The City of Richmond and the National Park Service are looking for people who lived in Richmond’s 11 World War II-era housing projects in the 1940s and 1950s. -more-
A packed house loaded with questions about UC Berkeley’s new role in the downtown planning process greeted City Planner Dan Marks and Tom Lollini, his university counterpart, at the Planning Commission Wednesday. -more-
State regulators Tuesday backed a recommendation by Berkeley preservationists in the raging battle over a city ordinance designed to preserve historic buildings. -more-
Berkeley High sophomore Rio Bauce, 15, has assigned himself a daunting task: winning the right for 17-year-olds in the city to vote in school board elections. -more-
Plans to demolish a West Berkeley landmark and replace it with a manufacturing plant came to an abrupt halt Wednesday morning after the building’s owner intervened. -more-
With newcomer Councilmember Pat Kerninghan urging fellow members to “just pass this and move on to more constructive things; I’m tired of the negative press Oakland is getting on this,” Oakland City Council passed a slightly modified version on first reading of Mayor Jerry Brown’s sideshow ordinance Tuesday in a rare morning meeting. -more-
Because of an editing error, an article in the July 12 issue incorrectly stated that the Albany councilmember who charged St. Mary’s College High School representatives with reneging on an agreement was not the same councilmember who charged that city staff encouraged the school to break their deal with the city. In both cases, the councilmember was Robert Lieber, the only councilmember quoted in the article. -more-
Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) added two new properties to the city’s list of official historic resources, one over the owners’ wishes and the other with the owner’s blessings. -more-
Downtown Berkeley has snagged a new business—albeit one that was already operating in the city. -more-
The City Council unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday urging residents to boycott Berkeley Honda, which they accused of union busting. -more-
How many Japanese city councilmembers can fit in a Berkeley City Hall elevator? -more-
Last Thursday morning in London, my wife Lisa and I left our three children to hail a taxi near the apartment we had rented. Eli, who is 20, had offered to take our twins Annie and Lucy to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum as a treat for their twelfth birthday. All three were excited about seeing the statues of everyone from the Queen to Johnny Depp. -more-
Construction overcharges continued to be the theme at the Peralta Community College District Trustee meeting Tuesday night, with trustees sparring with Chancellor Elihu Harris and staff over the Vista College construction project. -more-
http://www.jfdefreitas.com/index.php?path=/00_Latest%20Works -more-
Last summer, just before dusk, my 15-year-old daughter, Liana, and her friend Kate were standing in front of Berkeley High School (BHS), waiting for Kate’s dad to pick them up. A car pulled up to the curb near them and parked. -more-
I went out on the corner after dark on July 4 to watch the folks in my neighborhood set the sky aflame with fireworks, one of the most brazen displays of non-cooperation with authority since Mr. Ghandi led his followers down to the seashore to mine salt. -more-
An op-ed by Jonathan Wornick appearing in the July 12 Daily Planet opposing Berkeley’s recently passed resolution supporting a U.S. Department of -more-
Over two decades ago Bobby Sands, a member of the IRA, was arrested and put in jail by the British government. He later went on a hunger strike demanding to be freed. Margaret Thatcher, holding the British prime minister office at the time, refused to ca ve in to his demand until Sands finally died in prison as a result. -more-
Lies, damn lies, statistics, and then studies. Twice in last week’s Daily Planet letters section a deceptive 2002 parking study was cited as proving there is no need for more parking in the downtown area. Why, parking is plentiful, they claim, and an adjacent claim is always on its heels, that parking spaces “cost” $25,000 each, garage parking spaces $50,000 or more. -more-
West Campus Neighbors who oppose the Berkeley Unified School District’s plans to move light industrial uses and heavy vehicle storage into their neighborhood are beginning to feel a bit like kids at a carnival watching a grifter executing a shell game. Just as they think they have a line on what the district is up to, the district switches direction. A few examples: -more-
I know that many citizens in Berkeley must be confused about the revisions to the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance. What in the heck are we doing? -more-
The gutsy Berkeley Opera is taking on Wagner again, this time with its own reduced version of Die Meistersinger. Olivia Stapp had the opportunity to interview Artistic Director Jonathan Khuner after one of the recent rehearsals. -more-
Woman’s Will, the Oakland-based all-female Shakespeare company, celebrates their eighth season of free performances of Shakespeare In The Park with performances of Richard III this Saturday and Sunday at 1 p.m. in John Hinkel Park. -more-
Harold Lloyd, one of the greatest comedians of silent film, is poised for a comeback. In anticipation of the November release of more than two dozen of his films on DVD, Pacific Film Archive and San Francisco’s Castro Theater are screening some of the comedian’s best features. -more-
The City of Albany is removing homeless encampments on the Albany Landfill as part of a process that will bring the 31-acre site closer to becoming part of the Eastshore State Park. -more-
A decision last week by the Albany City Council to hold St. Mary’s College High School to a 10-year-old conditional use permit square-footage limit has left school representatives and at least one city councilmember trading charges of reneging on an agreement, as well as another councilmember’s charges that city staff encouraged St. Mary’s to break their deal with the city. -more-
Tuesday’s City Council meeting looks to be the latest battleground for pro- and anti-development forces as the council holds a public hearing on changes to a law that governs the future of Berkeley’s historic buildings. -more-
