad crossings that would play a recording of a train horn. Although the sound would still be at 96 decibels, it would be concentrated directly on the street, so that motorists might be shaken, but residents on nearby blocks would be spared. 

Since the train has to blow its horn a quarter-mile before it hits the intersection, the noise typically rattles several blocks. 

“If that makes it less loud, it would be great,” Widman said. 

Bromley of Union Pacific said the new horns have proven successful in Fremont and Riverside, but in those cities, as well as Berkeley, the railroad won’t pay for the upgrade. 

“It’s a quality of life issue for cities to deal with,” he said. “If they want a more advanced system they should pay for it.” 

Bromley said Union Pacific has faced an increasing number of horn complaints across the country, a phenomenon he chalks up to increased development near railroad tracks. 

“It’s always surprising to us that people buy homes near train tracks and then complain about noise,” he said. 

Recent developments in Berkeley are housing more residents close to the tracks. The latest project, proposed by Urban Housing Group, is a condominium project slated to hold over 200 units at Fourth and Addison streets. 

Railroads first ran cars along Third Street in West Berkeley in 1877, a year before the city became incorporated. Although there were homes already clustered around the tracks when they were laid, Lesley Emmington of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association said that the oldest home currently in West Berkeley dates back to 1878.

The Zoning Adjustments Board’s decision Thursday to approve a use permit for remodeling the recently landmarked monolithic block building at 2750 Adeline St. marked the end of an era for South Berkeley. 

Like the Drayage in West Berkeley, the 12,417-square-foot three-story Adeline Street building is a former warehouse that was transformed into low-rent live/work units for artists. 

And in both cases, a sale spelled the end of what tenants regarded as a uniquely creative community. 

While the sale of the Drayage fell through, inspections by the Fire Department and city building inspector resulted in demands for evictions from units that failed to meet city codes. The West Berkeley warehouse is the location of an ongoing battle between the owner, city officials and renters as most live/work tenants have gradually and reluctantly departed. 

In the case of Adeline Street, a court battle and ensuing evictions resulted from the sale of the building to Sasha Shamszad, a photographer and property developer, who plans to move a catering service and school into the first floor and his photo studio with wife Meredith’s future office and art therapy class space on the second floor. 

For ZAB members, the most controversial part of his plan involves the existing third floor and his plan to add a partial fourth floor on the roof to form a 5,000-square residence for himself. 

But for Natasha Shawver, the real issue has always been the eviction of her family and tenants of four other live/work units after Shamszad bought the building in May 2001 for an undisclosed sum. 

The structure had a long history as an artists’ haven, and its former occupants have included noted underground comic artists R. Crumb and Dori Seda. 

Shawver, who lived in the building for two decades and fought her eviction in court, was on hand Thursday to protest the permit. Her protest stirred an angry retort from Shamszad, who spent a lot of his time complaining about the former tenants and the intricacies of Berkeley bureaucracy. 

The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), regarded by many developers as a stumbling block to well-laid plans, has already signed off on the project, giving their permission for Shamszad to install large areas of windows along the street facades. 

Known to the LPC as Frederick H. Dakin Warehouse, the structure—built in the wake of the disastrous 1906 earthquake—features the fireproof building block which was manufactured by the warehouse’s builder and namesake. 

Designed by noted Berkeley architect Walter H. Ratcliff and George T. Plowman, the building was designated a city landmark on Aug. 9, 2004. 

When it comes to the interior of the landmark—something over which the LPC has no sway—Berkeley planner Steve Solomon told ZAB that in the city staff’s opinion, “the 5,000-square-foot single-family unit is possibly inappropriate, too large,” and they preferred two units in the space instead of one. 

“If you agree with staff, the cleanest solution is to get rid of the fourth floor,” he said, adding that they ultimately gave a reluctant approval to the plans. 

Solomon said he considered Shawver’s complaints irrelevant, “because in staff’s opinion there were no legal tenants because the [live/work units] had never been sanctioned by the city building department.” 

City officials raised the same argument in the context of the Drayage. 

Shamszad’s tenants were evicted under provisions the state’s 1986 Ellis Act, which gives landlords the right to evict tenants when they remove their property from the rental market. 

Rent Board member Jesse Arreguin appeared at Thursday’s meeting to protest “the loss of affordable artist space and housing,” a subject he said planning staff had failed to address in their report. 

Arreguin urged ZAB and staff to consult with the Rent Board whenever projects involved the loss of rental housing, noting that the rent board and planning ordinances contain conflict definitions of legal housing units. 

Asked by ZAB member David Blake why there wasn’t a parking space in the building for his own residence, Shamszad initially contended that the buildings structure prevented installation of an internal parking space—only to be contradicted by his own architect. 

Member Bob Allen found no flaws in the developer’s plans. 

“It’s a total dog of a building, and I am totally mystified as to why (the LPC) should have any say over ugly buildings,” he said. “It will do a lot for that neighborhood and a lot for the street.” 

When Blake said he was ready to approve the building as submitted, without the parking space Blake requested, the board majority agreed, approving Shamszad’s plan by a seven-two margin, with only Katz and Rick Judd in opposition. 

Picketers gathered outside the main gate of UC Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station (RFS) Monday morning—but unlike other protests there, this one wasn’t directed at the toxins polluting the site. 

Monday’s protesters were members of the Coalition of University Employees (CUE), participating in the third such walkout by UC unions since mid-April. 

Members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees held their three-day strike starting on April 14, followed by the University Professional and Technical Employees-Communications Worker of America on May 26. 

While CUE is currently negotiating with the university over a new contract, the union’s statewide steward and UC Berkeley library employee Margy Wilkinson said this week’s walkout concerns the union’s 2003-2004 contract. 

Union members haven’t seen a contract increase since October 2002, said Wilkinson, despite an independent arbitrator finding that “[t]here is no question that the university is in a position to afford a wage increase for the clerical employees.”  

Arbitrator Gerald McKay held recently that the system’s “claim that it does not have the money to spend on them is not supported by the evidence.” 

But that doesn’t mean campus unions are ignoring the toxins at the Field Station, which is slated for massive construction efforts as the shoreline facility is redeveloped as a corporate/academic research park. 

Unions seek toxin info 

Joan Lichterman, Occupational Safety and Health officer for UC Berkeley members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), said the CUE filed a formal request in April asking the university for information including names and amounts of toxic chemicals at the site. 

CUE, which represents UC clerical employees, is also asking for a list of past and present workers at the site. 

Lichterman said the union has already identified one worker who has tested positive for mercury in her system and said a second case of possible toxic exposure is also under investigation. 

Lichterman said the university had not responded to the request by last Friday and added that other campus unions are planning to file similar requests. 

The UC Field Station—or Bayside Research Campus as it has been renamed for its latest planned incarnation—is built on the site where a manufacturing plant turned mercury into blasting caps over the course of a century. Mercury is toxic to the nervous systems and is known to cause birth defects in cases of large exposures. 

In addition, the neighboring Campus Bay site houses a massive quantity of toxins, now buried under a thin concrete cap. 

Previous protests at the site drew members of Bay Area Residents for Responsible Development and the Richmond Progressive Alliance during their ultimately successful campaign to force the state to give cleanup jurisdiction over both sites to the State Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC). 

Lichterman said UC supervisors took names of RFS employees who attended a May 19 meeting at the Field Station featuring Contra Costa County Public Health Director Dr. Wendel Brunner and Dr. Richard Kreutzer, chief of the Environmental Health Investigative Branch of the state Department of Health Services. 

After the meeting, Lichterman said, “all the Field Station people were notified that they were not to spread rumor about the site next door (Campus Bay) or talk about environmental hazards or they would face discipline.” 

UC Berkeley officials didn’t respond to questions about the warnings by deadline Monday.  

Several RFS workers approached by a reporter have refused to comment on the subject. 

Cherokee Simeon Ventures is the developer of Campus Bay and has been selected by the university as the proposed developer of the UC site. 

The firm is a special purpose corporation formed by developer Simeon Properties and Cherokee Investment Partners, an international financing company that specializes in building projects on cleaned-up toxic waste sites. 

Cherokee’s plans for a 1331-unit housing unit at Campus Bay have been temporarily shelved pending the outcome of further toxics investigations at the site and a ruling by DTSC of the suitability of building a high-rise condo project atop a mound of 350,000 cubic yards of buried waste. 

Some of the toxins generated by the manufacture of pesticides, acids and other chemicals at the Campus Bay site are also present at RFS in addition to the mercury. 

State actions 

DTSC spokesperson Angela Blanchette said her agency is currently gathering information on toxins at RFS and Campus Bay. The state recently allocated money for a study of possible soil gas intrusions into the existing buildings at the Campus Bay office park, which should commence by the end of August. 

Blanchette said the agency is closely monitoring investigations by the state Department of Health Services and the Contra Costa Health Department of an RFS program that has students working on restoring a section of the field station’s shoreline march. 

“Our understanding is that the area has been remediated by the (San Francisco Bay Regional) Water Control Board, but we are following things closely,” she said.  

No strike impact, says UC 

Noel Van Nyhuis, spokesperson for University of California President Robert C. Dynes said Monday that the union walkout isn’t legal because it’s being conducted while union officials and university representatives are in the midst of negotiations for a new contract. 

Van Nyhuis said that of the system’s 17,000 employees only 600 to 700 didn’t report to work Monday. 

“The strike is having no effect on university operations,” he said. 

UC Berkeley spokesperson Noel Gallagher said only scattered pickets have appeared on campus. “We’ve been able to keep classes going, and nothing has been shut down because of the strike,” she said.›

The longtime manager of the Berkeley Community Theater has reportedly been placed on administrative leave, but because the Berkeley Unified School District will not comment on the reported action or even confirm it, there is no official word as to how long the leave may last, and what might be the cause. 

Berkeley High School staff members reported that a notice was placed on the office door of Theater Manager Judd Owens last week stating that Owens was on administrative leave, with no further explanation. 

Owens was not on campus and was not available for comment. 

BUSD Superintendent Michele Lawrence said by telephone that she could not comment on any personnel matters. 

BUSD Public Information Officer Mark Coplan also declined to comment on the administrative leave question, although he did release brief information about Owens’ employment history. 

Owens has worked as theater manager for three decades. In recent years, the position was transferred from the district to the Berkeley High School budget, according to Coplan. He said that in addition to managing the high school’s Community Theater and Little Theater, Owens also provides “facilities support” for the high school. 

“He sets up the large meetings that we have in the high school library, for example,” Coplan said. 

Coplan said that Owens also worked “for several decades” in the BUSD Facilities Department. 

Recently, BUSD officials have expressed concern about the cost of running the 3,000-seat Community Theater, which is used for high school, community and commercial events. 

Earlier this year, Superintendent Lawrence proposed restricting the use of the theater to the high school while the district studied the theater’s finances. But that proposal was put on hold, Coplan said, after staff indicated that the theater’s reported losses might actually be coming from its use by the high school.

BERLIN—Berlin’s annual Turkish-European Street Festival tries to bring a dose of Near-Eastern culture to a stubbornly white European town. You can buy kafta and börek in the booths and pretend, for one afternoon, that the “Strasse des 17. Juni” is a boulevard in Istanbul. But this year, in the wake of three decisive elections in Europe—two defeats for the E.U. constitution, plus a regional victory for the German right—the street fair’s motto, “We Are Europeans,” had a forced multicultural spirit that not even the festival-goers believed.  

“I have a German passport, but I’m still a foreigner,” said Aynur Aktürk, a woman of about 40 with hay-colored, gray-streaked hair, who moved to Berlin from Turkey as a teenager and now has two German-born kids. “My husband and I have jobs, we’re lucky. But if we lose our jobs, I don’t know what will happen. Germany is my home now, but it could change.” She munched thoughtfully on a sandwich. “Germany could change again. The people aren’t happy.”  

The mood at the fair was subdued, compared to previous years, Akturk said. “It’s not as full as it normally is. And you don’t see many Germans.”  

The frustrations that handed Gerhard Schroeder’s party a defeat last month in North Rhine-Westphalia, and forced him to call a snap national election in the fall—high unemployment, welfare reform—have sent Germans as well as Turks to their nationalistic corners. Schroeder and Jacques Chirac both championed the idea that Turkey belongs in the EU, but voters didn’t like it. The drubbing both men received at the polls last month has been read, not just by Turks, as a fear of immigrants.  

“The elections in Germany and the referendum in France are the first signs,” wrote Turkish columnist Emin Colasan in the Istanbul daily Hurriyet. “Europeans do not want us, and they are making it more clear with their choice now ... Slowly parties that say ‘No’ to Turkey will take over governments in Europe.” The Economist magazine reckoned that both the French and Dutch EU referendums showed “growing hostility around Europe ... to the idea of taking in poor, big and Muslim Turkey.”  

But Turks here, like other immigrants to Europe, still do the sort of work most natives try to avoid. Aynur and Sezai Aktürk have factory jobs. He works in a Berlin aluminum foundry, she works for Bosch-Siemens. They came to Germany about 25 years ago—separately—because their fathers had been guest workers. Hundreds of thousands of Turkish men settled here between 1961 and 1974, while West Berlin had a labor agreement with Ankara. They were a cheap work force that fueled West Germany’s “economic miracle.”  

The guest workers were allowed to bring in wives and children; now Berlin has the largest concentration of Turks in the world outside Turkey. Around 2 million Turks live in Germany, about 2.4 percent of the population. But they’re not integrated, and they don’t feel secure.  

“You feel at home in your homeland, not in some other country,” Sezai said, squinting up the Strasse des 17. Juni and wiping his mustache with a napkin. “If things get bad for us here, perhaps we’ll go back.”  

“I’d rather stay,” said his wife.  

The state of Turkish Germans now might be compared to the status of unintegrated Italian-Americans in the 1950s: The parents are traditional, heavily accented, sometimes religious. Their kids speak German, act cool, and try to fit in. (Aynur and Sezai make up a middle generation.) But nothing in German or European history guarantees that a third or fourth generation of Turkish Germans will adjust to Berlin the way Italian-Americans have adjusted to New York. America has never been a nation-state, for one thing; and the most interesting side of the EU project—the idea that Europe could move beyond its nation-state traditions and become more integrated, more open, more American—is stuck in the economic mud.  

Besides, becoming German has never been exactly cool. The surprise of the afternoon at the Turkish-European fair was that even a table of modern teenage girls, all speaking fluid German and wearing jeans and red T-shirts—each with a different spangled letter on the front—was so full of defiant ethnic pride.  

“We’re all Berliners, but we miss Turkey,” said Banu, from the Black Sea province of Samsun, who was brought here by her parents. “We go back every year. And we’re proud of being Turkish. That’s why we’re here.”  

What did their T-shirts spell?  

“Türkiye!” they shouted.  

“We’re cheerleaders,” blurted Melek, from Istanbul, who seemed as chirpy as any mall-raised girl from California. “No, just kidding.” 

Michael Scott Moore is a novelist and reporter living in Berlin. His first novel, “Too Much of Nothing,” is out from Carroll & Graf.  

›

Peralta Community College Trustees will consider the growing cost of building the new Vista College this week 

The meeting will be held on Tuesday, 7 p.m., at the Peralta Administration Building, 333 East Eighth St. in Oakland. 

Two construction cost overrun items that were postponed three weeks ago while Peralta Chancellor Elihu Harris gathered more information are back on the agenda this week as consent items, this time with the chancellor’s recommendation of approval. 

At the board’s May 24 meeting, Peralta Director of General Services Sadiq Ikharo had asked for the approval of $176,000 in additional fees for Vista designers Ratcliff Architects and another $252,000 in additional fees for HP Inspections for steel-testing services. 

After a representative of the Vista construction manager told trustees at the May meeting that some of the HP Inspections work had been done as early as last December, Harris said that he’d only been informed of the overrun requests the week before, and told Swinerton senior project manager Michael Raven to “tell me who was supposed to contact me, and we’ll hang him in the morning.” 

Last January, after hearing repeated requests for more money for the $65 million Vista construction project, trustees passed a new policy mandating increased board oversight for requests. 

For one neighborhood in North Oakland the national battle over abortion has been delivered to their mail boxes. 

Anti-abortion groups in Kansas and Texas have been blanketing the Oakland homes for the past seven months with fliers, one of which depicts a bloody fetus strewn on a table.  

The campaign is targeted at one of their neighbors, Dr. Shelley Sella, who performs abortions at clinics in Concord and Wichita, Kan. 

“She came on to our radar screen because she flies in here twice a month to kill pre-born babies,” said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, a Wichita-based anti-abortion group, which has spearheaded the mailings. “She’s an abortionist and we’re exposing what she’s doing.” 

In Wichita, Sella works at a clinic run by Dr. George Tiller, who has been the frequent target of Operation Rescue protests. In 1993, he was shot by an anti-abortion protester. 

Nevertheless, Sella’s partner said from her home Sunday that the family did not fear for their safety. 

“They [Operation Rescue] don’t appear to be violent,” she said. “The only concern is that they could incite someone to do something.” 

Sella is in Kansas this week and could not be reached for comment. 

Recently anti-abortion advocates, in town to protest a medical convention in San Francisco, staged a brief demonstration outside her home, she added. 

Mitzi Sales, the vice president of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Concord, said Sella also works in Wichita because the city has few services for women who want to terminate their pregnancies.  

“She’s helping women who are in desperate straits,” Sales said. 

The latest flier, produced by a company in Denton, Tex. and delivered to neighbors within a few blocks of Sella’s home, raised unsubstantiated claims that Dr. Tiller had failed to report incidents of child rape. It urged recipients to “Stop collaborating with ‘Tiller the Killer’ in protecting child rapists and participating in the murder of innocent pre-born children through abortion.” 

A telephone number listed on the flier to file complaints was out of service. Previous complaint numbers, neighbors said, directed them to Tiller’s clinic. 

When Michael Allaire received the first flier last November, he left a note at Sella’s door offering support and leaving his phone number to call in case she felt threatened. 

“The neighborhood won’t tolerate this,” he said. “It stirs up fear that someone could come from outside and incite violence against your neighbor.” 

Allaire said he informed the FBI of the mailings, but federal investigators determined that the fliers did not seek to incite violence. 

“This is classic free speech,” Newman said. “If you don’t like something your neighbor is doing you should talk to them.” 

Neighbors can’t do much to stop the fliers, Oakland Councilmember Jane Brunner said, because Operation Rescue doesn’t include a return address. Brunner has asked neighbors to trash the cards, and has produced pro-choice posters they can hang in their window. 

“I think it’s backfiring on them,” Brunner said. “What it has done is brought our community together in support of her.” 



If would-be developers and neighborhood activists find the inclusionary and density bonuses hard to understand, they’re not alone. 

The bonuses, which award extra height and size to buildings that include housing for lower-income tenants, are proving just as inscrutable to the folks charged with administering the code. 

“The density bonus law is clearly a mess,” said Zoning Adjustments Board member Bob Allen at ZAB’s Thursday night meeting. 

Allen is one of the ZAB members assigned to a subcommittee that is seeking to understand the laws and developing standards for working with them. 

Fellow panelist Dean Metzger said he is currently “trying to computerize the whole zoning code book. “I am still convinced it can be solved with mathematics. It’s difficult and complicated, but not insoluble.” 

But colleague Rick Judd, a land use attorney, said, “I don’t think it will ever be clear to the public until it’s changed.” 

Judd said that the subcommittee’s attempt to apply the city planning department’s mathematical model “didn’t make me feel I understood it any better.” 

“Getting clear answers to one calculation threw off the numbers in another,” said panelist David Blake, who added that it would take another subcommittee meeting for him to be able to report back to the full board about just how he sees the process. 

Meanwhile, at the direction of the City Council and Mayor Tom Bates, the Planning Commission has appointed its own subcommittee to look at the code. The two groups will then work together to come up with recommendations for clarifying the confusing stretches of legalese. 

“You know that as soon as you guys resolve this issue in Berkeley, the state law will change completely,” said ZAB member Chris Tiedemann. 

“It may be only a few meetings before we can come back with a clear explanation of how to apply the code, but that is only the first step,” said Allen. 

“The density bonus law is clearly a mess. If we’re really serious, this is a very long-term effort that will then be taken over by the Planning Commission,” Allen said. “Is it fair? Or is it a quagmire?” 

“First Vietnam, then Iraq, then the Density Bonus,” quipped Blake.

Proud traces of Berkeley’s building and construction trades abound in a little-known niche of the urban environment: our sidewalks. 

At the end of the 1800s, builders promoted concrete as a modern replacement for brick or board pedestrian walkways. Back then it was called “art stone,” and contractors set their names like a cattle brand in the fresh mix as a mark of craftsmanship. 

The number of stamps proliferated during the East Bay building boom that followed the 1906 earthquake, and a majority of the ones remaining date from the 1930s and ‘40s. Many of these stamps have suffered slow attrition due to the inevitable succession of root-damage repairs and curb cuts, and each new city campaign of sidewalk paving has the potential to put even more of these stamps at risk. 

Stamps were good advertising, and some contractors added addresses, and later even phone numbers. Some cities required stamps in order to track faulty work, but most were set during a less litigious era where pride in craft mattered. Some of Berkeley’s oldest stamps are from prominent contractor/developer John Albert Marshall, Sr. One of his 1899 stamps graces the front steps of an old home at 1670 Dwight St. Very few contractors now use stamps, although some do. The sidewalk in front of the recently refurbished California Theater on Kittredge Street bears a 2002 stamp from the SBI Construction Group. 

Most stamps were modest, with just a name in simple type. Others were more elaborate, integrating heraldry crests and labor symbology; there’s even a delightful artistic pair of fleur-de-lis stamps at 1210 Bonita St. and a lucky horseshoe for Ensor H. Buel at 1843 Cedar St. Many included the year and even the month of pouring. This was an open trade that did not require a large capital investment, and the ethnic surnames echo the immigrant waves of the past: Anaclerio, Barale, and Fadelli (now Berkeley Cement); also Dahlquist, Hierkildsen, and Lindstrom. 

One can also trace evolution in the family business, from single owner-operator “Paul Schnoor,” later “P. Schnoor & Son,” and finally “Schnoor Bros.” Some stamps for the same contractor change over time, allowing for subtle clues about age. The stamp of the venerable firm of J.H. Fitzmaurice has gone through at least four variants. 

Some stamps reflect not the contractors, but the trades that represented them. Right in front of Virginia Bakery and at Freight and Salvage one can find the distinctive crossed tools mark of the earliest union stamp, that of the American Brotherhood of Cement Workers (ABCW), whose president was Olaf Tveitmoe. 

Olaf was a classic colorful California labor leader hero of his time, both a working-class heavyweight who got elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and first president of the racist Asiatic Exclusion League in 1908. More recent union stamps belong to the Operative Plasterers and Cement Masons International Association, AFL-CIO, whose logo not only includes the number “594” of the East Bay local, but proudly notes by number the master finisher who did that piece. 

A good example is in front of Bancroft Clothing on Bancroft Avenue, where a Hal Bennett contractor stamp is accompanied by the cement finisher’s union stamp, Master Number 258. 

A few cities have adopted policies to protect the historical heritage reflected by these stamps. Citizens in Normal Heights (San Diego), arranged for the old stamps to be cut out and re-set in fresh sidewalks when they were replaced. A homeowner on North Berkeley’s Fresno Avenue had an endangered stamp neatly set into the driveway when repaving. 

The City of Berkeley is undergoing one of its many sidewalk repair projects, and the Planning Department indicates that they will leave them in place if they are in good condition and if homeowners request it.  

