In the face of angry neighborhood opposition, Berkeley City Councilmember Max Anderson Tuesday withdrew his motion to have his council colleagues reaffirm support of a state grant to plan development at the Ashby BART station. 

His move doesn’t mean an end to development at the site—where the city controls the “air rights” to build on the main parking lot. 

Instead, Anderson and consultant Ed Church—along with up to three other city councilmembers—will meet with the public Saturday to discuss development at the site before returning to the council on Feb. 21 to raise the issue anew. 

The Saturday meeting will be held from 10 a.m. until noon in St. Paul’s A.M.E. Church, 2024 Ashby Ave. 

“I don’t want to instill fear in people. I want to bring people together,” Anderson said. 

Anderson and Mayor Tom Bates, a strong supporter of development at the site, both acknowledged errors in the way they had handled the project. 

With the backing of both councilmembers, the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Council and consultant Ed Church had submitted an application for a $120,000 California Department of Transportation grant in October before winning council approval. 

The first that many neighbors learned of the project was in reports about the Dec. 14 council meeting where the council endorsed the grant application. 

That document proposed a project with a minimum of 300 units, a size that sent alarm throughout the surrounding community and galvanized opposition. 

About 70 project critics gathered outside the Maudelle Shirek Building—Old City Hall—before the council meeting while Mayor Bates was delivering his annual State of the City address inside. 

In addition to project area residents and preservationists concerned that the size of the project could jeopardize the character of the surrounding neighborhood, the protest also drew Berkeley Flea Market participants concerned for their livelihoods. 

Flea market fans  

“My main concern is with the vendors, especially those who might be starving if they didn’t have this venue,” said flea market General Manager Errol Davis. 

He said he was skeptical about a proposal to shut down Adeline Street on weekends along the eastern edge of the BART site. 

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Davis said. “How would the churches and the other businesses and residents be affected?” 

“How do we stop this building?” asked Salvación Pallera, a San Francisco resident who sells produce at the market. “People love the market.” 

“There are so many people whose survival depends on the incomes they get from the market,” said Aisha Vey, who sells natural body care products and food on weekends. “I’m not making a huge amount of profits, and most of the people who come by aren’t people who can afford to go to Whole Foods.” 

“I’d hate to lose it,” said Aaron Cook, a 26-year-old drummer who has been coming to the flea market “since I was 7 or 8. I live right on the corner.”  

Council comments 

Other critics rose to speak during the public comment session at the start of the 7 p.m. council meeting. 

“It takes a great man and a wise person to admit an error,” said Jackie DuBose, a prominent neighborhood activist. 

DuBose called on Anderson to rescind the grant application “and do not declare our wonderful community a transit village.” 

“It would be a crime for you all to close the Berkeley Flea Market,” said Howard Jones, a vendor at the flea market more than two decades. 

A 63-year South Berkeley resident said she had been shocked and “very disturbed to hear something had been planned and the community hadn’t been heard.” 

Another critic was Charles Gary, an Oakland resident who serves on the boards of three South Berkeley institutions: the flea market, Shotgun Players and Easy Does It, a disability assistance organization that will be housed in the Ed Roberts Center, which is to be built on the BART station’s eastern parking lot. 

Gary said he was disturbed that the flea market had been left out in the cold. 

“Max came with Ed Church in October to discuss the potential for the future of the flea market but never mentioned” the grant application would be going before the council in December, he said.  

“Our community is a sleeping giant awakened by the fact that this proposal was popped on us without discussing it with us in any way,” said Kenoli Oleari, a community organizer. “We say, No thanks. We’ll do it ourselves. We’re tired of being little sister to the city. We’re going to take the lead.” 

Addressing the council, Oleari declared, “The best thing you and Ed Church and Max” could do is “to stand aside and let us take the lead ... withdraw the Caltrans application. We’re not interested in any modifications. We’re not interested in any project in which Ed Church, Max Anderson or the City of Berkeley take the lead.” 

His remarks were greeted with loud applause. 

Anderson’s response 

After the council had disposed of the consent calendar, Mayor Bates gave the floor to Anderson, who made a spirited response. 

“When I campaigned for election last year people asked me if I had a vision,” Anderson said. “I told them my key to South Berkeley was the Adeline corridor and its development and health and a chance to take its place along with the other great avenues of the city.” 

Construction of the Ashby BART station and the demolitions that accompanied it “scarred our community,” he said. “It’s been begging for 30 years for someone to step up and take responsibility by bringing the resources to bear” to do something for the community. 

“I could have done nothing. I could have ignored” the problems in the community, Anderson said. “That’s the safest thing to do in Berkeley.” 

Instead, he said, realizing the lack of resources the city had devoted to the area, “when an opportunity came to get some resources” in the form of the Caltrans grant, “I endorsed it.” 

Singling out critics who charged that gentrification would follow the construction of a major condo or apartment project that offered 80 percent of its units at market rates, Anderson said that “if you don’t do something now, you will see gentrification the likes of which will startle everyone.” 

The councilmember singled out Oleari, declaring, “you don’t start an open and inclusive process by excluding people by name.” 

Instead, he said, “whatever mistakes have been made in the past should fade into the background.” 

Anderson said the meeting wouldn’t be “rigged like the last one was,” referring to the Jan. 17 meeting at the South Berkeley Senior Center organized by project critics. 

Collegial support 

Other councilmembers weighed in, offering Anderson qualified support. 

“When a great proposal came up in December . . . I supported moving forward with it,” said Gordon Wozniak, adding that “everyone regrets” that the proposal hadn’t been offered in a more inclusive manner. 

Betty Olds drew loud applause when she said she had come to the meeting ready to make a motion to withdraw the application and reapply only when neighbors had a chance to become involved. 

“I’ve been involved in politics for 20 years and I know what happens when you don’t involve the neighborhood,” she said, promising to offer a withdrawal motion in two weeks if neighbors were still unhappy. 

“I apologize and I think the City Council owes the community an apology,” said Kriss Worthington, acknowledging “that we have stumbled in this process” by not involving the stakeholders earlier in the process. 

“It’s not worth building anything on the site if it’s going to be yuppie expensive condos,” he said. 

“From this councilperson’s perspective, everyone went in with the best of intentions. We wanted to do the right thing . . . It was clearly inadequate” said Linda Maio. 

“Let’s come together this Saturday and see what we can do together for the city of Berkeley,” she said. 

“I would like to thank Councilmember Anderson for holding this item back,” said Dona Spring. “It was very wise on his part and shows maturity and that he’s listened to his constituents.” 

Spring and her colleagues had hoped to set the Saturday gathering as a council meeting, but City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque said that the venue precluded the idea because it raised church/state issues. The council agreed that at most four members would attend so that there wouldn’t be a quorum.

City councilmembers voted Tuesday to spend the city’s full $1.23 million budget surplus, discussed proposed changes in city landmarks law and watched a tense confrontation between two of their colleagues over the issue of diversity in appointments, in addition to debating the proposed development project at the Ashby BART station. 

While City Manager Phil Kamlarz had proposed spending less than $100,000 on immediate needs, Councilmember Darryl Moore said he wanted to be able to use the $292,643 in storm water system capital improvement funds earmarked in the city manager’s proposal to handle urgently needed repairs in his district. 

Moore said West Berkeley experienced severe flooding problems during December storms that resulted in damage to homes and businesses. 

Moore moved to authorize the spending, and was seconded by Betty Olds. 

When it came to a vote, Kriss Worthington was the lone holdout, arguing that the council should hold funds in reserve. 

Of the remainder, $300,000 will go to street repairs, $200,000 to traffic calming, $144,000 for parks, $42,000 for street and sidewalk cleaning machines, $44,5009 for disaster preparedness, $38,892 for hearing aids for a program for deaf children, $15,000 to fund emergency shelter beds for the homeless, $50,000 for a pedestrian and bike gate for BART, $82,000 to an alternative electric power program and $25,000 for special events.  

Landmarks 

One of the most controversial items on the council’s agenda was the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, and members heard the first of two presentations on proposed revisions. 

Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) Chair Jill Korte and former Commissioner Carrie Olson presented the case for a revised version drafted by their commission, while another draft has been offered by Planning Commission, which was represented by Vice Chair Helen Burke. 

The revisions were ordered by the council to bring the ordinance into conformity with the state Permit Streamlining Act, which sets limits on the time that cities can take to process building applications. 

But critics have used the revision in an effort to limit the scope of the ordinance, which developers say is used to hamper the construction of new projects. 

In the ensuing discussion, it became clear that the council’s major concern was the structure of merit designation, one of two designations the LPC can bestow on historic structures. 

That category is generally reserved from structures that have undergone modification in the years since construction but which remain as meaningful examples of an era, style or architect. 

In her presentation, Korte stressed that preservation of landmarks was a policy spelled out in detail in the city’s General Plan, and she noted that other cities in California also have tiered designations like the structure of merit. 

Burke said the Planning Commission favors reducing protections on structures of merit. 

“My big problem is the problem of the structure of merit,” said Mayor Tom Bates. “There is just no doubt about it. The language (of the existing ordinance) says it doesn’t rise to the level of being a landmark, but another part gives it the same protections as a landmark. That is the biggest problem we face.” 

The Planning Commission, backed by the mayor, has also called for new process called a Request for Determination that would allow a property owner to learn if a structure might be eligible for landmark status. 

“It’s a great idea,” said the mayor. 

One interesting moment came during a discussion about appeals of landmarking decisions, which can be overturned by the City Council. 

During the council discussion Councilmembers Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington seemed to show the most sympathy for the LPC position. 

“I have been very discouraged when I hear people said that a landmark is a vestige of the past that’s just getting in the way of progress.” said Worthington, who cautioned his colleagues about moving “too far and too fast.” 

“The landmarks commission has gone a long way toward trying to compromise,” said Spring, who offered a strong defense of structures of merit. “They are very important to the flatlands, which have very few examples” of homes by famous architects who designed more expensive residences in the hills. 

Fireworks  

Tuesday night’s tensest moments came during the discussion of rival proposals calling for councilmembers to increase the diversity of their appointments to city boards and commissions. 

Worthington, who sponsored the original resolution, used a survey conducted by UC Berkeley students of appointments by the current council to bolster his contention that a resolution is needed. 

Gordon Wozniak said he wanted to correct “errors and distortions” because “the very important issue of diversity has been clouded by flawed studies” that indicated he had made no African American appointments. 

“The last I checked my representative on the Police Review Commission was an African American,” Wozniak said, adding that he had also appointed five UCB students. 

Wozniak then moved the adoption of compromise motions drafted by Linda Maio. 

Wozniak said that he had interviewed the serving appointees of predecessor Polly Armstrong, and argued that his choice to keep them on was effectively an appointment. 

As the discussion continued, an angry Worthington compared Wozniak to George W. Bush, declaring that when news media count the president’s Latino and African American appointees, they don’t count holdovers from the administration of Bill Clinton and declared that Wozniak had “an abysmal record” 

At the end of the discussion Maio’s motions were unanimously approved and Worthington’s own version passed on a 5-3-1 vote, with the mayor, Wozniak and Olds voting no and Councilmember Laurie Capitelli abstaining.›

In a town where free speech is holy and libraries are sacred, library workers are claiming retaliation from management for speaking out about work-related issues. 

Still, at the same time staff-management tensions are on the rise, the two sides are coming together to explore better ways to perform work at the library. 

Service Employees International Union 535 has filed grievances on behalf of five workers claiming retaliation for protected union activities. 

The union alleges that: 

• Last year, North Branch teen librarian Debbie Carton was given permission by her supervisor to adjust her schedule so that she could attend the Board of Library Trustees (BOLT) meeting where she planned to express concern about a reorganization plan. BOLT is an appointed five-member board that oversees that library. 

When Library Director Jackie Griffin learned Carton was allowed flextime for this activity, Griffin instituted a blanket policy, disallowing flextime for staff to attend BOLT meetings. 

• Last April, library staffer John Mathews was called to a meeting with two supervisors one week after having read a statement written on behalf of 24 circulation employees at a BOLT meeting. The statement alleged unsafe working conditions and an increased workload at the library. 

Because the meeting with his supervisors was out of the ordinary, Mathews called on his shop steward to accompany him to the meeting; administrators, however, denied the steward access. As a consequence, steward Claudia Morrow received a written reprimand for her attempt to assist Mathews. Mathews and Morrow have filed grievances alleging retaliation against protected union activity and denial of a right to union representation. 

• Library aide Avaan Gates-Williams wrote and circulated the circulation employees’ statement and, in the process, looked up the telephone numbers of several library employees in the confidential library database. Around the same time, she spoke on a KPFA radio labor show and before the BOLT regarding safety concerns at the library. 

Gates-Williams’ grievance alleges management claimed that she compromised the confidentiality of her coworkers’ library records, despite having their permission to view the records. She says she was involuntarily transferred as a consequence. 

• Library assistant Joseph Alvarez expressed concern about staff reduction, increased workload and unsafe working conditions at a staff meeting, to which a manager allegedly replied, “If you can’t work as hard as I do, maybe you shouldn’t be at the BPL.” Such statements are explicitly prohibited, according to SEIU 535.  

Citing confidentiality rules, Director Griffin said she could not comment on the allegations. 

“I’m obliged legally not to talk about these things,” she said. She did, however, note that the complaints come from only some among the 212 employees and don’t represent the diverse group as a whole. 

“We’re not a monolith,” she said. 

The tensions can be traced back to the library administration’s push for an expensive monitoring system—radio frequency identification—where tags are embedded in books so that patrons can use a machine to check them out themselves. 

The union’s main concern was the $650,000 price tag, said Anes Lewis-Partridge, SEIU 535 senior field representative. 

“The union believes that cuts at the library were used to pay for the RFID,” Lewis-Partridge said. The staffing cuts have led to an increased workload and safety concerns, she added. 

“The union believes its outspoken members are being retaliated against,” she said. 

On Feb. 3, Lewis-Partridge wrote a letter to the mayor and City Council outlining instances of alleged retaliation. Lewis-Partridge said that because the council, in principle, appoints the Board of Trustees (in practice, the board has appointed new members and the council has approved the board’s choices) that the union believes the council can have some influence over the labor conflict at the library.  

But Trustee Chair Susan Kupfer said she thinks the union’s publicizing the grievances is ill-timed. 

“It’s unfortunate coming now that all the different groups in the library are coming together,” she said.  

Kupfer, who has been a trustee for two and a half years, was referring to a new ad hoc committee, consisting of library staff and management, which met Wednesday for the first time. She lauded the work of the committee, which, at its first session, prioritized ten concrete work-related library issues and began to address the first one. 

Kupfer said it was premature to speak publicly about what the issues are that the committee will address. She noted that the board is active on other levels in trying to reduce tensions at the library. 

“All board members are active in the community talking with community members and different groups in the library,” she said. 

Andrea Seagall, library shop steward, summed up the ultimate goal of the library workers: “It’s really about getting our library back, about providing services to the people of Berkeley.” 

BOX: 

Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense will hold an “Informational/Protest Picket” regarding the Radio Frequency Identification Device chips in Berkeley Library materials on Saturday at 6 p.m. at the main library at 2090 Kittredge St. to coincide with the library’s Authors’ Dinner.›

The Transportation Commission’s proposal to charge new developments and businesses a fee to offset the impacts of additional car traffic they cause has raised red flags with Community Economic Development Coordinator Dave Fogarty. 

Fogarty took his concerns to the Planning Commission Wednesday night, warning that the fee could thwart economic growth in the city. 

And while the commission took no action on the fee, they did vote to direct the city staff to present a plan to allow car dealers to relocate along the Eastshore Freeway, singling out sites near the Gilman Street and Ashby Avenue freeway interchanges. 

The commission also voted to set a Feb. 22 session where they and members of the Landmarks Preservation and Transportation commissions can hear a presentation from UC Berkeley officials on plans for massive new developments at and near the school’s Memorial Stadium. 

That session will be at 6 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

They also voted to hold another hearing that same evening—this one just for themselves—to vote on continuing the city’s inclusionary ordinance, a measure a joint city task force is currently working to revise. 

The city had a transportation fee—which is mandated in the general plan—between 1985 and 1997, when it was dropped because of a city attorney’s opinion that the ordinance was in violation of the state Mitigation Fee Act. 

Similar fees are common throughout the state, though the amounts charged vary dramatically. 

While Assistant Public Works Director Peter Hillier had proposed a Transportation Services Fee (TSF) of $4,687 for each new peak-hour car trip generated by a project or business, the Transportation Commission had voted to increase the amount by 25 percent—or $6,084 per trip—on Oct. 20. 

However, the study Fogarty showed the commission Wednesday used Hillier’s original figure in analyzing development impacts. 

Fogarty presented a table showing the impacts of assessments charged at the lower number on six Berkeley projects when added to the costs of other planning and development fees charged to developers. 

For the 176-unit Library Gardens project—which includes 3,000 square feet of retail space—Fogarty estimated that the project would result in 45 new daily car trips, resulting in a TSF assessment of $219,015, added to planning and building fees of $1,296,167 for a total of $1,515,182, or a net increase of 17 percent. 

Fogarty projected a 75 percent increase for the 35-unit condo and retail project at 2700 San Pablo, with a $131,149 TSF added to building and planning fees of $175,144. 

The dramatic difference resulted from the nearby access to multiple transportation modes and services at Library Gardens in downtown Berkeley, which would reduce the need for car trips, he said. 

The largest increase among his examples was for Cafe Trieste at 2500 San Pablo Ave. Because the popular cafe was estimated to account for 10 daily peak hour trips—seven more than the number estimated for the previous retail use—the city would assess a $34,069 TSF on top of the $5,945 in building and planning fees—a 573 percent increase. 

“The methodology is inherently unfair to retail in particular,” Fogarty told the commission. 

The fees would be assessed all new multiple-unit residential projects and new business in buildings as well as changes of business types when tenants change in existing buildings. 

Thus, a restaurant that replaces an existing restaurant wouldn’t be assessed the fee, but a restaurant that replaced a retail store—as in the case of Cafe Trieste—would be charged. 

The fee is heavier for retail uses, especially those that draw a larger number of customers and hire more employees. Developers and business owners can reduce or eliminate the fees by providing mitigations that reduce or eliminate the need for new trips. 

Fogarty said the fees could inhibit new businesses from locating in the city, and thus lead to a reduction in the sales taxes that are the cornerstone of his department’s development plans. 

“Retail sales are leaking into surrounding jurisdictions and we are at risk of generating more trips by our own residents as they shop in surrounding communities if we don’t allow” an ordinance that is friendlier to new tenants, he said. 

City staff presented the commission with a 78-page analysis of how the ordinance might be applied in each of the city’s planning districts—though without an evaluation of how the plan’s policies have actually fulfilled their development goals—which provoked amusement from Commissioner Gene Poschman. 

“If you look at the plans, you want to see what the plans have accomplished in the years they’ve been active, and if nothing has been done, how can we say the Transportation Services Fee will hurt? I’m very dubious. It makes very little sense unless we know what the plans have actually done.” 

Commissioner Helen Burke agreed, adding that she would also like to see how the fees have affected development in other cities. 

David Stoloff said he thought the city ought to considering exempting retail from the fee, and other said they thought more emphasis should be directed toward looking how businesses might not generate new traffic as much as shift it away from another competitor. 

Poschman said he’d wait until further discussion at the next commission meeting, and Chair Harry Pollack advised, “Let’s take it one step at a time.” 

The commission did vote a qualified endorsement of planning staff’s recommendation that car dealers be allowed to relocate near the freeway, a move endorsed by Mayor Tom Bates. 

The commission voted unanimously to direct staff to prepare an analysis of making zoning and plan changes to allow dealers to relocate to a manufacturing zone area near the Gilman Street interchange, and to an area zoned for manufacturing and light industrial uses south of the Ashby Avenue interchange. 

Hearings set 

The Feb. 22 hearing for UC Berkeley’s presentation on the Southeast Campus Integrated Plan will feature a packed meeting room, with as many as 27 commissioners as well as interested members of the public. The program will begin with a brief presentation by the university, followed by questions from the commissioners and, finally, by comments from the public—all scheduled to end by 7:30 p.m. 

The commission also voted to hold a March 8 hearing on a revision of the traffic analysis for the Draft Environmental Impact Report on the proposed new Berkeley Bowl in West Berkeley. The original document failed to looked at the store’s impacts on weekend traffic, which is the subject of the new report. 

Public comments will be limited to the traffic aspects of the report.?

The two-year-long labor dispute at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center hospitals appears at an end, with both sides announcing a settlement Thursday. 

Union members have scheduled a ratification vote for Tuesday. 

In a statement issued Tuesday to hospital staff, Alta Bates Summit CEO Warren Kirk said the new accord includes a wage increase of four percent, followed by another two percent in May 2007, followed by three percent more in November of that year. 

Those raises are on top of an increase previously awarded in August 2004 and another a year later, Kirk said. 

Union members will also receive another $1,000 apiece on ratification of the new contract, which expires on June 30, 2008.  

The last contract between the 1300 members of SEIU United Healthcare West and the hospitals expired in April 2004. 

The union represents licensed vocational nurses and other employees at the hospitals. 

During the course of the protracted negotiations, union employees staged a walkout and both sides filed unfair practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board. 

The union said the contract matched an agreement signed following a nine-week strike at San Francisco’s California Pacific Medical Center. That facility, like Alta Bates Summit, is part of Sacramento-based Sutter Health, which has hospitals and clinics throughout North California. 

“Patients are the real winners of this tentative agreement,” said union President Sal Roselli. “They will now be served by caregivers who have a real voice in staffing and access to a training and upgrade fund.” 

“Once again, we have demonstrated that when two sides want to reach an agreement, it can be done,” said Kirk. “We were able to negotiate a contract that addressed issues important to the union and the medical center.” 

The new agreement also provides for third party arbitration of staffing disputes. ›

Supporters filled the more than 200 seats in the City Council Chambers Tuesday evening for the annual State of the City address, applauding Mayor Tom Bates as he touted accomplishments over his three years in office and addressed the challenges of the coming year.  

These measures were put in place despite a lack of support on the state and federal level, the mayor said. 

“The state has eliminated nearly all funding for city infrastructure, cut funding for our health department and cut the safety net,” he noted. “Despite these challenges, it is important to acknowledge that we’ve accomplished a lot this past year.” 

Bates lauded his child and youth projects through which young people participate in after-school tutoring and sports. And he said children have gained access on their school sites to a public health nurse and mental health services as a result of endeavors he has supported. 

His efforts, the mayor told the crowd, have resulted in a balanced budget and a more civil City Council. 

Bates praised the agreement through which UC Berkeley development downtown must be planned with the city and through which the city will eventually get $22.3 million in payments over the 15-year period of the plan. 

“We did not solve everything, by any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “But we hope it has turned the corner on a very difficult and complex relationship.” 

He spoke of his efforts to address homelessness, emphasizing the importance of local projects. 

“I believe that what we do in this city will make a difference,” he said, pointing to the development of new housing for low-income people and efforts being made to house foster-care youth after they turn 18. 

He also listed his environment-friendly enterprises, including the city’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the conversion of the city’s vehicle fleet to biodiesel (vegetable oil) fuel and the new playing fields to be built on a little-used parking lot at Golden Gate Fields. 

Over the last year, many infrastructure needs were addressed, Bates said. The city repaired 100,000 square feet of sidewalks and 10 miles of streets, patched 2,300 potholes and repaired 58,000 feet of sewers. “But this is a city with an aging infrastructure and every year our list of needed repairs grows longer,” the mayor said. 

Bates also spoke to the future, noting that his staff was still working on a “sunshine ordinance”—rules that help citizens gain access to government—that would be ready by spring or summer. He also promised to curb a rise in property crime in South Berkeley. 

He pinpointed six specific areas that he would prioritize over the next year: 

• Supporting youth: improving city-school coordination to expand after school and summer programs. 

• Environmental leadership: making Berkeley the first “zero greenhouse gas” city in the country. 

• Ending chronic homelessness: addressing the challenge of homeless youth by linking homeless youth with services they need to gain permanent, supportive housing. Bates said he believes “homelessness is not a problem to be managed but rather a problem to be solved.” 

• Investing in infrastructure: a long-term approach is needed to adequately address the city’s need to protect and rebuild the city’s aging infrastructure. 

• Preparing for disaster: increasing the city’s investment in community outreach and training programs. 

• Sustainable economy: building an economy that focuses on growing the green business sector, neighborhood business districts and cultural arts. 

Natalie Leimkuhler, a co-founder of YEAH!, Youth Emergency Assistance Hostel, was in the audience listening to Bates, who had cited YEAH!’s work in his speech. 

“I think he’s starting to get the message,” she said, noting the efforts her organization had made to gain council support for the project. 

Calling the mayor’s speech “thorough” and “comprehensive,” Councilmember Max Anderson said people need to know about the city’s efforts, particularly in promoting green businesses and creating social safety nets. “It’s easy not to see,” he said. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington was more critical, admonishing the mayor for not prioritizing low-income housing, public safety and traffic calming measures when addressing future plans. 

Worthington, however, applauded the mayor for admitting he was mistaken in not including the community in the planning process for developing the Ashby BART station and promising that the citizens would be included. 

Demonstrators protested outside the Maudelle Shirek Building/Old City Hall during the speech, demanding a role in developing the project.  

Bates will address the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce on the State of the City Feb. 16, 11:30 a.m. at a luncheon at the Doubletree Hotel. Entry is $30 for members, $50 for nonmembers. A question and answer session will follow the speech, emphasizing, according to the chamber website, the possibility that Bates will introduce new tax measures during his re-election campaign.›

Nevada County Sheriff’s investigators are seeking child molestation charges against a Berkeley firefighter already jailed on charges of possession of child pornography in his locker and a city-owned computer. 

Luis Ponce, 47, had been arrested at his Grass Valley home on Jan. 26 on charges stemming from a Berkeley Police kiddie porn investigation. 

“We have evidence that he has molested more than one child in his home” in Nevada County, said Sheriff’s Lt. Ron Smith Thursday afternoon. 

Smith said his office had just presented the Nevada County District Attorney’s office with a request “asking that several (molestation) counts be filed,” as well as bail in excess of $1 million. 

“We also submitted evidence that charges of possession of pornography would be in order,” Smith said. 

Ponce is now being held at the Alameda County Jail in Santa Rita on $1 million bail on 57 charges of possession of child pornography, after a Berkeley Police investigation turned up more than 30,000 images on his computer and in an unlocked city locker. 

His locker also contained dozens of pairs of girls’ underwear, reported Alameda County prosecutor John Creighton.  

Ponce, who is married, cared for foster children in his Nevada County home, said Smith. It was there that the alleged molestations occurred. 

Victims were of both sexes, and none had reached the age of puberty, Smith said, adding that investigators had been able to identify some of the victims. 

None of the identified victims comes from the Berkeley area, he said. 

“This is the first case of its kind we have had,” Smith said. The officer also said that Ponce recorded instances of his molestation. 

Nevada County investigators also seized a computer from Ponce’s home when they acted on a warrant obtained by Berkeley officers. That computer is currently in the custody of Berkeley police. 

Berkeley officers were alerted to the case after another fire department employee discovered evidence of child pornography on a department computer. 

A subsequent investigation led by Detective Angela Hawk was able to link Ponce, a 17-year veteran of the department, to the images. The search and arrest followed.

As it nears its deadline for recommending a new creeks ordinance to the City Council, a citizen task force remains deeply divided, Chair Helen Burke told the Planning Commission Wednesday night. 

Burke, who represents the commission on the task force, said the task force is split between property owners and environmentalist creek protection advocates. 

“People have very strongly held views,” Burke said. 

“Will the task force try to come to a single recommendation?” asked Commissioner David Stoloff. 

“Given the split, it would be very difficult,” said Burke. 

Jordan Harrison, the Planning Department staffer assigned to the commission, and Deputy Planning Director Wendy Cosin presented the commission with four possible alternatives. 

“The good news is that you don’t need to pick any of these four,” said Cosin, noting that the commission has the power to use the variants—plus a fifth that creeks advocates are submitting—to shape their own version. 

One of the thorniest issues the task force faces is regulating the miles of city creeks that flow underground through long-buried culverts. Many property owners weren’t aware of the buried creeks when they brought their homes and businesses, and the task force is faced with a May 1 City Council deadline. If the task force is unable to adopt recommendations by then, the existing ban on building within 30 feet of a buried creek would be dropped. 

Creeks advocates want to disinter as many buried waterways as possible, arguing that public policy should favor restoration of a natural system that plays a major role in cleansing water supplies of pollutants while maintaining natural ecosystems. 

But ecosystems come into conflict with property rights, and the anxieties of owners who fear regulations that would reduce the value of their property and interfere with their rights to enjoy it. 

The task force will hold a hearing next Wednesday to bring the public up to date on the progress of the ordinance proposals. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

A joint hearing of the task force and the Planning Commission will be held at the same time and location on March 22. 

At that point, it’s up to the commission and city staff to prepare a draft ordinance for the council. Notice of the meetings and copies of a city staff report on the ordinance proposals are available at the city’s website, www.ci.berkeley.ca.us. 

The proposed regulations would affect about 1,900 parcels in the city, said Associate Planner Erin Dando. 

“The consensus is that culverts should be treated differently than open creeks,” said Dando, and that any “daylighting” of culverted creeks on private property would be at the volition of the landowner. 

All the proposals would allow owners to rebuild existing homes built within 30 feet of a creek or culvert in the event of disaster—though Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman cautioned that rebuilding should be restricted to the existing structure size, rather than merely limiting it to the same ground floor area, an option he said could lead to McMansions. 

All versions would also allow rebuilding in the event a home had to be rebuilt because of dry rot or other problems, said Cosin. That would resolve a major flaw with the current ordinance. 

One central issue that remains to be determined is the degree of regulatory review required for repair of existing structures or construction of new ones on land that would be affected by the ordinance. 

The possibilities range from: 

• An over-the-counter Administrative Use Permit, which carries a $1,374 fee and requires about three months to process; 

• A Use Permit, which requires a public hearing and approval by the Zoning Adjustments Board ZAB, a minimum fee of $5,165 and at least six months to process, or 

• A zoning variance, which requires a public hearing, costs a minimum of $5,542 and requires at least six months to process and is allowed only if the project is the only way to make development on the property economically feasible. 

Under the current ordinance, no new roofed construction is allowed within 30 feet of the center of a creek or culvert, although additions can be made to a single-floor home providing ZAB concurs and issues specific findings. 