A marriage between two national media chains has apparently deprived the San Francisco Bay Guardian of one of its top advertisers. -more-
On July 28 the curtain is scheduled to rise once again at the Elmwood Theater, operator Greg King said Monday. -more-
UC Berkeley has temporarily gnawed off yet another hunk of city turf, moving the Bancroft Library collection to a downtown building while the campus library is retrofitted. -more-
The Berkeley Planning Commission will take up three major projects when it meets Wednesday night, leading off with the joint UC-city Downtown Area Plan (DAP) process. -more-
Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board is confronting yet another dispute over construction plans on La Vereda Trail. -more-
A joint school lunch and school-garden-to-school-table project of the Berkeley Unified School District and Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Foundation has received the attention of national legislators and the country’s national museum. -more-
Berkeley has hired Claudette Ford as acting director of public works to replace Rene Cardinaux, who is retiring Aug. 5 after eight years with the city. -more-
The London attacks are the symptoms of an internal war among two Islamic trends, and may be a sign of growing desperation by one group. -more-
http://www.jfdefreitas.com/index.php?path=/00_Latest%20Workst -more-
It will be three years until the next Democratic convention, but Washington insiders not only expect Hillary Clinton to run for president, they believe that she will easily garner the nomination. According to veteran prognosticator Charlie Cook, Hillary is far ahead of the other contenders, both in terms of money raised and support among the party faithful. First, she has to win re-election to her New York Senate seat; if she wins that race handily in 2006, then her historic presidential nomination seems assured. Anticipating Hillary, conservatives have already launched a no-holds-barred assault on the former first lady. -more-
For years there has been a small leak in the ceiling between the upstairs bathroom and the downstairs dining room at our house. As leaks tend to do, it has grown progressively worse with time. The first major seepage was discovered after a charming young Russian guest decided to hand wash clothes in the bathroom sink. She forgot to turn off the hot water spigot before leaving the house. A crack in the downstairs ceiling plaster developed and water dripped onto the dining room table. Fortunately, no one was sitting there at the time, and after some investigation and discussion it was decided that as long as no one left the water running, or as long as there were no Russians in the house, we didn’t really have a major plumbing problem, we just had a big hole in the ceiling. -more-
Your story “Board Vetoes Jefferson School Name Change” (July 8) was misleading. I was never “torn” about the name change. I objected to labeling opponents of the name change as racist, and opposed arguments that the nasty nature of the campaign somehow justified ignoring the result of the vote. I said what the School Board taught about the value of democracy was more important than any school name. I reminded the School Board how disgusted we were when the Supreme Court interfered with the 2000 election. I implored boardmembers to prove that in Berkeley one’s vote still counted, and concluded that admiration for Jefferson required respecting the democratic process he so loved by honoring the vote to re-name the school. -more-
While some of our better lawmakers are working hard to improve our schools, keep fire stations open, fix our roads, and bring jobs to our beloved city of Berkeley, a chosen few are once again wasting their time, and our dollars, writing resolutions on na tional and international issues. -more-
The new fiscal year is a good time to look back on the last two and a half years and reflect on where we are in Berkeley and on what we have accomplished together. -more-
Last week the City of Albany installed three enormous green dumpsters on the upper road leading to the Albany Bulb and began an operation the purpose of which we’re being told is to clean out campsites of the homeless, some of which have been reoccupied in recent months. -more-
From its origins about 400 years ago, opera has been conceived as a synaesthetic experience. The voices, the lyrics, the orchestration, stylized acting, costumes, sets and lighting are meant to add up to a total effect on all the senses of the audience. This is what has given credence to the frequent claims that opera is the greatest of arts—because it combines them all in an aesthetic apotheosis. -more-
You think of fossil-hunting as something that takes place in faraway barren places: the Flaming Cliffs of the Gobi Desert, the windy wastes of Patagonia, the Dakota badlands. But not downtown Berkeley. That was the source of Specimen 78858 in the UC Museum of Palaeontology’s collection, though, a fossil I finally got to meet at last year’s Cal Day. It’s a massive thighbone, the femur of an extinct ground sloth that inhabited these parts in the Pleistocene Era, tens of thousands of years ago, and it turned up when the Berkeley BART station was being excavated. -more-
Judy Miller is one disgusting poster child for freedom of the press. We can all agree on that, can’t we? She was the pipeline for the administration’s totally bogus claims that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But on the other hand, nobody thinks that it’s right to jail a reporter who merely received—didn’t even print—a leak from a presumably highly placed source which amounted to the disclosure of the identity of a CIA employee. Can we agree on that? -more-
First, the breaking news: The Berkeley Daily Planet has captured a flock of prizes in the statewide Better Newspapers Contest sponsored by the California Newspaper Publishers Association. At the awards luncheon on Saturday we learned that we’d won two first prizes, for editorial pages overall and for an editorial cartoon by Justin DeFreitas, second prize for a spot news photo by Jakob Schiller, and honorable mentions (top 10 percent of entries in Northern California, statewide finalists) for local spot news (Matthew Artz), writing (Richard Brenneman) and for another DeFreitas cartoon. Please excuse us if we’re mighty proud of this record, especially since we’ve only been around for two years. -more-