A tribute to these stamps and link to a photo archive of hundreds of local examples can be found at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/~lcushing/Stamps/SidewalkStampHome.html. 

Lincoln Cushing is a cataloger and electronic outreach librarian at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. 

http://www.jfdefreitas.com/index.php?path=/00_Latest%20Work

RADICAL BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In the past issues of the Daily Planet, I have seen a number of letters lamenting about what happened to “radical” Berkeley. As a lifelong Bay Area resident who is also a student of history, I’ll hazard some answers to this question. About 30 years ago, in the wake of Vietnam, the powers that be, that is government, business, and academia (both Democrat and Republican), took it upon themselves to put the American public back in line. In their own words: more “moderation” was needed in the public debate, because the public had become “ungovernable.” At the same time, many former “progressives” went into these institutions convinced that one could change the system from within. They soon found out that centralized power is very selective about who it admits to its ranks. Those who advocated radical ideas were marginalized, ignored, and than forced out. Also, these people were faced with student loans to pay, children to raise, and the general pressure from family and society to “get on with your lives.” Economic downturns and the cutting of government benefits completed the process of coercing the young. At this point the ex-radicals must have become aware of the realities of power, about who actually rules, and by what means it is done. Lakota poet and activist John Trudell best described it as “being caught between living a lie or not living at all.” In other words, go with the system, or starve. Beset upon by these forces, the former “progressives” compromised and eventually capitulated to the establishment. This process of absorption became complete when Bill Clinton (who was just as enthusiastic in helping corporate America as Bush) was sworn in 12 years ago. It is these same forces of co-option that are responsible for the demise of “Radical Berkeley.” Let us now hope that the present generation of activists can learn from the past and avoid the trap of being taken over and controlled by the powers that be.  

John F. Davies 

Kensington 

• 

FREEDOM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Perhaps I have lost track of which book was flushed. And was that toilet at Guantanamo or the White House? In a June 9 New York Times article, “California Father and Son Face Charges in Terrorism Case,” Dean Murphy and David Johnson write: “They have been charged with lying to federal investigators…..” I thought that speech was protected in my country by the First Amendment. A Federal Court even gave corporations the right to lie in advertising under the First Amendment. If lying to federal agents is a crime, only a fool would talk to an FBI agent. You might be innocent and still get charged with lying. Of course there is no shortage of fools in the world, but some of us will advise our grandchildren don’t count on the FBI or the media to protect your freedoms. The Times might point out that under this fabulous democracy people are charged with specific crimes. 

Marc Sapir 

• 

CARS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Cars, Cars, Cars. I’d love to be able to impress upon car users just how awful those carbon monoxide fumes emitted from cars really are to the health and well being of the human and other living bodies. But whatever I said would probably not be too very much noticed. I am not a scientist and I cannot produce many many years of careful examination to prove the point. Only thing is...somewhere in each of us, we know it. And every time I hear of yet another death or another person suffering horribly with cancer...something in me wants to cry out. Is it too much trouble to not inflict disease? 

Look at yourselves, car users. Look at yourselves. Stop using petroleum to fuel your freedom. We, all of us, are enslaved to the marketplace in many ways. This automobile stuff has gone too far, however. We believe the truth of global warming. No one ever talks about using their poisons and them killing each other and ourselves. Intricate sentences won’t convince anyone. 

Perhaps the voice of the soul will. Refuse to use their tools of destruction. 

Iris Crider 

• 

PINK MAN IN PARIS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Have you heard of Pink Man? Hopefully that’s a silly question, as for years I’ve been called “a Legend” by all the papers in the Bay Area. As a matter of fact, if you asked practically anyone in Berkeley which performance artist has had the most positive impact, you would hear my name come up most often (please refer to countless stories on my site: www.pinkman.net). For almost 10 years I have ridden and danced and sung in “the most progressive city in the United States.” And for free. Unless you count getting punched, and dragged along side a car, and all sorts of stuff thrown at me. But I love doing what I do, that’s why I do it for free. 

But now I am terribly desperate; I am in Paris to spread the joy, to sort of represent the States and California in a positive way. But due to a lack of planning on my part I am frightfully close to sleeping on the streets. Like, tomorrow. I am not kidding. I’m scared, Berkeley. And my fear is making me angry. You see, I have already e-mailed people on the City Council pleading for some emergency financial help via paypal on my website. To my horror, I have not received even an e-mail in reply. My life has become a movie, and right about now Berkeley hangs on the edge of being portrayed as, well...we’ll see how it goes. 

I’m currently on TV around the world on the Discovery Channel’s “Lonely Planet.” I have already been on TV around the world, it’s exciting, but I haven’t gotten a dime for it.  

Mary Steenburgen, in Paris filming the DaVinci Code with Tom Hanks, came up to me and gave me a great big hug; “Pink Man! What are you doing here?!!” Just another fan of something good and worthwhile. But I need help, Berkeley. Surely you can afford something. 

Please at least be decent enough to e-mail a “fuck you.” I’m sorry. Again, I’m scared, I don’t know what else to do. Busking has proven ineffective, maybe because I stink from not having done laundry in so many days. Pathetic, isn’t it?  

Your turn. 

Michael John Maxfield, 

Your superfolkin’ hero 

• 

KPFA CONTROVERSY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It comes as no surprise to read of the sexual harassment lawsuit against Dennis Bernstein, host of KPFA’s Flashpoints News Magazine, and further allegations of sexual discrimination against him by other women. Anyone who has heard incessant Israel-basher Bernstein’s rants either on the air or in various colloquiums knows that he either denies or refuses to discuss the gender apartheid, honor murder or other forms of abuse so widespread against women in Palestinian society in particular and Arab culture in general. Given these accusations against Bernstein, perhaps we might now realize why he is so reluctant to discuss sexual discrimination elsewhere. 

On another matter, letter writer Robert Blau proclaims that Bolivia’s probable nationalization of oil and gas will benefit “the indigenous and poor people” of that country. A red flag (pun intended) should be run up in Berkeley every time the word “benefit of the people” is evoked. But then again, erstwhile progressives usually prove themselves deficient when it comes to history, as Mexico’s nationalization of oil has for nearly three quarters of a century proven to be as corrupt and inept as any industry existent in the Western Hemisphere. Ever since nationalization, Mexico has experienced a staggering siphoning off of profits by avaricious bureaucrats and labor leaders who make Enron’s corporate thugs appear benign by comparison. As a consequence, the “people” of Mexico have benefited but little. 

Dan Spitzer 

Kensington 

• 

UNDERMINING AMERICA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your article about the KPFA snakes and mongooses poses a cruel dilemma for the progressive community. Two ardent ideologues of the left are now undermining a major mouthpiece of the anti-American community. On the one hand, we have the Jewish Kapo who wants deprive Jews and Israel of our minuscule homeland. In an earlier incarnation this saintly figure would have been pushing Jewish children into boxcars on their way to Auschwitz. On the other hand, there is an equally saintly figure of the new left, who devotes her time and our airwaves to propaganda on behalf of a notorious cop killer. 

Poor KPFA is caught in the middle. All KPFA has ever discriminated against are people who do not subscribe to its political philosophy that the good consists in taking other people’s property without paying for it. KPFA has benefited from the self-destructive goodhearted instincts of liberal America which has allowed Pacifica/KPFA to use the public’s airways for free in order to undermine America. 

Alan Wofsy 

• 

UC-CITY DEAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The angry June 10 commentary of Dean Metzger and David Wilson is well intentioned but poorly reasoned. All the settlement agreement says in subsection III.D. is that, should state law be changed to alter the financial obligations of the university toward the city, the parties will try to renegotiate the settlement to keep the total amount the same, inclusive of the new obligations. That is not inconsistent with what Mayor Bates, et al., wrote in their commentary. If the university were assessed the full $13.5 million or more, that it owes, then obviously the parties would not be able to keep the total amount the same while including the new obligation. Metzger and Wilson have strained at the gnat and swallowed the camel. The camel is this: Both parties are promulgating a deceptive lie concerning the law as it now reads. 

The following is from the commentary by Tom Bates, Linda Maio, Laurie Capitelli and Max Anderson: “no court could have compelled the university to pay a penny to the city for basic services.” Here is what the real authority in the matter, the California Supreme Court, has to say: “On the other hand, when one tax-supported entity provides goods or services to another, neither the California Constitution nor decisional law exempts the public entity from paying for these goods and services” (San Marcos Water Dist. v. San Marcos Unified School Dist. (1986) 42 Cal.3d 154, 161). The university cannot be charged for special assessments, which means basically capital improvements, but it can be charged for basic services. The myth that it cannot be so charged is apparently one of the big lies that has come to be accepted as reality by a docile and legally unaware public. Citizenry in a participatory democracy requires more. 

I should add that there is an attempt to permanently exempt the University from parking taxes and sewer fees in subsections VI.B. and VI.C. of the settlement agreement, but there is actually a nice little provision at the bottom of section VI. to the effect that if either of these subsections are violated, the settlement agreement terminates. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as we used to say in grade school. All we have to do to end this miserable agreement is charge them what is really due, and by the language of the agreement, the whole thing automatically terminates. Wonderful! Let’s do it immediately, or as soon as the City Council comes to its senses. There will still be the struggle to reinstate the original lawsuit, but that is not an insurmountable problem, either. It is in the works, as we speak. It might help if the City Council would join the fray on our side, for a change. 

Peter Mutnick 

• 

HILLS FIRE STATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your article of June 10-13 regarding the Hills Fire Station is a horrible example of bad reporting. A news article should answer the simple question, “Why?” Why is the Hills Fire Station over budget and behind schedule as your headline trumpets? It is so surprising that a project originally estimated at $2.5 million (if that is in fact the original estimate) should have escalated 13 years later to $6.7 million? Absolutely nothing is said about the relentless lawsuits filed by one neighbor, that was the primary cause of the delay. Instead, the implication is that somehow Berkeley can’t manage its budgets, or spends money recklessly, or doesn’t pay attention to neighborhood opinion, unlike our neighbor Oakland. 

There are other subtle hints in this article that imply that somehow the prejudices of the writer, the editor, or the publisher account for the choice of “facts” left in or out. Why are objections of some neighbors hashed through once again, when the support of hundreds of residents who spoke for this project in endless hearings, letters, meetings is not mentioned? Why is nothing said about the citizen’s committee that worked for years to support this needed and very popular project? What are the unanswered critical questions one neighbor claims the city neglects to answer? Is there anything that has not been answered about this project in the hundreds of hours of public time devoted to it?  

Myrna Walton 

• 

ETHICS AND MEDIA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Is an act good because the gods say it is or do the gods say an act is good because it is?  

The Bush network has a knack for changing its goals to suit whatever means it may be deploying at the time. For example, the military is currently helping Iraqis develop a democracy but it started out to protect us from mushroom clouds. This Orwellian practice of adjusting ends to suit on-going means perverts the basis of ethics whereby the good (or evil) lies in the act itself. In order to get away with it the Bush network has enjoyed full media collaboration.  

It justified unprovoked war by lying and the media collaborated by blaming faulty intelligence. Although the decision, sui generis, to remove Saddam Hussein was taken a year before the fabricated justification the media concluded (sheepishly and reluctantly): Sure, that’s the Bush style, but it’s no “smoking gun.” In other words, there’s no murder if there’s no smokin’.  

How absurd! No wonder so many people distrust the media.  

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

• 

JEFFERSON SCHOOL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am surprised and pleased to see the Berkeley School Board exhibiting wisdom and leadership on the Jefferson School issue. All great men (and women) have their faults. Slavery, when Jefferson lived, was largely an unquestioned part of human existence and had been since the beginning of time. Choose any culture at any time in recorded history and you will find slavery, strict class hierarchy and in many cases horrific and brutal religious ceremony. It seems inappropriate to render moral judgments on the worth of a person’s life based on moral standards of today and which did not exist at that time. 

It is well documented that many “free Negroes” were slave owners themselves and , indeed the U.S. census from 1860 reveals that nearly one third of the “free Negroes” in the city of New Orleans owned slaves. Of course, the original slaves taken from Africa were captured and sold by their own black brothers. There is no monopoly on slavery and in fact it still exists today in Africa, India, and Asia.  

It is fair that the School Board include the larger Berkeley community in the debate over the name change. The teachers have, certainly, brainwashed the students who are too young to make a thoughtful and historically contextual decision. The parents are only affiliated with the school for a short time and because of the forced diversity aspect of Berkeley schools, many do not even live near the campus. The teachers and principal come and go and may not even live in Berkeley. 

There is a larger concern though; Where does it end? If we decide to change the name of Jefferson School because he was a slave owner, we must then change the name of our own city as well. The City of Berkeley is named for Bishop George Berkeley. Berkeley bought and owned slaves on his Rhode Island Plantation “Whitehall.” When Berkeley returned to Europe in 1731 he donated the profits from the plantation to Yale University for a set of scholarships. The “Berkeley Premiums,” as they came to be called, are still awarded today. Berkeley High is named after a slave owner. Martin Luther King Jr. school is named after a drunken womanizer and self-proclaimed communist. (It is against the law to advocate communism in California public schools today.) Malcolm X was a petty criminal who did time in prison. We do not judge them on these aspects of their lives but on the great accomplishments of their lives which have positively affected all of our lives today. 

We all sit here today thinking that we are smarter and more sophisticated than the barbarians of the past. We constantly ask how societies could have accepted such behavior in the past. We are so much better than that now. Are we really? Are the cheap and plentiful products we buy today produced by virtual slave labor? Is that chicken or burger that we salivate over on the grill the result of a cruel and pain-filled life? Do we care? Out of sight, out of mind. 

Nazi Germany was populated by an educated and intelligent people. How could a nation like that allow the mass murder of millions of Jews? Politicians demonized the Jews and blamed them for the woes of the country. Good people did nothing and the result was the Holocaust. Are we so different today? Howard Dean, the powerful leader of the Democratic Party and former presidential candidate, is publicly demonizing “white Christians” and blaming them for the country’s woes. This blatant racist and anti-Christian statement was uttered by the leader of the self- described party of intellectuals. My guess is that most Berkeley leftists agree with him. Let us not judge others before we judge ourselves. There are more important things to do than to change the names of our towns and institutions to fit a changed revisionists view of history. I know we are in Berkeley but let’s try living in reality for a while. 

If the name of the school must be changed, I have a solution which may save money on stationary and signs and also satisfy malcontent MargueriteTalley-Hughes. Change it from Thomas Jefferson to George Jefferson. 

Michael Larrick 

• 

OREGON PAPER TRAIL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Well, it’s time for Americans to hit the trail—the Oregon Trail. The Oregon Paper Trail. 

Please explain to me why Congress is so hot and anxious to circle the wagons and spend billions of dollars on voting machines that don’t work when they can follow the example of voting pioneers in Oregon and just have everyone mail in their votes. Why spend our hard-earned bucks on Diebold when we can chose the Pony Express instead? 

And here’s another Oregon (paper) Trail that needs to be looked at carefully. There was, according to prominent Republicans, a lot of cross-party vote switching going on in Florida. Oh really? Why is that? Abortion issues. Gay issues. “Moral” issues,” the Republicans tell us. But those same issues are present in Oregon too. Many Oregonians think a lot like Floridans regarding these issues. For instance, Oregon just passed an anti-gay-marriage ordinance. And a friend of mine who just moved there told me that she was surrounded by right-wing evangelical types. And yet despite all this potential for vote-switching, Kerry still won in Oregon.  

After noticing the pronounced differences between Oregon vote-switching patterns and Florida vote-switching patterns despite similarities in voter attitudes, it becomes obvious that we need to check out the Florida Trail too. However, in far too many cases, there isn’t any trail to check out. How sad for Americans. How convenient for Bush. 

Our George is always talking about how much he needs more money to buy weapons with. Well. If Bush really wanted to save more money to give to his scalawag friends in the weapons business, he would jump right on this here band wagon—or, in his words, “catapult the propaganda”—in favor of mail-in ballots. They are safe. They are accurate. They are cheap. 

When it comes to eliminating vote fraud, acting like a free country and saving tons and tons of money, the rest of America needs to dump those high-falutin’ lily-livered voting machine varmints in Washington and hit the Oregon Trail! 

Jane Stillwater 

• 

IMPEACHMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It will be a beautiful peach of an Impeachment: the coming impeachment, trial, conviction and removal from office of President Bush and Vice President Cheney for their high crimes and misdemeanors against the American people and the United States Constitution.  

Predict the exact date of the coming final and complete collapse of the illegitimate Bush regime. Win big prizes: freedom and democracy for all Americans! Help end the hated Bush war on Iraq. Bring our boys and girls back home. Help end the illegitimate grip of Diebold Corporation and ES&S Corporation, two privately held right-wing run electronic voting machine manufacturers, on our elections, with their miscounting our votes in private with proprietary secret software. Create the return to honest elections with traditional hand-counted paper ballots. Help right our badly listing ship of state.  

Currently the corporate mainstream media is holding the Sword of Damocles over the continued existence of the Bush regime. When the corporate mainstream media finally tires of the Bush regimes endless monkeyshines, they will quickly pull the plug by broadcasting some of the truth about how the Bush gang stole the 2000 Presidential election in Florida, how Dick Cheney and his neo-con idiot buddies were complicit in letting the 9-11 terrorist attacks proceed as originally planned (the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) stated that they needed “a new Pearl Harbor” to implement their imperialistic plans to dominate the Middle East in the 21st century; some 52 warnings to the FAA about how the al Qaeda terrorists planned to use hijacked airliners as weapons, and the FAA just could not be bothered to simply seal off the airliners’ cockpits and thereby prevent any airliner hijackings), how the Bush gang told a pack of lies about Iraq and WMD before launching its illegal criminal war on the Iraqi people in March 2003 (see www.downingstreetmemo.com), how the Bush gang stole the 2004 Presidential election by having its thugs and technicians hack and rig electronically attack insecure Diebold and ES&S electronic voting machines and vote tabulating machines on November 2, 2004 and flipped several million Kerry votes into Bush votes, how the Bush administration funneled billions of taxpayer dollars into Halliburton Corporation with its infamous “no-bid” Iraq “reconstruction” contracts and how right-wing Texas energy corporations, such as Enron and El Paso Natural Gas, conspired to rig and game the California electrical energy market and steal billions of dollars from California ratepayers with the phony energy crisis.  

Any regime, which bases its continued existence upon lies, fear, election rigging and public complacency, will fall sooner or later. This illegitimate Bush regime will fall sooner than later. Help grease the skids for this coming collapse by getting the Impeachment Ball rolling. Hold an Impeachment Ball in your neighborhood, city, county or state. Have a Ball. Have an Impeachment Ball. Create your very own Im-Peach-Mint website. Watch the coming collapse of the Bush house of cards. Help pull the dark curtains of secrecy aside and reveal the inner machinations of this pathetic bunch of cowardly chicken-hawks. Bring on Impeachment. Bring it on.  

The winning date will be the day that the House Judiciary Committee approves articles of impeachment against President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.  

Pick out which media outlet broadcast will be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back, as it were. Will it be Air America Radio, Pacifica Radio Network, NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN or perhaps even Fox?  

Submit your entry as a letter-to-the-editor to local newspapers, regional newspapers and national newspapers. Post it on your own personal web site. 

Submit your entry to progressive web sites. Submit your entry to reactionary right-wing web sites (thereby increasing their paranoia level). Submit your entry to the mainstream corporate media outlets. Note: This Impeachment Revolution will be televised. Mission accomplished.  

James K. Sayre 

• 

EQUALITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It isn’t quite clear to what equality H. L. Blash (Letters, June 7) aspires, or how he or she would like the “playing field” evened. What is clear, however, is that H. L. Blash could be outdone by a freshman student of rhetoric or informal logic. My goodness, we could almost pick and choose among most of the so-called informal fallacies of logic...say, non causa pro cause or petitio principii (the latter commonly known as “begging the question,” which bears no relation to the way in which journalists and talking heads use the expression) in the argument presented. We’ll leave it to H. L. Blash to look up, and perhaps even ponder, these terms in regard to his or her protestation. 

What I find offensive in his or her plaint is not necessarily the implied demand that women on Medicaid be given medications (and, if they exist, why not?) to improve their sex lives so as to receive treatment comparable to the dispensation of Viagra. And neither am I entertaining the possibility here that one unstated (O.K., subtext, we in Berkeley seem to be fond of this term) intent of the letter was to whine about taxpayer’s dollars going for what might be deemed by him or her for something to which layabouts on Medicaid are not entitled. 

What really offends me is the silliness of the implication (subtext!) that men and women are physiologically identical sexually. I see this silliness as part of the lingering fog of critical theory through which people still wander, even though they may never have heard of, in fact, critical theory. Some of us...especially in Berkeley!...know that the intellectual revolution of, say, the years 1965 to 1985 produced volumes of fascinating and challenging theories, pronouncements, and ideas. Some of these were based on critiques of political economy and difficult to disprove (who can forget Marcuse’s analysis of how the state minimizes the opportunities for sexual opportunity in order to keep the gears of industry grinding?), some were based on the linguistic movements that sprang up around the turn of the century, and convinced us, for example, that it was tres degoute to enjoy a novel for its narrative features, and feminist critical theory bought into the idea, counter-intuitive even at that time, that the sexual behavior of men and women was largely and most importantly constructed by environment....nurture....pretty much to the exclusion of nature. Hence, their enchantment with Sartre and his pronouncement that “A baby is a mere puddle of vomit,” i.e., a blank slate waiting to be shaped by the vagaries of environment. Parenthetically, think with what outrage lingering adherents of feminine critical theory would act if one were to attribute, in the manner of Christian fundamentalists, homosexuality to a life-choice, with the implication that that life-choice had been environmentally shaped.  

Even at the time, science knew this thesis to be way off the mark, but many scientists were shouted down, ostracized, and labeled as social Darwinists. Today, we have the benefit of genetic and cognitive science to provide hard data to push the “nature” argument back to its much smaller, though justifiable, position. There is an explosion of research in these fields today (most of the researchers are women) providing the data that delineate the “hard-wired” differences between men and woman....sexually and otherwise. One might pick up the latest issue of Scientifiic American, for example, and read about the intriguing discoveries of the differences in our amigdallae, and the consequent differences in behavior of men and women. 

Finally, there are many woes of women, gynaecologically speaking, with which men are not bedeviled.. But I can’t think of many that actually prevent a women from having copulative sex, except perhaps vaginismus, for which treatments exist. Men, on the other hand, H. L. Blash must know, almost always need to achieve and maintain an erection to have an orgasm. Copulation for women may be a wonderful, or ho-hum, or terrible experience. But nothing happens to them, with age, that prevents them from having a go at it. The obverse situation in men, I believe, is why (whoever) has decided that drugs like Viagra should be paid for by some medical insurers, justifiably or not. 

Latin language courses always begin with what the textbooks call “conjugal rites” (How many thousands of seventh-graders have had a giggle with that one?). I recommend to H. L. Blash a course in conjugal rites as the phrase is more typically connoted. And remember, begging a question will always invite a question from those who are paying close attention! 

Peter Hubbard 

In a March article in The New Republic, Robert Reich bemoaned the failure of Democrats to control four essential American stories. Two of these are myths with hopeful themes, “the triumphant individual” and “the benevolent community.” The other two portray powerful images of fear, “rot at the top” and “the mob at the gates.” The latter describes how, “the United States is a beacon of virtue in a world of darkness, uniquely blessed but continuously endangered by foreign menaces.” Reich observed that after 9/11 the Bush administration skillfully turned this metaphor to their advantage: al Qaeda became the barbarians at the gates, heathens preparing to pillage the American heartland. 