The four alternatives vary in the distances required for new development from a creek or culvert, the degree of permission required, the types of development allowed and the limitations placed on construction of decks and other unroofed structures, driveways and other impermeably surfaced structures.  

“On what basis are we going to make the recommendations to the city council?” asked commission Chair Harry Pollack. “I want to see as much basis for the task force’s recommendations as we can, because we would like to make an informed decision.”

A recently-released chancellor’s report on the Peralta Community College District Office of International Affairs concludes that the controversial office is not spending “lavishly” on foreign meals, accommodations, and travel, giving a sharp rebuke to charges made by Peralta Trustee Marcie Hodge. 

At one point, the report indirectly criticizes Hodge for failing to convert expenditure figures from foreign currency to U.S. dollars, making the expenditures seem vastly larger than they actually were. 

The report, compiled by Vice Chancellor Margaret Haig and scheduled to be submitted to trustees by Chancellor Elihu Harris at the trustees’ next meeting, concludes that “many facts” concerning the International Affairs Office “have been misconstrued and may have caused a negative impact either on the office or the staff involved.” 

The next trustee meeting will be held on Tuesday. 

A spokesperson for the chancellor’s office said that the report contains no recommendations, and is only intended as an information item for trustees, noting, “If there are to be any policy changes, they will come at a future date.” 

The report notes that the International Affairs travel budget has plummeted from a high of $79,000 in 2000-01 to $17,000 in 2004-05. The report also says that the department generated $2.6 million in revenue for the district last year. 

But Trustee Hodge disputes those figures, saying that district officials have still not demonstrated that the students paying “non-resident fees” to the district each year are actually being recruited by the International Affairs Office, one of her original complaints. 

“It would seem that the office could benefit from saying which students they have recruited from where, but that information has not yet been provided,” Hodge said in a telephone interview. “Right now, they’re just throwing around numbers. I’m still not satisfied. A lot of questions remain.” 

The Peralta Office of International Affairs is responsible for recruiting foreign students to the four-college district. Charges of improper foreign travel by faculty and staff through the office led to an Alameda County Grand Jury investigation of the office several years ago, leading indirectly to the firing of former Chancellor Ronald Temple. Harris re-placed Temple in late 2002. 

The Chancellor’s report grew out of a stormy Sept. 13 trustees meeting in which Hodge charged that Jacob Ng, the International Affairs Office Director, “has racked up thousands of dollars traveling around the world and nobody can tell me how many students have been recruited.” 

After complaining that Ng had not shown up at the September meeting as promised, Hodge asked “is there some kind of cover-up or something illegal going on?” 

That led to a virtual shouting match between Hodge and then-Trustee President Bill Riley when Riley tried to caution her against making personal attacks against a district employee. Trustees later voted to censure Hodge in part because of her actions at that September meeting. 

Criticisms of the International Affairs Office were also voiced at the meeting by Trustees Bill Withrow and Cy Gulassa, and Trustee Board President Linda Handy has said that trustee concerns about the department preceded Hodge’s attack. 

“We were already moving forward to make changes,” Handy said in an earlier interview. 

Last October, Hodge sent out a four-page mass mailing criticizing the International Affairs Office to constituents both in her own Area 2 trustee district as well as in the adjoining Oakland City Council 6th District, where she is contemplating a run against incumbent City Councilmember Desley Brooks. 

Last week, Hodge sent out a second brochure to voters in the two districts, showing a photo of a beach in Jamaica and the auditorium at Oakland’s Castlemont High School and asking, “Should the Peralta Community College District be recruiting students here? [in Jamaica] . . . or here [at Castlemont]?” 

In the brochure, Hodge writes, “I wish I could report to you that the lavish travel and wasteful spending in our community college district has come to an end. Unfortunately, it continues. . . . In recent months, college district staff have traveled to Jamaica, Brunei, Beijing, Singapore and Malaysia. We still have no system for verifying whether or not this expensive travel has resulted in the recruitment of one foreign student. I’m appalled at this ongoing waste and lack of accountability.” 

But the chancellor’s report noted that Hodge’s previous charges contained “inaccuracies that need to be addressed.” 

“Publicly distributed flyers quoted hotel and travel expenditures falsely as being in U.S. dollars,” the report said. “The amount on the invoice was actually in Chinese and Malaysian currencies. For instance, what was quoted as $316.20 Ringgit was actually $83 US. Another example was 300 Yuan, which were quoted in dollars, but actually equal $36 US.” 

The Chancellor’s report added that Hodge’s published allegations of six separate “lavish travel and wasteful spending” allegations came to an “alleged total” of $2,426.20, while the actual amount in U.S. dollars was $532. 

In her telephone interview following release of the report, Hodge said that she believes that the district “is beginning to put systems of accountability in place as a result of my criticism and the criticisms of other trustees. Hopefully, Vice Chancellor Haig will follow up this report with program reforms.›

Allegations last quoted in a Berkeley Daily Planet story have now surfaced in an employment termination lawsuit filed against the Peralta Community College District by a former president of Vista College (now Berkeley City College). 

Reporter Matthew Artz, who left the Daily Planet last year, has been subpoenaed to give a deposition concerning a 2004 Daily Planet article he wrote reporting on charges by former Vista President John Garmon that he was ousted from his job by a “black conspiracy.” 

Garmon’s lawsuit charges that the Peralta District violated his civil and employment procedural rights when it failed to rehire him as Vista president, as well as when it turned him down for the job of Peralta District Chancellor. The Chancellor’s job later went to Elihu Harris. 

In addition to the Peralta District itself, Garmon’s lawsuit also names Berkeley City Councilmember Darryl Moore as a defendant. 

In the article, Artz said that that Garmon, who is white, charged in a June, 2004 letter to Peralta Trustees that the five African-American members of the seven-member board and Chancellor Harris, who is also African-American, based their decision not to renew Garmon’s contract “on racial grounds and voted as a black majority for race-based reasons.” 

Artz quoted Berkeley Councilmember Darryl Moore, then a Peralta Trustee, as saying in response, “The vote had nothing to do with John’s race and everything to do with his performance.” Moore criticized Garmon for failure to properly fundraise for Vista’s new downtown Berkeley campus and for failure to build ties to the community for Vista’s 30th anniversary celebration. 

In a 2004 declaration in support of his lawsuit, Garmon said that he was one of four Peralta College presidents given a one-year contract in June, 2003. 

“I am the sole president who did not get a contract renewal,” Garmon declared. “I am the only Caucasian president. The other three presidents are two African-Americans and one Latino.” 

Garmon added that “before my termination from my contract as president . . . I applied for the Chancellor’s position having stated my position that the Peralta Community College District has a pattern of hiring only African-Americans to not only the president of the Board of Directors but to board members as well. At the time I applied for the chancellor’s position, I applied because the selection process seemed inherently unfair. I had noted a pattern of selecting African-American candidates for positions, including the chancellor’s position, without a search . . .” 

The Peralta District has denied the allegations in Garmon’s complaint.›

The developers of a massive housing project that will feature a Trader’s Joe store at 1885 University Ave. will meet with neighbors Monday. 

Hudson McDonald LLC plans a five-story, 55-foot-tall project at the northwest corner of University and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, raising alarms from nearby residential neighbors. 

The site is currently occupied by a strip mall anchored by Kragen Auto Parts. The project plan features 156 apartments over a ground floor Trader Joe’s market. 

Neighbors have told the Zoning Adjustments Board that they are worried that the project will throw nearby homes into to shadow and create chronic traffic and parking problems. 

The meeting will run form 7–8:30 p.m. at the Lutheran Church of the Cross, 1744 University Ave. 

The developers are expected to take the project to the Zoning Adjustments Board for approvals in March. 

PlanBerkeley.org, an organization that focuses on development along the University and San Pablo avenue corridors, has posted project plans, drawings and a history of the project on its website. To view them, click on the “Projects” button and then on the address.

False alarm, good drill 

A fire alarm and a report of smoke and flames billowing from a fourth-floor residence at Harriet Tubman Apartments drew out every piece of firefighting equipment in the city Tuesday night. 

Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth said that the call came into the department at 6:36 p.m., and because the building is six stories and occupied by senior citizens, the department ordered what is called a “high-rise response.” 

Orth said that an order was issued to evacuate the apartments in the 2870 Adeline St. building because of the age of the tenants, although some were sheltered in place. 

But a search of the building revealed no evidence of fire beyond a lingering smell of burnt food. 

Orth said he suspects a tenant burned dinner, and then was too embarrassed by the response to share the news with firefighters. 

“In the end, it was a good drill,” Orth said. 

At the peak of the action, there were six fire engines and two trucks at the scene, as well as one or two of the city’s three ambulances. 

This Friday and Saturday, the Berkeley High School drama department will be performing Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues. 

It is about the celebration of female sexuality through its many complexities and mysteries. A production of The Vagina Monologues is put on once a year to celebrate “V-Day,” a day created by Ensler to raise vagina awareness. Groups which perform the play during “V-season” don’t have to pay for the rights. 

The Berkeley High production of The Vagina Monologues is produced solely by students who are interested in drama. Under the direction of senior Amy Wright, the students have a mission: to empower women. 

“We’re trying to stop some bad things that go on today and raise awareness,” remarked Joia Devita, 16, a junior. “There are some terrible things going on like genital mutilation ... and there are battered women. Some members of the cast 

are actively involved in fighting for feminism and rights for lesbians.” 

Over the years, there has been a growing number of interested Berkeley High students wanting to participate in this production. 

“There was an enormous amount of girls,” said Devita. “We’ve been there to help each other and give each other feedback.” 

Devita also did some self-reflection, noting that this experience made her feel more comfortable talking about vaginas. 

“It’s a heavy show for a lot of people,” she said. “It may be a hard subject to talk about. But we had a group bonding session and we all opened up. Everyone was totally cool about it. It was really good to make everyone feel comfortable. I used to be very uncomfortable about this subject. I never wanted to talk about it. So much has been brought to my attention about things that go on around the world.” 

The Vagina Monologues is a seasonal play. For the last four or five years, students have been participating in this play. Money is usually short and they have a couple of sponsors, including Luna Bar. In addition to their sponsors, they also did some fundraising. 

“We had bake sales to raise money,” said Berkeley High sophomore Hannah Michahelles. “We are also going to be doing teach-ins in all the classrooms to spread knowledge about rape, genital mutilation, and respect.” 

In the play Michahelles plays a woman who complains about the various indignities her vagina is put through in life. “In the monologue, I’m basically just pretty pissed,” she said. “It’s one of the funnier monologues.” 

The Vagina Monologues will be performed at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater on the Berkeley High School campus at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $5 for students with ID and $10 for general admission. All proceeds will benefit organizations that help stop violence against women. 

Rio Bauce and Jacob Horn are sophomores at Berkeley High School. They 

can be reached at baucer@gmail.com or jnmhorn@comcast.net.

Since the beginning of time, people have been dispersed, by force or mutual consent, far from their homes. Through famine, political unrest, acts of nature and searches for a better life, many miles now separate groups from their ancestral habitations. With the belief that human life began in Africa, this continent is at the heart of the human spirit and the Museum of the African Diaspora (MOAD) has opened in San Francisco to give voice to this spirit. 

While society often emphasizes the differences that separate us, MOAD celebrates our connectedness, as people and to the African Diaspora. Through art, culture and technology the museum is a center for the stories and contributions of people of African descent. Using multiple forms of media in exhibits and theater presentations, and contemporary artistic statements, four universal themes are explored: Origins, Movement, Adaptation and Transformation. 

A full sensual experience greeted me on a recent visit. The sound of African drums a welcome complement to the illuminating exhibits and arresting artwork. The museum’s signature statement is viewed in its entirety from outside the striking three-story full glass atrium facing Mission Street. The haunting image of a young girl stares soulfully past floating staircases. Once inside the full beauty and significance of this portrait becomes evident. 

Composed of over two thousand individual images contributed from around the world, the two-story photomosaic, more than any other exhibit, conveys the concept of the universal connectedness of humanity, faces and scenes together creating the face of a young girl from Ghana. For me, this alone would have made my visit worthwhile. 

Not surprisingly, I continued to be impressed and moved touring the permanent exhibits on the second floor. In the Celebration Circle, low ceilinged, carpeted and benched for seating, I watched a multimedia video presentation. The images and voices echoed their mosaic of memories—times filled with song and laughter, being thankful, surrounded by family and friends, sharing food, heralding birth, marriage and death. Personal statements on Celebration and Africa, amid joyful images and music. 

The theme of adornment is arrestingly displayed with three stylized human figures, dressed in a collage of bold patterns and colors. Atop each one video screens morph through an eclectic collection of headshots altering hairstyles, jewelry and body art and how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us contributing to our sense of self. 

Music is part of the human experience, following people around the world. The story of Africa’s influence on music could fill volumes. Here touch screens allow the viewer to move through and listen to selections from traditional, jazz, gospel, blues, and across to the Caribbean and Latin America. So much of this music feels so familiar, ingrained in our souls. 

Last, but no less significant, is the exhibit focusing on the African influence on food and its role in the community. From the simple rice, beans, yams and gumbo, through the addition of greens, coffee and the sharing of food, colorful images and text tell the story. 

Other stories serve as reminders in the Slavery Passage Gallery. Within this small, dimly lit theater, while tinted patterns rotate like a slowly moving kaleidoscope, we travel over three centuries of time. Within a green forest-like setting, I listened to a 103-year old woman relate the day of her wedding, her wedding ring carved from a red button, jumping backwards over a broom to see who would be the “ boss”. Though the day was memorable, her husband could only stay one night, needing to return to his own plantation; this would be the pattern of their lives. When the colors changed to purple and yellow, the voice became that of a young man horrified of his plight and the conditions aboard a slave ship, where some were flogged for attempting to jump overboard, preferring death to slavery. 

Next door the Freedom Theater offers three presentations highlighting the Haitian Revolution, the American Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Apartheid Movement. On a wall-size screen, video and sound, as well as interactive devices present these historical events and the people who propelled them. 

Witness to the origin of life, on loan from the British Museum, is the exhibit “Made In Africa.” Hard to fathom, man-made objects nearly two million years old from Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge are inspiring. A simple hand axe chipped from quartz with violet amethyst banding resembles a work of art. A good mind-stretching activity is to consider the hands creating these tools as well as their survival through time. 

Artists create work under various trends and schools of art, carrying the baggage of their lives, their identity and their past. “Linkages and Themes” exhibits the work of 39 artists, in paintings, photographs, video and mixed media, forging this link. Isaac Julien’s night shot of a dapper young man on a bench, David Hammons’ African-American flag in colors of green, red and black, iona rozeal brown’s traditional Japanese prints transformed with brown skin and dreadlocks and Hew Locke’s afghan and pink wall sculpture of the Queen Mother are all strong personal and artistic statements. 

Nearby, “Dispersed: African Legacy/New World Reality” showcases three installations expressing current realities in view of the artists’ origins. Mildred Howard’s “Safe House” teases our concept of a loving home with her construction using butter knives, instruments of abuse. Brazilian Marepe uses monks’ vestments atop wood cots interspersed with metal catch basins symbolizing good intentions gone wrong in the Franciscans’ treatment of the Congolese. 

At the museum store artifacts from Africa and museum memorabilia serve as reminders of the African Diaspora. T-shirts, mugs and bookmarks carry MOAD’s iconic portrait in a sepia hue. Rwandan baskets, carved animal napkin rings, beaded jewelry by the Maaai women of Kenya and delicate flowered ceramic bowls from South Africa share space with music CDs, cookbooks, note cards and scarves. 

The Museum of the African Diaspora evokes a true sense of the connectedness of man. The images of the photomosaic, the Celebration voices sharing their stories and the haunting beat of African drums are catalysts for positive thought and serve as reminders of the basics, the elements that provide meaning to our lives. Music, food, personal expression, our histories—elements that all peoples throughout the world share—are elements that create one universal voice. 

The Museum of the African Diaspora is located at 685 Mission St., San Francisco, (at Third Street), two blocks from the Montgomery Street BART station. For more information call (415) 358-7200, or see www.moadsf.org. Open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursdays; noon-5p.m. Sundays. Adults, $8; seniors/students, $5; children 12 and under, free. Inaugural exhibits through March 12.  

e

Some stories are impossible to write as an objective reporter. 

On Saturday afternoon, South Berkeley historian Donna Graves spoke to an assembled crowd at the Frances Albrier Community Center on the grounds of San Pablo Park about the life history of the Berkeley pioneer African-American woman for whom the center was named. 

The meeting was part of a Berkeley-sponsored Black History Month celebration both to honor the civil rights work of Albrier as well as to gather personal histories of the San Pablo Park/Longfellow School neighborhood that was once the center of Berkeley’s ethnic and racial minority population. The program was co-sponsored by the City of Berkeley Civic Arts Commission, the Frances Albrier Community Center, the San Pablo Neighborhood Council, the Berkeley Historical Society, and the West Berkeley Foundation, and included the presentation of a portrait of the late Albrier to the City of Berkeley by her children to be placed at the center. 

At one point in her presentation on Saturday, Graves related how Albrier had initiated a 1940 “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” civil rights campaign, putting community pressure on a Sacramento Street and Ashby Avenue grocery store to hire a black clerk. 

I realized that I had heard the same story many times in my life, but from a slightly different angle. My late mother, Maybelle Reid Allen, was the clerk hired at the store as a result of Albrier’s campaign. 

My mother, who grew up in South Berkeley in the ’20s and ’30s of the last century, often told me how she spent much of her childhood and teenage years at San Pablo Park, a tomboy who played football and baseball and tennis on the park’s courts and fields. As a 16-year-old, she met my father at the park, who had come there from his East Oakland home on a Sunday afternoon because San Pablo Park gained the reputation around the East Bay in the 1930s as a social gathering place for African-Americans. 

The park’s tennis courts were among the few places in the Bay Area where African-Americans could play competitive tennis in the 1930s. One of those who competed in tennis competitions in those years—Lionel Wilson—later became the first African-American mayor of Oakland. 

In addition, the San Pablo Park baseball diamond—now the home of the Berkeley High men’s baseball team—became a regular stop for barnstorming teams of the Negro Leagues. 

Richmond resident Betty Reid Soskin—one of my cousins on my father’s side, and a contemporary of my mother and father—described at Saturday’s gathering how she came out to San Pablo Park from East Oakland to the weekend Negro League baseball games with her father, who made pralines—a Louisiana candy—to sell to spectators. 

During those Sunday visits, Soskin said she got to see such famous teams as the Birmingham Black Barons—with whom legendary pitcher Satchel Paige began his professional career—play the California Eagles, an African-American team made up of local players. One of the Eagles players was Mel Reid, a star Berkeley High athlete of the 1930s, whom she met at San Pablo Park and later married. 

But while San Pablo Park was a social gathering place for African-Americans during the ‘20s and ‘30s, drawing black visitors from as far away as San Jose to the south and Vallejo to the north, it was also a center of diversity and multicultural life in an era long before those terms became popular. 

Participants at Saturday’s gathering related that while restrictive real estate covenants kept Asians and African-Americans from renting or purchasing homes in other parts of Berkeley during the early 20th century, the area around San Pablo Park was open to minorities. The result was a neighborhood mix where whites, Asians, and African-Americans grew up with each other, played together, and went to school together at nearby Longfellow. 

A 1938-era Longfellow School Holiday Card presented by historian Graves during a slideshow presentation at Saturday’s event illustrated the diversity of that school, showing a gathering of students of several races.  

“South Berkeley in the 1930s was the area that gained Berkeley its reputation as a place of tolerance for people with diverse backgrounds,” Soskin said. “That reputation carried over into the 60’s, when people from other locations heard of Berkeley’s reputation for diversity, came here, and made it a self-fulfilling prophecy.” 

One San Pablo Park veteran—UC Berkeley Phi Beta Kappa Elizabeth Gee—related how the South Berkeley community in the 20’s and 30’s was a racial oasis in a desert of discrimination. Gee related how her mother, a Chinese-American, was forced by the U.S. government to give up her United States citizenship when she married Gee’s father, a Chinese national. Gee later had to leave California to marry her own husband—who was white—because California law through World War II prevented marriage between the races—identical to the laws of the Jim Crow segregated South at the time. 

But Gee said none of that mattered in South Berkeley, and particularly at San Pablo Park. 

“I learned to play tennis here,” she said. “So did my brother, at the time when he wasn’t permitted to play at the Berkeley Tennis Club.” 

Another photo presented by Graves during her slide show pictured a young Gee—along with my mother, one of my aunts, and another of my cousins and two other African-American girls—in dance costumes preparing for a San Pablo Park performance. 

Frances Albrier’s son, William Jackson, related how he often ate at the homes of Japanese-American neighbors in the South Berkeley area, learning Japanese customs and language that served him well when visited Japan while working on a merchant ship that ran the trade route between the two countries in the years preceding World War II. 

When many of these South Berkeley Japanese-American neighbors were sent to Utah internment camps during World War II, Albrier’s daughter, Anita Black, told how many of them entrusted their property deeds to Albrier for the duration of the war to keep them from being seized by the government. 

White South Berkeley also residents related how growing up in a diverse neighborhood affected their lives and their racial outlook. Ken Berndt, who appears on the Longfellow Holiday Card, told of bragging to friends that he played with the black California Eagles team, “but they really only let me shag balls.” 

And Graves related the story of South Berkeley’s most famous white native, Johnny Valliotis, whose Greek-American parents owned a grocery store in the San Pablo Park area. Valliotis, an accomplished musician, spent his childhood hanging out with black South Berkeley friends, later changing his name to Johnny Otis and his public identity to African-American, often telling interviewers that he identified more with black than with white. 

In the 1950s, Otis became one of the pioneers of the rock’n’roll and rhythm & blues movement, playing to segregated, all-black audiences around the country with an all-black band, and helped write the original lyrics that later became Elvis Presley’s signature tune, “Hound Dog.” 

Graves said Saturday’s event originally came out of a plan to place a historical tribute plaque to Albrier in front of the Albrier Center. 

“I’m concerned that so many young people come to the center and don’t know who it’s named after, and what she accomplished for the community,” Graves said. “In doing research about Mrs. Albrier, I came to understand the tremendous richness that was present in the surrounding neighborhood during the time she was active.” 

Graves said that Saturday’s event was designed to bring out residents of the San Pablo Park neighborhood during the ‘20s, ‘30s, and the World War II years and videotape their presentations for the Berkeley Historical Society. 

“But there’s presently no money available to do decent, historical videotapes of these people,” she said. “They are all getting older, and we need to get them formally interviewed so that we can preserve their histories and their memories. A lot of Berkeley’s history will be lost, if we don’t hurry.” 

Graves said she is hoping that the City of Berkeley will make individual videotape histories a part of the city’s project for the San Pablo Centennial celebration, which is coming up next year. She said that City Councilmember Darryl Moore, who represents part of South Berkeley and who spoke at Saturday’s gathering, told her he would present that videotape proposal to the City Council.

Between Mayor Tom Bates’ State of the City address, a motion on the controversial Ashby BART housing project and a hearing on the city’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, Berkeley’s City Council will have its hands full tonight (Tuesday). 

Opponents of the Ashby BART project—a plan backed by Mayor Bates and Councilmember Max Anderson—have scheduled a 6:15 p.m. protest outside the Maudelle Shirek Building (Old City Hall), timed to occur while Bates will be inside giving his annual State of the City address. 

That speech will start at 6 p.m., after the council finishes a 5 p.m. work session featuring a budget update from City Manager Phil Kamlarz. 

In a Monday preview for reporters, Kamlarz said following the 10 percent city workforce reduction, the secret to balancing city budgets in the years ahead would be the elimination of cost of living increases for city workers. 

Contracts with city unions are due to expire over the next two years, starting with the firefighters’ compact in June. 

“We’re starting negotiations this month,” the city manager said. “The generous contracts we have had in place over the last couple of years have been above the median in comparison with surrounding jurisdictions.” 

Plans for the balanced budget in years ahead “would go sideways pretty fast if salary increases are given,” Kamlarz added. 

Meanwhile, because of additional, unplanned revenues mostly from property transfer taxes, the city expects to chalk up a budget surplus in the current two-year budget period, Kamlarz said. 

Another major issue in labor costs has been health insurance, with premiums increasing by 15 percent in the last year, he added.  

Ashby BART 

Councilmember Max Anderson’s resolution calls on the council to reaffirm its commitment to seeking a $120,000 grant from the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to help plan a mixed-use housing and commercial project on the main parking lot of the Ashby BART station. 

Anderson’s resolution calls on the council to reject invoking state transit village legislation—a major sticking point with neighbors, who fear that the project would lead to upzoning and greater density in the surrounding neighborhood. 

The resolution would also reject the use of eminent domain in connection with the project. 

Neighbors have organized significant opposition to the project, in part because of fears of the project’s impact. The original proposal submitted to Caltrans by project consultant Ed Church, consultant to the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation, called for a minimum of 300 housing units on the site. 

Anderson said later that 300 would be a maximum. 

Many of the concerns arose because the council’s vote to approve the funding application came more than a month after it had already been submitted. 

A neighborhood meeting last month drew a turnout estimated at 400, where most speakers spoke in opposition to the project. 

Anderson has scheduled a community meeting of for 10 a.m. Saturday at St. Paul’s AME Church, 2024 Ashby Ave., to answer concerns about the project. 

Landmarks law 

The council is also headed to a showdown over the city’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, pitting the preservationists like the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association and the city’s own Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) against developers and “smart growth” advocates, such as Livable Berkeley. 

The issue for the council to decide is which of two conflicting ordinances to approve—one drafted by the LPC and the other by the Planning Commission—or whether to craft a hybrid of their own, such as a proposal floated by Mayor Bates in December. 

Though tonight’s meeting was initially billed as a public workshop to discuss the ordinance, it is scheduled as a public hearing and listed on the action calendar with the notation to “adopt first reading of one of two ordinance, or a variant thereof ... or, alternatively, provide direction to staff to prepare an alternative ordinance to bring back to council.” 

Developers and other critics of the ordinance charge that landmarking buildings has become a weapon of anti-development forces, and that the law as it now reads leads to extended project delays. 

Supporters of the law generally acknowledge that it’s been used to challenge questionable projects, but say that delays have been largely due to city staff, and not the ordinance. 

Budget additions 

Because of one-time financial windfalls, Kamlarz is recommending that the council earmark $98,302 of general revenue funds to pay for disaster preparedness, hearing aids and the city’s Winter Shelter Program. 

That sum is part of the $1.23 million in additional revenues he expects in the city’s budget for fiscal years 2006-7. 

Of the immediate expenditures, the largest sum—$44,500—would be earmarked for disaster preparedness, with $38,802 budgeted for hearing aids for the Council for the Education of the Infant Deaf program and $15,000 to pay for alternative beds for the homeless after roof leaks forced the closure of the city-funded shelter at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. 

An additional $1.14 million in anticipated surplus funds would be earmarked for a variety of programs, many of them one-time capital improvement expenditures, said Kamlarz. 

The largest share, $300,000, would be allocated to replace street repair funds that had been shifted to cover anticipated overtime costs in the fire department. 

Another $292,6443 would be allocated to capital improvements in the city’s ailing stormwater system, and $200,000 would be added to the traffic calming budget. 

Another $144,000 would be slated to restore shortfall in the city’s Parks Capital Improvement Project, with $126,000 for a new backstop, pathway and picnic area improvements at San Pablo Park and $18,000 for improvements at Dorothy Bolte Park on Spruce Street. 

Kamlarz is asking for two $21,000 “Green Machines” to help clean sidewalks in the Telegraph Avenue and Downtown Areas in response to merchant and neighborhood complaints, and an additional $82,000 for the Community Choice Aggregation, which is a statewide program to encourage green energy, $50,000 for a bike and pedestrian gate to BART and $25,000 for special events funding. 

The extra funds come mostly from property transfer tax revenues, Kamlarz said, funds which can’t be relied on in the long term because of the volatility of the current real estate market and widespread anxieties over a possible bubble in housing prices. 

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Steve Barton, Berkeley’s housing director, said, “It’s probably the most complicated financial structure ever put together for a non-profit development in Berkeley, and quite possibly the most complicated for any Berkeley project.” 

But despite the complications, Barton said construction could start as soon as August on the David Brower Center and Oxford Plaza affordable housing building. 

Proponents say the project, which would replace the city parking lot along Fulton/Oxford Street between Kittredge Street and Allston Way, will become an international showcase. 

The city received word of the latest funding allocation Monday, when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that the city had been awarded a $1.77 million grant and a $4 million loan earmarked for the project. 

The Brower Center, as the whole project is commonly called, involves two developers and an array of funding sources, as well as invisible lines that divide up the property into different parcels for funding purposes. 

Complex project 

The project will look like two buildings. With its greatest length along Allston Way, the David Brower Center will house offices of leading environmental organizations in a structure constructed to the highest green building standards. 

“We have letters of intent for over 50 percent of the office space,” said John Clawson of Equity Community Builders, which will be building the center for the non-profit David Brower Center corporation. 

“We hope to be applying for building permits in April or May,” said Carolyn Bookhart, project manager for Resources for Community Development, which will be building the 96-unit all-affordable housing building that will front along Oxford/Fulton. 

Known as Oxford Plaza, the building will increase Berkeley’s housing stock for low- and very-low income families by about 20 percent, said Barton. 

“It’s the only project of its kind in Berkeley,” said Barton. 

“We have other projects of similar scope,” including an 80-unit senior housing complex nearing completion on University Avenue, he said. “But we really don’t have anything comparable in the way of family housing.” 

Many of the Oxford Plaza units have two and three bedrooms, he said, providing homes for people who work in downtown Berkeley. 

Together, the two structures—plus the underground parking lot that will replace the spaces lost from the city lot that now occupies the site—will cost about $61 million. 

Invisible lines 

But because housing sources that pay for affordable housing don’t pay for creation of offices and retail spaces, the project is transected by invisible lines that reflect funding realities. 

While Oxford Plaza consists of five floors of housing, the ground floor is devoted to retail—a standing policy for projects built in downtown Berkeley. So the ground floor funding is linked to the Brower Center and separate from the sources that will pay for the structure’s housing component. 

Barton said the Brower Center itself is estimated to cost about $21 million, while the commercial ground floor of Oxford Plaza will cost $4 million to $5 million more. The final component, the underground parking lot, adds another $6 million to $7 million, he said. 

Costs of the lot have been assigned to the two projects, with RCD to pay for two-thirds of the costs and the Brower Center for the other third, Barton said. 

One component of the funding is a Brownfields Economic Development Incentive (BEDI) grant, funds awarded by the U.S. HUD to fund projects built on potentially contaminated sites—including former parking lots. 

It was that grant which HUD formally announced Monday, though Barton and Clawson both said last week that preliminary word from Washington had indicated that Berkeley would receive the funds. 

But the grant hasn’t come without controversy. As one condition of the funding, the city also had to pledge to commit $4 million in HUD Section 108 funding to the project, and to secure the funds by pledging an equal amount of the city’s Community Block Grant Development (CBGD) funding as collateral—a move voted down by a two-one vote in a Berkeley Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) subcommittee but approved by the commission itself. 

Critics worried 

Critics—including ousted HAC member and Berkeley Daily Planet Arts Editor Anne Wagley—cautioned that the city had committed its available Housing Trust Fund money to the project to the extent that other projects were precluded for a period of several years. 

City councilmembers also expressed caution when they voted to approve the loan, which puts at risk CBDG moneys used to fund a variety of city programs that benefit lower-income residents. 

“We are putting the funding for the city’s non-profit community groups at risk,” Wagley said. 

Wagley, who served as chair of the city’s Housing Advisory Commission (HAC), was removed from her post by City Councilmember Gordon Wozniak at the end of last June. She had been an outspoken critic of the project. 

“Both buildings will be built on top of a very expensive parking garage,” said Wagley, “and I would have been more supportive had the Brower Center been able to make a substantial contribution to its costs. But it became clear the city’s Housing Trust Fund wasn’t going to be the only contribution,” referring to the BEDI grant and the loan guarantees. 

Wagley said she also objected to tying up the city’s limited housing funds on a single project that was years in development when so many other projects were in need of the money. 

HAC member Jane Coulter says she wonders how the families in the 52 two- and -three bedroom units will get their children to and from school, given the project’s 40 total parking spaces and the lack of schools within walking distance. 

Another critic, current HAC member Marie Bowman, declined to comment, beyond saying that she had “heard a lot of concerns from the community. But it’s not the most positive thing for me as a HAC member to comment.” 

Tax credits and UC 

New Market Tax Credits will be used to help fund the Brower Center and ground floor commercial space at Oxford Plaza. 

“They are critical, because the cost of building new office space for environmental groups wouldn’t be feasible without them,” Barton said. “Otherwise, they would have to charge extremely high market rates, rates that would be at the high end of the market or above.” 

The program is a creation of the Clinton era, and is designed to fund development in low-income census tracks by giving major tax credits to investors. Downtown Berkeley qualifies for the program mainly because of the large number of students who live in the area. 

Unlike most of the housing recently built in downtown Berkeley, the majority of tenants won’t be single UC students, Barton said, because students receiving parental support aren’t eligible for the all-affordable apartments. However, students who are genuinely needy would be eligible for the studio apartments, and low-income married students and those with low incomes and families would be eligible for the larger units. 

There would be no units rented to multiple singles, however. 

And should the David Brower Center find itself without enough tenants to occupy its office space, there are no restrictions barring lease to the University of California, a point Barton acknowledged at the Jan. 24 City Council meeting. 

Deadlines near 

As deadlines approach, officials at RCD and the Brower Center are finishing the final funding documents and agreements and architects are finishing off the last details of their plans. 

“We hope to go to the city council in March with a development and disposition agreement,” said RCD Executive Director Dan Sawislak. “We’re still negotiating terms of the agreement,” which will be binding on the city and the joint development entity formed by RCD and the Brower Center. 

“The financing is coming together very well,” said Clawson. “We hope to be submitting building permits in June, and our objective to is to start construction in late summer or early fall.” 

Bookhart said RCD hopes to submit applications for its building permits in April or May. 

“Ideally, with financing secured by August for all components, we would start clearing and shoring” for the underground lot “in late August or early September,” said Roger Asterino, the city’s Community Development Project Coordinator. 

Those dates are critical because of the rainy season, which can start in late October or November. 

“Ideally, construction would be complete in late 2007 or early 2008, and they could then begin marketing, with full leases by May, 2008,” he said. 

“It could go another year,” added Barton.r

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California is demanding information from the U.S. military about a report of spying on UC students who have protested the Iraq war. 

The organization said it will wait one more week for the requested information to be delivered before deciding to file an administrative appeal or take other legal action about the report of widespread military spying on American anti-Iraq War demonstrations, including those by students at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. 

The ACLU filed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last Wednesday with the Pentagon, the three armed services, the Department of Defense, and the Defense Intelligence Agency specifically on behalf of UC Santa Cruz Students Against the War and UC Berkeley student members of the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition. The request seeks documents related to possible Pentagon monitoring of the groups’ anti-war activities. 

“We’ve asked that the Pentagon and other agencies to handle this with expedited processing, and they have to give us an answer back within 10 days on whether or not they will comply,” said Mark Schlosberg, ACLU of Northern California police practices policy director. “If you don’t get expedited processing, the process could take years. They put you at the back of the line.” 

Schlosberg said his organization is still waiting to get government documents from a FOIA request filed in August 2004. 

The Northern California ACLU request was filed in conjunction with similar requests filed by ACLU affiliates on behalf of several anti-war organizations around the country. 

The requests grew out of a NBC news report in December listing a secret Defense Department document, obtained by the news agency, that contained information on more than 1,500 anti-Iraq war incidents labeled “suspicious” by the military. 

Included in the “suspicions incidents” was an April 20 and 21, 2005, protest against recruiters at UC Berkeley organized by the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition and a similar April 4 and 5, 2005, protest at UC Santa Cruz organized by UC Santa Cruz Students Against the War. 

The Department of Defense document lists the UC Berkeley protest as a “not credible threat” and the UC Santa Cruz protest as a “credible threat.” A note in the Department of Defense document on the UC Berkeley event said that the “protest took place without incident.” 

“We want to know where the information came from about these protests and organizations and what’s being done with it,” the ACLU’s Schlosberg said. 

He added in a prepared statement that “students should be able to express themselves on campus without fear of ending up in a military database.” 

National ACLU staff attorney Ben Wisner said in a prepared statement that “the Pentagon’s monitoring of anti-war protesters is yet another example of a government agency using its powers to spy on law-abiding Americans who criticize U.S. policies. How can we believe that the National Security Agency is intercepting only al Qaeda phone calls when we have evidence that the Pentagon is keeping tabs on Quakers in Fort Lauderdale?” 

In an eight-page document obtained by NBC, the Department of Defense listed reports on 43 anti-war activities between November 2004 and May 2005 in 18 states and Washington, D.C. The majority were listed as “not credible” threats.  

The April UC Berkeley demonstration was aimed at attempting to halt military recruitment on the campus. A Berkeley Stop the War Coalition flyer announcing the event noted that “the Associated Students at the University of California [had recently] passed a resolution that argued that military recruiters (who refuse to recruit gays and lesbians) violate the University of California’s anti-discrimination policy and therefore should not be allowed access to ASUC facilities.”

Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Commissioners issued a scathing review of plans for the Prince Hall Arms, a four-story, 42-unit senior citizen residential and commercial building planned for 3132 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

The commission was charged with reviewing the impact of the project on historical resources in the surrounding area because the project is receiving federal funding. 

Commissioners faulted project proponents for submitting drawings that inaccurately minimized the scale of the four-story turreted structure in comparison with surrounding buildings. 

By unanimous vote, the commission also said that the area of potential impacts needed to be enlarged. The commission also voted unanimously to declare that the structure as planned adversely impacted historical structures in the area, as well as their historic context. 

“I was very concerned about what looked like doctoring of the pictures” regarding the proposed building’s height and mass, said commissioner Patti Dacey. “This is like ripping the heart out of the context of the neighborhood.” 

James Peterson, who is representing the project for the Prince Hall Masons—an African-American Masonic organization created at a time when the Freemasons were excluding African Americans from membership—had told the commission that he would take the issue to the City Council “if you take action contrary to what I think is reasonable action.” 

Several project neighbors spoke in opposition, including attorney Osha Neumann, whose Victorian home and office is located next to the project. 

Dori Kojima, project manager for Satellite Housing, an affordable housing developer, spoke in favor of the project, which she described as “a great asset for the neighborhood.” 

Robin Wright of the Lorin District Neighborhood Association, called the project “truly horrific, with no redeeming qualities for the neighborhood.” Her view was echoed by other neighbors. 

“This has been very educational,” said city Housing Senior Planner Tim Stroshane after the vote. “I will revise my report and I will be submitting it on behalf of the city to the State Office of Historic Preservation.” The office will make the final recommendation to Washington. 

The hearing came at a bad time for the developer because the neighborhood has been galvanized in recent months by a proposal to build a major housing project nearby on the Ashby BART parking lot which has raised extensive opposition. 

H.J. Heinz Building 

Commissioners also turned down a proposal by the owners of the landmarked H.J. Heinz Building at 2900 San Pablo Ave. 

The building’s owners wanted to remove galvanized siding from the rear of the building and replace it with stucco to match the exterior of the building’s San Pablo frontage, but the commission denied the proposal on a 6-0-1 vote, with member Fran Packard abstaining. 

Gary Parsons, an architect recently appointed to the board by City Councilmember Laurie Capitelli, said that the siding reflects the building’s past and the reason the structure was landmarked. 

At an earlier hearing, Parsons had suggested replacement of the aging siding with new and more durable corrugated siding that would replicate the original and last longer. 

The commission did vote to allow the demolition of an aging detached garage building that members agreed posed a traffic hazard in light of the anticipated increase in area traffic that would result if construction of a new Berkeley Bowl is permitted directly to the west. 

Commissioners also voted to landmark the Oaks Theater at 1861 Solano Ave., giving the owner an option to retain the structure in its present form, the result of a 1935 remodeling, or to restore it to its original Spanish-Moorish architecture. 

Hot issues 

The commission also dealt with a series of politically sensitive issues, including the new downtown plan, UC Berkeley developments planned for the Memorial Stadium area and the City Council’s deliberations over proposed revisions to the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO)—the law the commission administers on behalf of the city. 

Because the new downtown plan will include a survey of historical buildings in the city center, members Leslie Emmington and Dacey said it was important for commissioners to attend the meetings of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee that will be considering the topic. 

Members also addressed a March 8 meeting of multiple city commissions at which UC Berkeley is scheduled to brief them on its plans for a Student High Performance Center to be built adjacent to the stadium. 

As one of the conditions of the settlement of the city’s suit against the university’s Long Range Development Plan for 2020, the university agreed to brief city commissions on similar proposals. 

Emmington said the university should make a presentation to the landmarks commission because their plans directly affect several existing and proposed landmarks. 

“We request that the University of California come the Landmarks Preservation Commission at a regular meeting,” Emmington told commission secretary Janet Homrighausen, offering her proposal in the form of a motion. Dacey agreed, offering a second. 

With little discussion, the motion carried on a unanimous vote. 

A landmark application is pending on the stadium itself, and the university’s plans for the Southeast Quadrant call for demolition of two historic structures, and significant alterations to another. It also poses significant impacts to the landmarked streetscape of Piedmont Avenue/Gayley Way, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the designer of New York’s Central Park who is considered the father of American landscape architecture. 

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Investigators seized more than 30,000 electronic child pornography images when they searched the locker last month of a Berkeley firefighter who is now being held in Santa Rita jail in lieu of $1 million in bail, said the prosecutor handling his case. 

Most of the images were seized from a locker at a Berkeley fire station, said Alameda County Deputy District Attorney John Creighton. 

“He didn’t even have a lock on it,” the prosecutor added. 

The suspect, 49-year-old firefighter Luis Ponce, a 17-year veteran of the Berkeley Department, was arrested at his home in Grass Valley on Jan. 26. 

He is scheduled to enter a plea on 57 counts of possession of child pornography on Feb. 15 in Department 104 of Alameda County Superior Court, Creighton said. 

According to the prosecutor, a search of Ponce’s fire department locker by a team of investigators headed by Berkeley Police Detective Angela Hawk turned up CDs, digital videos and one or two analog recordings of underage porn. 

“The subjects were under age, and as I understand it, the overwhelming number of them were of females, although there were some males as well,” Creighton said. 

Investigators were first alerted to Ponce when another fire department employee discovered child porn images on a shared computer and an investigation followed. 

A search made at the time of Ponce’s arrest in Grass Valley resulted in the seizure of computers and disks, Creighton said. That computer gear is still undergoing expert examination by forensic investigators in Nevada County. 

“Typically in these case, there are computer security systems with passwords and the like,” the prosecutor said. 

Each of the 57 charges now pending is a misdemeanor. 

“Possession of child pornography is a misdemeanor,” Creighton said, “while manufacture or participation in the manufacture of child pornography is a felony.” Distribution is also a felony. 

As one part of the investigation, detectives in Alameda and Nevada counties are trying to identify some of the children used in the creation of the images. 

“We’re trying to see if he did more than possess,” Creighton said.

Berkeley officers are investigating two different shooting reports that occurred during the predawn hours Sunday. 

In the more dramatic of the two incidents, about 30 shots were fired at a house in the 1300 block of Ward Street around 3 a.m., said Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan. 

One Berkeley officer who was parked about three blocks away reported hearing about 30 gunshots. 

“And then the phones started ringing,” said Galvan. “A woman who was sleeping on a couch in the front room said she awoke to the sound of breaking glass.” 

The woman sustained minor injuries to her left shoulder and hand which may have come either from bits of drywall blasted loose by the gunfire or from fragments of .223-caliber bullets which were fired into the house. 

Officers later found shell casings from both 9-millimeter and .223-caliber bullets outside the house. The latter rounds, which are used in assault rifles like the AR15, are designed to fragment on impact, Galvan said. 

Most of the rounds were stopped by stucco and other wall materials, and investigators later counted nine bullet holes by the front door itself. 

Galvan said investigators believe the attack may have been designed to get the attention of the woman’s son, “who is known to us.” 

Shortly after the incident and because of inconsistencies in the woman’s story, officers obtained and served a search warrant on the house in search of her son, who is wanted by police in connection with other charges not related to the shooting. 

The young man was not present and remains at large, Galvan said. 

No one in the neighborhood was able to offer a description of the shooters or any vehicle associated with them, he said. 

Just 90 minutes earlier, officers were called to Roundtree’s Restaurant at 2618 San Pablo Ave. after receiving reports that anywhere from six to 30 gunshots had been reported in the area. 

When officers arrived, a large party was just leaving the restaurant, but none of the partygoers reported seeing or hearing anything. 

One caller reported hearing a motorcycle leaving the scene at high speed immediately after the shooting, and officers were given a description of a possible shooter, an 18-year-old African-American man with short cropped hair and gold-capped front teeth who stands about 5’7”, weighs about 160 pounds and who waas wearing a black Raiders cap and a black hooded sweatshirt.  

Investigating officers found shell casings at the scene.u

Brennan’s robbed 

A gunman who waited until after closing time robbed the evening’s take from Brennan’s Irish Pub at 700 University Ave. early Wednesday morning, reports Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan. 

The manager was carrying the contents of the till when a bandit, his face masked by a scarf, shoved the barrel of a pistol into his neck and demanded the cash. 

The gunman then fled with his loot. 

Gets flocked 

Burglar or burglars unknown cut a lock and broke into the Lucky Dog Pet Shop at 2154 San Pablo Ave. that same evening and made off with or “liberated” some 500 pigeons, said Officer Galvan. 

The officer suspects the birds may have been released. Otherwise, “it would take quite a container to haul them away,” he said. 

Car clout interrupted 

A 23-year-old Berkeley man spotted someone in his car in the 2200 block of 9th Street at 2 a.m. Friday, only to find himself face to face with an angry burglar who confronted him with a screwdriver. 

The young man’s mother had meanwhile called police, and officers arrived moments later, in time to apprehend a suspect—a juvenile—nearby.  

Nothing was taken in the incident, said Officer Galvan. 

Sorry about that 

After a bandit tried to steal some jewelry from a 23-year-old woman in the Roxie Food Center on Dwight Way late Friday afternoon, language problems proved momentarily disconcerting for a hapless bystander. 

When the young woman—who has some difficulty with English—called out, workers in the store thought she was referring to a young man nearby, who they grabbed and held down until police arrived. 

Once the language issues were resolved, the poor fellow was liberated with apologies. By then, the actual would-be bandit was long gone. 

Hot, piping prowl 

A resident of the 2800 block of Ellsworth Street was awakened late Saturday evening to discover a pipe-smoking felon in a black trenchcoat in the process of burglarizing his domicile. 

The hapless inhabitant threw his only available weapon, a glass of water, and the darkly clad burglar departed, along with the resident’s laptop computer and his doused pipe. 

Coat heist 

A fellow with a knife robbed a 48-year-old San Francisco man of his brown leather jacket outside the Walgreen’s store at 1050 Gilman St. just as Saturday night became Sunday morning.  

New officers wanted 

Starting Monday, the Berkeley Police Department is looking for a dozen new officers to join the ranks of the city’s finest, reports Officer Galvan. 

“We just received the word, and we are hoping some Berkeley residents apply,” he said. 

The department is accepting applications though March 6, and a tentative date for written and physical exams has been set for March 18. 

Entry level salaries start at $76,284 and applications are available online. For more information, see www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/police/employment/jobinformation.html.

Hit, run, burn 

A speeding car plowed into a bank of three gasoline pumps at a 1580 San Pablo Ave. Shell station at three minutes before midnight on Saturday, igniting a blaze. 

The driver and occupants fled the scene as the flames erupted, and automatic shutoff valves limited the blaze, said Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth. 

“The gasoline that was in the pumps and hoses burned up, but it was nothing like what you see in the movies,” he said. 

Firefighters quickly doused the fire, which had also spread to the car, and protected the other pumps and the accompanying Mini Mart at the station. 

The car owners never returned to the scene, Orth said.e

Planning commissioners will face a full agenda when they meet Wednesday night, while the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) faces a fairly light slate Thursday. 

Planners will discuss West Berkeley zoning changes that would allow Berkeley car sellers to relocate from downtown to areas near the freeway that are currently zoned only for manufacturing and light industrial uses. 

City Hall and Mayor Tom Bates are pushing for the changes as an effort to keep car dealers and their sales taxes in the city. The commission took up the discussion at their last meeting and continued it to Wednesday’s session, which begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

Also on the agenda is a discussion of possible preliminary changes to the city’s creek ordinance, which affects more than 2,000 property owners whose homes and businesses abut the city’s above-ground and culverted creeks. 

The commission is also slated to set hearings on the environmental impact report for the planned new Berkeley Bowl in West Berkeley, a provisional extension of the ordinance governing low-income units required of major new housing projects and a joint meeting of several city commissions on UC Berkeley’s expansion plans for Memorial Stadium and surroundings in the campus’ southeastern quadrant. 

ZAB, which meets at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers in the Maudelle Shirek Building (Old City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way), will once again take up the case of Black & White Liquors. 

While ZAB had initially voted to declare the 3027 Adeline St. store a public nuisance in December, members relented two weeks ago and decided instead to allow owner Sucha Singh Banger to work out a zoning certificate with city staff. 

ZAB will hear a report on the conditions proposed for the certificate and may take action Thursday. 

Also on the agenda is an application by Spud’s Pizza, at 3290 Adeline St., for a beer and wine license.

The cliché, surely quoted at some time previously in this space, is that anyone who loves law or sausages should not watch either being made. As someone who loves the law with all its defects, I’ve tried to follow that warning in recent years, but occasionally I can’t avoid seeing what goes on in government. The last month has been particularly bad at the federal level, what with the always excruciatingly embarrassing State of the Union speech, followed by the attorney general’s mealy-mouthed performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But what’s been going on in Berkeley is even more embarrassing. 

We went down to Old City Hall on Tuesday to do a little color collection, to see the real people behind the lively controversy over the Bates-Church-Anderson plan for building something big in South Berkeley. They didn’t disappoint: old ladies in great hats and flea market vendors in Afro-centric robes playing on the same team as aging anarcho-hippies, neighborhood watchdogs and serious policy wonks. One brave young white male stood out front with a sign for the other team, a neatly lettered equation saying approximately “Berkeley NIMBYs = Urban Sprawl = Oil Use = War.” Take that, unruly mob! 

We engaged him in dialogue, and he allowed as how he grew up in Davis and now lives in a family home in the Claremont district, but nevertheless feels well qualified to tell the folks who live near the BART station how much density they should be willing to tolerate in their neighborhood. An annoyed neighbor pointed out to him that the term NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) was coined by people protesting the Love Canal toxicity in their own neighborhood, but it didn’t faze him—he probably wasn’t even born then.  

Inside the building another self-confident white guy, an old one this time, was delivering the State of the City address. We missed it, figuring we could catch it on the streaming video on the web, but it doesn’t seem to be posted there. What is posted is his Power Point slides, the omnipresent medium now contributing to the Dumbing Down of Practically Everything. From these one can learn that the mayor stands four-square in favor of kids and hopes to be able to greenwash as much as he possibly can—not exactly breaking news. His accomplishments are detailed a la David Letterman as a reverse-numbered top 10 list—perhaps he or his speechwriter is not aware that Letterman uses that format to mock what is being listed. 

Next up was the City Council meeting. The chambers were full, so our access was barred by police officers and the fire chief (is that the highest and best use of her time?) The city did supply a TV monitor in the foyer, so we could watch the proceedings from comfortable chairs, with captions which helped us understand the mumblers on the council. It was a perfect opportunity for the smartmouths in the group to make audible wisecracks in response to what they thought were dumb statements from the podium, and they didn’t lack for material.  

The spectacle of councilmembers, led off by Max Anderson, falling all over themselves to back-pedal from their disastrous decision to do a post-facto endorsement of the BART site building project planning grant was hilarious. Anderson actually said the words—I’m sure I heard him—“the future lies ahead.”  

Their solution for this fiasco? They’re holding a “community” meeting this very Saturday (just four days notice) from 10-12 a.m. (prime business hours for the Ashby Flea Market vendors) in a church. But because it’s a church, the city attorney, whose grasp of constitutional law is tenuous at best, ruled that it can’t be a noticed special City Council meeting, because that would violate the principle of separation of church and state. And under her equally tenuous interpretation of the Brown Act, that meant that only four councilmembers may be present at any one time. Someone suggested that they could swap in and out. Two words for that: Serial Meeting—look it up. Meanwhile, the city-owned South Berkeley Senior Center will sit vacant two blocks west. And you think the Keystone Cops aren’t running Berkeley? 

Watching that exchange was so demoralizing we went out for dinner after that, figuring we could catch the rest of the evening on video if we wanted to. Later in the week I watched the council discuss their ongoing attempt to gut the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, a topic in which I have a personal interest, since I worked for four years with fellow Landmarks Preservation Commission members on an intelligent revision which is now in danger of being scrapped. Mayor Bates’ rambling 10-minute mangling of the technical architectural term “integrity” was mind-numbing, reminiscent of some of Dubya’s discussions of “nucular WMDs.” 

One footnote, for the record. Councilmember Worthington asked if it were true, as rumored, that a California Public Records Act request for copies of all communications that the mayor and councilmembers had engaged in regarding this ordinance had been made and perhaps denied. The city manager gave some sort of evasive response to the effect that the request had been complied with. Well, actually, no, that’s not true.  

It was the Daily Planet that made the request. We got to see just a very few documents. The letter which came back to us over the manager’s signature (perhaps he didn’t see it) said: “Please be advised that the city is withholding from disclosure communications between the mayor and his staff and all communications to the mayor from citizens as such documents reflect the mayor’s deliberative process and are exempt from disclosure under Government Code 6255.” This is the old “executive privilege” dodge, first perfected under Richard Nixon and recently invoked by Vice President Cheney to avoid revealing his collaboration with the energy industry in the Energy Task Force meetings.  

We forwarded the letter to public interest groups in the freedom of information field, and they’ve told us that they think no such exemption now exists or should exist in California law. One of them has put in its own CPRA request to the City of Berkeley for the same information to test the waters. We’ll see what happens. More on this later. 

B

The headline is a quote from the father of a friend of mine, who knew whereof he spoke. The aptness of his cynical worldview has been apparent in the last week.  

On Monday morning, the Daily Planet received in short order multiple copies of the following letter over different signatures, one of which added the original material which is in square brackets: 

I’m writing to say that, as a member of the media in a free society, you have a RESPONSIBILITY to publish the controversial cartoons on Islamofascism. 

I can understand the indignation of having your religion, and your religious leaders, portrayed in unflattering, even blasphemous, ways by secularists in the mainstream media. It happens to Christians ALL THE TIME in America and Europe. [You don’t see them cutting off heads—if you live in a free socity [sic] anyone has a right to offend you. That is freedom of speech, when that freedom is taken away by people who don’t agree with you, this is down right and simple communism. In America the ACLU is trying to shutdown the freedoms of Christians in the public square. You can’t mention JESUS, and now in America you get arrested. You can’t have anti protest because certain groups of people have more rights than you.] If you allow this censorship, you will allow the Islamic Fascism to win. 

But indignation is NEVER an excuse for violence. And threats of violence need to be *resisted* in free nations. And the best form of resistance to Islamofascist threats here? PUBLISH THE CARTOONS. 

As freedom-loving people, we need to resist the Islamofascists on ALL fronts. In solidarity with the people of free Europe and in support of the concept of freedom of the press, you need to PUBLISH the Danish cartoons.  

Thank you. 

We get entirely too many form letters like this from people who can’t seem to think for themselves, or who have disasterous results when they try. Fortunately, the addresses on most of this group of letters were not local, so the signers probably aren’t even Planet readers, but have used some kind of robot letter generator from some half-witted organization or other. We’d hate to think we were surrounded by them in the East Bay.  

This just in: The stupids are not confined to one religion, nationality, ethnic group or continent. It’s tempting to run up a whole series of cartoons along the lines of the Danish right wing models targeting the foibles of all known religions equally, but we can’t begin to afford enough space to do that on our budget. And also, the tiniest pinprick of possible criticism against any kind of religious organization in the past has subjected us to a deluge of ignorant and vituperative letters which clogged our e-mail for weeks. Comedians sometimes lament that you can’t satirize anything anymore, and they may be right. If we’re going to start up that machine again, we’ll at least do it with our own editorial cartoons, not someone else’s. 

For birthright citizens of what used to be considered a secular society, the concept of blasphemy is hard to parse. We would never have thought, for example, that what seemed to be a gently humorous soft feature on Berkeley’s annual pagan—oh, sorry, Pagan—parade, accompanied by a picture of two young ladies in fairy wings smoking cigarettes while leaning on the hood of a pickup, could be so offensive to so many. We even got letters from Pagans in South Africa. Their main beef? We didn’t capitalize Pagan, as we do Christian or Moslem.  

Religious people, all religious people, should become aware that there are at least some people on this earth who think that most if not all of their cherished beliefs and pretentions are silly. That’s right, silly. Not necessarily awesome, just silly. And equally silly, for the most part.  

We acknowledge the wholesome role of most religious traditions in encouraging what we think is desirable behavior: kindness, honesty, etc. But we also notice that many non-religious people do just fine on these dimensions without believing any of the silly stuff.  

Bad behavior is sometimes encouraged by the belief system of some religions, but much more often by errant members of religious groups who aren’t sanctioned by the authorities in their denomination, whoever the authorities might be. Stupid epithets like “Islamofascist” are created by people who can’t figure out which of these categories is which. “They’re everywhere, the stupids.” 

Yes, plenty of Moslems don’t respect freedom of speech, but neither do plenty of other people who should know better. 

We’re reminded of a wicked couplet attributed variously on the Internet to Spike Milligan, Ogden Nash and Hilaire Belloc: 

“Happy little moron, he doesn’t give a damn. 

I wish I were a moron—my God, perhaps I am.”  

Or, as stated more politely in the Christian tradition, “let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone.”  

B

www.jfdefreitas.com

ASK A UNION MECHANIC 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The striking Berkeley Honda mechanics are launching a new program: “Ask a Union Mechanic.” 

This will begin Saturday, Feb. 11, from 1-3 p.m., and then continue every Thursday from 4:30-6 p.m. until the strike is settled. We will offer advice to anyone who wants to talk with us about their automobile mechanical problems, no matter what make car you own. This is an opportunity not only for us to help you, but also for you to meet and get acquainted with us, and to learn first hand about our concerns and problems. 

Repairing and servicing automobiles does more than just provide us with a living wage. We very much enjoy applying our professional skills to diagnosing mechanical problems and to repairing them to the satisfaction of our customers.  

You are also invited to participate with us at our Thursday rallies as well.  

We look forward to seeing you. 

Nat Courtney 

Gold Level Mechanic  

• 

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Keith Winnard (Jan. 31) just won’t get it. Public financing of elections is not designed to only cut down the cost of elections; but primarily to make politicians beholden to the commonweal rather than to large contributors. 

If he really wants public money to go to teach high school students to become voters, let him follow the example of Maine, which got universal health care for it’s citizens soon after it adopted public financing of elections. 

We ignore the effect of big money on elections at our continuing peril. 

Mal Burnstein 

• 

FATALISM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I try to read every issue of the Daily Planet, and I have never seen anyone claim “...that global warming will be prevented by mass transit ...”. How can this be an “Urban Legend” (Editorial, Jan. 27) if no one espouses it? The use of strawman arguments seriously detracts from Becky O’Malley’s claim that the planners and smart building enthusiasts have got it wrong. Her trivialization of global warming is very disturbing, as global warming may be the most serious problem humanity has faced. Yes, some of us believe that we should be doing all we can to limit global warming—and that includes high density building which is pedestrian, bicycle and mass transit friendly. Ms. O’Malley offers us fatalism instead. She implies that demand for housing in Tracy and Fairfield is effectively infinite, and won’t be impacted by anything we do here. She is, in effect, a proponent of ugly sprawl (PUS). I suggest that the acronym is appropriate in portraying how such beliefs will affect our environment.  

Robert Clear  

• 

DERBY FIELD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I enjoyed the article by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor about San Pablo Park. What will the people of Berkeley say about Derby Park 70 years from now? Which multi-use field will eventually be built? We can look at San Pablo Park and see the benefits of building the best park possible to serve the most students and community members. What if San Pablo Park had built a “practice field,” as the vocal minority wants at Derby? I don’t think anybody would remember the great practices they had there. 