In the immediate aftermath of the dreadful attacks, the Bushies played to “the mob at the gates” (TMATG) theme and used fear-based propaganda to terrorize the populace. From this emotional platform they bullied Congress into passing the Patriot Act. Then the administration launched a poorly planned military campaign in Afghanistan; one where they employed Afghani mercenaries to do the bulk of the ground fighting with the result that key al Qaeda operatives, including Osama bin Laden, were able to escape. And, of course, George Bush and company re-stimulated the nation’s trauma in order to justify the invasion of Iraq—a country that was full of bad guys, but which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. 

Over time, the nature of TMATG image gradually changed. For the first year, the barbarians were members of al Qaeda. In the run up to the invasion of Iraq, the composition of the mob subtly shifted and became in succession, “Wahabis,” “Islamic terrorists,” and then all Middle-Eastern opponents of democracy. Accompanying this broadening of scope was a surge of anti-immigrant hostility directed at those who appeared to be Arabs. Brown-skinned men and women, citizens and visitors alike, were jostled by strangers and hassled by the police and immigration authorities. 

Despite the vitriol generated by this campaign, in the past year TMATG theme lost traction. While al Qaeda threatens Westerners throughout the world, there have been no recent attacks on American soil. Meanwhile, the Bush administration claimed that it was eradicating terrorists in Iraq so that our soldiers wouldn’t have to fight them in the United States. The public seemed to have swallowed this tortured logic, as well as the Bushies’ claim that the total number of terrorist attacks has decreased—that the world is a safer place—even though statistics argue the contrary. 

In the meantime, domestic circumstances have turned against the Republicans: The economy is unstable, millions are unemployed or under employed, one-third of all Americans have no health care, and there is general dissatisfaction with the administration—only 35 percent feel that the country is headed in the right direction, while Bush’s approval ratings have dropped below 50 percent, to historic lows for a second-term President. As a result, the Republican spin on TMATG metaphor has lost its appeal. The average American finally has realized that al Qaeda wasn’t to blame for home foreclosures, plant closings, or reduced health care benefits. 

In response to this setback, the Republican propaganda machine shifted the image of TMATG. Barbarians were no longer portrayed as members of al Qaeda, or as Islamic Terrorists; instead, they became all immigrants. Conservatives launched a new wave of attacks on non-citizens. California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and former Colorado governor, Dick Lamm, among others, recently gave major speeches where they blamed America’s social problems on legal and illegal aliens—particularly Hispanics. According to this polemic, if an American doesn’t have a job, it’s the fault of newly arrived foreigners. If citizens feel unsafe on the streets, it’s also because of these immigrants.  

This is a sadly familiar conservative strategy: when economic times get tough they blame people of color and non-Christians. At the turn of the century they fumed about the “yellow peril.” During the depression their wrath showered on “Bolshevik Jews” and “colored people.’ More recently, in the Southwest, their ire has been directed at “illegal aliens,” meaning Hispanic immigrants.  

Despite its historic success, this strategy has some obvious shortcomings in the economic reality of 2005. While social conservatives may fear immigrants, business conservatives employ them. From coast to coast, captains of industry understand that they need non-citizens in order to get their work done. For example, American universities do not graduate the engineers needed to fuel our high-technology industry—if we didn’t have immigrant engineers then this sector would slow down. In agriculture, aliens do work that no one else wants to do. 

Conservatives whine that immigrants have filled all the new jobs created since 2000. However, experts such as Georgetown professor Henry Holzer dispute this; immigrant employment is concentrated in a handful of industries, while large job shifts have occurred in other sectors. 

Immigrants are not the root cause of America’s social problems. When conservatives rant about the latest version of the mob at the gate, they are simply seeking to divert attention from the real problem, “rot at the top”—the continued ineptitude of the Bush administration. 

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

Almost a year ago, a Kaiser Permanente medical equipment contractor suggested that Ralph use a device other than a head array to control his wheelchair. The head array uses an infrared beam and somehow, when Ralph moves his head in various directions, his wheelchair slides in and out of a variety of gears: forward, backward, up, and down. It is a miracle in modern technology that doesn’t often work as it should. 

One of the conveniences of using a head array is that Ralph no longer has a chin-controlled joystick in front of his face. The joystick made it impossible to get near Ralph, to put my arms around him, or give him a kiss. The head array was supposed to fix that. However, with the head array in place we quickly learned that if Ralph moved slightly in any direction while receiving a kiss, the wheelchair could leap forward or backward at the precise moment the kisser was leaning into him. There were safety issues. I could be fatally injured trying to get near him. His wheelchair needs to be in the right gear in order for him to be touched.  

But kissing or not kissing Ralph is not the biggest problem. A more pressing concern is that the head array makes the wheelchair too tall to fit into our van which we use to take Ralph to meetings and doctor’s appointments. In order for Ralph to get into the van, he has to put the wheelchair into recline mode. Then he has to switch into drive mode. It’s like steering a car or boat up a ramp while lying down. He can’t see where he’s going. And where he’s going is into a very small space that does not accommodate the length of the wheelchair when it is in recline position. There have been many accidents. Either the head array snaps off because he’s not down low enough to pass through the sliding door entryway, or his feet jam into the far side of the van because he’s too long. Always concerned with fiscal matters, we have opted for feet jamming over head array snapping. Going to the podiatrist is cheaper and faster than trying to get the damn wheelchair fixed. 

We agreed with the wheelchair expert that we should try the shoulder control gizmo. He told us it might take several weeks to process the order. We are accustomed to waiting. We gave him three months. When we didn’t hear back from him we called. He’d forgotten about us. So we met with him again. Now he wasn’t sure that the shoulder control was a good thing. After all, he noted, Ralph didn’t get out of bed much, and learning to use a shoulder control takes practice. 

I pointed out to him that the reason Ralph didn’t get out of bed often was because sitting in his wheelchair for more than four hours per day had caused bedsores that required years of care, and major reconstructive surgery. I reminded him that at our initial meeting the issues discussed had been Ralph’s comfort, safety, and health, not how often he lay prone versus sitting upright. He agreed to order the part that he had forgotten to order before. We made a tentative follow-up appointment and then waited. Later, the appointment was canceled. We were told the part had not yet arrived.  

It’s been over nine months since we first discussed and agreed to try the shoulder control. I could have conceived and had a baby. I could have taken a trip around the world, redone my kitchen, written a best-selling novel.  

According to the rules of Ralph’s health insurance coverage, every five years Ralph is allowed to get a new wheelchair. It’s been 11 years since his accident. After the first five years we ordered a new chair. It took almost a year to get it. I think I’ll call Kaiser and start the process of ordering another chair. But I won’t cancel the shoulder control. Why? Because in the end, I’m an optimist. Someday that part will come in and the wheelchair guy will remember to call us.  

@

Garden tool brandished 

Berkeley police arrested a 46-year-old woman on one count of brandishing a deadly weapon shortly before 2 a.m. last Tuesday after she allegedly confronted another woman with a forked gardening tool, said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies. 

The affronted woman, 47, called police after the tool wielder departed, and the fork offender was then taken into custody. 

Alert janitor spots felon 

Two hours later, a janitor called police to report that he’d spotted someone inside the Orchard Supply store at 1025 Ashby Ave. 

Okies said officers arrived just as the fellow was about to depart the scene, sparking a brief foot chase that ended with the 50-year-old suspect facing charges of burglary, possession of stolen property and resisting arrest. 

Ashby BART heist 

Two teenage strong-arm bandits grabbed an iPod from a 24-year-old woman as she was walking along Martin Luther King Jr. Way across from the Ashby BART station. 

Drug team raids home 

A lengthy investigation by the BPD narcotics unit into complaints of drug dealing in the 1600 block of 63rd Street ended in a Wednesday afternoon raid on one of the houses in the block, said Officer Okies. 

By the time officers completed their search of the residence they had discovered heroin and cocaine packaged for sale, along with methamphetamine and equipment for making false IDs. 

Four men and one woman, ranging in age from 19 to 46, were arrested on a total of eight charges, Okies said. 

Belated report 

A 27-year-old woman called Berkeley Police Friday to report that a strong-arm robber had made off with her purse five days earlier as she was walking in the 2600 block of College Avenue. 

Seasons robbed 

A middle-aged man claiming to have a gun walked into Seasons Clothing at 2035 University Ave. about 5:15 Saturday afternoon and demanded the contents of the till. 

The clerk complied and the bandit departed, said Officer Okies. 

Major rat pack 

After a citizen called to complain that a group of 10 to 15 teenagers had robbed him of his cash and personal items near the Ashby BART Station just before 9:30 p.m. Saturday, officers arrived in time to stop a group and teens and arrested two of them as suspects in the heist.

Disaster Averted 

An 11:19 p.m. call on June 6 brought firefighters rushing to an apartment building at 2218 Seventh St., where they arrived to find a fire in the basement. 

Deputy Fire Chief David Orth said the flames, which started when objects piled on top of an electrical cord caused the wires to spark, caused an estimated $15,000 in damage. 

Things could have been a lot worse, because a plastic gasoline container kept for a lawnmower spilled its contents after the plastic melted from the heat. 

Fortunately, firefighters arrived before the gas could ignite. 

As it was, the fumes from the spoilt fuel forced the evacuation of the building, and the Red Cross provided Day’s Inn rooms for the six tenants who were displaced for the night until the fumes has dispersed, Orth said. 

Range fire 

Firefighters were called to a home at 1639 Fairview St. at 2 p.m. Sunday, but when they arrived they discovered that the occupants had already extinguished a kitchen fire that was confined to the area of the range and its hood. 

Orth estimated the damage at $5,000.›

Appended to the Berkeley Public Library June 8 Action Calendar memo to the Board of Library Trustees from the director of Library Services, Subject: Fiscal Year 2006 Budget Adoption is a “Service View-Adult Services Fiscal Year 2005 Summary.” The second bulleted item consists of the following in toto: 

One of the first big work projects was a thorough weeding of the adult collection; as a whole the collections had not been reviewed for some time and the exercise accomplished much in the way of finding damaged and dated materials, and helped to facilitate ordering new replacement copies for classic titles and completely new material for neglected subject areas. Adult selectors were placed on new teams with the hope of engendering more communication and discussion between branch and Central librarians as we try to find a more holistic approach to building the Berkeley Public Library collections. Librarians also began doing nearly all of their selection with online utilities like Title Source II, and BWI. [sic] 

Last fall I coordinated for/at the North Berkeley Senior Center a well-attended meeting on the subject of elder abuse, as the term is commonly used. I provided a handout that listed resources for this neglected subject area. I have always stressed borrowing books and the accessibility of titles from public libraries, especially “our” Berkeley Public Library. Over the last few months, I have had phone calls and e-mails from persons who attended or who otherwise received a handout copy: They report inability to obtain materials related to elder abuse, in particular woman-related elder abuse. 

I loyally respond with how-to suggestions that include using the Berkeley Public Library catalog. It responds to requests for materials on elder abuse with the news that one should use the established subject-heading: Older people, abuse of. O.K., a cross reference is good thing. But this one provides zero titles! I persevere, suggesting inputting key words elder and abuse, which generates two titles: an Alzheimer’s caregivers’ handbook and a reference book of articles mainly on childhood domestic violence. 

The Alameda County Library system catalog, relying on the same established subject heading and keywording (Boolean algebra) approaches, generates several titles. One, Elder abuse: A Decade of Shame and Inaction, is an antique report from the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Health and Long-Term Care of the Select Committee on Aging; its 1990 publication date is revealing. 

Helen Rippier Wheeler is a Berkeley resident.

Suddenly the proposal to change the name of Berkeley’s Jefferson School because Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder is at full boil. First broached over a year ago, the idea seems to have lain fallow until about a month ago. In a very short time the process for deciding the question has leapt forward with virtually breakneck velocity. 

The proposed change may be the right thing for Berkeley. Our community—and most particularly our children—may gain more than will be lost if we make such a change. Or maybe not. In any case, the question has already had its “first reading” at the School Board, where the decision will ultimately be made. 

There are some, I know, who feel as I do that such a decision should engage the larger Berkeley community—not just that tiny minority who happen today to be directly affiliated with Jefferson School. It would be well for the School Board to hear from them pronto. The accelerated clock hasn’t quite made the decision for us yet. The larger community, including the current “Jefferson School community” and, importantly, the School Board, deserve the time to achieve a fuller understanding of this complex issue than I think has been possible to date. 

When I first learned of the proposal last year, I prefaced some published comments (Berkeley Daily Planet, March 2-4, 2004) by noting that the shame felt by those whose ancestors held slaves must be nothing beside the pain of those whose ancestors were slaves. This is a reality that I believe Americans considering this difficult subject should never forget. Indeed, the dark legacy of slavery is a subject we neglect at our peril. 

The process for deciding the name-change question would certainly have interested Jefferson himself, champion of democracy that he was. What is that process? 

Following some internal deliberations at the school but apparently without any organized informational process or effort to engage the broader Berkeley community, a poll of the school’s current teachers, students, and their families was held in April to select a favored alternative in the event that the name-change proposal were to go forward. The name “Sequoia” was selected from a list of other alternatives. 

Finally, on May 17, with minimal publicity, an “informational” meeting was held at the school. 

Out of my interest in the subject, I attended that meeting, the stated goal of which was to provide “An opportunity to have thoughtful, inclusive, and informative discussion on a provocative question, and to hear as many divergent perspectives as possible within the timeframe.” The agenda promised 15 minutes each for prepared presentations by those favoring “Changing the name to Sequoia” and those favoring “Keeping the current name: Jefferson.” Not surprisingly the meeting was largely an occasion for those who favor renaming the school to air their case against Jefferson. 

Those favoring the change offered a well-prepared and moving case based on Jefferson’s ownership of slaves and on their impression that he had not acted to end slavery. In their 15 minutes they quoted from Jefferson’s own account of his ordering an offending slave flogged and from writers who have faulted Jefferson for not acting effectively to end slavery. At the core of their presentation were the strong feelings of a teacher at the school, who regards the school’s name as an affront to herself and to all members of the school community who are black. There is of course no arguing with feelings, and hers are shared by several others—both white and black—who endorsed her position. 

The 15 minutes allotted to “keeping the current name” were wholly given to Robin Einhorn, a rather antic UC historian, who breezily announced at the outset that she did not intend to “make the case for Jefferson” but informed her listeners that those who make that case base it on the Declaration of Independence. She misinformed them that the Declaration was written not by Jefferson but “by a committee,” read from the Declaration, and—perhaps six minutes into her allotted 15—sat down. It was by any standard a feeble gesture, veering witlessly close to mocking the gravity of the subject. Although there were several there who favored “keeping the current name,” the occasion’s organizers had not secured anyone to prepare that case and in the considerable time remaining for that purpose none were invited to extemporize it. 

In the wake of the meeting’s oddly unbalanced presentation, it was, naturally, difficult for those who favor keeping the name to speak out. Most of those attending are not scholars of the subject and had doubtless come simply hoping for some information. 

They might of course have been told the truth—that Jefferson did in fact write the Declaration of Independence, that its final form does indeed embody a number of revisions by the committee of which he was a member as well as by the full Continental Congress, that among their revisions were the removal of Jefferson’s language calling for an end to the slave trade. They might have been told that Jefferson wrote and supported legislation against slavery on numerous occasions throughout his life, probably more deliberate legislative efforts in that cause than were made by any of his contemporary “founding fathers.” “This abomination must have an end,” he wrote. “And there is a superior bench reserved in heaven for those who hasten it.” They might have been told that Jefferson regarded slavery as an “abominable crime,” an “infamous practice,” that he agonized over his having inherited a role in the “evil” system and declared that “there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach in any practicable way.” They might have been told that Jefferson felt that by taking unilateral action—freeing his slaves—he would merely diminish his own influence without achieving the broader purpose of universal emancipation, that so long as slavery persisted his duty was to work where he could for “the deliverance of these, our suffering brethren,” and to “endeavor, with those whom fortune has thrown on our hands, to feed and clothe them well, protect them from all ill usage, [and] require such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by freemen.” 

Those attending the meeting might have been reminded that it was Jefferson who insisted that the U.S. Constitution include a Bill of Rights, that the very processes that have most dramatically moved our democracy forward—including such landmark achievements as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—grew directly out of Thomas Jefferson’s thought, his insistence on broadening democratic institutions at every opportunity. They might have been reminded that Jefferson’s words were tellingly invoked by both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King in their struggles for racial equality, Lincoln most famously in the Gettysburg Address (1863), King exactly a century later in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963). 

Would such facts have counterbalanced the facts about Jefferson the slaveholder and the strongly expressed feelings of those favoring the change? It’s hard to say. In public discourse feelings have a way of trumping facts. 

Less than a week after the meeting the “Jefferson School community”—again consisting only of current students, their families, and teachers at the school—were asked to choose between retaining the name Jefferson or exchanging it for Sequoia. The larger Berkeley community—interested citizens in general, including former Jefferson students, parents, and teachers—were not asked their views. 

What should our larger Berkeley community, which devotes so much time and energy to encouraging fair and open process, do about this? For over two hundred years Thomas Jefferson has been generally regarded as the world’s leading apostle of democracy. It seems at the very least worth noting how shabbily democracy was served on this occasion. 

And what about the feelings of those like the Jefferson School teacher who so movingly stated her case? I think we honor those feelings by doing all we can to create an educational climate that acknowledges the complexity of human experience. The case of Jefferson is not simple. It does a severe injustice to our children to lead them to think so. As thoughtful citizens, as parents, as teachers, we have a job to do. The job is not to hand our children a politically correct point of view. The job is to help them open their minds to realities, even to sometimes contradictory, painful, ambiguous, or conflicting realities, to help them to think for themselves. That is the job that Thomas Jefferson foresaw when—as the first statesman to do so, not just in the US but in the world—he promoted universal publicly supported education as an essential foundation of democracy. In his lifetime he failed to bring that vision to fruition, just as he failed to develop a workable plan for universal emancipation. It is foolish, and dishonest, not to honor him for the attempt, just as we honor him for so much else that is best in our imperfect but not perhaps utterly hopeless heritage. 

All this leaves us with some questions: 

• Should the name-change process involve only those who happen to be associated with the school at a given time or should it involve the larger Berkeley community? 

• Should the only “informational” public meeting about the name-change question be held at the end rather than at the beginning of such a process? 

• What role, if any, should children in kindergarten through fifth grade play in the process? 

• If the contemporary—and temporary—“Jefferson School community” is indeed the appropriately exclusive group for deliberating on the question, should they be given balanced information and more than a week in which to come to a decision? 

• Should the School Board give itself time—say six months or so—to hear from the wider community, in hopes of understanding all the issues on a very complex question, before concluding this process? 

Changing the name of Jefferson School to that of a tree would certainly not be the worst thing Berkeley ever did. It may even be the right thing to do. But to do it on the basis of partial or wrong information or out of a process that lacks broad-based community consideration would, I think, be unwise. 

Rob Browning is a Berkeley resident and former editor of UC Berkeley’s Mark Twain Papers. 

E

A white divan (modern) backed by tiers of screens on which multiple images of a camel are projected: This is the simple set on the Ashby Stage on which the Shotgun Players’ production of Arabian Night will spin a tangled web. 

Roland Schimmelpfennig’s play (translated by David Tushingham) is a comedy of missteps, second-guesses and asides. Its subject is the banality of an evening in an apartment block, reflected in the windows of other, identically anonymous buildings, caught in a dark, fleeting undertow of the fantastic. 

The “action” finds the characters running up and down concrete stairs, wandering down corridors, tempted by open doorways, attracted by the siren sound of vaguely familiar voices, dreaming dreams of exotic landscapes peopled with remembered faces. 

While Franziska (played by Christina Kramlich), just out of her nightly shower, dozes in the sultry heat on the divan, her roommate Fatima (Carla Pantoja) waits for Khalil (Roham Shaikhani), her lover, to come by for their tryst. Meanwhile, Hans (Richard Louis James), the building super, roams the corridors and in and out of the apartments, in search of water. He can hear it, but it’s stopped running on the top floors. And also adrift among the blank walls of the passageways is Benjamin (Peter Karpati), waterless tenant of a facing tower, who’s caught a glimpse of Franziska drenched in the bath, and is irresistibly drawn to try to find the precious water—and her.  

Like particles in a cloud chamber, then a cyclotron, they’re all brought together in passing by forces of attraction that are beyond their (and the audience’s) comprehension, then pulled apart in vortices like whirlwinds—or desert sandstorms from the arabesque tales that give this play its wry, singular title.  

Khalil gets stuck in the elevator; Fatima’s locked out while looking for him down a stairwell. Franziska dreams strange dreams of being a virgin promised to her guardian in a far land, while the men, who happen on her, one by one, as she slumbers on her sofa, find themselves translated to other places to continue their searching (one to the desert for water, another to be the genie of a cognac bottle, the third to be unwilling serial seducer--or seduced), trapped by the curse Franziska dreams is attached to her lips. “If someone came and kissed her, that might be the end of these nights!” 

This particular night seems to end variously, both happily and hysterically sad—slight acquaintances embrace passionately, a knife’s drawn, there’s the sound of shattering glass. 

The Shotgun cast fares well in their intricate courses, talking their way through each situation in monologues a little like subliminal thoughts spoken out loud. The story accrues from these modular units—as modular as the apartment building, echoing like the corridors and stairways, coalescing into a multifacetted tale from the simultaneously apprehended quanta of hints and repetitions in speech and action. 

Sometimes the movements, executed crisply enough, seem static, like mime exercises (running in place, unlocking a door). One of the intriguing features of the play’s structure is a contradictory combination of the stasis of tableau with reversals of plot, “coups de theatre.” 

Shotgun’s got an offbeat hit on their hands, particularly for those who like that body of fiction loosely grouped together as “Magical Realism,” the offspring of Edgar Allan Poe, via Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Milan Kundera and a host of others who charm their public by the interpenetration of the everyday and fable. Arabian Night boomerangs through the exotic parallel universes of String Theory right back into the ordinary milieu of an urban apartment house, residing in the banalities of the New World Order.

TUESDAY, JUNE 14 

CHILDREN 

“Dragons, Dreams and Daring Deeds” Start the summer reading program with ventriloquist Randel McGee and his little dragon at 6:30 p.m. at Kensington Branch Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

FILM 

Alternative Vision: “Cats, Bugs, and Perverts: The FIlms of Martha Colburn” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bob Levin discusses “Outlaws, Rebels, Freethinkers, and Pirates: Essays on Cartoons and Cartoonists” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Matt Tabbi describes the 2004 election in “Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches form the Dumb Season” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

The Whole Note Poetry Series with Louis Cuneo and Geri Digiorno at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave., near Ashby. 549-9093. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Symphony with the Bay Area debut of Linda Watson, soprano, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$49. 841-2800. www.berkeleysymphony.org 

Claudia Russell at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $16.50- $17.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Singer’s Showcase with Ellen Hoffman Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Eric Swinderman, jazz guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Miguel Zenób Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Sage Jazz Group at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15 

EXHIBITIONS 

Tapestry Weavers West 20th Anniversary Exhibit opens at the Nexus Gallery, 2701 Eighth St.  