Alumni, parents and supporters of Berkeley High track and field have raised money and installed a fantastic records board at the Track on campus. The students have been inspired, by seeing the rich athletic history of the Track team. They actually raised all the money to design and build the new signs. In fact, the fundraising picked up steam as the word got out and they raised more than enough money. We feel that kind of support is out there for the closed-Derby design of the park, if given the chance. 

We can inspire more kids by building the biggest and best park possible at Derby and MLK. A limited multi-use field on school district land that ignores the needs of students is a wasted opportunity. You don’t get many chances to build a new park. Let’s not settle for an inferior design just to save some money now. From the history of San Pablo Park, we can see the long-term benefits of investing in the best park possible for everyone. 

It should be simple: Close the under-used street for one block so the school district can build a park on their land that serves the most students and the most sports. Let the City Council know that the majority of Berkeley wants to close Derby for the best park possible. 

Bart Schultz 

• 

FEEBLE EDITORIAL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Daily Planet’s uncharacteristically feeble editorial comments on the whole Mohammed cartoon fracas brings to mind all the intellectual firepower of a Berenstein Bears five and under morality play. But let’s humor the premise that “stupidity” and “intolerance” are in fact equally distributed on all continents and among all ethnic groups and religions. Why not test out this mawkish premise empirically with a fairly simple social science experiment?  

Let’s gather three sets of cartoon caricatures extremely offensive to: 1) Nordic people and Christianity; 2) Jews and Israel; 3) Arabs and Islam. Let’s blow these caricatures into enormous posters and send them off with the Planet’s intrepid editor on an overseas fact-finding mission. 

The first stop on this adventure will be Copenhagen, Denmark. She’ll start by making a big scene in the city center with her most offensive Hagar the Horrible posters. After a few hours of these embarrassing antics, she’ll brush off the butter cookie crumbs that have been hurled at her and report back to us on her experience. 

Next she’ll jet off to Tel Aviv with her Holocaust mocking cartoon posters and plant herself in the center of Ben Gurion square. Here she’ll likely enrage a bevy of hysterical octogenarian Holocaust survivors who will let loose a torrent of verbal abuse on her. This reaction will doubtless be interpreted to prove that every group is equally prone to “overreacting” to offensive images. 

Last, in ever sense of the term, she will cross over that hateful apartheid wall into Gaza City with her offensive Mohammed caricatures to prove her point that “stupids” abound everywhere. In the unlikely event that an angry lynch mob surrounds her person, she can sententiously shout out her Christian cliché, “Let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone,” which would doubtless immediately diffuse the mob’s rage. 

However, on further reflection, perhaps this whole experiment is conceived of backwards? Perhaps we should begin our quest to show that tolerance and intolerance are equally distributed the world over in Gaza City. After all, we read regularly how the Planet only gets by on a shoestring budget, so why not construct this important free-speech experiment in the most cost-effective manner possible and plan to donate the remaining frequent-flier miles to a good charitable cause like Amnesty International which champions freedom of expression worldwide? Let’s start a fundraising campaign now to speed up this vital mission! 

Edna Spector 

• 

EMERYVILLIZATION? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Zelda, you are on record complaining about buildings in Berkeley that are too high, too cheap and now too ritzy. Based on your complaints you would have opposed Julia Morgan’s Berkeley City Club, the Campanile and for that matter all of the successful buildings ever built, that are today centers of our civic identity. 

The less we build, the more expensive existing housing becomes. The less intensively we utilize our nooks and crannies (this means height in Berkeley) the more pressure we place on open space, artisanal space and small business. Most endeavors of civic life takes place in these spaces. Build too little for our real needs and you stifle potential civic interaction in all its forms. 

You fear Emeryvillization? By “Emeryvillization” do you mean it’s diversity of race and class that it now houses (and Berkeley does not)? Or do you mean Pixar and it’s creations and creators—which would have been a wonderful tenant in our West Berkeley—where now nothing can be built. Or do you mean the slew of other services now offered in Emeryville that Berkeley citizens drive to every day because we lost them to Emeryville? What will you say when Emeryville trumps Berkeley with a light rail system or Hydrogen bus fleet that it’s innovation density will ultimately justify? 

How the cumulative effects of growth in Berkeley will positively effect our quality of life takes not whining but positive and constructive ideas. I suggest you consider how cities survive and how they flourish. It has become difficult to create anything. Calling developers greedy misses the point. We need good developers more than they need us. We need to attract good developers with a strong sound vision. This vision should start in your column. Nay saying is easy. Constructive ideas, not so easy. 

Peter Levitt 

Member of LivableBerkeley 

PS: When the mayor Bates proposes future development for the hole in the ground that is now Ashby BART station he should be commended, not called secretive and underhanded. He never suggested excluding the neighborhood from the future design. However the neighborhood is a far too myopic a place to start the planning and big idea process. If the neighborhood woke up one day to a Rockridge BART scenario they might be pretty happy. Stores, offices, schools, libraries, residences all up around their station, but with a South Berkeley feel. (And this would include a weekend flea market too!) The neighborhood, encouraged by this newspaper, has immediately taken the narrow path of gloom and doom! What is your vision for Ashby and North Berkeley parking lots? I am interested to know if you have one. 

• 

RENT BOARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I wish to share my sincere gratitude for help I received from Nick Traylor at the Berkeley Rent Board over the last couple months. I want tenants, especially, to know that there may be help for your problem too if you go to the Rent Board.  

I have lived in the same shared house in Berkeley over 13 years. In November my beloved housemate who lived here 26 years passed away unexpectedly. The landlord who had always been attentive to repairs and appeared to be a nice person suddenly suggested that he received such low rent he would like to raise it to half way between “market value” and rent control rate.  

I was still in grief at the loss of my long time housemate (who was the lease-holder). Thanksgiving and Christmas were on the horizon. I walked woodenly to the Rent Board and asked for guidance. 

I learned that since I moved in before 1996, I was completely covered by the rent law, and the agreement the landlord suggested would violate my rights as a tenant and compromise the law. 

Although I had signed no papers with the landlord since I paid my rent to my long-time housemate, I had proofs of my residence here since 1992—witnesses and shared house phone bills with calls to relatives and friends and a canceled check from 1995. After numerous visits to the Rent Board and several meetings with the landlord, he and I agreed to meet at the Rent Board so we could both get the basic advice on whether I qualified as an “original tenant” because I was in the house before 1996.  

We found an amicable resolution with the help of Nick Traylor and his co-worker, Mathew. It is kind of a miracle that the rent law was written to protect low-income people like me. But, without people like Nick Traylor who is there at the Rent Board to help tenants figure it out and find out what their rights are, it would just be a theory. Because of Nick I am able to continue to afford to live in Berkeley. I get to stay in the house I have come to call home for the last 13 years (even though my housemate is no longer here). It has been a hard transition to lose my day-to-day friend in the house. But, without Nick’s help, I was in danger of being “edged out of town” in the wake of my housemate’s death. Nick’s spirit and his confidence that tenants are people too and his clarity in knowing the law was a ray of sunshine in a dark and stormy time. Thanks, Nick.  

Nancy Delaney 

• 

ALBANY SCHOOLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding your article, “Residents, Environmentalists Debate Albany Mall,” as an Albany resident and member of the Sierra Club, I obviously support and enjoy parks and open space. However, after a careful reading of the newly unveiled CESP/CAS initiative (the “Citizens’ Planning Initiative to Protect Albany’s Shoreline”), there seems to be a major problem for Albany schools. 

The Albany Unified School District receives approximately $500,000 annually in parcel-tax assessments from Golden Gate Fields race track. In the new CESP/CAS initiative, “Planning shall assume that a large portion of the Albany Waterfront District will be dedicated or acquired for public park, open space, and environmental restoration purposes.” The remaining portion available for development will be “located as close to the Interstate 80 freeway as possible” and not within 600 feet of the shoreline. Looking at a map, I estimate this remainder at about 50 percent of the existing property. 

The developer of this small remainder—located right next to a roaring, polluted freeway—will then be obliged to build a “green, sustainable” development that somehow will generate $1.2 million in revenue annually for the city, to replace that lost from the race track. That’s unlikely, to say the least. But there’s worse to come: the developer will only pay parcel tax to the school district based on the square footage they own. That means the schools will lose about 50 percent of the current $500,000. That is, Albany schools will lose $250,000 per year, every year, if this initiative passes. 

Albany residents need to study this initiative very carefully. Our city and our schools are depending on it. 

Trevor Grayling 

Albany 

• 

WIRETAPPING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

During the recent hearing on warrantless surveillance, I almost enjoyed listening to the realization dawning on even Republican senators that they are now as irrelevant to the executive branch as was the Roman Senate after Julius Caesar. Well they might worry for their own prerogatives—as well as for their necks if they get out of line—but they castrated themselves by confirming Ashcroft, Rice, Gonzales, Negroponte, Roberts, Alito, and so many others despite those nominees’ evasions and lies and the refusal of the administration to turn over requested documentation. Now, in the all-purpose name of national security, no citizen any longer has the safety formerly guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.  

Like most of the press, the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board still cannot bring itself to say impeachment. The enabling mass media will soon lose what remains of the First Amendment as the Caesar from Texas further consolidates the power he has been permitted to take.  

Gray Brechin  

• 

CARTOON CONTROVERSY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I remember “A cat may look at a king!” and wonder why the faith fantasies of Muslims should determine the subjects of cartoons. 

I surf the Internet and find gross caricatures of Jews on Islamic sites, yet non-Islamic cartoonists may not lampoon the hypocrisies and contradictions in just one of the multitude of religions? 

I think Islam feels very superior to other religions, a dangerous attitude. Faith cannot be the basis of human understanding and cooperation. People need mutual beliefs to agree on, not fantasies. Religion needs to be put into the closet, and be acknowledged as no more than a comfort blanket for the weak-minded. 

Please publish a cartoon to that effect. Thanks. 

Ormond Otvos 

Richmond 

• 

WILLIS-STARBUCK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This paper’s coverage of the Willis-Starbuck shooting has constantly whitewashed the two most important facts. That Ms. Willis-Starbuck precipitated her own demise, and that her death was no accident. As the father of a Berkeley High School student I am saddened that more is not being said about the culpability of Ms. Willis-Starbuck and her friends. To understand this tragedy and attempt to prevent future misfortune it is essential that the core facts not be glossed over.  

Like a Greek tragic hero, Ms. Willis-Starbuck was destroyed by a fatal flaw in her character. All her promise and Ivy League education notwithstanding, Ms. Willis-Starbuck could not walk away from some disrespectful football players. The gangster imperative—that no act of perceived disrespect goes unanswered—proved too compelling. Bowing to this imperative Ms. Willis-Starbuck orchestrated her own death when she solicited her friend to avenge her honor with deadly force. In addition to being a tragic error this solicitation was likely a criminal act. If Mr. Hollis’ bullet had killed one of the football players instead of Ms. Willis-Starbuck she would now be standing trial alongside her accomplices.  

Moreover, the misguided friends of Mr. Hollis and Ms. Willis-Starbuck need to learn the difference between an accident and an intentional act. The tragic shooting of Ms. Willis-Starbuck was no accident. At Ms. Willis-Starbuck’s behest Mr. Hollis transported a firearm from Oakland to Berkeley. Intentionally aimed the firearm toward the people his friend was arguing with and proceeded to discharge the firearm. This is a textbook intentional act. That Mr. Hollis did not intend to shoot his friend is of absolutely no relevance. Mr. Hollis intentionally brought a firearm to a dispute and intentionally and without justification discharged the weapon with, at the very least, reckless disregard for human life. This is all that is required for a murder conviction. The district attorney does not need to prove that Mr. Hollis intended to kill any specific person.  

It’s very sad that the lives of three young people have been destroyed by their adherence to a gangster code. However, the situation is not improved by trying to downplay the culpability of the actors. 

Francis McGowan 

Stockton 

• 

A DEVELOPER’S PERSPECTIVE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The development of housing and related commercial and community facilities on the Ashby BART parking lot strikes many people as something that is long overdue. There is a dire shortage of sites for new housing—for all income groups—that this city sorely needs. And, South Berkeley needs such a shot in the arm to breathe more life into the Adeline and Ashby shopping areas; the parking lot is a barrier that artificially separates them. It is a dead space that is unpleasant to look at and forbidding at night  

I think few would argue that the parking lot has charm or is worthy of preservation! Presumably, those who have decided to oppose any development don’t fear development per se, but fear the possible nature of what might get built.  

It was a visionary city leadership that negotiated for the air rights over the parking lot some 40 years ago. It gave our community the ability to make something good happen—to use the rights as a community building and strengthening resource. What Councilmember Max Anderson has proposed is to involve the community in a planning process to determine the best use of this resource. I would urge the entire community join in the process as visionaries who want to participate in the development of this property as a major step toward a better future for South Berkeley. 

Ali R. Kashani

After last Tuesday’s meeting, I can tell that most of you City Council members would like to pull some irons out of this Caltrans proposal fire. I’m sure that your motives are good: wanting something good to develop on the Adeline strip in South Berkeley. You all seem very sorry that Max didn’t do better outreach in bringing this proposal to the community. 

I’d like to ask you take a few minutes to think about this a little more deeply. 

The issue here is not just that this was approached in the wrong way. It is much deeper; if you are conscientious about using your voice and your vote to accomplish something meaningful for South Berkeley, there are some substantive things about the Caltrans proposal and its history that you might want to considered. 

As an incentive to take a deeper look, you might reflect on the morass the City has gotten itself into with the Masons’ project just across the street from the BART station, a project that has turned into a blighted vacant lot with a black hole of debt that no one so far has figured how to remedy. A project that has the city in trouble with HUD. A project the community warned the city about. The 2004 feasibility study on the BART site is an omen that this outcome for Ed’s project may not be far fetched. 

Here’s the story: 

Ed Church has been working on his plan for the Ashby BART for many years and has never brought his ideas to the community. Over this period he has obtained funding for his work on this project and brought in consultants to do various studies. None of this funding was used to find out what the community wanted, to engage the community in any kind of dialog. His contacts in the community have been limited to a very select group of people. I was one of those people, in a meeting that occurred years ago. I was asked not to share what I would hear at this meeting with anyone else in the community. He supposedly wanted to get ideas from me for including the community, though when I offered some ideas, he seemed more interested in how to manage negative reactions than how to lead an inclusive process. His actions since then have born out my impression. 

If you will notice, the very first role for the community in Ed’s plan is to offer advice on hiring a developer. This is to be done according to some very rigid parameters defining aspects of the project already laid out in the proposal and not up for community consideration. Once a contract with a developer is signed, there will be additional contractual commitments to consider that will further limit community choices. After all of this, the public planning process starts. What is wrong here is that Ed’s desired outcomes are driving the community rather than the community driving the outcomes. The community will have very little to say about what is done at the Ashby BART station. By the time all of this comes together, the community will be lucky if it gets to choose the color of the bricks on the front of the building. 

Is this a man we can trust with absolute control over a meaningful and inclusive community participation process? 

In a continuation of this pattern of excluding the community, Ed and Max got together on this project some time last year, submitted the proposal last October and never brought it to the community until it appeared on the consent calendar in December. Max may have been sincere in looking for a way to engage the community in planning. If he was, he got a pig in a poke. 

Emblematic, too, of what we might expect from Max regarding community participation is the example Max is giving us as to what he thinks full and open public participation is. We don’t have to guess. He is showing us in his approach to bringing the public voice into the City Council decision. 

His approach is a meeting announced with four days notice, which will be two hours long, at a time when the flea market folks, a prime constituency, are normally active at their trades and other community members, most of whom will not have heard about the meeting, are starting a weekend with their families or friends. This meeting is supposed to provide a meaningful profile of what the community wants the City Council to do. 

Max’s reiteration that his meeting will be, “Open, open, open,” fails to consider how very far “not locking the door on a brief meeting” is from actively bringing everyone to the table in a considered and meaningful way. This is the process issue staring us in the face. What Max is proposing is bad process, embarrassingly so. Should we naively expect anything better if he and Ed are allowed to drive the BART process. This assumption slights us all. 

And, in the immediate case, it puts the community in a awkward position. Should we do his outreach work for him? Should we participate in a bankrupt meeting, knowing that the result could easily misrepresent the community’s perspective and lead to a bad choice on your part? Should we rally “our” forces? We don’t want a political fight, we want good community dialog. What would you do? 

There are process tools in use in cities and communities around the world that are being used successfully to bring complex and diverse groups of people together to find common ground and act effectively together. It is, perhaps, Max and Ed’s lack of knowledge and experience with these approaches that is at the root of their failure to engage the community. Our community will bring these successful process tools to our service when we take the leadership in forging our future. 

These and other facts should raise serious questions about the qualifications of these two men to lead a process that is supposed to give the community a meaningful voice. It should raise a flag to the fact that the issue is much deeper than how effectively the proposal was presented to the community. 

When do we acknowledge that the actions we are seeing on these men’s part is emblematic of their unwillingness or inability to support meaningful public participation and remove them from any leadership roles? In some ways, I think we are lucky that they didn’t do a better job of short range outreach, because then maybe there wouldn’t be any public opposition and we would be sliding right into their plan. 

On the other hand, if the main thing you care about is getting this development built, regardless of the community, come hell or high water, then maybe it is too bad that Max didn’t do a better job of selling his proposal to the community. Maybe you can rescue it and see Ed’s project built through Max and Ed’s non-participative participatory model . . . unless you end up in the same hole the Masons’ project did. 

And then, on another hand, you are now seeing a group of people step forward and offer to lead a truly inclusive and participative community wide planning process, for their own community. Guess what, this is a chance to get behind some real community capacity building, something that may cause South Berkeley to really awaken to its potential and become a self-sufficient and vital community! What about this? It might even result in an exciting development at the BART station that is better than what Ed has dreamed up, something that will be the crown jewel to South Berkeley, something that will provide a permanent home for the flea market, an engine to drive an active business center and a housing model that will serve to sustain and grow the current community without losing it to gentrification. We’re pretty creative here in South Berkeley. 

Which ring are you going to throw your hat into? I know where mine is. 

Kenoli Oleari is a member of the Neighborhood Assemblies Network.

To view Justin DeFreitas’ latest editorial cartoon, please visit  

www.jfdefreitas.com To search for previous cartoons by date of publication, click on the Daily Planet Archive.



TRIBUNE REPORTER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

You guys must be really desperate for news. If any of you knew Alex Katz, you would know that he is a first-rate reporter who is as objective as a reporter can be. Like Cynthia Gorney said, there is no proof of any bias in Katz’ school stories. And what would you do in his place? Give notice to the Oakland Tribune before you had secured another job? Don’t be idiots. If you are real journalists, you know that stories are often held for days after they’re written, and any story printed on Friday, Jan. 13 or Monday, Jan. 16, was obviously completed, or near completion, before he gave notice on Jan. 12. Do you really think it was Katz’ intention, by writing a story about the closing of the Castlemont High School Library, to aid OUSD in their negotiations with the teachers’ union? Sounds to me like the Daily Planet has big newspaper envy. 

Meghan Ward 

• 

ETHICS ISSUES? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

If you question the ethics of Oakland Tribune reporter Alex Katz , I question your decision to print the “Ethics Issues” story without getting a perspective from Katz or the school district. Writing “neither the district nor Katz was available for comment” doesn’t mean anything. Did you call him multiple times? E-mail him? Pray tell. 

Such weak reporting goes on the op-ed page, not as a news story. 

Jason Blalock 

• 

BART ADVERTISING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Letter-writer John McMullen says he is “aghast” that a “point-of-view” advertisement is posted in a BART station, a public space that is subsidized by taxes. While his letter is carefully couched to avoid expressing a point of view of his own, I wonder what on Jefferson’s green earth he could possibly be thinking. Last time I checked—and, I admit, the situation is changing rapidly—we live in a democracy, in which citizens are meant to conduct political discourse with one another in order to wrestle toward resolution the constant and shifting conflicts that arise among people whose opinions are not marshalled by thought-police into neat, conforming rows. Does Mr. McMullen mean to suggest that political discourse ought to be a private matter, conducted in dark alleys and behind closed doors, where each of us can be safely and hermetically isolated from those whose points of view diverge from our own? I sure hope that’s not where we’re headed. As the still-controversial third president of the United States once observed, “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.” While I myself go queasy at the content and tenor of the anti-choice ads that so upset Mr. McMullen, it would be a nail in the coffin of democracy to agitate against the right of those with whom I disagree to express themselves in public. Whose mouth gets duct-taped next? Mine, maybe?  

Steve Masover 

• 

PACIFIC STEEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Our compliments to the Daily Planet for Suzanne La Barre’s interesting article “Watchdog Group Will Sue Pacific Steel.” Many have called or e-mailed us with the same questions: are you proposing to clean up PSC once and for all—or close them down? What about the jobs and the tax base? We’d like to clarify our position:  

We have never asked for the closure of PSC; we clearly have demanded they stop polluting our air! It is up to PSC to determine if, how or when they will do so.  

cleanaircoalition.net is not in favor of dirty jobs and companies that expose their workers and our neighborhoods to toxics 24/7. We side with, and fully support, our neighborhoods.  

I know this is a tough situation for many—including the Ecology Center and local politicians who have complex loyalties and relationships with the powers that be in B-Town, but our focus is dedicated to the citizens living in our neighborhoods who have long suffered from both the toxic rain of PSC and the lack of political will to fully remedy the problem. Cleanaircoalition.net will continue to try to find ways to work on the PSC problem with any and all individuals and groups who are interested in cleaning up the noxious, toxic vapors that PSC relentlessly vents into our air from its chimney stacks on 2nd Street. Anyone who has suffered from this nuisance may join this suit. 

We will be posting regular updates on our progress at www.cleanaircoalition.net. 

P.S.: Please let your readers know about Councilmember Linda Maio’s community meeting at 7 p.m. on Feb. 15 at the Berkeley Senior Center. Everyone who is interested in this situation should join the cleanaircoalition.net and other interested groups and attend this public meeting. (We understand that PSC will actually show up this time to meet the people they are endangering daily!) 

Willi Paul 

Founder and Project Director  

• 

DOWNTOWN PLAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In Friday’s article on the Downtown Plan Committee, it was mentioned that the committee “was formed as a condition of the settlement of a city suit against the university, filed in an attempt to mitigate [UC’s] impacts on the city and local taxpayers.” 

The settlement agreement does not have this committee as a condition.  

In fact, the settlement agreement envisions a planning process well-removed from the public. 

According to the settlement agreement, the Downtown Area Plan is to be prepared by a joint UC/City of Berkeley planning process with one FTE planner from each entity. The staff from the two entities “will meet to ensure the orderly and timely completion of the plan” within 48 months. 

The agreement continues to reinforce that the Downtown Area Pan is a creature of the city and university: 

“All public meetings regarding the Downtown Area Plan ... must be jointly sponsored by the city and UC Berkeley.” 

“... because the Downtown Area Plan is a joint plan, there shall be no release of draft or final Downtown Area Plan or EIR without concurrence of both parties.” 

“UC Berkeley reserves the right to determine if the Downtown Area Plan or EIR meets the Regents’ needs.” 

The exclusion of the public and the Planning Commission from the planning process, in violation of our city charter and municipal code is one of the reasons I and three other Berkeley residents decided to sue the city and the university over the terms of the settlement agreement. 

For the text of the settlement agreement, see www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/manager/LRDP/ucblrdpagreement.pdf. 

For information on the lawsuit, please e-mail blue@igc.org. 

Anne Wagley 

• 

STATE OF THE CITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to thank Mayor Bates for his invitation to his State of the City address. 

I have a few questions about what is to be covered in this address. 

In his January 2005 Mayor’s Policy Briefs/Re-inventing Berkeley Government, he mentioned his support of an in-progress sunshine ordinance “to ensure and open and transparent government.” The mayor stated, “The Clerk has prepared an excellent working draft and we must complete work and adopt it this year.” That is, in 2005. 

In the upcoming State of the City address, I hope the mayor will tell the people what he did on this issue in 2005 and how soon this ordinance will be ready for public review and implementation.  

This is especially relevant in light of the city attorney’s current refusal to release information under a Public Records Act request for documents related to the revision of the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, the “surprise” grant application for the Ashby BART station development, and the secrecy leading up to the UC settlement agreement. Perhaps those three incidents from 2005 will also suggest some additions to the draft sunshine ordinance. 

Sharon Hudson 

• 

ENERGY POLICY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Tuesday night President Bush spoke on our need to change the way we power America. Yet his “solutions” are pitiful stand-ins for actual progress. I am no longer amused while wondering if he’ll pronounce “nuclear” correctly, rather I am terrified that he calls it “safe and clean.” A process that leaves barrels of toxic waste cannot possibly be described as safe or clean. 

He claims that by 2025 we can reduce our dependency on Middle Eastern oil by 75 percent. What he failed to report was that the Energy For Our Future Act, a current piece of legislation, would save as much (not three-fourths of) oil as we import from the Middle East within 10 years, not 20. 

When will we demand truth and action and stop being satisfied with simple sound bytes that carry no substance? How about today? 

LC Smith 

• 

FIRST AMENDMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Becky O’Malley deserves praise for her articulate defense of Cindy Sheehan’s First Amendment rights. It was indeed outrageous that Capitol Cops should have thrown Sheehan out of the State of the Union address for simply wearing an anti-war slogan on a t-shirt. 

And it was equally appalling that the same cops should have removed the wife of a congressman who wore a “Support Our Troops” shirt.  

Moreover, O’Malley deserves kudos for noting that Code Pink people were out of line for bashing BART because it ran a “pro-life” ad. This should have not come a surprise to O’Malley as she can’t help but have noted the regular hypocrisy of local leftists when it comes to freedoms of expression. For example, surely O’Malley remembers the successful efforts of her pal, Barbara Lubin, to keep Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking in Berkeley.  

Unfortunately, while Ms. O’Malley’s editorial was in the finest tradition of an editor’s support of First Amendment rights, I can’t help but wonder why she didn’t include the most egregious recent demands for censorship played out on an international stage, the demonstration of millions of Muslims worldwide in condemnation of cartoons published depicting their prophet Muhammed. As this happened before the Daily Planet was put to bed, it is curious to note the absence of any editorial commentary by Ms. O’Malley on this odious attempt to abridge freedom of the press.  

I hope to see some future response by O’Malley on the above as we have already seen representatives of the EU threatened by thugs in Gaza and a speech there from a Palestinian religious leader stating: “We will not accept less than the severing of heads by those responsible.”  

Dan Spitzer 

Kensington 

• 

CARTOON CONTROVERSY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Muslims may object to being portrayed as berserk bombers, but their recent reaction to the Danish cartoons would seem to prove that very point. 

Steve Geller 

• 

RENT BOARD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to respond to the Jan. 27 letter by Chris Kavanagh regarding the reasons for Berkeley having a much higher unit registration fee than that of San Francisco and Oakland. He states first that San Francisco has an “honor system” between owners and tenants. This is true only if you believe that a contract, i.e. rental agreement, can be broken with impunity, and that tenants are a childlike lot who have no hope of understanding that agreement. He states that Berkeley has a city operated “tracking system” for all rents; this is known to the rest of us as a database--rents are not wild geese being chased down the Pacific flyway. In the era of Costa-Hawkins, all that needs be known is the initial rent, services provided, length of lease and the date, and the “correct, legal amount” can be automatically calculated from there. For pre Costa-Hawkins legacy tenants, all this information is already in the archives. Even if you believe that it is necessary to send out a mailing listing the allowable rent each year, it should not take a $3 million bureaucracy to do it. 

Other services which he asserts the Rent Board offers are:  

1. Mediation-hearing examiner process. How often has this been used in the past year?  

2. An agency legal counseling service for both property owners and tenants. This sounds so even-handed, but how many landlords have actually trusted the Rent Stabilization Program to give them advice, and how many tenants have taken advantage of it with all the other free legal advice available to tenants in Berkeley?  

3. Information newsletters/mailings. People actually read these things? I get one in every utility bill, credit card and bank statement etc. 

Lastly, Mr. Kavanagh claims that the staff receives over 10,000 “inquiries” per year. This sounds impressive until you do the math. Assuming the office is open 250 days in a year, for 7.5 hours in an average day, this works out to 5.3 inquiries per hour. I’ll bet this number includes the “How late are you open” kind, so how many staff members need to be devoted to this? Most of the substantive inquiries would hardly be necessary anyway if the board did not adopt convoluted and perverse interpretations of plain language in State law, to which they grudgingly submit, and common sense, to which they don’t submit at all (e.g. see their interpretation of the meaning of “original tenant” in the Costa-Hawkins law.) 

I can’t help but think that the $3 million, and rising, each year which the Rent Stabilization Program consumes could be put to better use in an assistance program targeted to people who really need it. It could fund a subsidy of $250,000 per month for the neediest people in Berkeley, helping hundreds of families directly without the rancor and ill will of the current regime. 

Mike Mitschang 

• 

TRUCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

1. Has no one else heard the rest of Osama bin Laden’s message? He threatens, yes, but then offers a truce. Sounds good to me. Stop the killing! 

2. What’s an insurgent? 

3. How much does a shopping cart cost? How much of a $40 grocery bill am I donating, like it or not, to pay for a stolen grocery wagon? 

I have a simple answer to most of our complex problems: Cancel the war and close the worldwide string of U.S. military bases (how would we like a foreign base in our neighborhood?) and use the money for universal free health care as good as Congress gets, housing the homeless, educating everybody tuition-free, and so on. 

It would work! 

Ruth Bird 

• 

THE RAILROAD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A recent Daily Planet article reminded me of the many happy times our family spent riding on the Southern Pacific train through all the winding tracks and tunnels in the Santa Cruz mountains to our summer home one block from the beach at Seabright. 

I recall eating sandwiches and apples sitting on the passenger car seats and smelling the smoke from the locomotive each time we went through a tunnel. And the taxi ride from the Santa Cruz station to the house at Seabright with all our baggage.  

I remember how we ran out to the gate each time we heard a train coming, to watch the plumes of smoke approaching until the fire breathing, clanking monster rolled across Seabright Avenue pulling its train of sand-filled cars from Felton behind it. 

The sheer awesome power of those massive clanking locomotives with fire flickering in their belly and an engineer in the cab was fascinating to a 10-year-old. You had to experience it first hand to truly appreciate it. 

There was a camel bridge over the railroad that if we were lucky we could stand on top of as the train went under. Smoke all around us and steam too if the engineer blew the whistle. Those are memories I will never forget. 

Stephen Jory 

• 

STATE OF THE UNION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

One word to describe the State of the Union Address: boring! Not that I held high expectations but how much non-information can someone squeeze into an hour (or 40 minutes minus the applause)? Aside from the blatant overuse of culturally latent words like “liberty” “diplomacy” and “freedom” (that all mean essentially the same thing) I am unable to draw a single conclusion as to what Mr. Bush plans to do with our country and the world for the next 1,000 days. One thing is clear: Bush and his supporters are not taking global warming seriously. The goals to cut our dependence on foreign oil, cut down CO2 emissions, and to stabilize an economy that is not based on oil are admirable. However, the methods proposed last night, such as investing more money in technology, are minimal measures at most. There is a bill in the House of Representatives that addresses all of these issues and doesn’t cost Americans a dime. It’s called the Energy For Our Future Act. This bipartisan initiative will raise fuel-efficiency standards for cars, trucks, and SUVs to 40 miles a gallon. This new standard for American car makers would save as much oil as we now import from the Middle East. It would slash our contribution to global warming by 250 million tons over a decade. Last, but not least it would save consumers 45 billion at the pump on gas. 

Bronwyn Dietel 

For Peet’s Sake 

“In Alameda County, the whitest tract isn’t in the outlying suburbs. It’s in progressive, university-town Berkeley.” 

—San Francisco Chronicle 

Pretty soon, 

A black man will have to 

Present a visa 

In order to enter 

Berkeley  

Even the well-dressed 

Ones 

But look at it this way 

At the downtown Peet’s 

You get your own 

Salesperson  

—Ishmael Reed 

?

Since I have had experience with redevelopment projects, I have been asked to discuss redevelopment and the current Ashby BART station proposal now before you. Frankly, this task is impossible because the Caltrans grant application which the City Council voted to support on Dec. 13, 2005 is in direct opposition to what the grant’s major proponents are saying it means. Let’s look at three areas as examples: 

First, eminent domain. The grant’s proponents assure us eminent domain will never be used and that the BART air rights would be the ONLY place where construction will occur. The grant itself is silent on the subject of eminent domain, saying neither that it will or will not be used. However, the application does state that vacant and underutilized properties will be identified which can be secured for purchase. The area affected extends a mile into the residential neighborhoods around the station. No explanation is given as to why those properties are included in the application, IF, as proponents say that construction will occur only on BART property. The application does state that BART’s planning criteria goes beyond the station.  Logic might support extension to commercial properties, but why should any residential neighborhoods be included at all. Objectives stated in the application are: “There are several vacant or underutilized parcels within four blocks of the site. Ownership, potential for acquisition or transfer of development rights, etc. will be explored.” Further, “Land trusts, land swaps, creation of commercial condominiums held by non-profit groups and other mechanisms in addition to direct purchase of parcels, will be explored, along with financing sources.” “Other mechanisms” and “etc.” are not explained. This gives every indication that the project involves changes in ownership of at least some property, but neither the application itself nor its proponents offer any further explanation or reassurances. 

The second point is the question of the number of housing units that will be included in this project. Proponents have stated they don’t know why the community mentions that number when speaking about the proposal, yet the application in several places says not “300” units but “at least 300 units.” The author of the application told the council that the number would be “more like 300.” A councilmember voting for the proposal said at that City Council meeting that the number of people in 300 units could be 1,000. That’s all on the record, but raises the glaring question of how the final number will be decided upon. At least in redevelopment areas (which I oppose), people have a chance to comment on individual projects within the designated area.  This application gives the appearance that there will be a single vote on the total project presented by the developer.   

The question of why include any mention at all of the number of units in the application leads to the most important point of all—the process. The application is riddled with statements regarding the vital importance of an open and inclusive process involving the community at an early point. It cannot be explained away that this application give every appearance of having already decided several important issues such as the proposed number of housing units. Further, the application has been in discussion for six months without the knowledge of the full community affected by it, the first notice to the public was Dec. 13, 2005 when council approval for the application was sought, the request for council approval occurred 60 days after the application had been submitted to Caltrans, the request for council approval was placed on the part of the council agenda reserved for non-controversial items, and the application was discussed by the council only because a single member of the community, Jackie deBose, stood up and objected.  

This is unprecedented. I cannot think of any other instance of bringing something to the council and having it approved in such a manner.  Councilmembers used to raise huge objections if applications for grant proposals were brought to them if there was too short of a period of time before they had to be submitted. 

Further, there is no built-in accountability. The SBNDC which is to lead the process can appoint whomever they want to the group that will select the developer who will submit the final project. These decision makers may or may not be experienced in such matters, they may or may not be able to devote time to the process, they may or may not have a questioning nature or they may or may not be geographically distributed around the project area, and, there is no way, community members will be able to hold members of the SBNDC, or their appointees accountable. 

The proposed Ashby BART station project is not redevelopment. However, it is indicative of the pattern that goes back 15 years when a redevelopment project area for South Berkeley was fortunately rejected because of community opposition and further, of the commercial up-zoning in the area that was unfortunately approved despite objections of the community.   

We should not be afraid of development. However, development on the Ashby BART station should not be the same as development that which occurs downtown. It should be appropriate to the specific Ashby BART site, and sensitive to the surrounding residential uses and take into consideration the uses and density that already exist in the community. The question of how dense the community should be has never been asked nor has it been answered. Development should proceed from a community consensus as to how dense you want this community to be and not from some predetermined number or concepts in a confusing and premature grant application that was written without your comment. 

This Caltrans grant application should be withdrawn and the city should begin a process to write a new application to be submitted next year, one that will be built on a foundation of participation of all residents of the affected area that want to be involved. 

Shirley Dean is the former mayor of Berkeley. 



I urge the City Council to vote against Mayor Bates’ proposal to alter the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, or LPO. (This is item 17 on their Feb. 7 agenda.) Among many good reasons to oppose the mayor’s proposal, let me emphasize two. 

First, there is no evidence that the current LPO is broken. On the whole, it is serving all of Berkeley’s constituencies well—allowing vigorous housing construction, while helping to preserve the city’s historic fabric. So let’s not “fix” what ain’t broke. 

Second, I’m particularly disturbed by the mayor’s proposal to severely restrict structure of merit designations to certain “historic districts.” To be blunt, this would further segregate the city. It would force more teardowns, and force more replacement structures of low quality, on poorer neighborhoods. 

I write as someone who’s fortunate to live in a North Berkeley neighborhood with several landmarked Maybeck houses. And then there are houses like mine: designed by no one famous (reportedly by one of Maybeck’s students) and maybe not an outstanding example of any particular style. Still, it survived the 1923 fire, and it fits in nicely with nearby houses. If a future owner wanted to demolish it, my neighbors would have no trouble winning “historic district” status and inhibiting the teardown. 

Under the mayor’s proposal, this tool would become almost unavailable to residents of many South, West, and Central Berkeley neighborhoods that already suffered from whirlwind redevelopment in the 1950s through 1970s. What the mayor really seems to propose is a vicious cycle: Because some parts of town are now stuck with a large share of the tilt-up eyesores from that go-go period, they won’t qualify as “historic districts,” so they can’t restrict further new developments that might look just as mistaken within a few years. 

There are many respects in which Berkeley needs to move beyond rhetoric and really strive harder to be “one city.” Selectively restricting development controls in the flatlands would move us in exactly the wrong direction. Maintaining all neighborhoods’ ability to protect their architectural fabric and livability would be a small, but important, step in the right direction. 

For that reason, I encourage councilmembers to reject the mayor’s proposed changes, and to instead keep the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance intact.  

Michael Katz is a Berkeley resident.

There are a number of people in this community, who are taking a pretty hard line position regarding the Ashby BART planning proposal submitted to CalTrans by Max Anderson, Ed Church and the city, particularly Mayor Tom Bates. This group of hardliners includes, among others, the ad hoc steering committee, a group of people who volunteered to keep working on this issue following the large community meeting that many of you attended, and myself. 

We are taking a position that includes the following:  

1. The only course of action that we find acceptable is that the city withdraw the proposal they have made to CalTrans. 

2. We will not consider supporting any modified version of that proposal. 

3. We are unwilling to support any project in which either Max, Ed Church, SBNDC or the city play a leading role. 

In addition, we are proposing that the community take the initiative itself to begin a fully inclusive visioning and planning process for South Berkeley. We are willing to put our energies into making this happen. The goal of this process would be a vision generated by all the diverse voices of South Berkeley. It would acknowledge all of the wonderful things that groups and individuals are already contributing to our neighborhood, bringing all of this together in a collective effort based on a vision we will build together. No one will be excluded, replaced or left out. It would also include making the commitment and taking the collective action necessary to make this vision a reality. Any plan for developing the Ashby BART station would grow out of this vision and this process. What we are saying to the City is “No thanks, we’ll do it ourselves.” 

Imagining the prospect of working together to create a community vision has been quite inspiring. It has brought together a wonderfully diverse group of people, some of whom have, in the past, not gotten along so well together. It is exciting to feel the energy that is growing out of this new meeting of diverse voices in an open and collaborative spirit. It has shown us what we can do if we work together. We are getting excited about possibilities for the BART site that could come out of such a process. 

But first, we have to stop this initiative. 

Since many of you may be wondering what brought us to this thinking, let me explain. I think you will find it is not as extreme a position as it might sound. 

First, we are not taking this position because we are opposed to developing the BART site. I think it is fair to say that, among those taking this strong stand, there are many opinions on whether to develop the site or how. It is my sense that most of us would like to see something done at the site. What all of us agree on is that if anything is developed at the BART station, it has to grow out of a full and open community process. It can’t be an idea cooked up by Ed Church on which we get to comment. 

This is what we mean by a full and open process: 

1. All community voices are included from the very start. 

2. The process is not driven by pre-existing constraints or assumptions.  

3. Anything that is done at the BART station or elsewhere grows out of a larger vision for South Berkeley that is the result of a true community-wide planning process.  

This is all predicated on a shared belief: “If we can imagine it together, we can make it happen!” 

The reason we are unwilling to allow Ed, Max, SBNDC or the City to have any directive role in any future proposal is because we believe they have violated and continue to violate, even in the face of our protests, our core value of full community participation. At this point, we think they do not hold community participation as a high priority; we don’t believe they even know how to support that kind of participation. This is some of what we have observed: 

• They developed the vision detailed in the CalTrans grant on their own with no process that included our community to any meaningful degree. The community is merely advisory. 

• Their proposal puts Ed completely in control of the project and all of its funds, as well as being in control of all public input and all final decisions.  

• Their proposal explicitly constrains public input at every stage with detailed prior constraints, regarding funding, density, scope, project control, etc.  

• They continue to exclude us as they attempt to justify and modify their proposal in the hope of winning our support.  

• When a group of community folks organized a meeting to provide information to the larger community, they tried to hijack that effort and, when that failed, they tried to isolate it.  

• When hundreds of people showed up at that meeting, they tried to organize a competing meeting, making an abortive nod to planning it with community voices. They abandoned that planning effort when they couldn’t control the planning process.  

• They have continually refused to acknowledge our protests about the process they have pursued, dismissing them as procedural attempts to block a proposal we don’t like or claiming they were based on our irrational prejudice against Max and the City or as “personal attacks.”  

• To add insult to injury, they even failed to inform us as to what they were planning to do before presenting their plan for action by the City Council. 

We are not making personal attacks on Max and Ed; we are observing what they have done and expressing our disapproval. We are holding them accountable for their actions. 

We are not willing to give them another chance on this issue; as far as we are concerned, any visioning or planning that goes on in South Berkeley will be driven by the community, not Max, Ed, SBNDC or the city. 

In addition, there are specific issues raised in the proposal that make it clear that they have made prior determinations regarding their plans for the site and continue to misrepresent this fact in public. Robert Lauriston has done an excellent job of detailing these issues, so I will not repeat them here. Robert’s article can be seen in the Feb. 3 issue of the Daily Planet or on the Planet’s website. 

All in all, what we are standing for is an exciting and active community that takes responsibility for its own future. We are even excited by what might develop at the Ashby BART station out of a shared community vision. We care about this so much that we are willing to commit to working toward creating a community wide process that will include every voice in South Berkeley in imagining and implementing a shared and integrated vision for South Berkeley, including but not limited to the Ashby BART station. 

We invite every member of the Berkeley community to join us. The first thing we need to do is to stop the proposal that has been pushed on us. 

Let’s make the city withdraw the CalTrans proposal! Then let’s get together and build the community we want to live in. 

“No thanks, we’ll do it ourselves.” 

Kenoli Oiler is a Berkeley resident. 

In December, the New York Times revealed that the Bush administration has been eavesdropping on our phone calls, by means of National Security Agency computer systems, without a court order. Although the exact nature of the surveillance is highly classified, it appears that the White House has gone on a massive “fishing trip”—one that invades the privacy of thousands of ordinary Americans. This article considers the pragmatics of Administration eavesdropping—why we should care about it. 

Bear in mind that the scope of this fishing expedition is enormous. Because the National Security Agency surveillance is highly automated, there are hundreds of thousands of Americans being monitored—an average of 500 additional each day since 9/11. In comparison, in 2004 the Federal Intelligence Surveillance ACT court granted 1758 warrants all year. 

Note that there is a specific law, FISA, to deal with domestic surveillance. The Bush administration has ignored this. Most legal experts feel that their action is illegal. 

Americans are a pragmatic people. For many, the ultimate criterion will not be “is it legal?” but simply, “does it work?” Has the Bush eavesdropping protected us? If it has, why should we care about how the White House goes about spying on terrorist suspects? Because of this pragmatic line of reasoning, Americans are divided on the subject of eavesdropping. 

The latest Gallup Poll, conducted Jan. 20-22, finds half of Americans (51 percent) believe the Bush administration was wrong in wiretapping terrorist-linked telephone conversations without first obtaining a court order, while 46 percent say it was right. However, these poll results are fragile, highly dependent upon the exact wording of the question. The results shift if respondents are asked if its OK to eavesdrop on “average Americans” versus “suspected terrorists.”  

The average American may reason, “So what? If I have done nothing wrong, then I have nothing to be afraid of.” 

Unfortunately, there is a lot to be afraid of. American history teaches us that there are three distinct reasons why we should be wary of illegal Federal actions such as warrantless domestic eavesdropping. The first is that they inevitably become political. The second reason is that we have learned from bitter experience that if the administration gets away with this, they will try something even worse. The final reason is that unauthorized surveillance is not a sign of strength, but rather of incompetence. 

The history of illegal eavesdropping in the United States indicates that it is abusive and something to fear. There is not a brick wall between well-reasoned security operations and sleazy political back stabbing. The history of surveillance operations such as COINTELPRO indicates that for every baddie the feds tracked, the Ku Klux Klan, they monitored a goodie, Martin Luther King, Jr. Opponents of the regime in power got monitored and, in many cases, harassed. 

Do we really trust the Bush administration to exercise good judgment in eavesdropping on our digital correspondence? Be serious. This is the same administration that has spied on Quaker meetings and sent IRS agents to hassle ministers who preached against the war. This is the same administration that routinely lies about key matters of national policy such as the presence of WMDs in Iraq. If they eavesdrop on our communications, they will inevitably use this information for political purposes. They imperil the foundations of freedom. 

The second reason we should protest this is because of the expansion of presidential power. This may seem like a theoretical concern, but it’s not. The founders had the wisdom to provide for separation of powers in the constitution. In the matter of domestic surveillance, Congress indisputably has the authority to set the rules, and has done so—the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act. This law clearly describes the process that must be followed when eavesdropping on Americans; the courts protect our Fourth Amendment rights, which ensures that there is “probable cause” for the surveillance. The president has simply blown off Congress and the federal courts. 

This is not the only instance where President Bush has sought to expand presidential powers considerably beyond those envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. He took us to war by misleading Congress, and the American people, about the danger posed by Iraq. The administration’s hunger for power is insatiable. This threatens our democracy. 

Finally, there is no evidence that the NSA program of warrantless surveillance has “helped prevent terrorist attacks,” as the president claimed in his State of the Union address. The only example Bush cites was the arrest of a crazy who planned to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge by a blowtorch attack. There is abundant evidence that the NSA program is yet another example of administration incompetence. Many observers have suggested that the funds spent on the NSA system would be better spent recruiting more agents and training them in Urdu and the other languages spoken by Al Qaeda operators. 

When we look at the history of the Bush administration, there is no large project they’ve done well—except get reelected. They screwed up the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. They failed to respond to Hurricane Katrina. George Bush and his cronies have not led, they have bungled. 

Americans are right to be concerned about the threat of terrorism. But the answer is not a vast, clandestine surveillance operation that threatens the privacy of every American. The answer lies in competence, in a well-thought-out program of homeland security. 

Sadly, competence is not something that we can expect from this administration, which continues to be more interested in increasing its own power than it is in protecting America. 

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at  

bobburnett@comcast.net. 

As expected—or feared, depending on your point of view—Pennsylvania Congressmember John Murtha is rapidly becoming one of the Democratic Party’s de facto spokespersons on defense policy. That may be a good thing for centrist Democrats who don’t want to get beat by our Republican friends with the “soft on defense” stick in another election. But where does it leave progressives? 

Mr. Murtha, you may remember, was the Congressmember who introduced a resolution last November calling for immediate U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, labeling the war “a flawed policy wrapped in illusion” and declaring that “the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It is time to bring them home.”  

Coming from a decorated Marine combat veteran of the Korea and Vietnam era and a representative who has consistently supported the military, those words jolted the Bush administration, and vaulted the respected—but obscure—Congressmember into national leadership. 

It’s not far-fetched to see him moving over from the House Appropriations Committee to a leading role—maybe the leading role—on the House Armed Services Committee should the Democrats retake control of Congress or wielding considerable influence on defense matters should a Democrat win the White House in 2008. 

And so, on the off chance that his proposals may one day end up being policy, we ought to look beyond Mr. Murtha’s call for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq—which won him well-deserved standing ovations on the left—and see just where he wants to redeploy those troops, and what he wants to do with them when they get there. 

In a letter written earlier this month to President Bush, Mr. Murtha called for a “strategy for victory against global terrorism,” suggesting that in conjunction with a troop withdrawal from Iraq, the president should consider “stationing a mobile force outside of the country.” Where such a “mobile force” would be stationed, and what would be its purpose, is left unclear. But in a letter written to Congressional colleagues last November explaining his troop withdrawal proposal Mr. Murtha gave some hints, stating that the military front of the War on Terror [his capital letters] “should be focused on where the leadership and main strength of Al Qaeda and related organizations exist. To me [Mr. Murtha continues], that is clearly in the area of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia…” 

Does that mean rather than invasion-and-occupation scenarios, we would be launching cross-border military raids from bases in, say, Turkey, into Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia or, in the alternative, continuing the Bush policy of launching missiles in villages whenever we suspect an Al Qaeda presence? I don’t know, partly because I could not find anything more specific in Mr. Murtha’s proposals. 

In any event, in the “second and perhaps most important ‘front’ in the War on Terror” as he describes it, Mr. Murtha advocates a “long-term battle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. … It is a battle we should be able to win resoundingly because we share so many values with common Muslims and stand for the principles of freedom and equality.” Aside from the disturbing echo of Lyndon Johnson’s “winning the hearts and minds” policy in Vietnam (remember how hard we had to fight against that one), this proposal also remains vague. To which values does Mr. Murtha refer, and how would he suggest go about demonstrating to our Muslim friends that we share them? The devil is in the details. 

But at least the Pennsylvania Congressmember is suggesting a strategy. 

While progressives—myself included—have taken great delight in pointing out the fumbles of the Bush administration during the so-called “war on terror” from Tikrit to Internet wiretapping, we have been mostly silent on what we, ourselves, would do in defense of this country if we had national power in our own hands. 

This has mostly to do with the natural breeding grounds for progressive thought in America, which is most definitely not in the average defense think tank. Most progressives cut their eye teeth on environmental activism or women’s or minority rights issues, and can talk for days on how we would improve the education system. Progressive knowledge on military matters, however, leans heavily toward the question of how to keep Marine recruiters off campus. 

This leads to a couple of results, both of them bad. 

First, it strengthens the hands of those in this country—the Rumsfelds and the Cheneys and the Wolfowitzs—who were all too eager to unleash the dogs of war in the sands of Iraq, if only to demonstrate that America can’t be kicked around any more, and to wash what they believe is the stench of the Vietnam withdrawal from the national body. 

Second, because defense-challenged progressives are such an integral part of the Democratic Party, progressive failure to craft and articulate a defense policy of our own creates an opening for our Republican friends to say that Democrats can’t be trusted on defense and national security issues. This causes centrist Democrats to scramble around to prove that they are not soft on defense—the Kerrys and the Hillary Clintons come immediately to mind—thus strengthening the hand of those in this country who are eager … well, just refer back to bad result No. 1. 

What’s the solution to this dilemma for progressives? 

First and foremost, while the political battle to end the war in Iraq is still going on, progressives need to answer the question: how would we defend the country if we were in charge? Specifics are in order. What would we do, for example, to prevent another terrorist attack on American soil along the line of, say, the 9/11 attacks? 

What would our response be if such an attack took place, and we could identify the base location of the attackers? Would we launch an invasion of the suspected country, as the Bush administration did in Afghanistan? What would we do if faced with the impending nuclearization of a country such as Iran? What would we do about nuclear weapons already existing in countries around the world? North Korea? China? Pakistan? Israel? France and England? The United States? Ask everyone to throw them in the ocean? Or let everyone keep them in place in the old mutually-assured deterrence scheme? 

And the larger question: what is the best balance between America’s economic and military policy in order to keep us relatively prosperous and relatively safe? Can we do that while bringing the rest of the world up with us? Is that the best defense policy and, if so, how do we suggest it would be managed in the real world, while keeping at bay those people who are still pissed with us about how we managed the world in the old days? 

We often hear it said, these days, that U.S. military forces are being stretched thin by the war in Iraq. Mr. Murtha uses the term “overstretched” in a column which included his recent letter to President Bush. But when Mr. Murtha uses such a term, he has specific numbers in mind, which is why people listen to him when he gives opinions. 

How many divisions the country must keep on hand in order to fight a two-front war, for example. How long would it take to redeploy troops stationed in the European theater to an African or Asian or Middle Eastern battleground, and how many carriers would it take to redeploy them. How long should the average soldier/sailor’s term be in combat conditions before they are cycled out for rest and refitting. How long should they stay out before being sent back in to battle. How many times should they go into battle. Before you can even enter that discussion, you have to start with simpler questions. How many carriers are in a battle group? How many soldiers are in a division? A company? A squad? I don’t have any idea. And I suspect, neither do most of my progressive friends. 

Until more of us do, progressives are going to be mostly on the sidelines during the coming debates over United States defense policy, forcing the issue, certainly, but never being able to define it. The real redeployment needed here is for progressives to get into the study of national defense. And quickly.?

Thornhill Nursery is a bit out of the way, not so much in distance from Berkeley, but tucked away on Thornhill Drive in the Oakland Hills. It’s most easily accessible from the freeway, if you don’t mind a little daring on- and off-ramp dodge’em game. Take the Thornhill Drive exit, drive on past the entrance to the Foothill business district and through a tiny patch of school and mini-mall on Thornhill. Keep it slow—you ought to anyway; the sidewalks are narrow and foot traffic can be a tad chaotic and full of rompity schoolkids. The nursery’s not hard to see once you get to its block, and the parking area, though small, is handy on the right. 

Thornhill employees told me the place specializes in Japanese maples. I guess so; it’s set off from the surrounding woodsy lots by a hedge of sheared Japanese maple. Since I made a buck or two back in the day by taking sheared and poodle-balled maples out of that form and turning them back into something that looked like a tree, I was a bit ambivalent about that. But there are certainly a lot of tree-shaped trees in the area, and the maples looked healthy enough, at least so far as I could see in winter. 

There are a couple of other radically pruned trees—a threadleaf “cypress” type in front of the shop building, and a pine behind it—in rather a different style, and integrated into the place’s architecture. Both are kept way open, even a bit bare, showing mostly trunk and major branches; both are at startling angles; both clearly have frequent attention to keep the foliage under control and healthy-looking. And both times I’ve asked who was responsible for them, I’ve heard very general answers: most recently, “Oh, that’s the grounds crew…” Either there’s a singularly talented mow-and-blow crew running around being underpaid, or someone else set that tree’s shape and showed them how to maintain it. 

When I first saw the place a decade ago, I made much of those trees and of the cement ’gator loafing so fetchingly in the flume of creek that runs through the lot. I didn’t see him this time, until a second look—maybe 15 feet from his original spot under the footbridge, where all several-hundred pounds of him were shoved by the New Year’s rainstorm. He looks undaunted after his impressive little trip. 

There are lots of Japanese maple varieties for sale, and ornaments that match that ’gator for interest. The setting makes the place relaxing for a stroll—birders, take your binocs!—and on visits over the years I’ve found staffers friendly and helpful but not intrusive. Plants are healthy and in good variety, too. There’s always something, plant or gadget or objet d’ whimsy, that makes me stop and point. And don’t miss the hood ornament on the roof. I wonder if the business bought someone a Jaguar or it’s where the Jag money went instead ... Either way, I like it.  

Thornhill Nursery 

6250 Thornhill Drive 

Oakland 

(510)339-1331 

Open daily 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

It has often occurred to me how primitive our houses are for a people who can look to the edges of the universe and plumb the living paths of bozons and muons. They’re not exactly mud huts but they are so simple that you’d think we were still fighting wars with guns and killing each other with bombs. Oh wait. Sorry. Anyway, if you look at the way in which our houses are built, you might think that we’d missed the U-boat altogether. 

First, they’re built from plant matter, literally somebody’s dinner. Things that grow out of the ground that seem hard enough to make a floor out of. We puncture them with little rods of metal, holding them together in a manner that’s not unlike sewing a sack together. 

Then we put more of these vegetable planks down to make floors and ceilings and cover them over with something we wove from the hair of a sheep. 

Windows are actually pretty advanced but they’re still an igneous rock remelted into a flat sheet. Roofs are made from tar, dug out of the ground or boiled down from oil left behind by some compressed rain forest and we finish the insides with sheets of soft rock called gypsum carved out of a hillside.  

I’ll stop, but the point is that there isn’t that much technology in all of this beyond those methods developed to make it cheaper for large companies to get it to you and put it together at a low price. There are lots of ways to do these things better but they haven’t figured out how to get you to pay enough for them. 

Heating is a great example of how we have started with technologies that are as simple as we could get away with and advanced toward safer and more efficient systems. Houses were first heated with wood fireplaces that reflected little of the heat inward and required huge amounts of raw material to burn. 

Mining of coal produced a more efficient system but puts workers at risk and also produces large amounts of carbon monoxide that kill the end user (so to speak). We still have coal burners in many of our early 20th century houses and occasionally I pick up coal from a crawlspace or basement where it remains from the last shipment in nineteen twenty-something. It’s very fun to find and be reminded of how recently these changes arrived. 

Gas became widely available just after the turn of the 20th century and we started blowing things up right away for lack of an ability to smell the stuff. Then gas companies began to add an acrid and pungent smell to the gas so that we’d know when it was on and things got a lot safer. For lack of this one notion, I suspect they’d have given up on gas. Gas heaters at this time were no more sophisticated than your cooktop burners and if you left them on, once again, they could blow you up. Then came the pilot which used up lots of extra gas by being on all the time but is well worth it if you don’t have anything better. 

Eventually the pilot safety device arrived. This made sure that gas wasn’t released into a burner unless a pilot was lit. This was a very big advance and we’re still using them today in very much the same form, although electronic ignitions are slowly taking over. 

The thing in all these advancements that was largely ignored for the last 80 years or so was efficiency. Gas was pretty cheap for a long time and the overall cost to the economy was manageable. Also, we weren’t chopping wood and everyone was pretty happy. Recently we’ve begun to realize that burning anything is pretty bad for the planet and is likely altering the climate and transparency of our atmosphere to carcinogenic radiation. 

Also, the population of this planet is becoming a pretty serious problem and there are great doubts about our ability to sustain ourselves while burning up the fuel sources that we can chop down or pump out of the ground. It’s time to take a much more serious assessment of our methods and our needs. Although I’m not happy to pay the utility bill as it soars into the ozone (sorry), I am happy that this has created a tangible impetus for people to make real changes in how they buy and use heat. 

As an inspector who meets new homeowners daily, it has always been something of a struggle to induce the buyer (who’s going into hock over their eyeballs) that a new more efficient heating system is in their best interest (and that of the home planet) but with utility prices skyrocketing this year, it’s been much easier. I’ve actually seen many of these folks decide then and there to dump the old water heater for an on-demand type or agree to toss the mid-efficiency furnace for a new high-efficiency condensing type in the first weeks of ownership. 

So I think it’s time to up the ante a bit by telling you about the latest and greatest thing I’ve seen in home heating. For the last few years I’ve been hearing about combined water heating and house heating systems but it’s been mostly talk. Somewhere a rich guy was having a team of technicians assemble a very expensive system from rarely seen components. This wasn’t practical for me to talk about since there were few examples to point to and very high initial costs.  

Recently, two technologies have taken off to the point where each have become a practical discussion point: the on-demand water heater, which I’m now seeing taking an actual market share and the hydronic (or hot water) heating system, which is far less common but still growing in popularity. 

Now we have the Baxi Luna. This is what I’ve been waiting for and the first time I saw one, which was just months ago, I almost flipped. Part of my reaction was that it was as though someone just skipped three stages and went right to the 22nd century model. 

This single unit employs so many of the latest concepts that it’s a bit dizzying. First, it’s very small and looks much like the more common on-demand water heater. It’s about the size of a suitcase and hangs on a wall in the upright direction. Inside is an on-demand water heater that only heats water when and as you need it but it also heats water in a closed loop that can run under your floor or through radiators in your house to provide very mild and extremely efficient heat. 

Warm floor heating is widely considered the best way to heat, in part, because it lacks the drying effect of forced air combined with the noise and blowing about of dust. 

If you’ve just bought a house with a problem water heater and furnace please consider this amazing option. If you’re living in a house that needs both or if your heating bill is making you consider asking your children to move out, take a look at a Baxi Luna. It’s penny-wise and planet-perceptive. 

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It is 1963. Americans across the South—white activists, black ministers and plenty of ordinary folks—are rising up against segregation, against the hypocrisy of separate but equal. They are sitting-in at lunch counters, fighting for the right to vote, the right to earn equal wages, the right to live in decent homes and send their children to good schools. 