“Vanishing Species and More” recent mixed-media paintings by Rita Sklar opens at the Joseph P. Bort MetroCenter, 101 Eighth St., Oakland. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays. 464-7773. 

FILM 

Seventies Underground: “Thundercrack” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Betsy Leondar-Wright talks about “Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Norm Stamper, former chief of the Seattle Police Dept. describes “Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Street-Smart Approach to Making America a Safe Place for Everyone” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082.  

Café Poetry hosted by Paradise Freejalove at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Music for the Spirit” harpsichord concert at noon at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555.  

Ned Boynton Trio at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

La Verdad, salsa, at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Harley White Jr. Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Dry Branch Fire Squad at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50- $19.50. 548-1761.  

Sonic Camouflage at 8 p.m. at Cafe Van Kleef, 1621 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 763-7711.  

Calvin Keys Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Whiskey Brothers at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. 843-2473.  

Sloppy Meateaters, Parkside View, Transit War at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886.  

Miguel Zenób Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, JUNE 16 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Blind at the Museum” guided tour at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-0808. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Luis Alberto Urrea reads from his new novel “The Hummingbird’s Daughter” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Word Beat Reading Series at 7 p.m. with Mark Schwartz and Yosefa Raz at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

Live and Unplugged Open Mic at 7 p.m. at Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar St. 703-9350. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Summer Noon Concert with Misturada at the Berkeley BART Plaza, Shattuck at Center St. 549-2230.  

Dream Dance Company “Dig Us Now” at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$20. 849-2568.  

Ben Adams Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Dr. Abacus at 9 p.m. at Cafe Van Kleef, 1621 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5. 763-7711.  

Fairport Convention at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761.  

Alektorophobia, Molehill Orchestra at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. 

Pete Madsen at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

John Mackay and Michael Wilcox at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Diane Schuur with the Caribbean Jazz Project at 8 and 10 p.m. through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Machine Love at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

FRIDAY, JUNE 17 

THEATER 

Antares Ensemble “Hellenic Image” choruses and monologues from Greek tragedies at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club. Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through June 26. Tickets are $10-$35. 525-3254.  

Aurora Theatre “The Thousandth Night” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. 2 and 7 p.m., through July 24, at 2081 Addison St. Tickets are $36. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Rep, “Honour” opens at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. and runs through July 3. Tickets are $20-$39. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

California Shakespeare Theater, “Othello” at 8 p.m. at Bruns Amphitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., between Berkeley and Orinda, through July 3. Tickets are $10-$55. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

Grand Kabuki Theater of Japan at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $40-$125. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Shotgun Players, “Arabian Night” Thurs.-Su. at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. until July 10. Tickets are $10-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Subterranean Shakespeare “The Taming of the Shrew,” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center in Live Oak Park, through June 24. For reservations call 276-3871. 

Traveling Jewish Theater, “Cherry Docs” at the Julia Morgan Theater, Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m., through June 19. Tickets are $12-$35. www.atjt.com 

Un-Scripted Theater Company “The Short and the Long of It” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., through June 25 at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St., Oakland. Tickets are $7-$10. 415-869-5384. www.un-scripted.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Hip-Hop Culture, Politics and Social Justice” a discussion with with authors Adam Mansbach, Jeff Chang, Tricia Rose and Bakari Kitwana at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Celebrating the Summer Solstice with Vierne’s “Pieces de Fantasie” David Hatt, organist, at 7:30 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. Suggested donation $10. 444-3555. 

Ruth Botchan Dance Company “More Matters of Life and Death” at 8 p.m. at Western Sky Studio, 2525 Eighth St. Tickets are $18-$20. 848-4878.  

La Peña Community Chorus celebrates La Peña’s 30th Anniversary at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$15.. 849-2568.  

Graham Richards, Ellen Robinson Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Carolyn Aiken at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Drunken Spacemen, The Ghostt, Bad Habitz at 9 p.m. at The Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $8-$10. 763-1146. 

Jennifer Berezan at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Hicks with Sticks, CD realease party, at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Quddus Sinclair, hip hop, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

Live And Unplugged, acoustic music showcase, at 7 p.m. Unitarian Universalists Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. 703-9350. www.LiveAndUnplugged.org 

Mike Lipskin Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Francesca Lee & Ben Storm at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Lady Mem’fis at 7 p.m. at Maxwell’s, 341 13th St., Oakland. 839-6169. 

Vince Wallace Quintet at 9 p.m. at Cafe Van Kleef, 1621 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5. 763-7711. www.cafevankleef.com  

Vinyl, Latin percussion, electric funk at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8-$10. 548-1159.  

Carne Cruda, Los Surf Cumbieros at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Lights Out, Allegiance, Lion of Judah, at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Diane Schuur with the Caribbean Jazz Project at 8 and 10 p.m. through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, JUNE 18 

EXHIBITIONS 

Tapestry Weavers West 20th Anniversary Exhibit at the Nexus Gallery, 2701 Eighth St. Reception from 4 to 7 p.m. 

THEATER 

Grand Kabuki Theater of Japan at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $40-$125. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

FILM 

American Outlaws: “Bloody Mama” at 7 p.m. and “DIty Little Billy” at 9 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bill Lee reads from his new book, “Born to Lose: Memoirs of a Compulsive Gambler” at 3 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350.  

Phil Lesh reads from his memoir, “Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Kym Flynn reads from “Thugged Out” at noon at Uncommon Cafe, 2813 Seventh St. 845-5264. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ruth Botchan Dance Company “More Matters of Life and Death” at 8 p.m. at Western Sy, 2525 Eighth St. Tickets are $18-$20. 848-4878. www.berkeleymovingarts.com 

Golden Gate Boys Choir & Bellringers Spring Concert at 7:30 p.m. at St. Mary Magdalen Church, 2005 Berryman St. Donation $5-$10. 887-4311. www.ggbc.org 

San Francisco Choral Artists “On Wings of Song” at 8 p.m. at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, 3534 Lakshore Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $17-$22. 415-979-5779. www.sfca.org  

Jason Martineau, Robin Gregory Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Apollo BRG Style at 8 p.m. at Black Repertory Theater., Adeline St. Cost is $5-$10. 652-2120. www.blackrepertorygroup.com 

Chris Cotton, Piedmont Blues, at 2 p.m. at Down Home Music, 10341 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. 525-2129. 

Mitch Marcus Quintet at 9 p.m. at Cafe Van Kleef, 1621 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5. 763-7711. www.cafevankleef.com 

Megan McLaughlin at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

FiddleFest with Bobbi Nikles, Cathie Whitesides, Betsy Branch and Michael Stadler at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

A Night of Voices, featuring Duckmandu, The Invisible Cities, Fire Wrecks the Forest, and others at 6 p.m. at Comic Relief, 2026 Shattuck Ave. Free. www.altgeek.net/voices 

A Band Called Pain, Alexic, The Agency at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Michelle Amador and the True Believers at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com  

Quetzal, Chicano band from L.A., at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $7-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Lua, a quartet of voices, percussion and strings at 6:30 p.m. at Cafe Valpariso, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 841-3800. 

Steve Smulian, orchestral acoustic guitar, at 7 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Bellyachers, Loretta Lynch, The Famous at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Quddus Sinclair, hip hop, at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

Marcus Shelby Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

David Jeffrey Quartet with Brendan Millstein at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Clorox Girls, The Observers, Shadow Boxer at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JUNE 19 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Blind at the Museum” guided tour at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“From Life” Plein air and figurative paintings by Iris Sabre in the Foyer Gallery, Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Reception for the artist from 4 to 6 p.m. 524-1577. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash “In A Fine Frenzy” Poets Respond to Shakespeare” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ruth Botchan Dance Company “More Matters of Life and Death” at 8 p.m. at Western Sy, 2525 Eighth St. Tickets are $18-$20. 848-4878. www.berkeleymovingarts.com 

The Christy Dana Quintet at 8 p.m. at The Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $12-$15. 524-1124. 

Chamber Music Sundaes with SF Symphony violinist Geraldine Walther at 3:15 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $7-$19. 415-584-5946. 

Julian White, piano at 3 p.m. at the Berkeley Piano Club, 2724 Haste St. 528-4959. 

Carlos Oliveira and Brazilain Origins, featuring Harvey Wainapel at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

“Ace of Spades” Acoustic Series at 1 p.m. at MamaBuzz Cafe, 2318 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Free. 

Me Without You, Make Believe, Veda at 4 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10-$12. All ages show. 848-0886.  

Americana Unplugged with Seventh Day Busters at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 655-5715. 

Slaid Cleaves at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

MONDAY, JUNE 20 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Getting There” works by artists with disabilities and members of East Bay Women Artists opens at NIAD Art Center, 551 23rd St., Richmond, and runs to July 24. 620-0290. www.niad.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Arthur Blaustein and Kris Novoselic talk about citizen action and civic engagement in the age of Bush at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Christy Campbell reads from her scientific detective story, “The Botanist and the Vinter: How Wine Was Saved for the World” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Poetry Express with Charles DuBois at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tom Duarte, guitarist, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Songwriters Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $5. 548-1761 www.freightandsalvage.org 

Faye Carol at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$15. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

.

What caught my eye was the color contrast: something bright red crawling along the green garden hose. It was a creature I had never seen before, a thumbnail-sized spider with a black cephalothorax and a red abdomen, a huge pair of forward-facing eyes, an d a glint of green about its mouthparts. Distracted from watering, I followed it around the lawn as it maneuvered through the grass blades, following one to near its tip where it suddenly pounced on something small, brown, and shiny. 

My find was a jumpin g spider, most likely Phidippus johnsoni, sometimes called the red-backed spider (no relation to the notorious Australian species, an antipodean relative of our black widow). From its coloration, it must have been a male; females have black markings on th e red abdomen. And I learned that it and its relatives in the family Salticidae are no ordinary spiders, if there is such a thing. Phidippus and other jumping spiders have remarkable visual skills and perform elaborate courtship dances; and some of them d o things that you would never expect from a mere arachnid. 

P. johnsoni seems to be common throughout the West; most of the research on it was done here in Berkeley in the ‘70s by arachnologist Robert R. Jackson. Jackson, now in New Zealand, must be a tru ly dedicated scientist. He speculated in one article that johnsoni’s bright color might signal its unpalatability to would-be predators, like the orange of the monarch butterfly. His conclusion: “There is no evidence that their coloration is aposematic, a lthough information concerning this is limited. They do not taste bitter or noxious to humans (personal observation).” 

Since jumping spiders have color vision, the red abdomen probably plays a role in courtship. Male salticids dance for their mates. P. johnsoni’s choreography consists of the linear dance (walking toward the female, then backing away), the zigzag dance (walking side to side while facing her), and gesturing (moving his forelegs forward and up, then down and sideways). In the 19th century, a Wisconsin couple named Peckham studied a whole range of jumping spiders and described fancier footwork, although a later author’s comparison to the hula, the tango, and the highland fling may have been a stretch. For dancing spider videos, check out htt p://tolweb.org/accessory/Jumping_Spider_Image_Gallery?acc_id=59. Males of some species also produce a buzzing or purring sound by twitching their abdomens while dancing. 

Female jumping spiders are tough audiences. The Peckhams introduced two successive m ales to a female Phidippus morsitans, who killed and ate them after “they had only offered her the merest civilities.” But males don’t depend solely on their dancing. When courting a female in her nest, they perform a tactile routine, tweaking her web wit h forelegs and mouthparts. If a male gets a positive response, he enters the nest for mating. When the female is not yet sexually mature (I’m not sure how he can tell, but apparently he can), he builds an annex to her nest and moves in until the time is r ipe. 

Both sexes stalk their prey like eight-legged cats. Unlike some spiders, whose vision is rudimentary, jumpers are sight-hunters. Salticids, typically for spiders, have eight eyes. The six along the side of the carapace, the secondary eyes, are simpl e light-and-motion detectors. But the huge, forward-facing principal eyes are something else again. They’re not compound eyes like those of insects: they’re like a built-in pair of binoculars. Each eye is a long tube with a large corneal lens up front and a second lens in the rear. The front lens has a long focal length and the rear lens magnifies the image from the front lens. Four layers of receptors in the retina allow for color discrimination. In the rearmost layer, a small region called the fovea res olves fine visual details. 

All this appears to be standard jumping spider equipment, good enough for spiders like Phidippus to recognize prey and mates from a considerable distance, for a spider. After his early work on P. johnsoni, Jackson moved on to a new subject, a genus of Old World jumping spiders called Portia. Jackson says Portia’s visual spatial acuity is much better than any insect’s, comparable to that of some mammals. Portia is a spider-hunting spider, and its vision is acute enough to differentiate between a spider and an insect, and between different species of spider; it can also tell whether another spider is holding an egg case.  

And act accordingly. The truly outstanding thing about Portia is the versatility of its hunting tactics. If a potential victim is encumbered with an egg case, it makes a frontal assault; otherwise, it sneaks up from behind. It will approach its prey by circuitous routes, using detours which remove the victim from its line of sight. And it employs what can only be called trial-and-error tactics to hunt spiders ensconced in their own webs. Like a courting male Phidippus, Portia tweaks and tugs the strands of its intended victim’s web. It may in fact be mimicking a male’s signals, with specific messages for differ ent species of prey. Depending on the response, it varies the pattern of tweaks until the victim, expecting to find a suitor at the door, ventures out within pouncing distance. And Portia even uses background noise, like leaves rustling in the wind, to ma sk its movements on the victim’s web. 

All this from a spider? Salticids have comparatively large brains, for spiders. But they’re still operating on a handful of neurons, and their eyes have only 10,000 to 100,000 receptors, compared with over 100 millio n in the human eye. Small doesn’t equate to simple, though. Robert Jackson and his collaborator Stim Wilcox aren’t afraid to use loaded words like “problem solving” and “cognition.” Thinking spiders? There’s clearly a lot more going on down among the grass blades than we would ever suspect.  

l

TUESDAY, JUNE 14 

Early Morning Bird Walk Meet at 7 a.m. at the Bear Creek Rd. entrance of Briones to look for Redwinged Blackbirds, White-crowned Sparrows and Western Bluebirds (It is Flag Day!) 525-2233. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools during the summer, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Beyond Oil II with Joanna Macy and Richard Heinberg at 7 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Sponsored by the East Bay Post Carbon Solutions Group. 496-6080. 

Peace Corps Information Night with volunteers and staff at 6:30 p.m. at Rockridge Public Library, 5366 College Ave., Oakland. RSVP to John Ruiz at 415-977-8798. jruiz@peacecorps.gov 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. In case of questionable weather, call around 8 a.m. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org  

Buddhist Meditation Class at 7 p.m. at The Dzalandhara Buddhist Center. Cost is $7-$10. For directions and details please call 559-8183. 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Sing-Along every Tues. from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic. All ages welcome. 524-9122. 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools during the summer, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

“The Emotional World of Farm Animals” a documentary, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. 

Walking Tour of Oakland City Center Meet at 10 a.m. in front Oakland City Hall at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Action St. 841-2174.  

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7:15 a.m. at Au Cocolait, 200 University Ave. at Milvia. For information call Robert Flammia 524-3765. 

JumpStart Entrepreneurs share information at 8 a.m. at A’Cuppa Tea, 3202 College Ave. at Alcatraz. Cost is $5. 541-9901. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. 548-9840. 

Artify Ashby Muralist Group meets every Wed. from 5 to 8 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, to plan a new mural. New artists are welcome. Call Bonnie at 704-0803. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch Bring your knitting, crocheting and other handcrafts from 6 to 9 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

Sing-Along every Wed. at 4:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

THURSDAY, JUNE 16 

Berkeley’s Conservatory Unearthed Gather at the base of Observatory Hill, just north of Memorial Glade and Doe Library, UC Campus at 7 p.m. to walk through the excavation site, viewing the uncovered remains, followed by lecture at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15, available from Berkeley Historical Society at 848-0181. Berkhist@SBCGlobal.Net 

Attorney General Bill Lockyer speaking on what’s happening in Sacramento at 7:30 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Hosted by the Berkeley Democratic Club. 612-1249. 

“Growing Old in Gay Culture” a video and panel discussion at 1 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190.  

Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation at 7 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Sliding scale donation $10-$25. 528-8844. www.unityberkeley.org 

FRIDAY, JUNE 17 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Jaleh Pirnazar on “Iran Struggles for Democracy” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020. 

“Take Back Our Schools” Day On the 51st Anniversary of Brown vs. Board. Rally at noon at Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland. Followed by activities and teach-in. 289-3318, 593-3956. 

“Hip-Hop Culture, Politics and Social Justice” a discussion with with authors Adam Mansbach, Jeff Chang, Tricia Rose and Bakari Kitwana at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

“Awakening to the Divine in Everyday Life” with art therapist Deborah Purdy at 7:30 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. www.sos-ca.org 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Berkeley Critical Mass Bike Ride meets at the Berkeley BART the second Friday of every month at 5:30 p.m. 

Kirtan, improvisational devotional chanting at 7:30 p.m. at 850 Talbot, at Solano, Albany. Donation $10. 526-9642. 

“Three Beats for Nothing” a small group meeting weekly at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center to sing for fun and practice, mostly 16th century harmony. No charge. 655-8863, 843-7610. dann@netwiz.net 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

SATURDAY, JUNE 18 

Summer Solstice Celebration and Crafts Fair from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, Center St. at MLK, Jr. Way. 548-3333. 

Temescal Street Fair from noon to 6 p.m. on Telegraph Ave. between 51st and 48th Sts. Music, performances, craft and community booths, and food. 593-9831. 

Berkeley Garden Club Spring Plant Sale from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 547 Grizzly Peak Blvd., top of euclid. 524-7296. 

Building and Planting for the Birds from 9 a.m. to noon at the U.C. Field Station, Richmond. Help is needed to assemble and paint potting tables to help expand our native plant nursery. Tools provided, but you are welcome to bring your own. Pre-registration required; youth under 18 will need a waiver signed by their parent or guardian. Sponsored by the Watershed Project. 231-5783. www.thewatershedproject.org  

“Recycling, Waste Reduction and the Zero Waste Household” Class includes hands-on activities and a tour of Berkeley recycling facilities. From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Call for location. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Project Learning Tree A program on forest ecology and environmental issues, designed for teachers of grades K-12. From 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $45-$51. Registration required 636-1684. 

Talking with Turtles Meet our resident reptiles and learn about their behaviors at 11 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Butterfly Trading Cards Create your own set of cards to take home, and learn about these insects and the plants they need to survive. From 1 to 2:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. For ages seven and up. Cost is $3-$5. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Walk in the Wild The 12th annual fundraiser for the Oakland Zoo with gourmet foods and wines. Cost is $75-$85. For reservations call 632-9525. www.oaklandzoo.org 

“Resistance in Haiti” with Haitian-American activist, Lucie Tondreau at 7 p.m. at St. John’s Community Center, 6500 Gladys Ave., El Cerrito. 483-7481. 

Faith and Feminism: “Awakening the Energy for Change: The Black Madonna and the Womb of God” a conference from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. at GTU, Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. Cost is $95, includes lunch and materials. 849-8268. www. 

gtuss.org/courses/conf.html 

Black Community Forum from noon to 3:30 p.m. at the African American Museum and Library, 659 14th St., Oakland. Sponsored by the Third Baptist Foundation of SF and the Gibbs Community Foundation of Oakland. www.gibbsmagazine.com 

Create a Spiritual Business Plan with Pat Sullivan from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Cost is $125. Registration required. 530-0284. 

Child Car Seat Check with the Berkeley Police Dept. from 10 a.m. to noon at the UC Garage on Addison at Oxford. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

Free Sailboat Rides between 1 and 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club in the Berkeley Marina. Bring warm waterproof clothes. www.cal-sailing.org 

Walking Tour of Old Oakland “New Era/New Politics” highlights African-American leaders who have made their mark on Oakland. Meet at 10 a.m. and the African American Museum and Library at 659 14th St. 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden Sat. and Sun. at 2 pm. Regional Parks Botanic Garden, Tilden Park. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Historical and Botanical Tour of Chapel of the Chimes, a Julia Morgan landmark, at 10 a.m. at 4499 Piedmont Ave. at Pleasant Valley. Reservations required 228-3207.  

New TaKeTiNa Intensive with Zorina Wolf, from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. at The Wildcat Studio, 2525 8th St. at Dwight. Cost is $95. 650-493-8046. www.taketina.com 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

Kol Hadash Interfaith/ 

Intercultural Picnic from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Terrace Park, Albany. Bring picnic and BBQ items. Sodas, paper goods and grills provided. RSVP to event@kolhadash.org 

SUNDAY, JUNE 19 

Juneteenth on Adeline from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. between Alcatraz and Ashby with live music, arts, crafts, food and cultural activities. www.epicarts.org 

Year of the Estuary: San Pablo Bay Hike Meet at 2 p.m. in the public parking area at Pacific Ave. and San Pablo Ave. in Rodeo to explore the natural history of Lone Tree Point. 525-2233. 

Berkeley CyberSalon “Citizen Journalism” with Dan Gillmor, Becky O’Malley, and Peter Merholz at 6 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St.  

“The Impact of the War on Iraq’s Workers” with two members of the General Union of Oil Workers in Basrah at 6:45 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Sponsored by US Labor Against the War. Donation $5, no one turned away. http://uslaboragainstwar.org 

Hands-On Bicycle Clinic from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Free. 527-4140. 

Father’s Day Campfire and Sing A Long Bring your hot dogs, buns, marshmallows and long sticks at 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Dress for fog. We will walk uphill to the campfire circle. Call for disabled assistance. 525-2233. 

Family Violence Prevention Fund 5K Run with the Oakland A’s and Macy’s at McAfee Coliseum Creekside Parking Lot, north end of D Lot. Registration at 7:30 a.m., run starts at 9 a.m. Cost is $25-$35. www.endabuse.org 

“Darwinism and Religion” with Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow at 9:30 a.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302. 

Berkeley Oakland Lesbians Diners Dinner at a Berkeley restaurant. For more information and to join BOLD, please go to http://groups.yahoo.com/ 

group/BOLDiners 

Introduction to the Alexander Technique from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Free Sailboat Rides between 1 and 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club in the Berkeley Marina. Bring warm waterproof clothes. www.cal-sailing.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Sylvia Gretchen on “Healing Pain” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

Multicultural Shavuot Festival with food, crafts, workshops, music and dancing at 1 p.m. at BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

MONDAY, JUNE 20 

City of Berkeley Walking Group walks Mon.-Thurs. from 5 to 5:30 p.m. Meet at 830 University Ave. All new participants receive a free pedometer. 981-5131. 

Summer Solstice Gathering at 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Interim Solar Calendar Cesar Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina, including a brief astronomy workshop led by Tory Brady, Exploratorium Teacher Institute. 

Summer Science Week “Insects and Plants” from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Mon. - Fri. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $160 Berkeley residents, $176 non-residents. Registration required. 636-1684. 

“RFID: What's It All About?” a Community Informational Forum at 6:30 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Sponsored by the Berkeley Public Library. 981-6195. 

“Citizen Action and Civic Engagement in the Age of Bush” with Arthur Blaustein and Kris Novoselic at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

“Story Tells” A story swap with storytellers and story listeners at 7 p.m., special guest Mary Ellen Hill, local professional storyteller at 8 p.m. at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Jack London Square, 98 Broadway, Oakland. 527-1141.  

“Honoring Our Parents: Two Jewish Sons Remember” with journalists and authors Ari Goldman and Samuel Freedman, at 7:30 p.m. at Congregation Netivot Shalom, 1316 University Ave. 549-9447. 