The whole world watches while black people are beaten by cops and fire hoses, bitten by vicious dogs. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. comes into national prominence in Birmingham, Alabama, leading marches in protest of continued maltreatment at the hands of local government officials. 

Months later, the Ku Klux Klan and its supporters bomb a local church and four little girls are murdered. Dr. King then leads over two hundred thousand civil rights advocates in the historic March on Washington. As the multitudes gather to hear Dr. King deliver his unforgettable “I Have a Dream” speech, somewhere in Wyoming, two white cowboys are on the downlow.  

What does one thing have to do with the other? Not a durn thang. Or maybe . . . 

I am writing this little ditty on Super Bowl Sunday while most black folks I know are frying and barbecuing and stirring and pouring, entertaining friends, family and a few strangers in honor of the big, fun football sit-down. Although invited to one of these events, I am not in the mood to deal with more than three hours of this. So while everyone else is pigging out between whoops and shouts, my 16-year-old daughter and I head to downtown Berkeley to see Brokeback Mountain.  

With all the hype, I expected to be moved by a tender love story between two guys who find each other amidst the mountain ranges, in between the horses, sheep and the macho world of ropin’ and ridin’.  

Tender it was not. Their first sexual encounter was almost like a rape. But then, Hollywood has a history of mixing sex with violence, most often with both participants coming away from it mysteriously satisfied. To each his own, I suppose.  

Brokeback Mountain opens with two cowboys awaiting work, one Marlboro-weathered with squinty eyes whose mumbling is often uncomprehensible; the other dark-eyed, lively, more comfortable in his skin. He sneaks peeks at his future lover and it is he who eventually initiates their intimate relationship.  

But how intimate is it? The film is more about emotional repression than intimacy. Both characters come from poor, working-class families who are isolated and living in bleak circumstances. They are emotionless, rigid, cold. Growing up, both men were estranged from their fathers. They may have admired their fathers’ strengths from a distance but there was no sense of warmth between them. 

As the cowboys continue their relationship over a period of perhaps 20 years, they each marry, have children and lie to their wives about who they are and what they are doing.  

They never discuss homosexuality in any depth. After their first encounter they each declare: “I ain’t queer.” They refer to their ongoing relationship as “this thing that’s got ahold of us.” One of the wives, bitter over her husband’s deception refers to it as “nasty,” but that’s about it. No discussion of how they feel inside or what it means. Are they gay and pretending to be straight? Bi-sexual? Are they so ignorant and isolated that they are unaware that there are others in the world who are like them and that there are other places that would be more accepting of who they are?  

Remember, this romance takes place in 1963. I have to wonder if these two cowboys have any clue as to what is happening in the world around them; any knowledge of the scores of black people who are simultaneously being beaten, lynched and stuffed into jails cells for demanding that they be granted equal rights. It seems not. But still, I have to ask: Would these two lovers empathize with black people who had even fewer rights than they did? Would they see any connection? Would they care? 

But, you say, this movie wasn’t about that. No it wasn’t and I’m not saying it should have been. I’m simply describing what most black folks bring with them to the movies—a gnawing sense of invisibility—that is, unless we are bouncing a ball, brandishing a gun, dancing, singing or helping white folks rescue white girls. 

After viewing the film, I spoke with a good friend, Patricia Rambo, to get her take on it. She is the mother of a gay, African-American man and she brought me back to what the film did have to offer. 

“Relationships don’t have gender,” she told me. “They consist of emotional energy that must be balanced between the two people involved . . . If I were to close my eyes and just listen to the dialogue in the film, I wouldn’t be able to tell the gender  

. . . that’s why I related to it as just a love story.” 

I agree with Patricia wholeheartedly. Relationships cannot be stereotyped, they are particular to the two individuals involved. Just because I didn’t see much tenderness doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Just because they didn’t communicate they way I would choose to doesn’t mean that they didn’t share a deep bond. They obviously did.  

Patricia and I also noted the lack of courage in either man to stand up and claim who they were, accompanied by the silent suffering of their wives. We both observed a seemingly unspoken agreement between all parties to keep mum in order to keep up appearances, financial and/or familial stability. In this sense, their relationship was not unlike many heterosexual relationships that rest more on convenience than honesty. Perhaps this was the underlying message: that too many of us, regardless of our sexual orientation, move through life in fear, choosing to live only partially fulfilling lives for fear that our honesty might mean that we are forced to face the world alone. 

My daughter and I arrive at the tail end of the super bowl party. (She actually found the film to be a bit boring and fell asleep twice.) There are just three minutes left, which drag on for another half an hour.  

It seems that everyone in the house has been pulling for the Steelers, so the mood is decidedly upbeat.  

“Sorry we’re so late,” I say. “We went to a movie.” 

“What’d you see?” asks the hostess. 

“Brokeback Mountain,” I reply. 

“Did you like it?” she asks. 

“Well, I wasn’t really that into it,” I say, looking around to see if there’s any barbecue chicken and potato salad left. “It was OK.” 

“That’s what I thought,” she nods her head as she hands me a plate. “It was a white folks’ movie, wasn’t it?” 

Well . . . yes and no. 

Last week I went out to the Legion of Honor to see the show “After the Ruins, 1906 and 2006: Rephotographing the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.” The exhibit pairs archival pictures of a devastated San Francisco with shots of today’s city taken from the same viewpoints. As I contemplated the stunning contrasts between the ruined townscape and the reconstructed one, I began to think about the different ways we perceive radical urban change.  

When transformation is catastrophic, as it was in San Francisco in 1906, it’s hard to deny, even when you’d like nothing better than to deny it. In one of the most moving photographs at the Legion of Honor, a crowd stands on a hill, backs to the camera, and watches the huge clouds of smoke rising from the burning city in the distance. Anyone who lived though the Oakland firestorm or who just followed Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath on TV can imagine what those men and women were thinking and feeling: shock and fear in the face of sudden, sweeping destruction.  

Not all ruin, however, is the result of calamity. Civic character can also be transfigured by change that’s incremental, and hence much harder to detect. There are increasing signs that Berkeley is on the verge of just such an insidious identity crisis, one brought about by construction as well as destruction.  

I’m not only thinking of the rampant development of recent years, though certainly that’s part of the story. The face of central Berkeley—Downtown and its environs—has already been altered by big, new mixed-use projects that one by one, have gone up in recent years. The Gaia Building, known to some as the tallest seven-story building in the world, led the way. The glassy, six-story façade of the new Berkeley City College (formerly Vista) facility now looms over Center Street. On Kittredge, west of the Berkeley Public Library, construction of the five-story, 176-unit Library Gardens apartment complex is well under way. This is but a partial inventory of what’s already built or being built.  

There’s much more to come. The nine-story, 149,000 square-foot Arpeggio (né Seagate) luxury condominium building on Center, across the street from Berkeley Community College. The 168,00 square-foot (not counting the underground parking) Oxford Plaza/Brower Center complex on Oxford between Allston and Kittredge. A five-story, 148,249-square-foot, 186-unit apartment building on the Kragen Auto site at MLK between University and Berkeley Way.  

And that’s only the scene at city center. Consider a few of the projects that are planned for other parts of town. In south Berkeley, the 86,000-square-foot Ed Roberts Campus is going to be built at the Ashby BART station’s east parking lot. In October the City of Berkeley submitted a grant to Caltrans for planning a development with at least 300 residential units over the west parking lot at Ashby BART. On Solano Avenue, Safeway wants to tear down its existing store and erect a bigger grocery with 40 to 50 apartments on top. The site’s in Albany, but the development will significantly affect the nearby Berkeley residents living just over the city line. In West Berkeley, a 91,000-square-foot West Berkeley Bowl store (two to three times the size of any other Berkeley grocery store) is planned to go at 916 Heinz, off Ashby and Seventh—more to the point, just off the freeway, where regional superstores like to be.  

Add to the above the University of California’s projected growth, on and off campus. The UC administration intends to build 1 million square feet of new development and 1,000 new parking spaces downtown, exactly where they have yet to tell us. On College Avenue there’s the Underhill Parking Structure, expanded to 1,000 spaces. Further up the hill, university planners are moving forward with the massive, Southeast Campus Integrated Projects (SCIP), which includes a 135,000 square-foot expansion of Memorial Stadium (which sits directly over the Hayward Fault), a new parking structure that will increase the university parking supply by 300 spaces, a 132,500 square-foot Student High Performance Center dedicated to intercollegiate athletics, and 180,000 square feet of new facilities for the Law and Business Schools.  

Some of these projects are extremely worthy. But that’s beside the point here, which is that taken together, they add up to a staggering amount of growth for our medium-sized city. As a community, we have yet to ask how that growth’s cumulative impact is affecting Berkeley’s character and quality of life, and whether that change is desirable.  

The good news is that those questions are now being raised in neighborhoods all over the city, including some districts that are ordinarily thought to be insulated from major development. The neighborhoods most threatened by the colossal amount of traffic to be generated by the Southeast Campus Integated Projects are the Elmwood and Claremont districts. Watching Janice Thomas’s eye-opening slideshow presentation on SCIP at last week’s Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association meeting, I realized that growth has become an issue for all of Berkeley.  

So far I’ve discussed only the built environment. But a city is more than its structures and spaces; it’s also what goes on inside of them. I’m talking about culture and class. I used to think that Berkeley was in danger of being Emeryvilleized (I refer of course to the “new” Emeryville.) That may still be the case. Now I wonder if our civic future isn’t symbolized by another place—Blackhawk.  

The February newsletter of Berkeley Design Advocates describes the Read Brothers Building being proposed for the corner of Fourth and Addison, the site of the old Sierra Design Building, across the street from Celia’s. One half of the first floor will house five small retail spaces. The other half will be a private museum for the Reads’ collection of Aston Martins and Ferraris. The second floor will be devoted to offices. According to BDA, “On the third floor, which measures 3,000 square feet plus a roof deck of 2,400 square feet, [the architect] will create a large Manhattan penthouse surrounded by roof gardens [which] will be used by Read Investments for parties, guests, board meetings, and other corporate and charitable functions. The finishings and woodwork are all of outstanding quality, with lime stucco being imported from France to create first class Continental look and feel . . . Construction cost is expected to exceed $300 per square foot.”  

Sure, it’s only one building. But it’s the “it’s only one building” mentality that’s the problem. The Read Brothers program needs to be viewed in the context of the accelerating gentrification of West Berkeley. The project’s five retail spaces will extend upscale consumerism south on Fourth Street. I’m all for a high end, tax revenue-generating commercial zone, but not if it means the continuing erosion of our manufacturing and artisanal sectors. What’s made Berkeley more than another pretty college town is its mix of blue collars and white, high culture and low. That mix is now at risk, and not only in the flats. Like growth, high-rent gentrification has become a citywide issue. The price of single-family homes in this city has soared far beyond the reach of most middle-class people, especially young, would-be first-time homeowners. Only a fraction of the thousands of rental apartments that have been or are about to be built in Berkeley over the past few years are officially affordable. And as Robert Lauriston keeps pointing out in his precise commentaries in the Daily Planet, many units on craigslist are cheaper than what’s officially affordable.  

The first goal of Berkeley’s 2002 General Plan is, “Preserve Berkeley’s unique character and quality of life.” Carrying out that goal doesn’t mean recreating a local version of Colonial Williamsburg. It does mean recognizing that we live in a special place, and that its specialness can withstand only a certain amount and kind of change without being degraded or even destroyed. Unlike the citizens of San Francisco in 1906 or New Orleans in 2005, we still have time to make that recognition and to act on it.  



Michele booked some friends and me into an all-inclusive Jamaican resort—one of those places where you can kill yourself doing activities, drink yourself to death, or eat until you can’t move. I chose the former, though I did some of the latter as well. 

Upon arrival I ate a big meal, downed a couple of Red Stripes, and swam half a mile. I gorged and imbibed some more before going to bed. 

The next day I swam another half-mile, did yoga and aerobics, rode a horse, and kayaked. In-between sporting events I sat on the beach, lounged in a Jacuzzi, and lingered at the all-you-can-eat buffet tables. 

The following day I waterskied, sailed, and took step and ab classes. Then I joined a cliff-jumping party cruise. 

I wasn’t interested in leaping off a 35-foot cliff but Michele was jumping so I felt I should too. Michele was jumping because her daughter, Jessica, had leaped off a Jamaican cliff last year during Spring Break. Michele had something to prove. She was going feet first off that cliff if it killed her. I had nothing to prove but what the hell, if Michelle could do it then I could do it, and if Jessica did it then I had to do it because, after all, Jessica is 21 and I’m 53, almost 54. You know the logic. It has to do with age, wrinkles and menopause, but I don’t really want to go there. 

From the deck of the boat the rocky precipice appeared a quarter-mile high. An announcement boomed at us through a loudspeaker: “You have 15 minutes to swim to the cliff, climb up the ladder, jump, and swim back before the boat departs. Leap at your own risk. The country of Jamaica is not responsible for your safety, or possible demise.” 

Michele and I dove in. From the water’s surface the cliff looked even higher. We swam toward the rickety ladder which was inside a cave. Waves tossed us back and forth, and I realized I could die before I reached the entrance. Once there, the incoming tide lifted me high enough to whack my head against the grotto roof. I thought about turning back, but Michele was ahead of me, and a huge wave flung and spun her toward the ladder. She grabbed a rung. Another wave crashed and pitched me forward. I swirled past Michele, then fought my way back. “Hurry up,” she yelled. “Before you drown!” 

We clawed up the ladder, crawled through a small hole, and emerged into bright sunlight. Two young Jamaican men greeted us. We each handed over our two soggy, crumbled dollar bills, the price for this opportunity. One of them gave us each a shot of rum, to fortify us for the plunge. 

Michele walked to the edge. She looked down once, turned to me and said, “If I don’t go now I never will.” Then she stepped over the lip, into the abyss. I heard her scream. 

I saw a splash and her head pop out of the water. She looked tiny. “Get out of the way,” I called, my hands forming a megaphone around my mouth. I jumped. Hitting the water hurt, but not as much as learning that no one on the boat saw me hurtle through the air. They were busy having another cocktail and watching the impending sunset. 

Back at the hotel, Michele called Jessica. 

“I jumped off the cliff,” I heard her say. 

There was a pause while Jessica responded. 

“The cliff down by Rick’s Cafe,” Michele explained. “Where the party boat stops.” 

Another pause. 

“Thirty-five feet, but who’s counting?” 

Pause. 

“What? You mean I didn’t have to do it?” Michelle looked at me, her eyes wide. She put down the receiver. 

“Jessica didn’t jump off that cliff,” she said. 

“Why not?” I asked. 

“Too high,” said Michele. Then she laughed. We gave each other a high five. 

“What shall we do tomorrow?” I asked. 

“Absolutely nothing,” suggested Michele. 

I’ve spent lots of time, breath, and column inches here and elsewhere in the past telling people how not to kill their trees. Don’t top trees; don’t hack away most of their limbs; don’t leave stubs; don’t hire inept bozos who do any of the above. Don’t plant them in the wrong place, or too deeply. Don’t irrigate native live oaks. Don’t let the base of the trunk get smothered in soil or mulch.  

But suppose you have a dead tree on your hands through no fault of your own. (Or because you really blew it.) Now what—the takedown crew and the chainsaws? Well, maybe. But unlike the average large rotting animal, a tree is still useful after it’s dead.  

Useful to us, of course; we surround ourselves with dead trees. We live in them, sit on them, perch our computers on them, transmit copy across town over wires they support to be printed and read on sheets made out of them. Wood is handsome and feels nice to touch; paper is sure as heck easier to make and use and re-use than, say, parchment or vellum or clay tablets. So, yay dead trees! At least processed ones. 

A dead tree standing in your yard, that’s another matter, pure liability. Or is it?  

Lots of our wild neighbors actually make intense use of standing dead trees. Such trees host more bugs—and many of the new bugs are specialists, who don’t go on to eat every live tree in sight—and often in tasty, juicy larval form, which makes them a free buffet for insectivores like woodpeckers. In Berkeley, we’re most likely to see red-shafted (“northern”) flickers, especially in winter. Flashy as they are, you’ll hear them first, that scornful brazen “Fnaah!” from the top of a tree. They are one woodpecker you’ll see on the ground too, sometimes “anting”: sitting on an anthill and spreading their feathers, mashing a beakful of ants and rubbing it all over their skin. I’ve heard several speculative explanations for this, but I’m sure it’s a rush. I’m waiting for the crystal-aura-magical spa types to latch onto it and offer a formic acid skin peel, you know, As Nature Intended. Remember, you read it here first. 

We get downy or hairy woodpeckers, depending on whether we’re in the more urban flats or the woodsy hills. They’re very similar; listen for a squeaky-toy noise or a small but piercing “peent” and look for a white back, then grab the field guide. If it has a barred rather than a white back, and if it gives a rolling “bb-bbb-bbbbbbt” sort of call, it’s a Nuttall’s woodpecker. I believe that species is extending its range over the last decade or so; we used to see them only well east of the hills, and lately they’re all over here, including the one who has a drumming post on the telephone pole out front of our house.  

Woodpeckers are pioneers; other species live in the natural hollows caused by decay, or in holes that woodpeckers have excavated. Those indomitable chickadees and titmice need a hole. The red-breasted nuthatch, tooting merrily? Same requirement. Don’t they just cheer you up on a gray winter day? 

If you’re lucky and/or semirural, you might get western bluebirds, ash-throated flycatchers or tree swallows nesting in your stump. Our native gray squirrels, so rare here in the urban umbra, might winter in a tree hole. Arboreal salamanders, who turn up in places as unlikely as big apartment complexes near Dwight and Shattuck—I’ve seen them there, in multiples—need tree hollows to hide and reproduce in.  

And those who like owlboxes—barn owls, for example—or any critter—possum, wood duck, kingfisher—who’d use a birdhouse would likely prefer a hollow tree.  

So, a dead tree, lucky you. Rethink it. One smart person I know had her dead Doug fir limbed and topped at about ten feet up, and left it there. It’s not about to topple onto anybody, her neighbors are OK about it, and she’s got Nuttall’s woodpeckers moving in and a barn owl in the neighborhood.  

Consider her example. You’ll want to calculate, and see if the tree’s base is rotting out and what’s in range of a fall. But here’s another instance where careful “neglect” is the best kind of gardening.  

FRIDAY, FEB. 10 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, “Twelfth Night” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., through Feb. 18. Tickets are $12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre “The Master Builder” Wed. through Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through March 5. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Rep “9 Parts of Desire” about women in war-torn Iraq, at 8 p.m. at the Trust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through March 5. Tickets are $30-$59. 647-2949.  

Black Repertory Group “The Piano Lesson” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St., through Feb. 25. Tickets are $7-$15. 

Contra Costa Civic Theater, “One Flew Over the Cockoo’s Nest” Fri. and Sat at 8 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave. at Moeser Lane, El Cerrito, through Feb. 25. 524-9132.  

Impact Theatre, “Hamlet” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through March 18. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468.  

The Marsh Berkeley “Strange Travel Suggestions” monologue by Jeff Greenwald, Thurs. and Fri. at 7 p.m. through March 3, at 2118 Allston Way. Tickets are $15-$22. 800-838-3006.  

Masquers Playhouse "Over the River and Through the Woods" Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. through Feb. 25 at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $15. 232-4031.  

Ragged Wing Ensemble “Splinters ... and Other F-Words” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda, through Feb. 11. Tickets are $12-$25 sliding scale. 800-838-3006.  

“Walkin’ Talkin’ Bill Hawkins ... In Search of My Father” performed by W. Allen Taylor at 7 p.m. at the Marsh-Berkeley, 2118 Allston Way, through March 19. Tickets are $15-$22. 800-838-3006. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Buddhist Relics Opening reception at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley Shambala Center, 2288 Fulton St. through Sun. Donations welcome. 755-1136. 

“The Bancroft at 100 Symposium” Fri. and Sat. from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808.  

“Charles Criner: A Colorful History” in honor of Black History Month at the LunchStop CAfe, Joseph p. Bort MetroCenter, 101 Eighth St., Oakland. 817-5773. 

Solarized Photographs by Len Blau at the Giorgi Ggallery, 2911 Claremont Ave., through Feb. 28. 848-1228. 

Katsunori Hamanishi, mezzotints. Reception at 6 p.m. at Schurman-Scriptum Gallery, 1659 San Pablo Ave. Exhibit runs to March 31. 524-0623. 

Ruth Block, abstract and figurative artist and scavenger sculptor Gaelyn Lakin works on exhibit at the Community Art Gallery, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 2450 Ashby Ave., through March 18.  

FILM 

African Film Festival “The Hero” at 7 p.m. and “New Voices from Africa” at 9:15 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Leslie M. Freudenheim describes “Building with Nature: Inspiration for the Arts & Crafts Home” at 7:30 p.m. at First Church of Christ, Scientist, 2619 Dwight Way. Tickets are $15. Sponsored by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 841-2242. 

Chitra Nanerjee Divakaruni reads from “The Mistress of Spices” set in Oakland in the 1980’s at 7 p.m. at The Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200.  

Istvan Rev on his new book “Retroactive Justice: Prehistory of Post-Communism” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

“Celebrating the Arts” Speakers of Color Series with comedian and writer Brian Copeland and artist Arnold White at 7 p.m. at Head-Royce School Pavilion, 4315 Lincoln Ave. 531-1300, ext. 2245. 

George McGovern talks about “Social Security and the Golden Age: An Essay on the New American Demographic” at 12:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Lois-Ann Yamanaka reads from her new novel “Behold the Many” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Eileen Ivers & Immigrant Soul, Irish fiddler, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $20-$32. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu  

Fetish, Intrepid Improv, The Bullheads at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

John Santos Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

Vladimir Vukanovich, Peruvian guitarist, at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568.  

Kenny Washington & His Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Nanette McGuinness, soprano, Raeeka Shehabi-Yaghmani, mezzo-soprano, Kathryn Cathcart, piano at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont at Ashby. Cost is $12. 848-1228.  

Albino, Afro-beat, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $32.50-$33.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Larry Vuckovich’s “La Orquesta El Vuco” at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

DJ & Brook at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Friday Night Hayride with Kemo Sabe, Bob Harp and Toshio Hirano at 9:30 p.m. at the Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph Ave, Oakland. Cost is $5. www.storkcluboakland.com  

All Bets Off, Lifelong Tragedy, Dispute at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Lunar Heights at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Flowtilla at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Steve Tyrell at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, FEB. 11 

CHILDREN 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Fran Avni & Bonnie Lockhart at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568.  

“Junie Jones and A Little Monkey Business” theater for ages 5 and up, at 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $13-$18. 925-798-1300. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Bancroft Library Centennial with their collection of rare and historic documents. Reception at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, UC Campus. 643-4715. 

Andrew Red Hourse Alvarez Jewelry, Sat. and Sun. at Gathering Tribes Gallery, 1573 Solano Ave. 528-9038. 

“Three Teachers” highlights the works of three California painters, David Fleming, Barbara Lawrence and Dave McGuire, at the Stone Gallery, 600 50th Ave., Oakland. 536-5600. 

THEATER 

Big City Improv, comedy, at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby. Tickets are $15. 595-5597.  

FILM 

Mikio Naruse “Anzukko” at 7 p.m. and “When a Woman Ascends the Stairs” at 9:10 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Howard Thurman: A Gracious Spirit” with Arleigh Prelow, documentary filmmaker, at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

“The Art of Living Black” Artist talk and slide lecture with Ala Ebtekar and Almudena Ortiz at 2 p.m. at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave. at 25th St. 620-6772.  

Julian Barnes reads from his new novel “Arthur & George” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

“The Bancroft at 100” Curator’s talk with Anthony Bliss at noon in Gallery 4, Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chick Corea & Touchstone at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $30-$52. 642-9988.  

“Improvisation” with Myra Melford, Mark Sresser, Bob Ostertag and David Wessel at 8 p.m. in Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22. 642-9988. 

Alexander Tsygankov “The Paganini of Domra” at 7:30 p.m. at New Spirit Community Church, 1798 Scenic Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. 704-7729. 

Caminos Flamencos at 8 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave., through Feb. 14. Tickets are $50-$95, includes dinner. 287-8700.  

RebbeSoul World Beat and Jewish roots at 7 p.m. at Kehilla Community Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave. at Fairview, Piedmont. Tickets are $25-$60. 547-2424 ext. 214.  

Kirtan, devotional chanting with Jaya Lakshmi at 7 p.m. at Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St. Tickets are $15-$18. 843-2787.  

Maria Marquez & Trio with John Santos at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Patrick Ball “O’Carolan’s Farewell to Music” at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Fuga, dance/concert at 9 p.m. at at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$7. 849-2568. www.lapena.org  

Prefixo de Verao, Brazilian pre-carnival celebration at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

City Limit, The Wearies, Last Clear Chance at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Caroline Chung’s “Superbacana Trio” at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Mario Desio & Friends at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Ilene Adar and Dana Shellmire at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Future Adults, Leopard Life, Teli Savalas at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $3. 525-9926. 

Mitch Marcus Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SUNDAY, FEB. 12 

CHILDREN  

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

EXHIBITIONS 

“If Not Now, When?” 150 Years of California Jewish Activism opens at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St., and runs through May 14. 549-6950. 

Craig Baxter, screenprints and etchings. Reception at 2 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

FILM 

Mikio Naruse “The Approach of Autumn” at 4:30 p.m. and “Daughters, Wives, and a Mother” at 6:10 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Andrew Lam reads from “Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora” at 1 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. 

David Kipen considers “The Schreiber Theory: A Radical Rewrite of American Film History” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Poetry Flash with Eileen R. Tabios and Catherine Daly at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

“Reality and Representation” in conjunction with Larry Abramson’s installation “Searching for the Ideal City” at 2 p.m. at Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $10-$12. Reservations recommended. fpowell@magnes.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jean-Michel Fonteneau and Roy Bogas at 4 p.m. at Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. Cost is $12, free for children.  

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra “2Bs or Not 2Bs” at 4 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Free. 415-248-1640.  

Organ Recital by Lynn Trapp at 6:10 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Donations accepted. 845-0888.  

Community Women’s Orchestra, “On With The Dance” at 4 p.m. at Zion Lutheran Church, 5201 Park Blvd., Piedmont. Suggested donation $10, children free. 463-0313.  

Les Violons du Roy and Magdalena Kozená, mezzo-soprano, at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$56, available from 642-9988.  

Carlos Oliveira & Brazilian Origins featuring Harvey Wainapel at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Julian Waterfall Pollack Trio at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

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

Tangria at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

MONDAY, FEB. 13 

THEATER 

Subterranean Shakespeare “Titus Andronicus” Staged reading at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, Fireside Room, 1924 Cedar St. Donation $5. 276-3871. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Tuskegee Airman, Samuel Broadnax introduces his new book “Blue Skies, Black Wings” at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Cost is $5. 642-9460. 

Bharati Mukherjee and Meredith Maran introduce “Why I’m Still Married: Women Write Their Hearts Out on Love, Loss, Sex and Who Does the Dishes” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

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

Maggie Morley and colleagues, poetry, followed by open mic, at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Valentine’s Day Voices with University Chorus and University Choral Ensembles at 8 p.m. in Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $3-$10. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Caminos Flamencos at 6 and 9 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $50-$95, includes dinner. 287-8700. www.cafedelapaz.net 

George Brooks’ Indian Jazz Combo at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $16. Benefit for the Oakland Library. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, FEB. 14 

FILM 

Alternative Visions: Films by Peter Tscherkassky at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Love Fest 06 hosted by Aya de León, featuring members of Kreatibo, Mike Molina, Alicia Raqule and others at 8 p.m. at La Peña. Cost is $10-$12. 849-2568. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wild Catahoulas, Cajun, Zydeco, at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Ellen Hoffman with Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Cheryl Wheeler at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Khali Hustle, 20 Boyz, BTA Boyz at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $10. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Kitty Margolis “Heart and Soul” at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $12-$8. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

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

Jessica Neighbor & The Hood at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 15 

EXHIBITIONS 

African American Inventors and Scientists at the Junior Center of Art and Science, 558 Bellvue Ave., Lakeside Park, Oakland, through April 8. 839-5777. www.juniorcenter.org 

“Illuminated Garden” Pinhole sun prints by Susannah Hays at North Berkeley Frame and Gallery, 1744 Shattuck Ave., through March 4. 549-0428. 

Print Exchange between the California College of Arts and University of Osaka. Reception at 5:30 p.m. at CCA, 5212 Broadway. 594-3636. 

FILM 

Film 50 “All Quiet on the Western Front” at 3 p.m. and Weird America “Born in a Barn” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Ayelet Waldman reads from “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

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

Linda Blachman introduces “Another Morning: Voices of Truth and Hope from Mothers with Cancer” at 7 p.m. at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, 5741 Telegraph Ave. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

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

Groundation, Bab Marley Tribute at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13-$15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Orquestra Universal at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa dance lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

J-Soul at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

John Benet, With All Sincerity, Name at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Cheryl Wheeler at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761.  

Poncho Sanchez Latin Jazz Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $20-$24. 238-9200.  

Nick is a dot-commer pushing 30, an Italo-American from New Jersey, but really pretty white bread. He is the good grandson, however; long after his parents and sister have fled the immigrant family hearth he leaves the city every week to spend Sunday dinn er with all four grandparents. 

“My sister says that the great thing about America is that you can move 2,000 miles from your family and still be in the country,” Nick says, and asks “How did I come from these people?”  

So the dilemma of the third generation is presented with the spectacle of the first, aging yet stubbornly holding to their ideal. Nick’s grandfather Frank (played by Wayne Johnson) puts it in perspective: not just to support a family, but to have the capability to hold it together. 

This is the root of the dilemma of cluelessness and misplaced sympathies that makes Joe DiPietro’s comedy, Over the River and Through the Woods—now running at The Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond—tick, but like a heart murmur. 

Announcing to his stifling f orebears that he’s been offered a promotion if he will move to Seattle, Nick (Dillon Siedentopf) sets off a chain reaction that blows up the next Sunday at dinner, when Nana Emma (Dory Ehrlich) invites Caitlin O’Hare (Heather Morrison), daughter of her ca nasta partner, in hopes Nick will find something “to hold him here.” 

Caitlin is an immediate hit with the family, even making it through her announcement she is a vegetarian. When she says that none of her grandparents is living, she’s assured “you have us now.” A convivial young woman, she enjoys the big family meal and the big characters the family proves to be. 

Even Nick’s impressed with her. But he’s thrown into a frenzy of apologizing to Caitlin, admonishing his grandparents. Caitlin refuses his r equest for a date however and finally he faints from a “panic attack.” 