Summer Reading Game “Search for Dragonfire” open to children of all ages at Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. The reading game continues through August 20. 526-3720. 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60 years and over meets Mondays at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Join at any time. Cost is $2.50 with refreshments. 524-9122. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

Philip Roth Book Club meets at 7:30 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $10. Registration required. 848-0237, ext. 110. 

ONGOING 

Summer Camps for Children offered by the City of Berkeley, including swimming, sports and twilight basketball, from June 20 to August 12, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. 981-5150, 981-5153. 

Barrington Collection Free Skool holds summer classes in the East Bay. Classes including “Buying Your First Home,” “Beer Brewing,” ”Grant Writing,” and classes for children. http://barringtoncollective.org/FreeSkool 

Free Lunches for Berkeley Children beginning June 20, Mon.-Fri., 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Frances Albrier Center, James Kenney Center, MLK, Jr. Youth Services Center, Strawberry Creek, Washington School and Rosa Parks School. 981-5146. 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., June 14, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., June 15, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Katherine O’Connor, 981-6601. www.ci.berke 

ley.ca.us/commissions/humane 

Commission on Aging meets Wed. June 15, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. William Rogers, 981-5344. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/aging 

Commission on Labor meets Wed., June 15, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Delfina M. Geiken, 981-7550. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/labor 

Human Welfare and Community Action Commission meets Wed. June 15, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Kristen Lee, 981-5427. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/welfare 

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., June 16, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Anne Burns, 981-7415. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/designreview  

Fair Campaign Practices Commission meets Thurs., June 16, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Prasanna Rasaih, 981-6950. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/faircampaign 

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., June 16, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Peter Hillier, 981-7000. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/transportation 

Creeks Task Force meets Mon. June 20 at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Erin Dando, 981-7410. www.ci.ber- 

keley.ca.us/planning/landuse/Creeks/default.html 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., June 20 at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

citycouncil/agenda-committee 

City Council meets Tues., June 21, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

While many who live near the corner of Acton and Addison streets see it as a neighborhood delight, city officials see it as a code violation. 

And so the homemade framework of metal pipes enclosed in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) that supports the flowering shrubbery that overhangs the sidewalk at 2185 Acton St. is headed for the chop by noon today (Friday). 

“For those of us in the neighborhood, it’s a sad day,” said Bill Trampleasure, who lives a block away. “We’ve really enjoyed it.” 

But for City Code Enforcement Supervisor Gregory Daniel, it’s just the latest chapter in the troubled relations between officialdom and the residents of what some have dubbed “the hippie house.” 

Owner Asa Dodsworth looks and speaks more like a flower child of the sixties than a typical Berkeley homeowner, and the house contains one of the city’s few remaining collectives. 

Residents and volunteers are part of Food Not Bombs, the group which provides fresh, healthy meals for the homeless in People’s Park. 

Thursday morning, two members of the collective were busily chopping up vegetables as a reporter interviewed Dodsworth about his latest run-in with the city. 

“Because the city owns the sidewalk, they issued a citation because they don’t permit any encroachment on the public right of way,” he said. “The city guy who came said he’d been here before, and he called it the ‘hippie house’ and fined me $500.” 

By this week, additional citations had brought the total fines owed to $2,000. 

“2185 Acton has worn out its get-out-of-jail free cards,” Daniel said. “The history of code problems goes back to May 2003.” 

The list of citations reflects the inherent conflicts between counterculture and bureaucracy. 

Among the violations Daniel cited were composting bins in the strip between the sidewalk and street, construction materials piled in the front yard, shopping carts in the front yard, schoolbuses and campers parked on the street and people living in the back of a truck. 

“It’s just wild,” Daniel said. 

One of the offenses involved a truck parked across the sidewalk while volunteers sorted through food for the homeless meals. 

Dodsworth said he sees a certain irony in a complaint coming about a program to feed the city’s homeless. 

“The city recently gave an award to Food Not Bombs, and if the city really wanted to show its appreciation, they’d give us money so we wouldn’t have to rely entirely on private donors,” he said. 

Neighborhood resident Nora Honbo was strolling under the arbor Thursday when Trampleasure asked what she thought about the arbor. 

“I like it,” she said. 

When told that the city had ordered its demise, Honbo asked “Why? If it’s not a danger, why should you have to take it down? The worst thing that can happen is that some leaves could fall on you. Do you have a petition?” 

A petition did exist, but the long list of signatures was no avail when it came to the city codes. 

Daniel said the metal arches violate three separate sections of city code. 

“To me, it’s simple,” he said. “Yes, it’s nice. It’s green. But you can’t go taking over public property. We gave him ample time. It’s not like we just came up and body-slammed the guy.” 

Colorful Tibetan prayer flags adorn the fence next to the arbor, and a small contemplative shrine offers a moment’s psychic retreat from the mundane world. 

Further down the fence is a poster about missing woman, along with a collection of buttons—including one proclaiming that “Bush is the only dope worth shooting.” 

The population at Dodsworth’s house is declining as some members of the collective are moving to a new home on King Street that will house a vegetarian collective. 

“It has been kind of messy,” Dodsworth acknowledged. 

Still, he said he has no plans to abandon his dream of a collective home. 

Meanwhile, faced with the heavy fines he can’t pay, Dodsworth said the arbor is coming down before the city’s noon deadline today.  

“I spent 45 minutes with him yesterday, and I told him that if he took it down we’d work on the penalties,” Daniel said. 

“I talked to Councilmember Darryl Moore and the guy from the city, and they said they’ll drop $1,500 of the fines and help me appeal the other $500 if I take it down. So I will,” Dodsworth said. 

Even though Dodsworth is taking responsibility for the arbor, he acknowledges that he didn’t build it. 

“A guest put up the bracing about a year ago,” he said.

In a move that signals a truce in the library’s six-month labor-management war, the Library Board of Trustees approved Wednesday a $12.8 million budget that would avoid layoffs and open the door to restoring Sunday hours. 

After months of union leaders bashing Berkeley Library Director Jackie Griffin, SEIU Local 535 Northern Regional Director Joyce Baird thanked Griffin for her work in reaching a compromise on staffing and settling future labor unrest. 

Under the deal, hammered out with the help of City Manager Phil Kamlarz, the library will cut fewer clerical positions than first proposed, and a mediator will be retained to handle labor disputes. 

“I think [the fight] is settled,” said Tom Dufour, a reference librarian, who has been critical of Griffin at past meetings. 

The labor-managment dispute exploded in January when Griffin issued a budget proposal that called for layoffs and a major reorganization plan to help close an estimated $1 million budget deficit. In the following months several employees told the board that the library was understaffed and that management ignored their suggestions to stave off the budget crisis. 

“It’s been a rough year,” Griffin said. “I want to build trust back up again.”  

Griffin said she regretted releasing budget projections in January, when revenue estimates were still hazy. “What I thought was being fiscally responsible led to a whole lot of tension,” she said. 

The library’s financial fortunes turned around two months ago. Having anticipated a 2 percent increase in the city’s library tax for next year, library officials were surprised when California Personal Income Growth—an indicator that can be used to raise the library tax—came in at 4.8 percent. 

If the City Council approves the tax rate, the library will receive an additional $556,980. When coupled with over $600,000 saved last year by not filling vacant positions, the library fund is now nearly $1 million in the black. The City Council will vote on the tax rate on June 28. 

The final budget calls for reducing nearly five full-time positions, all of which are vacant, as opposed to the initial proposal, which called for laying off the equivalent of 12 full-time employees. 

The sudden influx of money has board members now pushing Griffin to restore library service on Sundays. 

Griffin said she had no doubt that “we will be open on Sunday for some amount of time” but declined to estimate the cost of reopening the library on Sundays or when service would be restored. 

Griffin credited the library’s controversial program to install tracking devices (RFIDs) on materials with enabling it to consider extending hours, which were cut last year to save money. 

“If we can open on Sundays, it will be because RFID has allowed us to use staff in more efficient ways,” she said. 

But the technology, first approved by the board last June and scheduled to be fully implemented this August, is opposed by local free speech advocates. Berkeleyans Organized for Library Defense, an anti-RFID group, has joined forces with local anti-tax organization Berkeleyans Against Soaring Taxes to lobby the council to reject the higher library tax as long as the library intends to implement RFID. 

With the board scheduled to host a forum on the technology June 20, board members split over whether the program could be dismantled at such a late stage. Ying Lee, the newest board member, argued that the library should not consider RFID a done deal. “I’m going into the meeting with an open mind,” she said. 

However, Board President Mary Anderson said she didn’t view the forum as a chance for the board to turn its back on RFID, but an opportunity to see “how to make the system work best for Berkeley.” 

”

A former KPFA radio employee has filed a sexual discrimination and harassment suit against the station, charging that she was repeatedly harassed by her male supervisor and that station management refused to respond to her complaints and ultimately fired her when she continued to press her concerns.  

In a lawsuit filed in March, Noelle Hanrahan, the former producer and co-host of KPFA’s Flashpoints News Magazine, charged that the program’s executive producer and co-host Dennis Bernstein sought to drive her off the show and at one point told her, “I’m going torture you until you quit or I force you to leave.” 

The complaint alleges that as the abuse worsened, then-General Manager Jim Bennett refused to investigate Hanrahan’s claims, telling her, “If you file a grievance, it will only get worse.” 

He eventually placed her on leave in February 2002 and seven months later terminated her, according to the complaint. 

Bernstein and Bennett could not be reached for comment. 

Current KPFA General Manager Roy Campanella II said station policy prevented him from discussing the lawsuit. 

Bernstein, an investigative reporter, poet, Palestinian activist, and longtime KPFA producer, has been hit by other allegations of sexual discrimination and harassment, according to the complaint. Last week, another female producer at Flashpoints, Solange Echeverria, resigned citing abusive behavior by Bernstein. 

“I was forced out ... I reported unfair treatment, favoritism, abuse and hostile working conditions on the Flashpoint program ... and I was met with complete disrespect and disregard,” she wrote in an open letter to the KPFA Local Station Board. 

Tanya Brannan, of the women’s rights group Purple Berets, said a number of women have been forced from KPFA over the years. 

“It’s very difficult for women in public radio to stand up to that kind of harassment,” said Brannan, who has assisted Hanrahan in filing the lawsuit. “There are so few jobs that if you get blacklisted there aren’t many places you can go.” 

The lawsuit lists as defendants Bernstein, Bennett, KPFA, and Pacifica, the station’s parent network. It seeks punitive damages for sexual harassment, retaliation, negligent supervision, wrongful termination, and infliction of emotional distress. 

Wendy Musell, Hanrahan’s attorney, said her client decided to file suit after KPFA rejected her attempts to regain her job and win lost pay. 

The complaint alleges Hanrahan was subjected to Bernstein’s abuse periodically from 1998 through 2002. After Hanrahan complained of Bernstein’s behavior, Pacifica in November 2001 demoted her to host only 40 percent of Flashpoints, according to the suit. Later that month, the complaint alleges that Bernstein interrupted her on the air, urging listeners to call for her removal and to call KPFA management in a show of support for him. 

Bernstein received a 10-day suspension for the outburst, according to the lawsuit. 

In February 2002, after Hanrahan had reiterated her complaints, the complaint alleges that KPFA changed the locks on the doors so she could not come to work and placed her on involuntary leave. She was fired that September. 

Hanrahan, a winner of three public radio awards, now produces the Prison Radio Project, a vehicle that often airs the writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former Black Panther and journalist convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer. 

The Jefferson Elementary School name controversy did not end with the decision by Jefferson parents/guardians, school staff, and students to change the school’s name to Sequoia. 

On Wednesday members of the Board of Directors of the Berkeley Unified School District indicated that they were as divided as they could be on whether or not to accept the name change. And with the district asking for public input before a vote in two weeks, the conflict could escalate. 

It was the first time the board weighed in on the name change. Board President Nancy Riddle said, “The board did not want to meddle in the process while it was being decided at the school site.” 

The Jefferson name controversy began two years ago when a group of parents, guardians, and Jefferson staff petitioned the district to change the school’s name. 

“Thomas Jefferson is revered as the primary author of one of the world’s most respected and beloved documents,” the petition read. “Jefferson is also a man who held as many as 150 African and African-American men, women and children in bondage, denying them the very rights which he had asserted for all in the Declaration of Independence.” 

The petition continued, “A school name which fails to acknowledge or respect the depth and importance of their people’s collective sorrow is personally offensive. … It is time to consider a name which unites us as a community.” 

The Jefferson School community voted last month to change the school’s name to Sequoia. Students and staff voted to change the school’s name by wide margins. The vote among parents and guardians was closer, 67 to 61 to change the name. 

The school vote is a recommendation that must be approved by the school board. 

At Wednesday’s meeting, Board Vice President Terry Doran and Director John Selawsky indicated that they would probably vote to approve the name change, while directors Joaquin Rivera and Shirley Issel said they would vote against it. Riddle said she had not yet made up her mind. 

Riddle said that since she lives near Jefferson School, there is a chance that the California Fair Political Practices Commission might ask her to recuse herself if the name change would have an economic effect on her property. 

Riddle said that she was “horrifically conflicted” on the name change. 

“I admire Jefferson’s legacy on education,” she said. “Most of my heroes have stood on his shoulders in that area, and most of the work I do in this district is inspired by him. But this is a board that respects the community process unless we don’t think the outcome is good for the general community.” 

Riddle also answered critics who have said that the name change discussion was a “waste of time” during a period when the district is struggling to make ends meet. 

“I think it’s good that we live in Berkeley and are having these kinds of discussions,” she said. “I think it’s very healthy.” 

The sharpest comments came from Issel, who accused name change supporters of “holding hostage our educational institutions by emotional terrorism.” 

She said, “I don’t find your arguments compelling. I find them offensive. I pray to God that none of you are judged by the standards that you’ve used to judge this situation. Somehow you’ve located the source of your discomfort, and you have decided that by changing the name of the school you’ll become more comfortable. I don’t think that will happen.” 

Issel said she agreed that “it is troubling to all of us that Jefferson held slaves,” but the district should recognize that “all of us are less than perfect. Our Founding Fathers were less than perfect.” 

Rivera said he would give his reasons for opposing the name change at the next board meeting, when the board votes. 

While neither Selawsky or Doran indicated their position on Wednesday night on the propriety of a Berkeley school named after Thomas Jefferson, both said they believed that the board vote should reflect the will of the Jefferson community. 

“My opinion of Jefferson is irrelevant,” Selawsky said. “The board vote should not be an endorsement of the school name, it should be based on whether or not the school community followed the board policy in reaching this vote.... From what I’ve heard so far, the policy was followed in this instance.” 

Selawsky noted—and other board members agreed—that the district’s name change policy itself may be flawed, and needs to be reconsidered. 

Complaints had been raised both on the board and in the Jefferson community that the school parent/guardian vote is restricted to parents and guardians of present school students, leaving out others who have had long association with the school. 

Complaints have also been made that early elementary school children aren’t equipped to make an informed decision on a school name change. 

“My five year old nephew told me he voted for Ralph Bunche as the school name because it sounded like one of his favorite cereals, Honey Bunches of Oats,” said a parent who opposed the Jefferson name change. “Is that any way to run a school district?” 

›

Thirteen years after Berkeley voters approved the Hills Fire Station, the project is within a year of completion, with the final tab estimated at $6.7 million. 

Though little beyond the reinforcing bars of a retaining wall are visible from the street, City Capital Projects Manager Henry DeGraca said the project should be completed by December, barring bad weather. 

“We were hit by a lot of rain, which delayed things for a while, but we’re still on schedule,” DeGraca said. “We’re about 30 percent complete, and we have the complete foundation pads in place.” 

However, Dave Mitchell, project manager for Alten Construction, which is building the station, told a reporter at the site Thursday that completion might be a year away. 

The latest figure represents an increase from $4.39 million, the figure floated two years ago and nearly double the original estimated cost. 

The 6,920-square-foot station at the intersection of Shasta Road and Park Gate will replace the existing 2,565-square-foot station just down the hill on Shasta Road. 

If the total construction and site acquisition costs are divided by size of the new station, the per-square-foot costs are now $968, compared with the $200 per square foot paid by the City of Oakland for their new Oakland Hills Fire Station, built after the two cities failed to agree on a planned joint station. 

One of the chief reasons for the difference in costs is that the Oakland station was built on a level hilltop site while the new Berkeley station is dug into a hillside slope, which has had to be reinforced and stabilized by an expensive retaining wall. 

The fire station has been the subject of contention between neighbors who oppose the project because of both siting and cost issues and neighbors who like the current location. 

Louise Larson, a longtime hills resident who lives near the new station site, said she was especially irritated by the escalating construction costs. 

“The original estimate was $2.5 million, then it went up to $4 million and now it’s $6.7 million. It’s just so irritating,” she said.  

Opponents claim that the Berkeley hills would be better served by the originally planned joint jurisdiction station. Oakland pulled out of the arrangement after a battle over the location. 

Oakland wanted the station further south, in the area which has historically produced the overwhelming majority of fires that have devastated the costly residences built to capture the spectacular bay vistas only the hills can provide. 

Construction of the station was authorized in 1992, when Berkeley voters passed Measure G, whose provisions included a new station in the hills designed to fight wildfires. 

Initial plans called for a multi-jurisdictional station that would be built on land donated by the East Bay Regional Parks District and house about 10 vehicles and 15 to 20 firefighters from Berkeley, Oakland, the parks district and, possibly, the University of California. 

That plan was scrapped two years later, and followed six years later by the current plan. 

Oakland built its own Hills Fire Station in 1999 at 1006 Amito Ave., just two-tenths of a mile south of Claremont Ave. The design, by an architect who lives near the site after neighbors reject the city-sponsored plans, blends unobtrusively into the residential neighborhood. 

Many Berkeley residents wanted the station closer to the existing station, in part because of the paramedics and ambulance service needed by the aging and affluent population. 

Larson said DeGraca has volunteered to meet with neighbors, “but he said he had to ask his boss first.” 

Larson said she hoped that in future meetings, unlike some held earlier, neighbors would be able to get answers to critical questions. 

The new station will retain some of the original vision of the old, albeit on a much reduced scale. Some firefighters from the park district—which has its own station nearby in Tilden Park—will be assigned to the new Berkeley station on high fire danger days, which average about 15 per year. 

The official fire season started earlier this month, but the highest fire danger typically comes later in the year after annual grasses have died and dried into tinder.

Medical marijuana users have few promising avenues to turn to after Monday’s Supreme Court decision upholding the federal government’s authority to prosecute sick people who use and grow marijuana, according to legal experts and legislative staffers. 

Following the ruling, Angel Raich, an Oakland resident and a co-plaintiff in the case, said she would next head to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress to change federal drug laws. 

Lawmakers are scheduled to vote next week on an amendment to the annual Justice Department appropriations bill that would forbid federal agents to use tax dollars to raid or persecute medical marijuana patients in the ten states that have legalized its use. 

Last year, despite the support of nearly the entire Bay Area delegation, including Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oak), the amendment lost 268-148. The previous year it lost 273-152. 

A more sweeping measure, introduced for the 11th consecutive year, has even less chance for passage, according to its author. The “States’ Rights To Medical Marijuana Act” drafted by Barney Frank (D-Mass) would give states full authority to enact and implement their own medical marijuana laws without federal interference. 

The bill, however, which has 36 co-sponsors, including Rep. Lee, has never made it to a committee vote and Frank’s press secretary Kay Gibbs didn’t think the publicity surrounding Monday’s court ruling would garner it more support. 

“Congressman Frank has said that people are afraid of this legislation,” she said. “He’s not optimistic that there will be any increase in support.” 

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Congress’s power to regulate commerce among states gave it the authority to prosecute growers and users of medical cannabis in states where the practice is legal according to state law. 

With their most persuasive legal argument rejected, Raich’s attorneys said Monday they would renew their legal argument on grounds that Raich, who suffers from an inoperable brain tumor, chronic pain and a wasting syndrome, had a constitutional right to use the drug that best eases her pain. 

The legal case is not impossible, but definitely “an uphill battle,” said Boalt Hall constitutional Law professor Jesse Choper. Referencing two right-to-die cases, Choper said it might be possible to persuade five members of the high court that in the cases where a patient is in extreme pain or facing a terminal illness, there is a constitutional right to take pain killers. 

Marsha Cohen, a pharmaceutical law professor at Hastings School of Law, was more pessimistic about Raich’s chances to renew her legal fight. She said federal courts have rejected the rights of patients to have access to illegal medicine. The court’s majority ruling, she added, referenced one case in which the high court rejected a petition for cancer sufferers to have access to a drug that had not been approved by federal regulators. 

“The court said [the federal government] can make that judgment,” Cohen said. 

The best option for medical cannabis users, she added, would be to petition the federal Drug Enforcement Agency to once again consider rescheduling marijuana as a less restricted substance.  

The Federal Drug Enforcement Agency classifies marijuana alongside heroin and cocaine as a highly addictive drug with no medical benefit. The DEA rejected an attempt in 2001 to reclassify the drug filed by medical cannabis advocate John Gettman and High Times Magazine.›

Tentative Berkeley Unified School District contract settlements have been ratified by three school unions, but the agreements must be cleared by the Alameda County Office of Education (ACOE) before going to the BUSD Board of Directors for final approval. 

The unions include the Berkeley Federation of Teachers (BFT), the Berkeley Council of Classified Employees, which represents secretaries, office workers, and elementary school library technicians, and Local 39 of the Stationary Engineers, which represents bus drivers and custodians. 

Pre-clearance of the tentative union agreements is required by the county office because BUSD is presently officially operating under a “qualified” budget status. The district has submitted a “positive” interim budget report to ACOE which would end such restrictions, but that new budget designation has yet to be approved by the county. 

No date has been issued for clearance of the union agreements by ACOE. 

BFT President Barry Fike said that the BFT negotiations team had decided not to release the actual margin of approval of the tentative agreement by district teachers. Fike also declined any other comment on the union’s ratification or the contract itself, saying he would wait until after the contract cleared final approval by the county education office and the BUSD board. 

BCCE President Ann Graybeal said that her organization ratified the tentative agreement by a “majority vote,” and declined to release any more details. 

Representatives of Local 39 were not available for comment. A spokesperson for the district confirmed that the union had also ratified the proposed contracts. 

In a telephone interview with Graybeal held before the union’s ratification vote, she said that unlike the teachers or the bus drivers and custodians, BCCE was not working on a new contract, but has been negotiating what is called a “reopener” of the existing 2004-07 pact. In reopeners, either side of the party is allowed to ask for contract changes in salary, benefits, and two other items of their choice. BCCE submitted their reopener proposal to the BUSD last November. 

“The tentative agreement was reached on the most critical areas of our salary and benefits proposals,” Graybeal said. 

She said the two remaining compensation-related issues yet to be decided in the negotiations “are considered to be minor issues relative to the issues that have been tentatively resolved, not because they are not important issues to the union and to the employees involved, but because they only affect a small number of unit members.” 

Graybeal said that agreement has yet to be reached on the union’s non-compensation proposals.

Thanks to $12.5 million in tax credits granted by the state this week, construction can begin on an 80-unit low-income senior housing project at 1535 University Ave. 

With all necessary funding in hand, construction will begin in late October or early November, said project developer Ryan Chao of Satellite Housing, a Berkeley-based builder of low-income housing. 

“It’s a happy time for us,” said Chao. “It’s the last major funding we needed.” 

Featuring a much-lauded design by architect Erick Mikiten of Mikiten Architecture, University Avenue Senior Housing will offer studio and one- and two-bedroom apartments for tenants making from 30 percent to 60 percent of the Oakland-area average median income. 

Monthly rents will range from $435 to $931. 

The $12.5 million in tax credits were awarded by the state Tax Credit Allocation Committee, which receives an annual allocation from Washington. 

While the tax credits are of no direct financial value to Satellite, they represent a significant value to investors, who are allowed to apply them against their own income starting ten years after the original investment, said Chao. 

“It’s a highly competitive process, because there are limited amounts available,” said Chao. “We were very fortunate to get them in this round.” 

The allocations represent the largest share of the $20 million in project costs, with $1.2 million more coming from the city in housing trust funds and other allocations, $5.5 million in the form of a mortgage from Silicon Valley Bank, and $720,000 from the Federal Home Loan Bank board. 

In addition to the low-income apartments, the building also offers ground floor commercial spaces. One of the first tenants to move in will be Satellite itself, which will move its corporate headquarters from its current location at 2526 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Chao said. 

A second major tenant will be the Salvation Army’s food pantry and service office. 

The four-story, 80,501-square-foot project at the northeast corner of University Avenue and Sacramento Street features 33 parking spaces, 12 for commercial tenants and 21 for residents. 

The design won high praise from the city’s Design Review Committee and will feature colorful murals by noted Berkeley artist Juana Alicia.

The Berkeley homeless woman who last month asked the City Council for help has recovered her pick-up truck and two dogs taken from her in February. 

Friends of Elizabeth Gill raised roughly $1,500 to help the longtime homeless women recover her truck that had been impounded for unpaid parking tickets. With her truck returned, Gill also regained custody of her dogs from the Berkeley Animal Shelter where she had kept them while she was without permanent shelter. 

“I’ve known her for a while. She’s a lovely person,” said Andrea Pritchett, who raised $1,000 to get the vehicle out of Hustead’s tow lot. Councilmember Dona Spring said she raised an additional $450 to help Gill insure and re-register the truck. 

On Feb. 13, Gill parked her truck at the Berkeley Bowl and returned to find it lifted on to a tow truck while her two dogs were set to be carted off to the animal shelter. 

Because many of the parking fines she had accumulated dated back more than one year, Gill did not qualify for a program that allows motorists to work off parking tickets with community service. Without her truck, she said, she had no place for her dogs, which she chose to leave at the shelter. 

In April, the council directed city staff to waive $4,000 in boarding fees at the animal shelter and eliminate the one-year deadline for low-income people to work off their fines. The council also notified the Department of Motor Vehicles that the fines would be removed and promised to help the Gill find housing.›

At the foot of an oak-studded hillside facing Doe Library on the UC Berkeley campus, a team of UC students is hard at work this month unearthing the remains of what was once one of the most prominent and distinctive buildings in the Berkeley landscape. 

In the 1890s, the university built a large glass conservatory on the site, just northeast of today’s Moffitt Library. In 1924 the conservatory was torn down but considerable remnants survived, buried under a parking lot. 

On Thursday evening there will be an opportunity for the public to visit the excavation site. You can see the remains of the university conservatory first-hand, with the student researchers as guides, and attend a lecture describing the history of the building and what the buried remains reveal about campus and Berkeley life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Similar—although not identical—in style and appearance to the famous and recently restored Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, Berkeley’s stately glass greenhouse, with two wings and a towering central “palm house” dome, overlooked an outdoor botanical garden where rare and unusual plants were studied by campus scholars and on display for the general public. 

Although Berkeley’s conservatory was demolished not long into the 20th century, much of its extensive brick foundation and other elements survived, buried and largely forgotten, for nearly eight decades. 

The site is currently punctuated with precise, one-meter square, units or excavation pits, and the archaeological dig is yielding up history in the form of brick foundations, metal steam-heating pipes, terra cotta drainlines, broken slate pavers, fragments of ironwork and wood, and other debris.  

The project is being undertaken by graduate and undergraduate students in a summer sessions archaeology field school, led by UC Professor of Anthropology Laurie Wilkie. 

The students are learning proper archaeology field techniques, documenting conservatory construction and materials, interpreting the operation and use of the building, and unearthing stray objects from fragments of terra cotta plant pots to broken bottles, dishware, and food remains dropped on the site generations ago. Even the make-up of the special soils that university scientists used inside the conservatory will be studied. 

The ornate University Conservatory was emblematic of the Victorian-era passion for collecting, studying, and displaying rare and unusual plants. It was built at a time when significant botanical regions of the world, especially in the tropics, were still just being “discovered” and explored by western scientists. Many exotic plant species were reaching Europe and North America for the first time and were enthusiastically grown and admired in places like the Berkeley and the Golden Gate Park conservatories.  

California itself was a horticultural frontier. A first generation of American era farmers and gardeners was exploring what would grow well in the West Coast’s unfamiliar landscapes and climates.  

Large conservatories arose throughout the Bay Area on the estates of the wealthy and the well-to-do, who used the spacious greenhouses to nurture their particular collecting obsessions—from orchids to ferns to exotic birds—or simply to provide spectacular ornamental backdrops for equally ornate Victorian-style homes. 

Many of the finest Bay Area private conservatories once stood in the East Bay, particularly in Oakland. The university conservatory provided a stately public counterpart to these private plant mansions. 

However, it had a relatively brief existence. Erected around 1891, it seems to have fallen into decay and partial disuse in the 20th century and, despite at least one partial renovation, was demolished in 1924 after Haviland Hall was completed nearby.  

In that same era, the University Botanical Garden moved to its current site in Strawberry Canyon where it continues to thrive today as an internationally known center of plant conservation, display, and education.  

For eight decades, the conservatory foundations remained buried beneath a road and parking lot. That changed when the university was contemplating construction of the C.V. Starr East Asian Library, the first element of the planned Chang-Lin Tien Center for East Asian Studies. 

Since the footprint of the new library building would overlap the old conservatory site, a summer session 2003 field school directed by Wilkie was funded to excavated the edges of the parking lot and explore nearby areas. That project also included extensive archival research about the history of the conservatory. 

This summer’s second field school was undertaken to follow up and complete the earlier excavation work. When the field school finishes, the site will be turned over for construction of the new library.  

UC Berkeley staff member Steven Finacom worked on the planning of the conservatory excavation project and is a board member of the Berkeley Historical Society. 

On Thursday, June 16th, 7-8 p.m., students will display the site and the uncovered conservatory remains to the public. At 8 p.m. Professor Laurie Wilkie will talk about the history of the conservatory and what the excavations have uncovered. Tickets, $15. Call 848-0181 or e-mail berkhist@sbcglobal.net or visit the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center Street, 1-4 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays to reserve a space.?

http://www.jfdefreitas.com/index.php?path=/00_Latest%20Workj

MALCOLM X SCHOOL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s a good thing that people do not know that Malcolm X was in prison. Think of all the name changes in schools and programs that would cause. 

Albert R.Levy,PhD. 

SUSTAINABILITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Berkeley ranks number three nationally in a new survey rating the sustainability of American cities. It seems like an excellent rating, until you look at the details and see that Berkeley was rated “sustainability leader” or “moving toward sustainability” on all categories except two.  

On zoning, Berkeley was rated 12 out of 18 (with 0 the highest and 18 the lowest), a rating that is classed as “mixed sustainability progress.”  

On land use, Berkeley was rated 17 out of 18, a rating that is classed as “sustainability in danger.” 

Both these ratings were based on the city’s progress toward smart growth, and they confirm what many Berkeley’s environmentalists have been saying for a long time. Berkeley will not be a real national leader in sustainability until we overcome the suburban mindset of some residents and strongly support pedestrian- and transit-oriented infill development.  

The results of the survey for Berkeley are available at www.sustainlane.com/cityindex/citypage.php?name=berkeley&page=1&.  

Charles Siegel 

PIT BULL BAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am a Berkeley landlord, and I allow tenants to have dogs at most of my properties. Not any dog, however. I do not allow pit bulls, and I don’t know any landlord in this city who does. 

When I interview applicants for apartments who own pit bulls, they all seem to be in denial. Pit bull owners frequently tell me that statistics prove that pit bulls are no more likely to bite than most other breeds of dogs. 

Recently, an applicant for an apartment with a pit bull showed me a book containing a graph showing that Lhasa Apsos are three times more likely to bite than pit bulls. I know that is true, but so what? How many people were killed last year by Lhasa Apsos? Has anyone ever been mauled to death by a Lhasa Apso? 

(For those not familiar with this breed, a full-grown Lhasa Apso stands about 10 inches tall and weighs 12 pounds. My sister had a Lhasa Apso, and it bit me several times. Usually the bites failed to break the skin. The worst bite required a small Band-Aid. Lhasas are snappish little dogs, but they are incapable of doing much damage.) 

Here are facts about pit bulls that I have to consider: 

• Last year, 50 percent of all dog mauling cases reported to the San Francisco Police Department involved pit bulls. 

• A recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control concluded that pit bulls are twice as likely as any other breed to be involved in a fatal attack, and another study by the American Veterinary Medical Association came to the same conclusion. 

• Most insurance companies will not sell liability insurance on a rental property if they know there is a pit bull on the premises. 

• When someone is mauled or killed by a dog in an apartment house, it is now standard procedure to sue both the dog’s owner and the landlord. 

My advice to anyone who is thinking about getting a dog is this: If you want to rent in this area, don’t get a pit bull. You will probably have a very hard time finding a landlord who will rent to you. 

Mark Tarses 

NEITHER HERE NOR THERE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The trouble with “Here and There” is that it’s neither here nor there when it comes to recognizing where it’s at. Which happens to be in the heart of a predominantly African-American community. As a piece of conceptual art executed in cool hard edge metal, “Here and There” feels misplaced. If there’s public sculpture in Berkeley or Oakland that reflects the forms and feelings of our diverse neighborhoods, I’d like to know where. Certainly not here. Or there.  

Too bad. It’s an opportunity lost.  

Osha Neumann 

CONSTITUTIONAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

“The evil men do lives after them....” 

So it will be with the Court of “creatively” anointed, as our “President,” George W. Bush, the Bully Butcher of Baghdad. 

At least a third of our federal courts, and the Supreme Court, are anticipated to have “Bully Butcher”-appointed judges when George W. Bush ends his second term. 

Should we not worry that, even before then, a Bush-dominated Supreme Court may invalidate the Constitutional Amendment limiting presidents to two terms? And/or invalidate the native-born rule for a President, to make way for Schwarzenegger? 

Yes, we are in trouble! A recent decision by our present Court again exhibits the judge’s widely varying understanding of time-honored plain English. Disappointing wineries of New York and Michigan, the Court has obtusely ruled that, despite its clear language—intended to prevent unwanted efforts to apply the Interstate Commerce Clause that would result in violation of state laws—the Constitution’s Amendment 21, that negated Amendment 18, does not supersede the Commerce Clause, at least not for latter-day appellants seeking relevant Court Protection under Amendment 21! Doesn’t the majority of the Court know that, with the help of the “interstate Commerce Clause” restriction of Amendment 21, Iowa stayed “dry” decades after Prohibition repeal? 

Judith Segard Hunt 

RENT BOARD IRRELEVANT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With “For Rent” signs blooming like spring flowers all over Berkeley, I find myself asking, “Is the Berkeley Rent Control Board any longer necessary—or even relevant? 

Found to “regulate” rents when housing was tight, its only function now seems to be to collect the exorbitant fees (taxes) it mandates from owners of rental property in order to pay the salaries of the board members and litigating lawyers it retains. 

Could it not be enfolded into another of Berkeley’s many bureaus concerned with housing? 

For the record, I am neither a landlord nor a tenant, just a 70-year resident of Berkeley. 

Norma Gray 

SERIOUSLY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I must finally add my comments regarding the Daily Planet’s Police Blotter. I really dislike the tone of the writer. 

Too flip. Too sarcastic. Too cute. Too informal. Too little recognition of the seriousness of the encounters. 

Street crime, domestic violence, and out-of-control anger are serious, not humorous. Crime is serious—not a joke. 

Tedi Siminowsky 

BUSH LIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The replies to Tom Lord (June 7-9) missed the really scary parts of his letter. He admits that Bush’s administration lied about the reasons for invading Iraq, and then goes ahead and uses the lies as part of his justification for the invasion. Wow. Furthermore, he seems to be incapable of entertaining the thought that the administration might be lying or misrepresenting the current conditions and prognosis in Iraq, or anywhere else for that matter. Nor is it obvious from reading his letter that this would make a difference to him if he did recognize the thought. His “get with it” type of remarks suggest thinking founded on “us versus them,” and not arguments based on morality or even rational evaluation of the consequences of our actions. With this type of thinking American casualties are a necessary price for our war on terror, or war to get oil, or whatever, and Iraqi casualties are almost irrelevant. If the support for Bush’s administration is based on the kind of thinking exemplified by Lord’s letter it is going to take a major disaster in the U.S., or massive disobedience or even rebellion to make a change. That is scary. Let’s hope that Lord’s thinking is just an ugly aberration. 

Robert Clear 

XXXXXXX 

Editors, DailyPlanet: 

I am very concerned about the issue of the teen librarians relocating/transfer to the Main Library. These teen librarians do a tremendous amount of work for our community, and especially for our ‘forgotten’ group, teenagers. To clump all of the teen librarians into on building might seem like a nice thing to do for the Main Library Central - but what about for the branches?  

These branches would lose a full time librarian who assists with reference, branch affairs, and with the public. To cut a full librarian from a ever-populated branch merely to bring them downtown and make this central teen librarians group manifest itself into the same successes already seen at the branches is a ludicrous idea. Why do teens favour branches rather than the Central Library? Parking, Parking, Parking.... the ‘business’ like atmosphere of the Main/Central library, and a ‘place’ where teens can hang out—these things are well established at the Branches and work exceedingly well as everyone knows who has seen it happen, or partook in the numerous play-readers and other gatherings that have become apart of the BPL/Community.... you cannot do this at Main? Where are you going to do this?  

To disrupt one finely tuned program to merely consolidate the Teen librarians from the branches—which diseffects both the Teen Librarians, the Branches, and the public—to place them into the business-like Central Main library where teen readership/participation is low compared to the branch populations, is not rational thinking, and is a waste of an already exhausted department. From a patron and member of this Community, this is ludicrous and plain foolish to promote.... leave this part of BPL as is, and mess with some other aspect of BPL that does need work - i.e. the lack of familiarity of the management level personages with fellow BPL staff, the public, and obviously with the branchs, and with the teens themselves. Ask the teens what would be in their best interest, and consider that? Nobody (hardly) ever asks those who are directly affected by such staff alterations, do they?  

Thank you, 

Mark Bayless 

XXXXXXX 

Editors, DailyPlanet: 

Howard Dean tells it like it is - GOP, the Christian Party - and catches flak for it. More correctly he should have said the GOP is the White Christian Party and mentioned that 40% of those who voted for Bush last year don’t believe in evolution. Dean missed the mark by a mile - the GOP has become the Dumbing Down of America Party. 

Ron Lowe Nevada City, CA  

XXXXXXX 

Editors, DailyPlanet: 

Just a couple of thoughts on the article about the Brower Center not having the funds to build the building: 

1. This is the same problem that developed with the Ed Roberts Campus. Economic Development encourages a group, in both cases non-profits, to acquire sites and build buildings, most likely with assurances from city staff that they will find funding sources at the state and federal levels for the projects. Then the organizations can’t come up with all the money needed and the community is left wondering if the organizations will have the ability to maintain them once they’re built. 

2. Contrary to your reporter’s assertion that the Ed Roberts Campus did not really qualify for clean-up monies (the Ed Roberts Campus...which also had little evidence of past contamination), it indeed is likely to be contaminated. It is likely that one reason a decision was made to put a station at Ashby, in spite of it being in a poor black neighborhood, was that the site of the east parking lot had been underdeveloped since Mark Ashby sold his farm. Since the late 40s it was the site of an “aeroplane factory,” including machine shops and painting sheds. Clearly the site may be contaminated by these activities and in need of clean-up if a parking garage is to be built below the existing ground surface. 

Dale Smith 

Becky O’Malley, in her rather charming and bizarre editorial on British town planning and localized housing has missed some really vital points. 

Oxford City Council is indeed in a building boom, planning between 60,000 and 70,000 new homes in areas around Oxford. However, this is not the plan of Oxford, it is the plan of the office of the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. It is also very misguided. While the plan effectively will allow cramped city livers to move to suburban areas and give Londoners the chance to have their little weekend or summer house, I wonder whether Becky herself was able to visit any of the present planned communities around Oxford (although she probably went to Royal Leamington Spa, which doesn’t count). Many of these suburbs resemble Danville, that oh-so-pleasant-what-nice-lawns-I-have-to-drive-five-miles-for-a-decent-bottle-of-beer kind of place. Meaning, that despite the forward-thinking investment to save the old city of Oxford from over-development; Oxford and many of the congested cities of the Midlands region have not properly understood the need for infrastructure to sustain these new areas. New roads. New businesses. New bureaucracies. And God, what bureaucrats! Whole departments for dealing with signs for roads; whether stores should be allowed to ban hooded sweatshirts because they may or may not factor into anti-social behaviour; and how they can get more money by lowering the amount of time people should be allowed to park in front of their own homes. You get the picture. Berkeley. 

The real sad thing is that despite the growth that may in fact come to these new towns, they will likely never experience real bona fide local government. Each town will have some splendid name thought up by a guy in London whose only job it is to take two old English words and string a thought together, like the real-life examples of Melton Mowbray, Broughton Astley, Sutton Coldfield and so on. Then the Prince of Wales will visit and declare it a town and the city council will institute taxes and the people who live in these towns will have to commute all the way back to Oxford just to find out why they are being charged so much in council tax and getting so little. 

In the end the editor of this newspaper was just another American tourist taken in by the charms of a British university town with its old churches and teeming museums. One could venture that she stayed at a little B&B and first was shocked and then giggled at the size of the English breakfast that no one here actually eats: two sausages, two strips of bacon, fries, a helping of baked beans, two fried tomato halves, two slices of toast, black pudding (the rare, real treat), and a mug of the worst freeze-dried coffee the world has ever seen. But I bet she ate it all, I know this because she came back to write such a glowing tribute to something as boring to readers as satellite towns. 

As for student living in England, Becky O’Malley should try it. Ignorant landlords who insist you pay with direct debit, faucets that never stop running, potato bugs, and horrible wallpaper everywhere. The only thing I got out of my last student house was full-blown scabies, which I bet hasn’t affected a Berkeley student in 20 years. 

John Parman, Birmingham  

XXXXXXX 

Editors, DailyPlanet: 

Last Saturday midnight, a cop sits on our intersection for an hour with an AR-15, causing us to move our sleeping children to a more interior bedroom. Eventually they find the guy and shout at him, and the paramedics come. Now all we have to worry about is that the guy tossed a .25 auto into someone’s backyard. This literal “Saturday Night Special” is small enough to be anywhere in our kids’ yard, the neighbour’s 2-year-old’s yard or anywhere else, probably with a round in the chamber. I have no idea when that other shoe, the loaded gun, will drop.  

All Police Blotter could manage was a blythe “submitted his wrists to... encriclement”? 

The community would be better served by better information. 

Piet Bess 

XXXXXXX 

Editors, DailyPlanet: 

Current news reports indicate that the president of Bolivia is resigning and that Bolivian oil and gas will probably be nationalized to the benefit of the indigenous and poor people of Boliva. My goodness, what happened to our CIA? Their enormous secret budget should have enabled them to have prevented such an anti-American disaster! Hey, what’s the point of having a CIA if they can’t prevent true Democracies from emerging in South America? 

Robert Blau 

XXXXXXX 

Editors, DailyPlanet: 

So Knight-Ridder has come up with a BDP-killer, the East Bay Daily News, filled with such scintillating stuff as where to find the Prettiest Banker in the East Bay, and (yet) more about Nicole Kidman. I pretty much stopped reading the East Bay Express when New Times took it over.  

While the BDP may not have the level of writing of the old Express, it has some good writing and topics not consistently covered in any other publication. I especially appreciate the back page column by Ron Sullivan. 

The conspiracy-theorist in me wants to see a Knight-Ridder/New Times connection (see  

http://www.writenews.com/2000/042600_knightridder_newtimes.htm.)  

Here’s hoping you can hang in there! 

Dale Engle?

If you were able to stay up well into the early morning hours during Tuesday night’s Oakland City Council meeting, you would have come across some interesting things. 

The first one was that for the first time—to my knowledge, anyway—in the five year con troversy over the sideshows, the Oakland City Council looks like it might begin a serious discussion about safe and legal sideshow alternatives. 

Councilmember Desley Brooks revealed that she’s been working on such a sideshow alternative proposal for some time now, holding meetings that have included police representatives, sideshow participants, and potential promoters. (In the interest of full disclosure, I attended two of those meetings some time ago as an observer.) 

Up until now, there has been stubb orn opposition from City Hall powers to even discuss such legal alternatives. At Tuesday’s council meeting, for example, Ms. Brooks said that she had twice called the mayor’s office to participate in her discussions, but the mayor, apparently, was not int erested. But during Tuesday’s meeting, some other councilmembers—Henry Chang and newcomer Pat Kernigham, for example—went on record saying that any discussion of stepping up penalties on sideshow participants should also include a discussion of legal alte rnatives. 

More on that at a later date. 

The second interesting thing that happened at Tuesday’s council meeting was that—in case you missed it—the council defeated Mayor Jerry Brown’s “arrest the spectators” sideshow ordinance on a dramatic 4-3-1 vote a fter the mayor showed up in council chambers, apparently expecting to cast a vote to break an expected tie. 

Under Mr. Brown’s proposed new law, spectators at the sideshows—for the first time—would be subject to misdemeanor arrests, with fines between $500 and $1,000 and jail time up to six months. Up until now, police enforcement of the sideshows have concentrated mainly on the drivers themselves. 

It takes five votes to pass an ordinance in Oakland City Council (not just a simple majority). Four of the councilmembers (President Ignacio DeLa Fuente, Larry Reid, Chang and Kernigham) were ready to pass the ordinance on Tuesday. But four others (Brooks, Jane Brunner, Jean Quan, and Nancy Nadel) said they were deeply troubled by parts of the ordinance, and w anted it to go to the Public Safety Committee (where it should have been sent in the first place) for fuller discussion. Brooks, Quan, and Nadel all expressed concern that the new law would bring new groups of young Oaklanders as offenders into the crimin al justice system, which tends to worsen criminal behavior rather than rehabilitate. And Ms. Brunner, especially, feared that police attempts to arrest spectators might create what she called “riot conditions,” making the whole situation worse rather than better. 

(It should be noted, by the way, that Councilmembers Brooks, Quan, Nadel, and Brunner are not in favor of the unsanctioned sideshows that are presently taking place on Oakland’s streets. They want those unsanctioned sideshows ended; they just do n’t think the mayor’s bill was the best way to do it.) 

Anyway, if the votes had gone as expected, the matter would have tied 4-4, the mayor would have broken the tie (his only City Council function under the City Charter), and the “arrest the sideshow” law would have passed with a minimum of public discussion. But when Ms. Quan abstained rather than voted no there was no tie, and with no tie Mr. Brown did not have the right to vote, and without Mr. Brown, the ordinance did not have the five votes needed to pass. 