It’s while he’s recovering on the couch, during the days that follow, that Nick begins to really see his grandparents—even when “getting excited” over the way they play Trivial Pursui ts. 

Grandfather Frank remembers the father who put him on the boat to America, alone at age 14: “I always thought my father was a bastard who never would give me anything,” he says, “turns out he gave me everything he had.” 

And grandfather Nunzio suppre sses telling him about his cancer when he realizes Nick passionately wants to go, to make his own way. The “black and white movie world” of the past he sees his grandparents in begins to show its true colors and its savvy: “You’re too serious, Nicky,” his grandmother tells him. “When we were your age, we were always laughing.” 

There’s a lot of knowing laughter in the audience at The Masquers. Over the River and Through the Woods is a natural for community theater, and fits every ethnicity that’s simmered in the melting pot. 

It’s played many times around the Bay. The last time I saw it, a Brazilian woman directed it in Marin; this time, director Renee Echavez is of Portuguese-German-Filipino background, from Hawaii, and brings her own experience of an ex tended family to the play, as everyone seems to do. 

She wisely has it playing fast but with a sense of dynamics that allows for the tenderer feelings to settle in by the end. Grandparents Frank and Aida (Marian Simpson) talk in stagey Italian accents, no t as extreme as Chico Marx, and balanced out by the All-American twangs of Nunzio (David Lee) and Emma. The play is a little too much like sit-coms, with Nick narrating and each grandparent speaking to the audience at one point or another, like TV talking heads. 

Caitlin, who is in some ways, the most interesting role, and the one played with the most range in the three productions I’ve seen, doesn’t speak to the audience, but tells Nick about her late grandmother, her own therapy and her “desperation.” 

The play is a little too synthetic, but the situation and content are real enough and the gags can be pretty funny. And, again, everybody brings something of themselves to it. Which is what community theater is all about. The Masquers know that in spades, as they celebrate their 51st season, “proud of the title ‘amateur,’ which translated from the French means ‘for the love of.’”› 

Over the River and Through the Woods plays at 8pm Fridays and Saturdays and at 2: 30pm Sundays through Feb. 25 at the Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, $15. For More Information, Call 232-4031 or see www.masquers.org2

Thornhill Nursery is a bit out of the way, not so much in distance from Berkeley, but tucked away on Thornhill Drive in the Oakland Hills. It’s most easily accessible from the freeway, if you don’t mind a little daring on- and off-ramp dodge’em game. Take the Thornhill Drive exit, drive on past the entrance to the Foothill business district and through a tiny patch of school and mini-mall on Thornhill. Keep it slow—you ought to anyway; the sidewalks are narrow and foot traffic can be a tad chaotic and full of rompity schoolkids. The nursery’s not hard to see once you get to its block, and the parking area, though small, is handy on the right. 

Thornhill employees told me the place specializes in Japanese maples. I guess so; it’s set off from the surrounding woodsy lots by a hedge of sheared Japanese maple. Since I made a buck or two back in the day by taking sheared and poodle-balled maples out of that form and turning them back into something that looked like a tree, I was a bit ambivalent about that. But there are certainly a lot of tree-shaped trees in the area, and the maples looked healthy enough, at least so far as I could see in winter. 

There are a couple of other radically pruned trees—a threadleaf “cypress” type in front of the shop building, and a pine behind it—in rather a different style, and integrated into the place’s architecture. Both are kept way open, even a bit bare, showing mostly trunk and major branches; both are at startling angles; both clearly have frequent attention to keep the foliage under control and healthy-looking. And both times I’ve asked who was responsible for them, I’ve heard very general answers: most recently, “Oh, that’s the grounds crew…” Either there’s a singularly talented mow-and-blow crew running around being underpaid, or someone else set that tree’s shape and showed them how to maintain it. 

When I first saw the place a decade ago, I made much of those trees and of the cement ’gator loafing so fetchingly in the flume of creek that runs through the lot. I didn’t see him this time, until a second look—maybe 15 feet from his original spot under the footbridge, where all several-hundred pounds of him were shoved by the New Year’s rainstorm. He looks undaunted after his impressive little trip. 

There are lots of Japanese maple varieties for sale, and ornaments that match that ’gator for interest. The setting makes the place relaxing for a stroll—birders, take your binocs!—and on visits over the years I’ve found staffers friendly and helpful but not intrusive. Plants are healthy and in good variety, too. There’s always something, plant or gadget or objet d’ whimsy, that makes me stop and point. And don’t miss the hood ornament on the roof. I wonder if the business bought someone a Jaguar or it’s where the Jag money went instead ... Either way, I like it.  

Thornhill Nursery 

6250 Thornhill Drive 

Oakland 

(510)339-1331 

Open daily 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

It has often occurred to me how primitive our houses are for a people who can look to the edges of the universe and plumb the living paths of bozons and muons. They’re not exactly mud huts but they are so simple that you’d think we were still fighting wars with guns and killing each other with bombs. Oh wait. Sorry. Anyway, if you look at the way in which our houses are built, you might think that we’d missed the U-boat altogether. 

First, they’re built from plant matter, literally somebody’s dinner. Things that grow out of the ground that seem hard enough to make a floor out of. We puncture them with little rods of metal, holding them together in a manner that’s not unlike sewing a sack together. 

Then we put more of these vegetable planks down to make floors and ceilings and cover them over with something we wove from the hair of a sheep. 

Windows are actually pretty advanced but they’re still an igneous rock remelted into a flat sheet. Roofs are made from tar, dug out of the ground or boiled down from oil left behind by some compressed rain forest and we finish the insides with sheets of soft rock called gypsum carved out of a hillside.  

I’ll stop, but the point is that there isn’t that much technology in all of this beyond those methods developed to make it cheaper for large companies to get it to you and put it together at a low price. There are lots of ways to do these things better but they haven’t figured out how to get you to pay enough for them. 

Heating is a great example of how we have started with technologies that are as simple as we could get away with and advanced toward safer and more efficient systems. Houses were first heated with wood fireplaces that reflected little of the heat inward and required huge amounts of raw material to burn. 

Mining of coal produced a more efficient system but puts workers at risk and also produces large amounts of carbon monoxide that kill the end user (so to speak). We still have coal burners in many of our early 20th century houses and occasionally I pick up coal from a crawlspace or basement where it remains from the last shipment in nineteen twenty-something. It’s very fun to find and be reminded of how recently these changes arrived. 

Gas became widely available just after the turn of the 20th century and we started blowing things up right away for lack of an ability to smell the stuff. Then gas companies began to add an acrid and pungent smell to the gas so that we’d know when it was on and things got a lot safer. For lack of this one notion, I suspect they’d have given up on gas. Gas heaters at this time were no more sophisticated than your cooktop burners and if you left them on, once again, they could blow you up. Then came the pilot which used up lots of extra gas by being on all the time but is well worth it if you don’t have anything better. 

Eventually the pilot safety device arrived. This made sure that gas wasn’t released into a burner unless a pilot was lit. This was a very big advance and we’re still using them today in very much the same form, although electronic ignitions are slowly taking over. 

The thing in all these advancements that was largely ignored for the last 80 years or so was efficiency. Gas was pretty cheap for a long time and the overall cost to the economy was manageable. Also, we weren’t chopping wood and everyone was pretty happy. Recently we’ve begun to realize that burning anything is pretty bad for the planet and is likely altering the climate and transparency of our atmosphere to carcinogenic radiation. 

Also, the population of this planet is becoming a pretty serious problem and there are great doubts about our ability to sustain ourselves while burning up the fuel sources that we can chop down or pump out of the ground. It’s time to take a much more serious assessment of our methods and our needs. Although I’m not happy to pay the utility bill as it soars into the ozone (sorry), I am happy that this has created a tangible impetus for people to make real changes in how they buy and use heat. 

As an inspector who meets new homeowners daily, it has always been something of a struggle to induce the buyer (who’s going into hock over their eyeballs) that a new more efficient heating system is in their best interest (and that of the home planet) but with utility prices skyrocketing this year, it’s been much easier. I’ve actually seen many of these folks decide then and there to dump the old water heater for an on-demand type or agree to toss the mid-efficiency furnace for a new high-efficiency condensing type in the first weeks of ownership. 

So I think it’s time to up the ante a bit by telling you about the latest and greatest thing I’ve seen in home heating. For the last few years I’ve been hearing about combined water heating and house heating systems but it’s been mostly talk. Somewhere a rich guy was having a team of technicians assemble a very expensive system from rarely seen components. This wasn’t practical for me to talk about since there were few examples to point to and very high initial costs.  

Recently, two technologies have taken off to the point where each have become a practical discussion point: the on-demand water heater, which I’m now seeing taking an actual market share and the hydronic (or hot water) heating system, which is far less common but still growing in popularity. 

Now we have the Baxi Luna. This is what I’ve been waiting for and the first time I saw one, which was just months ago, I almost flipped. Part of my reaction was that it was as though someone just skipped three stages and went right to the 22nd century model. 

This single unit employs so many of the latest concepts that it’s a bit dizzying. First, it’s very small and looks much like the more common on-demand water heater. It’s about the size of a suitcase and hangs on a wall in the upright direction. Inside is an on-demand water heater that only heats water when and as you need it but it also heats water in a closed loop that can run under your floor or through radiators in your house to provide very mild and extremely efficient heat. 

Warm floor heating is widely considered the best way to heat, in part, because it lacks the drying effect of forced air combined with the noise and blowing about of dust. 

If you’ve just bought a house with a problem water heater and furnace please consider this amazing option. If you’re living in a house that needs both or if your heating bill is making you consider asking your children to move out, take a look at a Baxi Luna. It’s penny-wise and planet-perceptive. 

›

FRIDAY, FEB. 10 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Michael Perleman, international financier. Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020.  

Memorial Service for Jean Siri at 11 a.m. at the Miller-Knox Shoreline, Dornan Drive, Pt. Richmond. For infromation call the East Bay Regional Parks District at 544-2206. 

“Building with Nature: Inspiration for the Arts & Crafts Home” with Leslie M. Freudenheim at 7:30 p.m. at First Church of Christ, Scientist, 2619 Dwight Way at Bowditch. Tickets are $15. Sponsored by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 841-2242. 

“Whooping Cranes: Recovering from the Brink of Extinction” with Dr. George Archibald, Co-founder of the International Crane Foundation, at 7:30 p.m. at San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum, corner of 9th Ave/Lincoln Way, San Francisco. Sponsored by The Golden Gate Audubon Society, Berkeley. 843-2222. www.goldengateaudubon.org  

“From the Panthers to the Zapatistas,” a talk with Ashanti Alston at 7:30 p.m. at Eastside Cultural Center, 2587 International Blvd., Oakland. Cost is $5-$10. Sponsored by Chiapas Support Committee. 654-9587. 

Womansong Circle An evening of participatory singing for women at 6:45 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. DOnation $10-$20. 525-7082. 

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

Berkeley Chess School classes for students in grades 1-8 from 5 to 7 p.m. at 1581 LeRoy Ave., room 17. 843-0150. 

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

SATURDAY, FEB. 11 

Toddler Nature Walk for 2-3 year olds. We’ll look for our salamander friends from 2 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 7-12 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

16th and Wood Train Station and Black History Month Celebration with tributes to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Pullman Porters, at 5 p.m. at Jubilee West, 1485 Eighth St., West Oakland. Co-Sponsored by Just Cause 763-5877. 

Presentation on the Ashby BART Development Proposal with Councilmember Max Anderson at 10 a.m. at St. Paul’s AME Church, Ashby at Adeline. 981-7130. 

Energy Efficiency Workshop for your home, from 9 to 11 a.m. at Truitt and White Conference Room, 1817 Second St. Free, but registration required. 649-2674. 

Ask a Union Mechanic from 1 to 2:30 p.m. at Parker & Shattuck. They will offer advice on all makes of car. 

War Tax Resistance Workshop from 2 to 4 p.m. at 3122 Shattuck Ave. Sponsored by Northern California War Tax Resistance. 843-9877. www.nowartax.org 

Open Conference on the Electoral Crisis on the failures of the “two party system” at 2 p.m. at Redwood Gardens, 2951 Derby St. MrPlutocrat@aol.com 

East Bay Impeach Bush Group meets at 5 p.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 527-9584. 

“Women in Ancient Arabia” a visual presentation by Max Dashu, at 7:30 p.m. at Change Makers, 6536 Telegraph Ave., near Alcatraz, Oakland. Cost is $10-$20 sliding scale, no one turned away. 415-561-7752. 

Solo Sierrans Sunset Walk at the Emeryville Marina Meet at 3:30 p.m. on the west side of Chevy’s Restaurant. Rain cancels. 234-8949. 

The Rotary Club of Albany Second Annual Celebration, “Service Above Self” at 7:30 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany. Tickets are $20. 558-1534. 

Lead-Safe Painting & Remodeling Free class to learn about lead safe renovations for your older home at 10 a.m. at the Eastmont Branch Library 7200 Bancroft Ave #211, Oakland. Presented by Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. 567-8280. www.ACLPPP.org 

Bridging the Gap Conference with hip hop historian, and community activist Davey D and Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on the UC Campus. Free and open to all ages. Benefit for the Graduate Minority Students’ Project. 642-2876, ext. 4. www.struggle4reparations.com 

Sistaz N Motion, helping women start their own business, meets at 12:30 p.m. until 3:30 p.m. at Crescent Park Multi-Cultural Family Resource Center, 5004 Hartnett Ave., Richmond. Cost is $10 for non-members. Please RSVP to sistaznmotion@hotmail.com 

Make a Valentine Workshop with Adria McCuaig from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Free for all ages. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Love Mission to Mars A simulated space mission to share with your Valentine at 3:30 and 5:30 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center. Also on Sun. at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. Tickets are $60 per couple. 336-7373. 

The Great War Society meets to discuss “General George C. Marshall, Organizer of Victory” at 10:30 a.m. at 640 Arlington Ave. 527-7118. 

“Let’s Talk About It: Jewish Literature - Identity and Imagination” Discussion led by Led by Dr. Naomi Seidman, at 2 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Registration is recommended. 524-3043. 

Small Business Seminar on Market Analysis at 9 a.m. at Vista College, 2075 Allston Way. Cost is $26. To register see www.peralta.cc.ca.us 

“Self Image/God Image” Writing workshop for believers and doubters with Beth Glick-Rieman from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Donation $40. Bring a bag lunch. To register, call 524-2858. 

“Scars of War/Wounds of Peace” with Shlomo Ben-Ami, fromer Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley-Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $5. 839-2900, ext. 253. 

Preschool Storytime for 3-5 year olds at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

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. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Jack van der Meulen on Opening the Heart Yoga from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. Cost is $80, registration required. 843-6812.  

SUNDAY, FEB. 12 

Reptile Rendevous Meet the resident reptiles of the Tilden Nature Center from 11 a.m. to noon at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Waste Not, Want Not A recycling adventure for 8-12 year olds from 1 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Green Sunday: Why Three Alameda County Greens are running for state-wide office at 5 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. at 65th in North Oakland. 

Mending Bee and Repair-a-thon Bring your latest repair project, share skills and materials, and watch a slideshow by local artists of their recent small and largescale repair projects. From 4 to 7 p.m. at Rock Paper Scissors Gallery, 2278 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 238-9171. www.rpscollective.com 

Love, Kisses, Wills, Trusts Get your legal affairs in order. Open forum discussion and private consultations from 9 a.m. to noon at Chapel of the Chimes, 449 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Free. 228-3207. 

Celebrate Black History Month with interactive storytelling and jazz from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Habitot, 2065 Kittredge St. Nubia at 1 p.m., Derique the Clown at 3 p.m. Free. 647-1111.  

Family Film Sunday Series “101 Dalmations” at 11 a.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $5.  

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 

Jewish Holiday of the Trees and support Rabbis for Human Rights at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley/Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $10. RSVP to 415-789-7685.  

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Tibetan Buddhism with Sylvia Gretchen on the Buddhist writings of Longchenpa at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, FEB. 13 

Neighborhood Meeting on Kragen Auto Site and the proposal for a Traders Joe’s at 7 p.m. at Lutheran Church of the Cross, 1744 University Ave., between MLK and Grant. www.planberkeley.org 

Sweatshop Workers Speak Phannara Duangdej from Thailand, Branice Linugu Musavi from Kenya and Siti Malika from Indonesia, speak of their experiences working in the global garment industry at 6 p.m. at FSM Café at Moffitt Library, UC Campus. 760-519-7725. 

Tuskegee Airman, Samuel Broadnax introduces his new book “Blue Skies, Black Wings” at 7:30 p.m. in the Home Room, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave. Cost is $5. 642-9460. 

“The Global Class War” with author Jeff Faux, founding president of the Economic Policy Institute, and a critic of pro-business free-trade, at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. 

Valentine Making Workshop from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Tues. from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Art Studio at Habitot, 2065 Kittredge St. Cost is $5 for adults, $6 for children. 647-1111. www.habitot.org 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Free Business Loan and Business Plan Writing Boot Camp Mon. and Fri. from 9 a.m. to noon at 519 17th St., 2nd Floor, Ste. 200, Oakland, through March 31. 395-6003. 

World Affairs Discussion Group for seniors at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center. Cost is $2.50.  

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. 

Introduction to Meditation at 6:45 p.m. at Bay Zen Center, 315 Alcatraz near College Ave. Suggested donation $10. Advance registration required. 596-3087. www.bayzen.org 

Spice Up Your Love Life A workshop with Dot Claire at 7 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Cost is $27. 925-287-9594.  

TUESDAY, FEB. 14 

Birdwalk on the MLK Shoreline from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. to see the ducks: Scaup, Goldeneye and Bufflehead. Beginnners welcome, binoculars available for loan. 525-2233. 

“Take Me Instead” Grandmothers Against the War will try to enlist to replace young people in military in Iraq as act of love on Valentine’s Day at noon at the Army Recruiting Station, 2116 Broadway at 21st St., Oakland. 526-5075. 

Public Hearing on the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci. 

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Valentine’s Day Celebration with community participation in poetry, song, dance and prayer at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St. midtown Oakland. www.HumanistHall.net  

“Black Beauties: The History of Oakland’s Miss Bronze Pageant” with author Maxine Leeds Craig at 10:30 a.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

Health Education Presentation by Dr. Robert Cooper of the West Oakland Health Council at 7 p.m. at the El Cerrito City Council Chambers, 7007 Moeser Lane. Sponsored by the NAACP El Cerrito Branch. 233-5460. 

Travel Photography in Venice and Tuscany with Don Lyon at 7 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 654-1548.  

“Doing Business in China: Panasonic’s Growth Strategy” with former Matsushita Executive Vice-President Yukio Shohtoku,at 4:30 p.m. at the IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton St., 6th Floor. 642-2809. 

Valentine’s Day Crafts and Stories for Children at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

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. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Family Story Time at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Branch Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Free, all ages welcome. 524-3043. 

Free Handbuilding Ceramics Class 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. John’s Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Also, Mon. noon to 4 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Materials and firing charges not included. 525-5497. 

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. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

Introduction to Buddhist Meditation at 7 p.m. at the Dzalandhara Buddhist Center in Berkeley. Cost is $7-$10. Call for directions. 559-8183. www.kadampas.org 

Sleep Soundly Seminar at 6:30 p.m. at New Moon Opportunities, 378 Jayne Ave., Oakland Free, but registration required. 465-2524. 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 15 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll search for our amphibian friends, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds, who may be accompanied by an adult. We will search for newts, slender salamanders, ensatinas and more, from 3:15 to 4:45 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

Creeks Task Force Public Hearing at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Erin Dando, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/planning/landuse/Creeks/default.html 

“New Era, New Politics Walking Tour” at 10 a.m. at the African American Museum, 659 14th St., at Jefferson, Oakland. A two-hour guided tour of the points of interest in African American history in Oakland. 238-3234. 

“Exploring the Place, Meaning and Purpose of the Black Studies Movement” from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Merritt College, Building A, Room 129. 12500 Campus Drive, Oakland. 434-3935. 

Disaster Preparedness and Wilderness Safety with Michael St. John of Marin County Search and Rescue at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

“Water The Matrix of Life” What to drink for health and eco-living at 7 p.m. at Teleosis Institute, 1521B 5th St. Cost is $5-$10. Registration required. 558-7285. www.teleosis.org  

“Celcius 9/11: Full Spectrum Dominance and the War of Terror” a film by Jeremy Wright at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St. Free, but $5 donations accepted. www.HumanistHall.net 

Berkeley Communicators Toastmasters welcomes curious guests and new members at 7:15 a.m. at Au Coquelet Cafe, 2000 University Ave. at Milvia. 435-5863.  

Entrepreneurs Networking at 8 a.m. at A’Cuppa Tea, 3202 College Ave. at Alcatraz. Cost is $5. For more information contact JB, 562-9431. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

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. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Sing your Way Home A free sing-a-long at 4:30 p.m. every Wed. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720.  

Prose Writer’s Workshop An ongoing group made up of friendly writers who are serious about our craft. All levels welcome. At 7 p.m. at BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. georgeporter@earthlink.net 

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 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets to hold a Public Hearing on the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance Tues., Feb. 14, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Berkeley Unified School Board meets Wed., Feb. 15, at 7:30 p.m., in the City Council Chambers. Queen Graham 644-6147 or Mark Coplan 644-6320. 

Creeks Task Force meets Wed., Feb. 15, at 7 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Erin Dando, 981-7410. www.ci. 

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

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

us/commissions/humane 

Downtown Area Plan Advisory Commission meets Wed. Feb. 15, at 7 p.m. in the Sitka Spruce Conference Room, 2nd Floor, 2118 Milvia St. 981-7487. 

Library Board of Trustees meets Wed. Feb. 15, at 5 p.m. at South Berkeley Senior Center., Jackie Y. Griffin, 981-6195. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/library 

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

us/commissions/designreview  

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

us/commissions/transportation 



TUESDAY, FEB. 7 

EXHIBITIONS 

James Gayles’ “East Bay Blues Master” and other works by George Hopkins at the Richmond Health Center, 100 38th St., enter at 39th and Bissell. Celebrating Black History Month. 231-1348.  

FILM 

Women’s Preservation Film Festival at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Marion Nestle discusses her reasearch on culinary history in northern California at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Bernard-Henri Lévy introduces his new book “American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville” at 7:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

New Pacific Trio at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $20. 525-5211. 

Swamp Coolers, cajun, zydeco at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $9. 525-5054.  

Ellen Hoffman and Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

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

David Thom Band, Dark Hollow, Grizzly Peak and Marty Varner at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $15.50-$16.50. 548-1761.  

Mingus Big Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 8 

FILM 

FIlm 50 “The Fall of the House of Usher” at 3 p.m. and Weird America “Olie Noodling” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

An Evening with John Cleese at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$56. 642-9988.  

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

Tim Egan describes “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. 

Camille Paglia describes “Break, Blow, Burn” on poetry and the state of our culture, at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley High School Jazz Ensembles at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

North Beach Django Band at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Earth Quake Weather, Love Infinity, Sabre Teeth, Yardsale at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8. 848-0886.  

Four Flea Circus, folk-rock fusions, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Lunasa at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $19.50-$20.50. 548-1761.  

Mingus Big Band at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$24. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, FEB. 9 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The White Album” works in varying shades of white. Reception at 6 p.m. at Kala Art Institute, 1060 Heinz Ave. Exhibition runs through March 25. 549-2977. www.kala.org 

Irie Park All-Stars “Civil Rights and Lefts” Visual history of the African-American experience. Reception at 5:30 p.m. at the Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. and runs through March 11. 967-5399. 

“A Retrospective in Black & White and Color” works by photographer Susan Sai-Wah Louie at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., through March 16. 981-6100. 

THEATER 

“Grandma’s Hands” A Black History Month celebration by the fifth graders at Oxford Elementary School at 9 a.m. at 1130 Oxford St. Also on Fri. at 10:30 a.m. at Jefferson Elementary School. 644-6300. 

FILM 

Mikio Naruse “Summer Clouds” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

“The Greater Circulation” by Antero Alli at 8 p.m. at 21 Grand, 416 26th St. Cost is $5-$10. 444-7263. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Regla: Revolution” panel discussion on Cuban political prints by Antonio Canet, at 6 p.m. at the NIAD Art Center, 551 23rd St., Richmond.  

Poets for Peace with Margaret Kaufman, Jeffrey Levine, Ilya Kaminsky and Robert Thomas at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

An Evening with John Cleese at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$56. 642-9988.  

Sarah Vowell reads from her book “Assassination Vacation” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Word Beat Reading Series with Michael Kelly and M.K. Chavez at 7 p.m. at Mediterraneum Caffe, 2475 Telegraph Ave. 526-5985. 

Nomad Spoken Word Night at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $32.50-$33.50. 548-1761.  

Bryan Girard’s Soul Jazz Collective at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Full Service at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Duo Mysterioso at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Steve Tyrell at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

FRIDAY, FEB. 10 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley, “Twelfth Night” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., through Feb. 18. Tickets are $12. 649-5999. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre “The Master Builder” Wed. through Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through March 5. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Berkeley Rep “9 Parts of Desire” about women in war-torn Iraq, at 8 p.m. at the Trust Stage, 2025 Addison St., through March 5. Tickets are $30-$59. 647-2949.  

Black Repertory Group “The Piano Lesson” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at 3201 Adeline St., through Feb. 25. Tickets are $7-$15. 

Contra Costa Civic Theater, “One Flew Over the Cockoo’s Nest” Fri. and Sat at 8 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave. at Moeser Lane, El Cerrito, through Feb. 25. 524-9132.  

Impact Theatre, “Hamlet” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through March 18. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468.  

The Marsh Berkeley “Strange Travel Suggestions” monologue by Jeff Greenwald, Thurs. and Fri. at 7 p.m. through March 3, at 2118 Allston Way. Tickets are $15-$22. 800-838-3006.  

Masquers Playhouse "Over the River and Through the Woods" Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. through Feb. 25 at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond. Tickets are $15. 232-4031.  

Ragged Wing Ensemble “Splinters ... and Other F-Words” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. at Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda, through Feb. 11. Tickets are $12-$25 sliding scale. 800-838-3006.  

EXHIBITIONS 

Buddhist Relics Opening reception at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley Shambala Center, 2288 Fulton St. through Sun. Donations welcome. 755-1136. 

“The Bancroft at 100 Symposium” Fri. and Sat. from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808.  

Katsunori Hamanishi, mezzotints. Reception at 6 p.m. at Schurman-Scriptum Gallery, 1659 San Pablo Ave. Exhibit runs to March 31. 524-0623. 

FILM 

African Film Festival “The Hero” at 7 p.m. and “New Voices from Africa” at 9:15 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Leslie M. Freudenheim describes “Building with Nature: Inspiration for the Arts & Crafts Home” at 7:30 p.m. at First Church of Christ, Scientist, 2619 Dwight Way at Bowditch. Tickets are $15. Sponsored by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 841-2242. 

Chitra Nanerjee Divakaruni reads from “The Mistress of Spices” set in Oakland in the 1980’s at 7 p.m. at The Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200.  

Istvan Rev on his new book “Retroactive Justice: Prehistory of Post-Communism” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

“Celebrating the Arts” Speakers of Color Series with comedian and writer Brian Copeland and artist Arnold White at 7 p.m. at Head-Royce School Pavilion, 4315 Lincoln Ave. 531-1300, ext. 2245. 

George McGovern talks about “Social Security and the Golden Age: An Essay on the New American Demographic” at 12:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852. www.codysbooks.com  

Lois-Ann Yamanaka reads from her new novel “Behold the Many” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Eileen Ivers & Immigrant Soul, Irish fiddler, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $20-$32. 642-9988.  

Fetish, Intrepid Improv, The Bullheads at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

John Santos Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373.  

Vladimir Vukanovich, Peruvian guitarist, at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568.  

Kenny Washington & His Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Nanette McGuinness, soprano, Raeeka Shehabi-Yaghmani, mezzo-soprano, Kathryn Cathcart, piano at 8 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont at Ashby. Cost is $12. 848-1228.  

Albino, Afro-beat, at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $32.50-$33.50. 548-1761.  

Larry Vuckovich’s “La Orquesta El Vuco” at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

DJ & Brook at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

All Bets Off, Life Long Tragedy, Dispute at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Lunar Heights at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Flowtilla at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Steve Tyrell at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, FEB. 11 

CHILDREN 

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Fran Avni & Bonnie Lockhart at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568.  

“Junie Jones and A Little Monkey Business” theater for ages 5 and up, at 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $13-$18. 925-798-1300. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Bancroft Library Centennial with their collection of rare and historic documents. Reception at 6 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, UC Campus. 643-4715. 

Andrew Red Hourse Alvarez Jewelry, Sat. and Sun. at Gathering Tribes Gallery, 1573 Solano Ave. 528-9038. 

THEATER 

Big City Improv, comedy, at 8 p.m. at The Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby. Tickets are $15. 595-5597.  

FILM 

Mikio Naruse “Anzukko” at 7 p.m. and “When a Woman Ascends the Stairs” at 9:10 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Howard Thurman: A Gracious Spirit” with Arleigh Prelow, documentary filmmaker, at 2 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

“The Art of Living Black” Artist talk and slide lecture with Ala Ebtekar and Almudena Ortiz at 2 p.m. at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave. at 25th St. 620-6772.  

Julian Barnes reads from his new novel “Arthur & George” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

“The Bancroft at 100” Curator’s talk with Anthony Bliss at noon in Gallery 4, Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chick Corea & Touchstone at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $30-$52. 642-9988.  

“Improvisation” with Myra Melford, Mark Sresser, Bob Ostertag and David Wessel at 8 p.m. in Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $22. 642-9988. 

Alexander Tsygankov “The Paganini of Domra” at 7:30 p.m. at New Spirit Community Church, 1798 Scenic Ave. Tickets are $10-$20. 704-7729. 

Caminos Flamencos at 8 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave., through Feb. 14. Tickets are $50-$95, includes dinner. 287-8700.  

RebbeSoul World Beat and Jewish roots at 7 p.m. at Kehilla Community Synagogue, 1300 Grand Ave. at Fairview, Piedmont. Tickets are $25-$60. 547-2424 ext. 214.  

Kirtan, devotional chanting with Jaya Lakshmi at 7 p.m. at Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St. Tickets are $15-$18. 843-2787.  

Maria Marquez & Trio with John Santos at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $7. 841-JAZZ.  