That might have ended the issue right there, but actually, that was when the most interesting thing happened. The four councilmembers who opposed the mayor’s “arrest the sideshow spectators” law then decided that the proposed ordinance should st ill go to the Public Safety Committee for further discussion and possible revision. 

At least two of those councilmembers—Ms. Brunner and Ms. Quan—were clearly not trying to outright kill the mayor’s ordinance. Both Ms. Brunner and Ms. Quan said that they might support the mayor’s ordinance if the fines on the spectators were significantly lowered. 

And with Councilmember Larry Reid—a strong supporter of the “arrest the spectators” law—as chair of Public Safety, it would be expected to move through without undue delay. Not quite as fast as Mr. Brown might have wanted it, but probably in time for the hot days at the end of the summer. 

So one would expect that Mr. Brown—if the ordinance was really needed to prevent injury and death, as the mayor has said, and if the mayor was really interested in making Oakland’s streets safer—would have accepted his loss on the initial vote and moved forward to get the ordinance through committee as quickly as possible and back to the full council. 

Mr. Brown did not. 

In stead, as Ms. Quan and Ms. Brooks were discussing whether to support taking the ordinance to Public Safety, Mr. Brown stepped up to the microphone and said, “I think we should just withdraw this. When the council wants to reconsider it, then go ahead. I’m not going to push this anymore. You’ve just rejected it, I think you should just leave it at that. We’ll see what happens.” 

We’ll see what happens? 

Immediately after Mr. Brown made his statement, the four councilmembers who had opposed his “arrest the spectators” ordinance as it was originally written—Nadel, Brooks, Quan, and Brunner—voted to send the ordinance to the Public Safety Committee so the public could have the chance for more input, and the ordinance could be put in better shape. They were jo ined by Ms. Kernigham, who had voted for the ordinance only after other ordinance supporters agreed to eliminate jail time for spectators for the first two offenses. 

But while the five women on the council voted for more community input and discussion on a highly-controversial proposal, the council’s three men—Reid, President Ignacio DeLa Fuente, and Henry Chang, all of whom had originally voted to pass the ordinance—all now agreed with the mayor and voted to kill the ordinance entirely, now that it hadn’t gone through immediately. 

So the five women on the Oakland City Council decided that the sideshows are a serious problem, the mayor had presented a serious proposal to stop them, and that both the sideshows and the proposal needed a serious, public di scussion in the Public Safety Committee.  

Mr. Brown and two of the three men on the Oakland City Council decided that the sideshows are a serious problem, but if the mayor’s proposal could not be passed exactly as it was written, and exactly when the may or wanted it, then nothing more should be done about the mayor’s proposal. (Though Mr. Chang voted against sending the mayor’s ordinance to Public Safety, he had earlier said that a sideshow alternative discussion should go forward in that committee). Any way, I know it’s all pretty complicated, but is that a fair reading of what went on? 

You can draw your own conclusions, friends. As for me, like I said, I find all of this pretty interesting.›

The Bates/Maio/Capitelli/Anderson article of last Friday defending the private settlement between Berkeley and the University of California is profoundly misleading. Instead of opening a “new era of cooperation,” the agreement effectively gives the Regents an effective veto over development in the downtown area. At the same time it gives the city no voice whatsoever in the university’s expansion plans.  

The Background: One of the root causes of Berkeley’s financial problems is the long-standing exemption of non-profit groups, chief among them UC, from city taxes and fees. This issue got new attention some months ago, when the university announced its “Long Range Development Plan.” The LRDP promised an increased student body, more employees, and more buildings. It seemed like a slap in the face: hadn’t university officials for years seemed to sympathize with concerns that further growth would stretch city services to the breaking point? Wasn’t it true that the university already represents about forty per cent of our daytime population, but contributes virtually nothing to support the fire, police, sewer and other services it uses?  

The Lawsuit: The city tried to negotiate, but UC wouldn’t budge. The city with great hoopla sued the university. The complaint seemed to promise relief…until you took the time to read it. There was nothing about crumbling infrastructure, and very little about traffic. There were vague charges that the university had violated California’s Environmental Quality Act, but nothing precise on which a judge could act. There was no demand for money damages, and no request for an injunction. The whole thing, one had to suspect, was either the result of gross legal incompetence, or a paper tiger, designed to make the electorate think it was being protected, even while its leaders were preparing to surrender on whatever terms they could get. 

The Settlement: And surrender they did. The “settlement” is nothing of the sort: all of the old issues are still there. The university has promised virtually nothing, while the city has surrendered all of the legal weapons that it was brandishing so bravely a few weeks ago. For example: 

The mayor talks about the promised “cooperation” between town and gown on future planning issues. But while it is true that there is a lot of soothing language about “mutual goals,” and promises “to respect the unique social and cultural character of downtown,” it is all just talk. There is not a single, legally enforceable commitment by UC to mitigate any of the troubling aspects of the Long Range Development Plan. On the contrary the city has accepted the document without a single change, and has agreed—in advance—that UC will not be required against its will to mitigate any of the impacts of the LRDP over the next fifteen years. All of our concerns remain—traffic, population densities, and the need for tens of millions to repair the infrastructure that is so heavily impacted by the University. 

More frightening is the language about the “DAP” or Downtown Area Plan. A careful reading shows that the university will have a veto power over virtually all planning decisions in the downtown area from now to 2020. In fact, there is a provision that the DAP will not even be released for public discussion until the university has agreed on all major issues. 

The mayor and council majority point to UC’s agreement to pay $1,200,000 per year to the city. But read the fine print: $250,000 is to be taken off the top to fund the DAP process. Another $500,000 or so is in lieu of fees that the university already pays, or would have to pay anyway even if there were no settlement. In other words, the city will get about $450,000 in new money to defray the $13 million in estimated direct costs of city services provided to the University of California. For this pittance, the city has given up any and all rights it has under California law to get more money, or to object in any way to UC plans through the year 2020. 

Indeed the Agreement has a classic “poison pill”: if the city sues the university over any of the LRDP projects, the city must pay the university’s attorneys fees. 

Bates, Maio, and the others say that they will continue to push for changes in state law which would require UC to pay more to support the services it uses. But the Agreement says—very clearly—that if there is any such change in the law the University will not have to pay any more than the $1,200,000 already agreed to. 

While the Bates article is misleading, the ultimate result is far more troubling. The mayor and current council majority have surrendered the city’s last, best chance to sort out problems that have bedeviled it for decades, and have gotten virtually nothing in return. And with such a gap between the city’s press releases and the actual text of the documents, we have got to conclude that either the majority failed to read the document they approved, or that their lawyers failed properly to explain it. In other words, we are dealing with either legal or political malpractice, and perhaps with both. ?

Librarian. From the Latin librarius: “concerned with books.” 

-The Oxford 

English Dictionary 

You hear it every day on the Circ Desk: “Honey, give your card to the librarian.” 

On the Paging Desk: “Librarian, can you help me?” 

From friends and family: “This is Eric. He's a librarian.” 

Now, I used to try and explain the library's rank system to these folks, but somewhere in my discourse about the difference between a Specialist 1 and a Specialist 2, I could always see their eyes start to glaze over. To the patrons and the public at large, anyone who works in a library is a librarian. And you know what? They're right.  

The patrons recognize something here that we often forget. Whether you shelve books, answer the phone, or run Children's Story Time, we're all here to serve the patrons of the Berkeley Public Library. Anything that leads us away from that service is an unnecessary distraction. Obsession with the minutiae of place takes us away from the goal of service, and also leads us to consider our co-workers as “lesser” workers, not deserving of our respect. Internecine feuds and power politics have many causes, but a simple lack of respect for the work done by your colleagues has got to be one of the biggest.  

Here's a simple, cost-free step to take: let's scrap this classification maze of assistants, aides, specialists, and technicians. Let’s stop referring to our co-workers as “para-professionals” (What, do I do ‘para-work’? Are the patrons I serve ‘para-patrons’?). And who, or what, are “support staff”? Aren’t we all here to support each other? Let’s start treating each other with the respect due to colleagues, co-workers, and librarians.  

Some will say that any organization needs distinctions in authority and seniority. My first thought is, what, we need more division in this place? Folks, we've already got RFID, the Re-Org, Line Staff vs. Management, and you want more division? How about something that brings us together and encourages mutual respect? 

But OK, if you really need it, we could put numbers after “Librarian”. Book schleppers like me could be “Librarian 1” and folks at the top could be “Librarian 6.” Heck, we could even use roman numerals, which would look more archaic and “library-esque.” We would still have our different jobs (the director would still be the director, and the reference manager would still be the reference manager) but by making this change we are saying that, on one level at least, we recognize each other as co-workers and equals. 

Here are some concrete examples of what I’m getting at- Whether you’re a beat cop or the Chief of Police, you’re a police officer. Whether you drive a fire truck or serve as the Fire Marshall, you’re a firefighter. Whether you’re a lowly deckhand or the high and mighty Captain, you're a sailor. There is a recognition of the power structure, but also a recognition of the basic equality of folks working towards the same goal. 

Now, I’m not saying that if we adopt this proposal that everything will improve overnight. It sure doesn't solve the budget crisis or put books on the shelves. But I do say that it would help us on the way back to respect for all the staff of the BPL. This little change would say to the staff, the public, and the library community that at BPL, everyone is a colleague, everyone is a professional, and everyone is a librarian. 

Eric Knudsen is a circulation staff member at the Berkeley Central Library where he has worked for the past seven years.›

Probably one of the toughest jobs an improvisational theater company has in putting on a show must be figuring up a title. Think about it: Since nobody knows what the actors are going to do on any given night, how on earth do they find a title encouraging people to give it a try? 

The Un-Scripted Theater Company (a smart name in itself) has come up with a great one for their current production at Oakland’s Temescal Arts Center. It’s The Short and the Long of it. 

That’s even an accurate description of the evening’s events. 

The program is divided into two parts (you can’t say “acts” about Improv can you?) with the first section consisting of very short, and wonderfully silly, skits created on the spot on themes that members of the audience suggest. The second half of the entertainment is the more rarely seen “Long Form Improv.”  

Again, the audience selects the idea, but this time there’s only one theme chosen from a group of ten audience proposals.  

Last Saturday night the theme was “Berkeley.” (Afterwards, one of the actors said that, curiously enough, this was the first time that idea had ever been proposed). The actors turned it into a tale of two students, one male, one female, leaving home for the first time, and entering Berkeley dorm life as freshmen. 

Most of the obvious issues (except class work) were touched on—weird roommates, oddball food, initiation to pot, falling in love, and commitment to a huge stack of idealistic goals in a kind of grand finale. Again, the ensemble played it as a smooth production, not so smooth that one suspected rehearsal, but without unexpected silences or abandoned themes.  

The thing about the Un-Scripted people is that they’re there for fun themselves. The people that you’re watching perform are enjoying themselves and they fully expect you to have a really good time, too. And you do, no question about it. These guys are good.  

This is definitely Improv, but no way is it the kind you may have wandered into at a party a while back. It’s funny, mind you, and harmlessly comic, often absurd, and nobody’s pushing a message. But it’s far from amateur night. 

The Un-Scripted performers have spent years working together—at least three years with this particular company, but most of them share experience beyond that, going back about nine years. And they have rehearsals. You could argue that the key to their performances is that they’ve learned to communicate with each other really, really well … and, if you felt like speculating, it might be fun to consider how much of that communication is non-verbal.  

So what you get in one of their productions are bubbles of absurdity, based on ideas suggested by the audience, within a framework proposed by the actors. And the results are smooth. There are no sudden “Uh’s” or abrupt moments of silence from someone failing to grab an idea. These people have learned to play a kind of verbal basketball with each other, catching a cue and taking off with it, quite possibly in a totally different direction.  

So far as a review goes, well, that gets a little complicated, since every night’s performance is unique. But does their work look worth going back another time? 

Definitely yes. 

The Un-Scripted Theater Company presents The Short and the Long of It Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m., through June 25 at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St., Oakland. Tickets $7-$10. For details, call 415-869-5384, or see www.un-scripted.com.›

FRIDAY, JUNE 10 

THEATER 

Antares Ensemble “Hellenic Image” choruses and monologues from Greek tragedies at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club. Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through June 26. Tickets are $10-$35. 525-3254.  

Berkeley Rep, “Honour” opens at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. and runs through July 3. Tickets are $20-$39. 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

California Shakespeare Theater, “Othello” at 8 p.m. at Bruns Amphitheater, 100 Gateway Blvd., between Berkeley and Orinda, through July 3. Tickets are $10-$55. 548-9666. www.calshakes.org 

“Cantiflas!” a bilingual play written and performed by Herbert Siguenza Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $16-$18. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater “Private Lives” Noel Coward’s comedy. Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. through June 12., at 951 Pomona Ave., El Cerrito. Tickets are $10. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Shotgun Players, “Arabian Night” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. until July 10. Tickets are $10-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

Subterranean Shakespeare “The Taming of the Shrew,” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center in Live Oak Park, through June 24. For reservations call 276-3871. 

Un-Scripted Theater Company “The Short and the Long of It” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., through June 25 at Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St., Oakland. Tickets are $7-$10. 415-869-5384. www.un-scripted.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Bucky Walters” Works by Ben Belknap, Luke Dorman, James Kirkpatrick, Seth Mulvey, Darsi Obekata Mary Scott and Brandon White. Reception at 7:30 p.m. at Bootling Gallery, 4224 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. www.41leagueindustries.com 

FILM 

American Outlaws: “Wild in the Streets” with Village Voice critic J. Hoberman at 7 p.m. at Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ambassador Joe Wilson describes “The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Put The White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Camille Peri and Kate Moses describe motherhood in “Because I Said So” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

By the Light of the Moon open mic for women at 7:30 p.m. at Changemakers, 6536 Telegraph Ave. 655-2405. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley High Jazz Ensemble with the Lab Band and the Lab Band Combo at 7 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, at Berkeley High.  

Point Richmond Music with Mojo Hand and Anna Maria Flechero in a free outdoor concert at 5:30 p.m. at Baltic Square, behind 117 Park Place, in Point Richmond. 223-3882. 

The Christy Dana Quintet at 8 p.m. at The Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. at Ashby. Tickets are $12-$15. 524-1124. 

“Singin’ & Swingin’” with Music in the Community Youth at 8 p.m. at Black Rep Theater, 3201 Adeline St. Tickets are $5-$10. 652-2120. 

Nguyen Dance Company “Struggle to Survive: 30 Years Cry for My Country,” at 8 p.m. at Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 Ninth St., Oakland. Tickets are $15. For reservations call 208-6086. www.dannydancers.org 

Hideo Date, Stephanie Bruce and Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ.  

Corinne West at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

37th Anniversary Revue hosted by Phil Marsh, with Mayne Smith, Eric & Suzy Thompson, Suzanne Fox & Eric Park at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Vince Wallace Quintet at 9 p.m. at Cafe Van Kleef, 1621 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5. 763-7711.  

Pocket, 7th Direction at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082.  

The Lips at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

DJ & Brook, jazz trio, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Bob Marley Student Ensemble at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Diego’s Umbrella, funk, jazz at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $25. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Eleven Eyes at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Century of War, Black Market Bombs at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Yellowjackets at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $15-$22. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, JUNE 11 

EXHIBITIONS 

The Eureka Fellowship Awards Exhibition opens at the Berkeley Art Museum and runs through August 14. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Alvarado Artists Group Show with works by Marilyn MacGregor, Barbara Werner, Joan Lakin Mikkelsen, Carla Dole and MJ Orcutt at the Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Reception for the artists at 1 p.m. 848-1228.  

“New Work” paintings by Yasuko Kaya, Chung Ae Kim, Mitsuyo Moore. Reception at 7 p.m. at 4th Street Studio, 1717D 4th St. 527-0600. www.fourthstreetstudio.com 

THEATER 

Living Arts Playback Theater Ensemble improvisational theater at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Free but reservations suggested. 595-5500, ext. 25. 

“Cantiflas!” a bilingual play written and performed by Herbert Siguenza at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $16-$18. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Traveling Jewish Theater, “Cherry Docs” at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 2 p.m. at the Julia Morgan Theater. Tickets are $23-$34. www.atjt.com 

FILM 

American Outlaws: “Joe” at 7 p.m. and “Myra Breckenridge” at 9:20 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joann Eckstut explains “The Color Palette Primer: A Guide to Choosing Ideal Color Combinations for Your Home” at 3 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

La Peña Day with live music and activities, from noon to 6 p.m. at the intersection of Prince and Shattuck. 849-2568.  

Betty Shaw, Ellen Hoffman, India Cooke Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Hal Stein Quartet at 9 p.m. at Cafe Van Kleef, 1621 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5. 763-7711 www.cafevankleef.com 

Wayward Monks at 8:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10. www.epicarts.org 

David Gans, Mario DeSio, Jeff Pehrson at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Full at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

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

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

SFJazz All-Star High School Ensemble at 8 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com  

Dave Bernstein Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Shades of Green at 7 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

“The Saucy Summer Sessions” at 10 p.m. at Club Oasis, 135 12th St., Oakland. Cost is $10. 763-0404.  

Louise Taft Memorial Dance Concert with Farma, The Natives, Fun with Finnoula at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Groovie Ghoulies, The Mormans, at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JUNE 12 

CHILDREN 

Polish Folk Culture through Song and Dance with Lowiczanie Polish Folk Dance and Music at 2 p.m. at Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Bancroft at College. 643-7648. 

“Peaceful Families, Peaceful World” a concert with singer/songwriter Betsy Rose at 4 p.m. in the Large Assembly of First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Suggested donation is $5 per person or $10 per family. 

EXHIBITIONS 

The Eureka Fellowship Awards Exhibition Artists’ Talks at 3 p.m.at the Berkeley Art Museum. Runs through August 14. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Martha Rhodes, Robert Thomas, and Daniel Tobin at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Pacific Mozart Ensemble, “A Capella Jazz & Pop” at 5 p.m. at The Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-705-0848. www.pacificmozart.org 

Mozart in the Garden with George Cleve and Festival artists at 3:30 p.m. in a private home in the East Bay Hills. Tickets are $50. 415-627-9141. 

“Café Buenos Aires” Tango music with Creative Voices at 4 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Live Oak Park. Tickets are $15-$18. 415-861-3680. www.creativevoices.org 

Crying High Brazilian Jazz and Choro Band at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

DJ & Brook at 3 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Americana Unplugged: Matt Kinman and the Oldtime Seranaders at 5 p.m. at Jupiter. 655-5715. 

Art of the Trio: Dick Conte Trio at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazz- 

school. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

“Stand Up & Get Down” Music and Comedy Night Fundraiser for East Bay Community Mediation at 7 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

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

MONDAY, JUNE 13 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tim Farrington reads from his new novel “Lizzie’s War” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Enrique Cruz describes his “Autobiography of an Ex-Chess Player,” in Spanish, at at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

www.codysbooks.com  

Poetry Express with Jan Steckel at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Geraldine Walther, violin, at 7:30 p.m. in a private home in Berkeley. Benefit for The Crowden School. Tickets are $100, or $180 for two. 559-6910. 

Trovatore, traditional Italian songs, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Frankye Kelly, CD release party at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, JUNE 14 

CHILDREN 

“Dragons, Dreams and Daring Deeds” Start the summer reading program with ventriloquist Randel McGee and his little dragon at 6:30 p.m. at Kensington Branch Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

FILM 

Alternative Vision: “Cats, Bugs, and Perverts: The FIlms of Martha Colburn” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bob Levin discusses “Outlaws, Rebels, Freethinkers, and Pirates: Essays on Cartoons and Cartoonists” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Matt Tabbi describes the 2004 election in “Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches form the Dumb Season” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

The Whole Note Poetry Series with Louis Cuneo and Geri Digiorno at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave., near Ashby. 549-9093. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Symphony with the Bay Area debut of Linda Watson, soprano, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22-$49. 841-2800. www.berkeleysymphony.org 

Claudia Russell at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $16.50- $17.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Singer’s Showcase with Ellen Hoffman Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Eric Swinderman, jazz guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Miguel Zenób Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Sage Jazz Group at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Jazzschool Tuesdays at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15 

EXHIBITIONS 

Tapestry Weavers West 20th Anniversary Exhibit opens at the Nexus Gallery, 2701 Eighth St.  

“Vanishing Species and More” recent mixed-media paintings by Rita Sklar opens at the Joseph P. Bort MetroCenter, 101 Eighth St., Oakland. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays. 464-7773. 

FILM 

Seventies Underground: “Thundercrack” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Betsy Leondar-Wright talks about “Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Norm Stamper, former chief of the Seattle Police Dept. describes “Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Street-Smart Approach to Making America a Safe Place for Everyone” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryplough.com 

Café Poetry hosted by Paradise Freejalove at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña. Donation $2. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

“Music for the Spirit” harpsichord concert at noon at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway. 444-3555.  

Ned Boynton Trio at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

La Verdad, salsa, at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Harley White Jr. Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Dry Branch Fire Squad at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50- $19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Sonic Camouflage at 8 p.m. at Cafe Van Kleef, 1621 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 763-7711. www.cafevankleef.com  

Calvin Keys Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

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

Miguel Zenób Quartet at 8 and 10 p.m. Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$16. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, JUNE 16 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Blind at the Museum” guided tour at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Luis Alberto Urrea reads from his new novel “The Hummingbird’s Daughter”at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Word Beat Reading Series at 7 p.m. with Mark Schwartz and Yosefa Raz at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

Live and Unplugged Open Mic at 7 p.m. at Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar St. 703-9350. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Dream Dance Company “Dig Us Now” at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10-$20. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Ben Adams Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Dr. Abacus at 9 p.m. at Cafe Van Kleef, 1621 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Cost is $5. 763-7711. www.cafevankleef.com  

Fairport Convention at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Alektorophobia, Molehill Orchestra at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082 www.starryplough.com 

Pete Madsen at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

John Mackay and Michael Wilcox at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Diane Schuur with the Caribbean Jazz Project at 8 and 10 p.m. through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Machine Love at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

?

January was the time for resolutions: get outside, exercise, eat better food, reduce stress and get healthy. Half way through the year, your resolutions may remain on paper only. If you’re still waiting for the right motivation, an easy solution may be at hand. 

East Bay Regional Parks and Kaiser Permanente are co-sponsoring the 12th Annual Trails Challenge and there’s a “Trail Log” out there with your name on it. If you have children who love to explore, a dog that’s bored with his daily route, a trail bike gathering dust or a spirit who yearns for the smell of pines and the call of birds, read on. 

The parks district has selected specific hikes in twenty of our regional parks. They are challenging you to complete a minimum of five hikes by Dec. 1. How hard can this be? In encouragement, and for a fee of $12, they provide a terrific instruction booklet detailing each hike; a neon lime green t-shirt with the challenge logo that will never allow you to get lost in the woods; and a step pedometer to track your goal of 10,000 steps per day. Filling out your Trail Log and mailing it in rewards you with the official 2005 pin. This is a deal you can’t refuse. 

For the next several months, I’ll stand in for your conscience by describing hikes and adding information to help you better enjoy the outdoors, like tips for smart hiking, taking Fido, and general outdoors information. I’ll also up the challenge by encouraging you to make every hike a real excursion allowing time for a picnic or outdoor reflection. 

Any new experience should be a positive one. The more you are well prepared the better the chances of wanting to repeat the experience. All it takes to be a good hiker is some common sense. Just like the Scouts: be prepared. Carry a backpack with plenty of water, snacks and a hat. Dress in layers and wear comfortable shoes with good ankle support.  

Walk with a friend when possible and leave information behind as to where you’re headed. Allow enough time to hike at a reasonable pace. There’s more than just an elevated heart rate waiting for you, be sure you have time to stop, look and revel in what’s around you. 

Pick up a trail map when you get to the park. Read it; know where you’re going. Evaluate the hike you’ve selected and condition you are in. You want to enjoy this. 

Be courteous of others on the trail. If you’re with a loud group, be aware that others may be looking for a different outdoor experience. Don’t leave or remove souvenirs; leave only footprints, take only memories. 

TRAIL CHALLENGE #1: Redwood Regional Park: 3.2 miles, intensity rated easy. 

There are several entrance gates to Redwood Park. This particular hike originates at the Canyon Meadows Staging Area, accessed through Redwood Gate. 

As soon as you exit your car, you’ll know you’re in the right place for an outdoor adventure. Canyon Meadows is lovely, a large grassy expanse with a variety of mature trees, lots of picnic facilities and a small kid’s playground.  

The hike begins on Stream Trail—shaded, broad, paved and level, paralleling Redwood Creek. Stop to read the Interpretive Panel explaining the efforts under way to control erosion of the creek’s banks and restore habitat for newts and trout. A rail fence lines both sides of the creek and dogs must be leashed in this area. Other Panels discuss the ecology of forest streams and the amazing survival story of the redwood, whose habitat has been reduced to a narrow corridor along the Pacific Coast. 

Stream Trail continues for 1 mile bordered by native grasses adorned with huckleberry, wild currant and foxglove. You’ll pass additional picnic areas and facilities as well as groves of the magnificent 100-foot redwoods. Notice their characteristic formation, five to ten sentinels in circular arrangements like mini-cathedrals, filtering the light. 

At trail’s end, paving gives way to dirt and the trail begins to climb. At the trail junction, turn left on Chown Trail. After a short climb, you’ll reach another junction and will need to make a decision. You can turn left onto Bridle Trail to return to Stream Trail and your car. 

If you’re up to the challenge, turn right on Chown Trail and get ready to climb a series of switchbacks. 

Now you’re into the real hiking experience among the redwoods. Notice the bright green tips of new growth on branches and in bright tutus of soft growth at the base of trunks. As you climb up the canyon, you get a better perspective of how tall these trees are. Look up at their straight trunks with branches clustered near the light-providing tops. You can’t help but feel a sense of accomplishment. Strenuous walking in a beautiful setting under ideal conditions—dappled light, well-maintained, wide trail—you can almost ignore your panting. 

After 0.5 miles, a trail marker directs you left onto French Trail, a mostly level path following the ridgeline. 

The hard work is done so now you can take in your surroundings. Leaf litter cushions your feet; sticky monkey flowers, coast oaks, bays and ferns line the trail. Let the cares of life diffuse away, leaving your mind free to soak up nature’s healing. Think about Sequoia sempervirens, surviving adversity for hundreds of years, still around. Leave your watch behind and your cell phone off. Enjoy the moment. 

The next trail marker is at a stand of madrone. He who goes up must come down. Turn left and head down on Orchard Trail, another series of switchbacks. This is steep in some areas so take your time. Try weaving from one side of the trail to the other or turning your feet to the side as you descend. This is where you really appreciate sturdy shoes with good ankle support. The floral variety continues as you head back down to the canyon floor, enough to keep any budding botanist happy. The same is true for birders, who will enjoy identifying the symphony of calls and songs.  

At the bottom, turn left on Bridle Trail, on the far side of the creek. From here, you can see evidence of serious erosion on the banks, entire root masses of large bay and sycamore trees exposed. It’s difficult to predict how many storms will pass before these magnificent trees are uprooted.  

Bridle Trail crossed Redwood Creek at Fern Dell, where you once again pick up Stream Trail, leading you back to Canyon Meadows, now beckoning to extend your excursion with a picnic lunch or a grilled brunch—the smell alone will make the trip worthwhile. 

A most satisfying hike, earning an A rating from this hiker. Keep it on your list and return on a hot Indian summer day or better yet, after a few winter storms. The experience of Redwood Creek swollen with run-off and redwoods softening the force of the rain is a memorable one. 

IF YOU GO: 

EAST BAY REGIONAL PARK DISTRICT 

TRAILS CHALLENGE: 

For more information see www.ebparks.org. or call 562-PARK. 

GETTING THERE: 

From Hwy 13, exit on Joaquin Miller Rd. and go east. Joaquin Miller turns into Skyline Blvd. At intersection of Skyline and Redwood Rd. turn left onto Redwood Rd.; Continue on Redwood Rd, park entrance is on your left. Follow entrance road to the last parking lot. 

You can also access Skyline Blvd. from Grizzly Peak Blvd.  

Redwood Regional Park: 5am-10pm, fees: $5/vehicle, $2/dog.Ë

FRIDAY, JUNE 10 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Cornelia Niekus Moore on “Obituaries as Social, Religious and Political Commentary in Early Modern Germany” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020.  

Acts Full Gospel Women’s Conference with Dr. Doris Limbrick at 7 p.m. at 1034 66th Ave., Oakland. Speakers on Sat. from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Cost is $45 for adults, $20 for youth. to register call 567-1300. 

“Three Beats for Nothing” a small group meeting weekly at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center to sing for fun and practice, mostly 16th century harmony. No charge. 655-8863, 843-7610. dann@netwiz.net 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Women in Black Vigil at noon at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. 548-6310. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

SATURDAY, JUNE 11 

La Peña Day with live music and activities, from noon to 6 p.m. at the intersection of Prince and Shattuck. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Live Oak Park Fair from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with arts and crafts, jazz, children’s entertainment and food. 898-3282. www.liveoakparkfair.com 

East Bay Multilingual Home Buyer Fair from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Frank Ogawa Plaza, 14th St. and Broadway, Oakland. Lenders, realtors, non-profit organizations and local housing agencies will have information booths. 637-0240. 

“Beat Back the Arnold Attack!” SEIU Local 790 Membership Convention from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with community activities at 1 p.m., at Berkeley Community Theater, 1930 Allston Way. http://graypantherssf.igc.org/050611back.pdf  

“Dragonflies of California” a slide show with Kathy and Dave Briggs from 9:30 a.m. to noon at the Visitor Center, Tilden Park. Optional excursion in the afternoon. Cost is $30-$35. Bring your lunch. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Mini-Farmers in Tilden A farm exploration program, from 10 to 11 a.m. for ages 4-6 years, accompanied by an adult. We will explore the Little Farm, care for animals, do crafts and farm chores. Wear boots and dress to get dirty! Fee is $3-$5. Registration required. 525-2233. 

Kids Garden Club For children 7-12 years old to explore the world of gardening. We plant, harvest, build, make crafts, cook and get dirty! From 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7, registration required. 525-2233. 

All Trails, All Day A whirlwind tour of Alan Kaplan’s favorite Trails. Meet at 10 a.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park, and bring lunch, liquids, hat and sunscreen. 525-2233. 

Basic Organic Vegetable Gardening with special emphasis on the East Bay backyard and climate, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $10-$15. 548-2220, ext. 233. 

Passport to the Summer Garden UC Botanical Garden’s Party from 3 to 6 p.m. Tickets are $35-$45. Reservations required. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

Origami from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Free and open to all ages. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Tryouts for Piedmont Choirs from 9 a.m. to noon in Alameda or Piedmont. Call for appointment 547-4441. 

Albany Karate for Kids Open House from 9 to 10:30 a.m. at 1249 Marin Ave. 847-2400. www.albanykarateforkids.com 

Child Car Seat Check with the Berkeley Police Dept. from 10 a.m. to noon at the UC Garage on Addison at Oxford. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

Walking Tour of Jack London Waterfront Meet at 10 a.m. at the corner of Broadway and Embarcadero. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours 

Introductory Birding Walk in Kensington with Robbie Fisher from 8 to 11 a.m. Cost is $25, includes breakfast. For meeting place and to register, call 525-6155. 

“Headaches and Heartaches” with Ed Bauman, Director of Bauman College at 10 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

“The Rising Power of Europe and the European Constitutional Vote” with Conor Dixon at 10 a.m. at the Niebyl-Procter Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America. 415-789-8497. 

“Starting and Managing Your Small Business” a workshop from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, Community Room, 2090 Kittredge St. Sponsored by the Small Business Network. Free but registration required. 981-6148. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552 

SUNDAY, JUNE 12 

Live Oak Park Fair from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with arts and crafts, jazz, children’s entertainment and food. 898-3282. www.liveoakparkfair.com 

Ashby Arts District Open House from 1 to 6 p.m. Visit La Peña, Epic Arts, Ashby Stage, Black Rep and many more. A bus will shuttle from venue to venue. www.epicarts.org 

At Summer’s Cusp An exploration of pollination in the Regional Parks Botanic Garden at Tilden Park from 10 a.m. to noon. 525-2233. 

Joys of Walking Hear what great writers have to say about sauntering and learn the origin of the word. Meet at 2 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Hands-on Bike Maintenance Learn how to perform basic repairs on your bike from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $85-$100. 527-4140. 

Solar Electricity for Your Home Learn how you can produce your own electricty and “sell” the excess back to PG&E, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Building Education Center, 812 Page St. Cost is $75. 525-7610. 

Theater Class for Families with improvisational games and movement activities from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Nevo Education Center, 2071 Addison St. Free, but bring a book to donate to John Muir Elementary. Sponsored by Target and Berkeley Rep. 647-2972. 

Acting Out Garden Party from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Magnes Museum, in conjunction with the Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore exhibition. RSVP to magnes40@magnes.org 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732. www.nativeplants.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace Peace walk around the lake every Sun. Meet at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Mary Gomes on “Compassionate Activism” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

Erev Shavuot Lecture with David Biale on the Jewish concept of political dissent, at 4 p.m. at 951 Cragmont Ave. Sponsored by Beyt Tikkun. Cost is $20 for non-members. For reservations call 528-6250. 

Tikkun Leyl Shavuot, all night study, at 7 p.m. at BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237.  

MONDAY, JUNE 13 

City of Berkeley Walking Group walks Mon.-Thurs. from 5 to 5:30 p.m. Meet at 830 University Ave. All new participants receive a free pedometer. 981-5131. 

The Berkeley High School Site Council meets at 4:30 p.m. in the school library. On the agenda are the advanced placement (AP) program, attendance, and safety and discipline. For more information, go to bhs.berkeleypta.org/ssc 

Tea and Hike at Four Taste some of the finest teas from the Pacific Rim and South Asia and learn their natural and cultural history, followed by a short nature walk. At 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7, registration required. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

World Affairs/Politics Discussion Group for people 60 years and over meets Mondays at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Join at any time. Cost is $2.50 with refreshments. 524-9122. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

TUESDAY, JUNE 14 

Early Morning Bird Walk Meet at 7 a.m. at the Bear Creek Rd. entrance of Briones to look for Redwinged Blackbirds, White-crowned Sparrows and Western Bluebirds (It is Flag Day!) 525-2233. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools during the summer, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Beyond Oil II with Joanna Macy and Richard Heinberg at 7 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Sponsored by the East Bay Post Carbon Solutions Group. 496-6080. 

Peace Corps Information Night with volunteers and staff at 6:30 p.m. at Rockridge Public Library, 5366 College Ave., Oakland. RSVP to John Ruiz at 415-977-8798. jruiz@peacecorps.gov 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. In case of questionable weather, call around 8 a.m. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org  

Buddhist Meditation Class at 7 p.m. at The Dzalandhara Buddhist Center. Cost is $7-$10. For directions and details please call 559-8183. 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Sing-Along every Tues. from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic. All ages welcome. 524-9122. 

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools during the summer, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

“The Emotional World of Farm Animals” a documentary, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation $5. 

Walking Tour of Oakland City Center Meet at 10 a.m. in front Oakland City Hall at Frank Ogawa Plaza. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Action St. 841-2174.  

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 7:15 a.m. at Au Cocolait, 200 University Ave. at Milvia. For information call Robert Flammia 524-3765. 

JumpStart Entrepreneurs share information at 8 a.m. at A’Cuppa Tea, 3202 College Ave. at Alcatraz. Cost is $5. 541-9901. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. 548-9840. 

Artify Ashby Muralist Group meets every Wed. from 5 to 8 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center, to plan a new mural. New artists are welcome. Call Bonnie at 704-0803. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch Bring your knitting, crocheting and other handcrafts from 6 to 9 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198. 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/ 

vigil4peace/vigil 

Sing-Along every Wed. at 4:30 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

THURSDAY, JUNE 16 

“Growing Old in Gay Culture” a video and panel discussion at 1 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190.  

Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation at 7 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Sliding scale donation $10-$25. 528-8844. www.unityberkeley.org 

FRIDAY, JUNE 17 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Jaleh Pirnazar on “Iran Struggles for Democracy” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020. 

“Take Back Our Schools” Day On the 51st Anniversary of Brown vs. Board. Rally at noon at Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland. Followed by activities and teach-in. 289-3318, 593-3956. 

“Hip-Hop Culture, Politics and Social Justice” a discussion with with authors Adam Mansbach, Jeff Chang, Tricia Rose and Bakari Kitwana at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

“Awakening to the Divine in Everyday Life” with art therapist Deborah Purdy at 7:30 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. www.sos-ca.org 

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041. 

Berkeley Critical Mass Bike Ride meets at the Berkeley BART the second Friday of every month at 5:30 p.m. 

Kirtan, improvisational devotional chanting at 7:30 p.m. at 850 Talbot, at Solano, Albany. Donation $10. 526-9642. 

“Three Beats for Nothing” a small group meeting weekly at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center to sing for fun and practice, mostly 16th century harmony. No charge. 655-8863, 843-7610. dann@netwiz.net 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com 548-6310, 845-1143. 

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 655-6169. www.bpf.org 

ONGOING 

Summer Camps for Children offered by the City of Berkeley, including swimming, sports and twilight basketball, from June 20 to August 12, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. For details call 981-5150, 981-5153. 

Barrington Collection Free Skool holds summer classes in the East Bay. Classes include “Buying Your First Home,” “Beer Brewing,” ”Grant Writing,” “Yoga” and classes for children. http://barringtoncollective.org/FreeSkool 

Find a Loving Animal Companion at the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society Adoption Center (open from 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday). 2700 Ninth St. 845-7735. www.berkeleyhumane.org  

Medical Care for Your Pet at the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society low-cost veterinary clinic. 2700 Ninth St. For appointments call 845-3633. www.berkeleyhumane.org  

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., June 13, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

citycouncil/agenda-committee 

City Council meets Tues., June 14, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Citizens Humane Commission meets Wed., June 15, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Katherine O’Connor, 981-6601. www.ci.berke 

ley.ca.us/commissions/humane 

Commission on Aging meets Wed. June 15, at 1:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. William Rogers, 981-5344. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/aging 

Commission on Labor meets Wed., June 15, at 6:45 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Delfina M. Geiken, 981-7550. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/labor 

Human Welfare and Community Action Commission meets Wed. June 15, at 7 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Kristen Lee, 981-5427. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/welfare 

Design Review Committee meets Thurs., June 16, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Anne Burns, 981-7415. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/designreview  

Fair Campaign Practices Commission meets Thurs., June 16, at 7:30 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Prasanna Rasaih, 981-6950. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/faircampaign 

Transportation Commission meets Thurs., June 16, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Peter Hillier, 981-7000. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/transportation 

Monday’s voice mail carried a request that the Daily Planet print the full text of the rejected European constitution, as a follow-up to the Pacific News Service analysis we printed last week. E-mail transmitted a suggestion that we reprint the full text of the agreement between UC Berkeley and the City of Berkeley. Unfortunately, our page count, which is determined by the amount of advertising we have for each issue, doesn’t allow us such luxuries, though we can and will make such documents available to our readers on the Internet via either links or full texts.  

It’s interesting that there’s been a major change in the expectations of readers. They now seem to distrust the role of the media in telling them what’s happened. The word “media” itself is from a Latin word meaning “middle,” and the approved role of contemporary media, now including not only print but also electronic means of transmission, is to bridge the gap between events and observers. Cognate English words like “intermediary” and “mediate” suggest the proper role of today’s media: not to shape the news, but simply to transmit it. 

The term is a relatively new one, absent from my fine-print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, and “severely condemned” when used as a singular noun in my 1981 American Heritage dictionary. The older usage was “the press,” derived from the word for the equipment on which the news was printed, with no representation regarding content or transparency of transmission.  

Reading about the no votes on the European constitution in the British press, mostly in the Guardian, a bit in the French papers, I got a better understanding that it’s still the role of the European press to interpret the news, not just to transmit it. The Guardian carried three or four short bylined pieces the day after the votes, each with a somewhat different take on what happened, none pretending to be comprehensive. When Tony Blair’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announced that the U.K. referendum on the European constitution was being postponed, interpretations in the British press multiplied even more.  

In the European press I saw no New York Times-style long article which purported to be “the news” or “the truth” about what was going on, but by taking the average of the multiple voices I got a pretty good idea of the various public opinion currents which contributed to the votes and the postponement. The bottom line, as I sorted out what I read, is that people in the various European countries still like their own style of doing things better than they like the economic fiats imposed by the transnational Brussels bureaucrats, thank you very much. Does this mean that the concept of a united Europe is doomed? Probably not, but it will have to be re-imagined, perhaps outside of Brussels. 

I don’t think reading the full text of the defeated draft, which I haven’t done, would add to my understanding of what happened. I don’t have the background in the subject matter which most of the commentators I read have. Similarly, I don’t think that our local readers will understand the substance of the UC-CoB deal better if the Planet reprints all 19 pages of the agreement (which can be found on the mayor’s press website). Instead, if they read all the many comments we’ve received from people who have made it their business to be on top of the situation, they can get some sort of balanced understanding of what’s happened, even though we don’t seem to have gotten many comments from citizens who were happy with the outcome. 

It’s sometimes confusing to decide who “our readers” are, anyway. Based on the letters we get, a lot of them ride busses. They care about nature, judging by the letters we receive from the fans of the Tuesday back pages. They have strong opinions about what the various levels of government are doing, and about the arts, especially about the role of public art.  

Thinking along these lines about who our readers might be, I find it hard to understand a comment which one of our advertising sales reps recently passed along. She’d gotten it from the advertising coordinator of the highest profile, best-funded local independent theater. His management doesn’t want to advertise in the Planet, he says, because “your readers are not our target audience.” That’s a hard one to interpret. Does he mean that we shouldn’t review or preview their productions? Surely not.  

Does his quote tell us more about his audience or about our readers? Perhaps his management is aiming at what used to be known as “the carriage trade”—people who arrive at the theater in expensive cars from the hills and the suburbs. Maybe our readers, bus-riders and armchair arts critics that they are, are thought not to be affluent enough to be able to spring for a night at a play. I think that’s a mistake. 

Based on the letters and phone calls we get, our readers are a pretty good cross-section of the Greater Berkeley population. They’re by no means a homogeneous crowd. You can gauge that, among other ways, by how often they’re at each other’s throats. How they could be perceived as uniform in their theater tastes and unlikely to patronize the theater in question escapes me.  

They can read the whole UCB-CoB agreement at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Mayor/PR/UCAgreement.pdf. 

They can read the full text of the draft European constitution at http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/JOHtml.do?uri=OJ:C:2004:310:SOM:EN:HTML. 

They can find out what’s playing at local theaters by reading the Berkeley Daily Planet’s Friday Arts Calendar. 

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Councilmember Dona Spring has contributed the guest editorial below, which she also sent as a letter to the Berkeley School Board. Keeping a warm water pool available for Berkeley citizens was a major project of the late Fred Lupke, a valued participant in reviving the Berkeley Daily Planet two years ago, so we are happy to have the opportunity to concur with the concerns expressed by Councilmember Spring. We would also like to remind Berkeley citizens that all of us, students and non-students, are just an accident away from disability. When I experienced a painful and lingering knee injury a few years ago, swimming at the Warm Water Pool was the way I finally recovered, after conventional medical therapy hadn’t worked very well. We need to preserve and maintain this valuable city resource for everyone, not allow it to vanish because of the school district’s careless maintenance. 

–Becky O’Malley 

The Berkeley School Board took up the proposed plan for the Berkeley High School South Campus athletic complex at its May 11 meeting. The preferred plan proposes moving the warm water pool from its current location next to the Old Gymnasium building across the street to the former tennis courts. School Board Director John Selawsky announced he wanted the community to know where he was coming from on the proposed warm water pool. He said that from his perspective, the school district could not contribute any funding to make up the budget gap. Board member Terry Doran also stated the school district did not have the funds to help with the warm pool. Their comments referenced the city consultant's report that indicated the cost of the pool would increase from $3.2 million for a reconstruction at the current site to between $6 million and $7 million to build a new pool across the street.  

Previously, the City Manager had sent a letter to the school district stating: in 2000 "the City Council became aware of the deteriorated condition of the Pool Building on the Berkeley High School (BHS) South Campus. Council initiated a bond measure to rehabilitate the building at a time when it was still financially feasible. The City earnestly underwent steps to pursue this rehabilitation with the School District. It was determined that a joint venture using a joint architect would be beneficial. However, before design work could proceed, the School District unilaterally decided to shelve the whole plan while a Master Plan for the entire site was studied. 

“During the years waiting for the planning process, the pool building has continued to seriously deteriorate. Confronted with the School decision to move the pool to another site, the City underwent a study to determine the options and costs—to rebuild the pool in place or rebuild it across the street." 

The letter went on to say that subject to council approval, the city would be willing to contribute an additional $1 million to the $3.2 million bond to fund the budget gap. 

The Berkeley Unified School District is hereby formally noticed that under the Americans with Disabilities Act that they must provide a reasonable accommodations for physical education and athletic opportunities to students with disabilities. They need to ask themselves if the following accommodations will be found to be reasonable: 

1. To withhold maintenance funds for over a decade from the Warm Water Pool facility, which provides for disabled students, so that it deteriorates beyond repair; 

2. To spend tens of millions of dollars reconstructing pools and athletic facilities for able-bodied students, but not committing any of the bond fund money to provide reasonable physical education/recreation and athletic facilities to disabled students; 

3. To spend millions of dollars of bond money intended for reconstruction of the old gymnasium and pool buildings to demolish the primary BUSD accommodation provided to the great majority of disabled students and children, thereby depriving them of any accommodation for physical education/recreation and athletic opportunities. 

What is very clear under the Americans with Disabilities Act is that the School District is obligated to provide reasonable accommodations to its disabled students, and it would not be reasonable to spend public funds to destroy the facility that provides this current accommodation and not replace it. The School District is fortunate that the City of Berkeley (thanks to the voters) has come up with over half the funds to replace the facility, otherwise the School District would be on the hook for the full amount. 

In the mid-eighties, parents of disabled children had to find an attorney from a legal advocacy group for people with disabilities to sue BUSD for refusing to make the old library accessible. The case was settled in favor of the disabled students, and this was before passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In the late nineties, the City of Berkeley lost an expensive ADA lawsuit for not making its old jail accessible when it put in over $100,000 worth of remodeling. The city unsuccessfully argued that it intended to do a new project soon and this was just an interim remodel. Hopefully, disabled rights organizations will not now have to divert resources into getting the BUSD to do the right thing. Disability rights advocacy is stretched to the limit right now fighting the draconian moves of the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations. 

The city and the disability community need some firm financial commitments from the School District by the end of June before the value of the bond money is further diminished through inflation and increased construction costs. 

–Councilmember Dona Spring