Patrick Ball “O’Carolan’s Farewell to Music” at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Fuga, dance/concert at 9 p.m. at at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$7. 849-2568.  

Prefixo de Verao, Brazilian pre-carnival celebration at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

City Limit, The Wearies, Last Clear Chance at 9 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $8-$10. 848-0886.  

Caroline Chung’s “Superbacana Trio” at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Mario Desio & Friends at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

Ilene Adar and Dana Shellmire at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Future Adults, Leopard Life, Teli Savalas at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $3. 525-9926. 

Mitch Marcus Quartet at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

SUNDAY, FEB. 12 

CHILDREN  

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054.  

EXHIBITIONS 

Craig Baxter, screenprints and etchings. Reception at 2 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

FILM 

Mikio Naruse “The Approach of Autumn” at 4:30 p.m. and “Daughters, Wives, and a Mother” at 6:10 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Andrew Lam reads from “Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora” at 1 p.m. at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave. 548-2350. 

David Kipen considers “The Schreiber Theory: A Radical Rewrite of American Film History” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

Poetry Flash with Eileen R. Tabios and Catherine Daly at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. Donation $2. 845-7852.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Jean-Michel Fonteneau and Roy Bogas at 4 p.m. at Crowden Music Center, 1475 Rose St. Cost is $12, free for children.  

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra “2Bs or Not 2Bs” at 4 p.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Free. 415-248-1640.  

Organ Recital by Lynn Trapp at 6:10 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. Donations accepted. 845-0888.  

Community Women’s Orchestra, “On With The Dance” at 4 p.m. at Zion Lutheran Church, 5201 Park Blvd., Piedmont. Suggested donation $10, children free. 463-0313.  

Les Violons du Roy and Magdalena Kozená, mezzo-soprano, at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$56, available from 642-9988.  

Carlos Oliveira & Brazilian Origns featuring Harvey Wainapel at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

Julian Waterfall Pollack Trio at 4:30 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12. 845-5373.  

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

Tangria at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

MONDAY, FEB. 13 

THEATER 

Subterranean Shakespeare “Titus Andronicus” Staged reading at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship, Fireside Room, 1924 Cedar St. Donation $5. 276-3871. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bharati Mukherjee and Meredith Maran introduce “Why I’m Still Married: Women Write Their Hearts Out on Love, Loss, Sex and Who Does the Dishes” at 7:30 p.m. at Cody’s Books. 845-7852.  

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

Maggie Morley and colleagues, poetry, followed by open mic, at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Valentine’s Day Voices with University Chorus and University Choral Ensembles at 8 p.m. in Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $3-$10. 642-9988. 

Caminos Flamencos at 6 and 9 p.m. at Cafe de la Paz, 1600 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $50-$95, includes dinner. 287-8700. www.cafedelapaz.net 

George Brooks’ Indian Jazz Combo at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $16. Benefit for the Oakland Library. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

The sparsely decorated set, designed by John Iacovelli at The Aurora, says something of the fin-de-siecle Norway in which Henrik Ibsen wrote The Master Builder—simple, functional wood furniture with little adornment. In the parlor, a nosegay of deep red carnations seems almost startling. 

The Master Builder’s office has a ledger on an upright desk, drafting tools laid out on a table, where, later, architectural renderings will be spread. In the back wall—with windows sketched in on blue wallpaper like drafting paper—are French doors, the only visible link to the gardens and vista of other dwellings outside. 

This is the cockpit for the battle of nerves the Master Builder wages like a war with his colleagues, clients, his doctor, his wife—the world, outside and in. James Carpenter’s demeanor in the lead role also says something of exterior and interior worlds—spare, perfectly appointed (Jocelyn Leiser the costumer), but abrupt in mood and movement, with occasional extravagant gestures. He dominates all around him, who seem to do his will with a mixture of awe and resentment. He’s also battling himself, in episodes of exaltation followed by self-doubt, fantastic confidence in his own powers followed by paranoid delusions. 

And through the French doors at the back, his angel or demon strides in, midway through the first act, in the form of a vivacious madcap making her way down from the mountains and into the world, Hilda Wangel (Lauren Grace).  

Hilda is banking on a vague invitation from the Builder’s wife, Aline (Anne Darragh), a woman who seems in perpetual mourning, resigned to “do her duty.”  

But she also wants to cash in on what she takes to be an old promise from Solness, the Master Builder, who at first doesn’t remember her and maybe never really does. Ten years before, inaugurating a church tower he built in her home town, Solness complimented the 13-year-old, telling her she was a princess who deserved a palace, a kingdom. Now Hilda has come to demand her due.  

Solness finds he can talk to Hilda; he doesn’t feel misunderstood by her, as he does by the others. He tells her his view of things we’ve already seen or heard of—how he’s feigned affection for the young woman who works in his office (Kaja, played by Zehra Berkman) in order to keep her fiancé, his assistant Ragnar (Brian Herndon) from leaving his employ and becoming a competitor. He has forebodings of being brushed aside by “the young.” He’s browbeat Ragnar and Ragnar’s father, Knut (Julian Lopez-Morillas), trying to destroy any confidence in the young man’s chance of independence. 

Hilda admiringly says that no one should be allowed to build but Solness—but shows distain when he tells her he secretly agrees. The two revel in their seeming ability to read each other’s thoughts, anticipate each other’s statements. 

Solness further reveals to her his great fear: that his success cannibalized his own and his wife’s disasters (the burning of her family home they’d inherited, the deaths of their twin infant sons). Everybody thinks him lucky and, he thinks, mad. Even his doctor (Richard Rossi), very much the diplomat and counselor, who jokes about what he assumes to be Solness’ affairs with young women, thinks him unhinged. 

Urged by all who see her hold on the Master Builder to restrain his extravagance, Hilda pushes him on to greater heights, to find her “castle in the air.” 

The program notes for the production emphasize the psychological drama of an older creative man driven on recklessly by an infatuation with a younger woman. That is most apparent in the plot, but the excellent performances by the cast, so well directed by Aurora founder Barbara Oliver, and the spartan clarity of the the translation (a world premiere, by past ACTdramaturg Paul Walsh), show the bald contradictions and ambiguities of every statement and action, offering a critique of the middle-class society of the 19th century. The Master Builder was Freud’s favorite play for more than clinical reasons. 

“To be a poet is to see,” said Ibsen. In The Master Builder he shows his ability to see deep into the contradictory matter of modern existence. After an absence of three decades from Norway, his courage in sublimating his own experiences into the character of a provincial enfant terrible grown long in the tooth and afraid of the up-and-coming young, shows the greatest artistic freedom.  

Something the Aurora production doesn’t quite grasp, which seems implicit in the translation, is the precise social tone of the conversation, the constant mention of duty to cover resentment, Hilda’s coquettish demands for an imaginary kingdom, Solness’ thoughtless yet domineering flatteries and condemnations. 

Kierkegaard, whose writings Ibsen knew, waged a campaign against what he called “drivel,” the irresponsible, careless, hypocritical chatter of bourgeois society and press, which tossed off chimeras of the mind as if silly parlor talk, exactly the doubles-entendres Freud found so indicative of true duplicity and neurosis, and which R. D. Laing would later characterize as “double binds,” Catch-22s. The dialogue of the play is, like the character of Solness, wound tight with these, spring-loaded like the stychomythia of Greek Tragedy, where the meaning is what’s ironically missed, not said outright, in the exchange. 

This show has plenty of irony, but maybe not enough of the falsely light touch, both knowing and frivolous, whereby a young lady could demand blood from an older man, yet just sound like a silly, coquettish girl. 

The Master Builder plays at 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and at 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays through March 5 at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St. For more information, call 843-4822 or see www.auroratheatre.org. 

Although there are many indicators of prestige among modern educational institutions—from Nobel prizes to faculty ratings to research dollars and private donations—university libraries remain one of the enduring benchmarks of excellence in higher education. 

Among the many library gems at the University of California campus in Berkeley, the most unique and precious may be the Bancroft Library.  

It’s a great treasury of historical materials—from books to manuscripts, paintings, photographs, and ancient papyrus—a leading center of historical research, and a wellspring of numerous scholarly studies, books, and even novels. 

Founded privately by Hubert Howe Bancroft, a foresighted California pioneer, publisher, and collector, today’s public Bancroft Library dates its campus connections to 1906, the year it was brought to Berkeley.  

The official Centennial of the Bancroft is celebrated this week with a free public conference and exhibit opening at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum.  

The event runs from about 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. this Friday and Saturday. Some 15 talks and panel discussions are scheduled on topics relevant to Bancroft research and collections, including “Modern Literary Manuscripts,” “Nineteenth-Century California History,” “The Environmental Movement,” “Mark Twain and His Era,” “Biotechnology and the Biological Revolution” and “The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.”  

Speakers and participants come from as far as the University of Leiden and as near as City Lights Bookstore, and include State Librarian Emeritus Kevin Starr, scientists Daniel Koshland, Jr. and John Heilbron, activists Kathleen Cleaver and Sylvia McLaughlin, and poets Robert Hass and Michael McClure.  

Central to the Bancroft are the amazing and eclectic collections of western history and documents collected in the 19th century by its namesake, who came to California in the Gold Rush and ultimately established the largest book and stationery firm west of the Mississippi. 

With profits from his business he got into the habit of collecting records and books and ended up publishing, with the help of a large research and editorial staff, nearly forty volumes of western history.  

Besides collecting existing written and published materials, he sent out researchers to interview early Californians—from Mexican-era officials, to American pioneers—and record their recollections in an early form of oral history. 

Wrapping up his own research activities in the 1890s he worked to find a permanent, secure, home for his collections, especially since his office building—although not the collection itself—had burned in 1886. 

As early as the 1870s the University of California had expressed interest in his library, but financial concerns and public criticisms had prevented a sale.  

As the 20th century began, acquisition efforts were renewed by two new University of California officials—President Benjamin Ide Wheeler and Professor of History Henry Morse Stephens—and by fall 1905, the deal was done.  

Bancroft sold his collection—appraised at more than $315,000—to the University for $250,000, and immediately donated $100,000 back to the institution.  

“The purchase of the Bancroft Library marks a great day in the history of the university,” a University Press release noted. “It marks the emergence of a real university of study and research out of the midst of the colleges of … teaching and training.” 

Then things nearly went up in smoke. Although a ceremonial transfer of the key to the collection took place in late November 1905, the documents were still in San Francisco in April 1906, when the great earthquake shook, and conflagration swept the city.  

For a time, “the University heads went through an anxious period, sadly contemplating … the default of the hopes to make the university a real institution of learning,” historian John Caughney wrote.  

But when the smoke cleared, the Bancroft collection had survived the earthquake and fire, almost alone among the great public and private libraries of San Francisco. This was due to the caution of Hubert Howe Bancroft who had installed his treasures somewhat outside the densely built-up districts in a strongly built, fireproof, structure on Valencia Street.  

Later in 1906 it was carted to Berkeley and its first campus home, the attic of California Hall. It would subsequently move to various floors of Doe Library. 

Although always stressed for funds, the collection grew through an active acquisitions program. Directors, curators, and staff were determined to make it a living collection by adding more material on western history as old materials became available through donation or purchase, and as new history was made. 

By 1946, the collection was three times bigger than it was in 1905, and a little over half a century ago the library moved to the new Annex building next to Doe Library and continued to grow. 

Today, the annex is temporarily closed as it undergoes a multi-million dollar seismic retrofit and interior reconstruction. Bancroft facilities including the Reading Room operate out of temporary quarters on Allston Way in downtown Berkeley, while most of the collections are stored in Richmond. 

In the 1970s and later the Bancroft was administratively united with several other special collections and library programs at the university. Rare books and manuscripts of all sorts, the ancient Egyptian Tebtunis Papyrus collection, the Regional Oral History Office, the University Archives, and the Mark Twain Papers, among others, all operate under its wing.  

Here’s the Bancroft by the numbers. Some 600,000 printed volumes and 60,000,000 pieces of manuscript occupy miles of shelving, along with 2,800,000 photographs and 23,000 maps.  

Operating with an annual budget of around $6 million (only about a third of it funded by the State of California), the Library sees more than 12,000 research visits a year and handles nearly 43,000 research and reference inquiries.  

All of the Bancroft collections are “non-circulating,” making the library’s reading room the sole public access point of the collection.  

Today, any individual with a serious research interest can go to the Bancroft, register, and call up and examine materials. 

When the Bancroft first moved to Berkeley, research access was more limited. A campus commission recommended that only graduate students at work on theses, and “qualified researchers” be allowed access. 

Other visitors “shall be courteously received and shown around the library by the assistant custodian, but shall not be permitted to use books or other historical materials,” the commission admonished. 

In the modern era, no visitors need fear being shunted off to the “assistant custodian.” Instead, they receive careful and expert assistance from a small corps of curators and reference staff adept at suggesting and finding the most obscure materials.  

I’ve been an occasional user of the Bancroft reading room, and have always been amazed at the immense scope of the research materials and the unexpected gems they contain. A small example; once, while researching the history of the University Art Museum, I opened a folder of dry administrative documents to find an original 1934 letter by Bernard Maybeck, commenting on the architecture and uses of a renovated campus building.  

For the next century the Bancroft will undoubtedly continue to accumulate and unfold treasures. In the meantime, now is a great time to get acquainted with the library through its centennial. 

A gallery talk at noon and an evening exhibit reception (6–8 p.m.) on Saturday help open the Centennial exhibit, “The Bancroft Library at 100.” It will remain on display through early December. 

Symposium events take place in the Berkeley Art Museum theater and Pacific Film Archive theater on Bancroft Way, near Bowditch Street. For more information see http://bancroft.berkeley.edu or call (510) 642-3781. The two-page program can be downloaded from the website. 

(The College of California, by the way, gave Bancroft Way its name in the 1860s before the University of California existed. It honors not Hubert Howe Bancroft but 19th century American historian George Bancroft.) 

I’ve spent lots of time, breath, and column inches here and elsewhere in the past telling people how not to kill their trees. Don’t top trees; don’t hack away most of their limbs; don’t leave stubs; don’t hire inept bozos who do any of the above. Don’t plant them in the wrong place, or too deeply. Don’t irrigate native live oaks. Don’t let the base of the trunk get smothered in soil or mulch.  

But suppose you have a dead tree on your hands through no fault of your own. (Or because you really blew it.) Now what—the takedown crew and the chainsaws? Well, maybe. But unlike the average large rotting animal, a tree is still useful after it’s dead.  

Useful to us, of course; we surround ourselves with dead trees. We live in them, sit on them, perch our computers on them, transmit copy across town over wires they support to be printed and read on sheets made out of them. Wood is handsome and feels nice to touch; paper is sure as heck easier to make and use and re-use than, say, parchment or vellum or clay tablets. So, yay dead trees! At least processed ones. 

A dead tree standing in your yard, that’s another matter, pure liability. Or is it?  

Lots of our wild neighbors actually make intense use of standing dead trees. Such trees host more bugs—and many of the new bugs are specialists, who don’t go on to eat every live tree in sight—and often in tasty, juicy larval form, which makes them a free buffet for insectivores like woodpeckers. In Berkeley, we’re most likely to see red-shafted (“northern”) flickers, especially in winter. Flashy as they are, you’ll hear them first, that scornful brazen “Fnaah!” from the top of a tree. They are one woodpecker you’ll see on the ground too, sometimes “anting”: sitting on an anthill and spreading their feathers, mashing a beakful of ants and rubbing it all over their skin. I’ve heard several speculative explanations for this, but I’m sure it’s a rush. I’m waiting for the crystal-aura-magical spa types to latch onto it and offer a formic acid skin peel, you know, As Nature Intended. Remember, you read it here first. 

We get downy or hairy woodpeckers, depending on whether we’re in the more urban flats or the woodsy hills. They’re very similar; listen for a squeaky-toy noise or a small but piercing “peent” and look for a white back, then grab the field guide. If it has a barred rather than a white back, and if it gives a rolling “bb-bbb-bbbbbbt” sort of call, it’s a Nuttall’s woodpecker. I believe that species is extending its range over the last decade or so; we used to see them only well east of the hills, and lately they’re all over here, including the one who has a drumming post on the telephone pole out front of our house.  

Woodpeckers are pioneers; other species live in the natural hollows caused by decay, or in holes that woodpeckers have excavated. Those indomitable chickadees and titmice need a hole. The red-breasted nuthatch, tooting merrily? Same requirement. Don’t they just cheer you up on a gray winter day? 

If you’re lucky and/or semirural, you might get western bluebirds, ash-throated flycatchers or tree swallows nesting in your stump. Our native gray squirrels, so rare here in the urban umbra, might winter in a tree hole. Arboreal salamanders, who turn up in places as unlikely as big apartment complexes near Dwight and Shattuck—I’ve seen them there, in multiples—need tree hollows to hide and reproduce in.  

And those who like owlboxes—barn owls, for example—or any critter—possum, wood duck, kingfisher—who’d use a birdhouse would likely prefer a hollow tree.  

So, a dead tree, lucky you. Rethink it. One smart person I know had her dead Doug fir limbed and topped at about ten feet up, and left it there. It’s not about to topple onto anybody, her neighbors are OK about it, and she’s got Nuttall’s woodpeckers moving in and a barn owl in the neighborhood.  

Consider her example. You’ll want to calculate, and see if the tree’s base is rotting out and what’s in range of a fall. But here’s another instance where careful “neglect” is the best kind of gardening.  

TUESDAY, FEB. 7 

Community Rally to Stop the Ashby BART Grant at 6:15 on the steps of Old City Hall, before the City Council meeting. 

“Hard Ball on Holy Ground” The Religious and Secular Right’s Attack on Progressive Churches with Andrew J.Weaver at 7 p.m. at Epworth United Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 524-2921. 

Kalimba Interactive Assembly with Carl Winters on the African thumb piano, in celebration of Black History Month at 10 a.m. at the Oakland Public Library, West Oakland Branch, 1801 Adeline St. and at 1 p.m. at the Temescal Branch, 5205 Telegraph Ave. All ages welcome. 238-7352. 

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

“Sankofa” A showing of the Black independent film at 6 p.m. at Merritt College, Building A, Room 218.  

“The Conflict Between Lions and Humans: Is Peace Possible in Africa?” with researcher Dr. Laurence Frank at 6:30 p.m. at the Marian Zimmer Auditorium, lower park entrance, Oakland Zoo, 9777 Golf Links Rd., in Knowland Park, Oakland. Cost is $12-$20. 632-9525 ext. 122. www.oaklandzoo.org  

Introduction to Conscious Parenting If you have ever wondered about new ways of parenting, or struggled with things not going how you expected, come and find relief, community, and a host of new tools at 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby near Ashby BART. 415-312-1830. 

Turn Stress into Success Workshop at 7:30 p.m. at Creating Harmony Institute, Atrium Plaza, 828 San Pablo Ave. Suite 115B, Albany. Free but registration required. 526-1559. 

Paris & Provence with photographic adventure guide Don Lyon at 7 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. 654-1548.  

Berkeley Salon Discussion Group meets to discuss Love and Sex in the 21st Century from 7 to 9 p.m. at the BRJCC, 1414 Walnut St. 601-6690. 

California Shakespeare Summer Theater Camp Open House to meet with potential campers and their families from 7-8:30 p.m. at the Cal Shakes Rehearsal Hall, 701 Heinz Ave. 548-3422 ext. 127. 

Family Story Time at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Branch Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Free, all ages welcome. 524-3043. 

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. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Free Handbuilding Ceramics Class 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. John’s Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. 525-5497. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 8 

Richmond Southeast Shoreline Community Advisory Group Meeting at 6:30 p.m. at Richmond Convention Center, Bermuda Room, 403 Civic Center Plaza at Nevin and 25th Sts. 540-3923. 

Presentation about the Albany Shoreline and the Citizens’ Planning Initiative to Protect Albany’s Shoreline with Robert Cheasty, president of Citizens for East Shore Parks and former Mayor of Albany at 10:30 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave., Albany. 558-9639. www.albanyshoreline.org 

“African American Health Awareness 2006” A cummunity forum at 10 a.m. at African Methodist Episcopal Church, 530 37th St., Oakland. 444-9655. 

Lead-Safety for Remodeling, Repair and Painting of older homes. A HUD & EPA approved class held in Oakland from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. To register, call Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program at 567-8280. www.ACLPPP.org 

“The Rebirth of Environ- 

mentalism” with George Lakoff and Mark Danner at 7:30 p.m. at Buttner Auditorium, College Prep School, 6100 Broadway. Tickets are $5-$10 at the door. 339-7726.  

Rhoda Goldman Lecture in Health Policy “A Conversation with Robert Klein” at 7:30 p.m. at Chevron Auditorium, International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave., UC Campus. 642-4670. 

Film Series on 9/11: “The Great Conspiracy” at 7 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St. Oakland. Free, but donations of $5 accepted. www.HumanistHall.net 

“Indigenous Peoples And Diabetes: Community Empowerment And Wellness” edited by Mariana Ferreira and Gretchen Lang, book release at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

East Bay Genealogical Society Robert Lindquist will about the Swedish immigration at 10 a.m. in the Library Conference Room of the Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Ave. Oakland. 635-6692. 

Poetry Writing Workshop, led by Alison Seevak, at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library ,1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at USDA, 800 Buchanan St., Albany. To schedule an appointment, call Steven at 559-6188.  

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction every Wed. and Sat. at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

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. 

Sing your Way Home A free sing-a-long at 4:30 p.m. every Wed. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www.geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, FEB. 9 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll search for our amphibian friends, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

“Grandma’s Hands” A Black History Month celebration by the fifth graders at Oxford Elementary School at 9 a.m. at 1130 Oxford St. Also on Fri. at 10:30 a.m. at Jefferson Elementary School. 644-6300. 

“Can the US be a Global Good Neighbor” Panel discussion with Ann Wright, Tom Barry, John Gershman, Laura Carlsen, Stephen Zunes, and Conn Hallinan at 7 p.m. at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Donations suggested. Sponsored by The International Relations Center. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

“North Koreans Beyond the Border” Four UCB Journalism students report about their travels to South Korea and Northern China where they met North Korean migrants and defectors, at 5:30 p.m. at North Gate Hall Library, UC CAmpus. http://ieas.berkeley.edu/events/2006.02.09.html 

East Bay Mac Users Group meets at 6 p.m. at Expression College for Digital Arts, 6601 Shellmound St., Emeryville Learn how to sync your Mac to almost any PDA or handheld. http://ebmug.org 

American Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at MLK Student Union, East Pauley Ballroom, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-GIVELIFE. www.BeADonor.com 

Lead Funding Info Meeting for Landlords to learn about financial assistance to reduce lead hazards at 6 p.m. at Oakland Housing Authority, 1619 Harrison. Free, presented by Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. 567-8280. www.ACLPPP.org 

World of Plants Tours Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu 

FRIDAY, FEB. 10 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Michael Perleman, international financier. Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925 or 665-9020.  

Memorial Service for Jean Siri at 11 a.m. at the Miller-Knox Shoreline, Dornan Drive, Pt. Richmond. For infromation call the East Bay Regional Parks District at 544-2206. 

“Building with Nature: Inspiration for the Arts & Crafts Home” with Leslie M. Freudenheim at 7:30 p.m. at First Church of Christ, Scientist, 2619 Dwight Way at Bowditch. Tickets are $15. Sponsored by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 841-2242. 

“Whooping Cranes: Recovering from the Brink of Extinction” with Dr. George Archibald, Co-founder of the International Crane Foundation, at 7:30 p.m. at San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum, corner of 9th Ave/Lincoln Way, San Francisco. Sponsored by The Golden Gate Audubon Society, Berkeley. 843-2222. www.goldengateaudubon.org  

Womansong Circle An evening of participatory singing for women at 6:45 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. DOnation $10-$20. 525-7082. 

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

Berkeley Chess School classes for students in grades 1-8 from 5 to 7 p.m. at 1581 LeRoy Ave., room 17. 843-0150. 

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

SATURDAY, FEB. 11 

Toddler Nature Walk for 2-3 year olds. We’ll look for our salamander friends from 2 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 7-12 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

War Tax Resistance Workshop from 2 to 4 p.m. at 3122 Shattuck Ave. Sponsored by Northern California War Tax Resistance. 843-9877. www.nowartax.org 

Energy Efficiency Workshop for your home, from 9 to 11 a.m. at Truitt and White Conference Room, 1817 Second St. Free, but registration required. 649-2674. 

Open Conference on the Electoral Crisis on the failures of the “two party system” at 2 p.m. at Redwood Gardens, 2951 Derby St. MrPlutocrat@aol.com 

East Bay Impeach Bush Group meets at 5 p.m. at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 527-9584. 

“Women in Ancient Arabia” a visual presentation by Max Dashu, at 7:30 p.m. at Change Makers, 6536 Telegraph Ave., near Alcatraz, Oakland. Cost is $10-$20 sliding scale, no one turned away. 415-561-7752. 

Solo Sierrans Sunset Walk at the Emeryville Marina Meet at 3:30 p.m. on the west side of Chevy’s Restaurant. Rain cancels. 234-8949. 

The Rotary Club of Albany Second Annual Celebration, “Service Above Self” at 7:30 p.m. at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany. Tickets are $20. 558-1534. 

Lead-Safe Painting & Remodeling Free class to learn about lead safe renovations for your older home at 10 a.m. at the Eastmont Branch Library 7200 Bancroft Ave #211, Oakland. Presented by Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. 567-8280. www.ACLPPP.org 

Bridging the Gap Conference with hip hop historian, and community activist Davey D and Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on the UC Campus. Free and open to all ages. Benefit for the Graduate Minority Students’ Project. 642-2876, ext. 4. www.struggle4reparations.com 

Sistaz N Motion, helping women start their own business, meets at 12:30 p.m. until 3:30 p.m. at Crescent Park Multi-Cultural Family Resource Center, 5004 Hartnett Ave., Richmond. Cost is $10 for non-members. Please RSVP to sistaznmotion@hotmail.com 

Make a Valentine Workshop with Adria McCuaig from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. Free for all ages. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

Love Mission to Mars A simulated space mission to share with your Valentine at 3:30 and 5:30 p.m. at Chabot Space and Science Center. Also on Sun. at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. Tickets are $60 per couple. 336-7373. 

The Great War Society meets to discuss “General George C. Marshall, Organizer of Victory” at 10:30 a.m. at 640 Arlington Ave. 527-7118. 

“Let’s Talk About It: Jewish Literature - Identity and Imagination” Discussion led by Led by Dr. Naomi Seidman, at 2 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Registration is recommended. 524-3043. 

Small Business Seminar on Market Analysis at 9 a.m. at Vista College, 2075 Allston Way. Cost is $26. To register see www.peralta.cc.ca.us 

“Self Image/God Image” Writing workshop for believers and doubters with Beth Glick-Rieman from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Donation $40. Bring a bag lunch. To register, call 524-2858. 

“Scars of War/Wounds of Peace” with Shlomo Ben-Ami, fromer Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley-Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $5. 839-2900, ext. 253. 

Preschool Storytime for 3-5 year olds at 11 a.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

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. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Jack van der Meulen on Opening the Heart Yoga from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. Cost is $80, registration required. 843-6812.  

SUNDAY, FEB. 12 

Reptile Rendevous Meet the resident reptiles of the Tilden Nature Center from 11 a.m. to noon at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Waste Not, Want Not A recycling adventure for 8-12 year olds from 1 to 3 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Green Sunday: Why Three Alameda County Greens are running for state-wide office at 5 p.m. at Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave. at 65th in North Oakland. 

Mending Bee and Repair-a-thon Bring your latest repair project, share skills and materials, and watch a slideshow by local artists of their recent small and largescale repair projects. From 4 to 7 p.m. at Rock Paper Scissors Gallery, 2278 Telegraph Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 238-9171. www.rpscollective.com 

Love, Kisses, Wills, Trusts Get your legal affairs in order. Open forum discussion and private consultations from 9 a.m. to noon at Chapel of the Chimes, 449 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Free. 228-3207. 

Celebrate Black History Month with interactive storytelling and jazz from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Habitot, 2065 Kittredge St. Nubia at 1 p.m., Derique the Clown at 3 p.m. Free. 647-1111.  

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 

Jewish Holiday of the Trees and support Rabbis for Human Rights at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley/Richmond Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Cost is $10. RSVP to 415-789-7685.  

Family Film Sunday Series “101 Dalmations” at 11 a.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $5. 

Free Garden Tours at Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park Sat. and Sun. at 2 p.m. Call to confirm. 841-8732.  

Tibetan Buddhism with JSylvia Gretchen on the Buddhist writings of Longchenpa at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, FEB. 13 

Sweatshop Workers Speak Phannara Duangdej from Thailand, Branice Linugu Musavi from Kenya and Siti Malika from Indonesia, speak of their experiences working in the global garment industry at 6 p.m. at FSM Café at Moffitt Library, UC Campus. 760-519-7725. 

“The Global Class War” with author Jeff Faux, founding president of the Economic Policy Institute, and a critic of pro-business free-trade, at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Free Business Loan and Business Plan Writing Boot Camp Mon. and Fri. from 9 a.m. to noon at 519 17th St., 2nd Floor, Ste. 200, Oakland, through March 31. 395-6003. 

World Affairs Discussion Group for seniors at 10:15 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center. Cost is $2.50.  

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. 

Introduction to Meditation at 6:45 p.m. at Bay Zen Center, 315 Alcatraz near College Ave. Suggested donation $10. Advance registration required. 596-3087. www.bayzen.org 

Spice Up Your Love Life A workshop with Dot Claire at 7 p.m. at Unity of Berkeley, 2075 Eunice St. Cost is $27. 925-287-9594.  

ONGOING 

“Sprout Hope” Half-Pint Library Book Drive to benefit the library at Children’s Hospital, Oakland, is looking to register schools in the book drive. To register see www.halfpricebooks.com 

Free Tax Help—United Way’s Earn it! Keep It! Save It! program provides free filing assistance to households that earned less than $38,000 in 2005. To find a free tax site near you, call 800-358-8832 or visit www.EarnitKeepitSaveit.org 

Albany Library Free Drop-in Homework Help for students in third through fifth grades, Mon. - Thurs. from 3 to 5:30 p.m. Emphasis is placed on math and writing skills. No registration is required. 526-3720, ext. 17. 

CITY MEETINGS 

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

berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Homeless Commission meets Wed., Feb. 8,, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Jane Micallef, 981-5426.  

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Thurs., Feb. 9, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. r