The Bateman Mall Park has been restored, but drainage problems at the site continue. 

Some residents of Prince and Colby streets, tired of having water clog the newly constructed grass park, took matters into their own hands on Sunday and tore out clumps of grass to allow water to pass into the drains. 

“The water was damming up at the beginning instead of damming up at the end,” said a resident of Colby Street who had shoveled away the grass and did not want to be named. “It was rotting the grass and the smell was driving the neighbors insane. There was at least five inches of standing water and the leaves were getting stuck.” 

Lorin Jenson, supervising civil engineer for Berkeley, said that the drainage problem was caused because the grass never got a chance to root. 

“The temperature and weather conditions at the moment are such that the grass is going straight into hibernation,” Jenson said. “If this was not the case, the original plan would have allowed the water to drain.” 

The city had allowed Alta Bates Hospital to construct a temporary road through the Bateman Mall Park earlier this year, which neighbors said had caused further disruptions in addition to the Alta Bates Emergency Room remodeling project, which brought the area residents months of noise, traffic disruptions, water drainage and light pollution. 

The neighborhood had been working with the city and the hospital since April to develop an acceptable plan to restore the mall. Neighbors had wanted the park, where the access way was to cross it, to be grass surfaced as it had been before the temporary road. 

But after the construction was completed, the neighbors complained that the grass was too high. 

“It’s retaining water on a constant basis,” said Bill Cain, a resident of Prince Street and the designated representative of the neighborhood for the Bateman Mall Restoration. 

Jenson, the city engineer, admitted that the contractor (Alta Bates Summit Medical Center) had made a mistake and that the gutter at the cul-de-sac was poured more than two inches too high.  

“I was not there, nor am I normally, when a pour occurs,” Jenson said in a letter to neighbors. “I don’t know what happened. I expressed the importance over and over again with the foreman in the field of meeting that elevation. That mistake will be corrected.” 

Cain also claimed that the criteria that the park must be able to handle a storm as strong as one that typically hits every 15 years was not met and that flooding would occur two to three times a year. 

“The capacity of the access way gutter is not sufficient to pass the 15-year storm,” he said. 

Jenson however said that Cain’s analysis and statements were not correct. 

“To ensure I was meeting the 15-year flow design criteria I checked the capacity, momentum, and water surface profile, which are all dependent on the slopes and materials of the cul-de-sac, grass pavers road and pipes,” he said. “Mr. Cain and I agree on the 15-year flow quantity. Mr. Cain is not taking the water surface profile into account in his analysis.” 

Neighbors of the Bateman Mall are scheduled to meet with Jenson this week to decide how to solve the current drainage problem. 

“If the neighbors want the grass then something temporary like gravel can be poured to allow the water to pass,” Jenson said. “In spring we can kick out the gravel and re-plant the grass so that it gets time to root. The other option would be to kick out the grass and build a concrete gutter on the side.” 

Cain said that the neighborhood was working with the city to come up with a plan that would suit all the residents.  

“The city is trying its best to listen to the neighbors,” he said. “But the hospital continues to discharge water everyday. They say that they need to over-water to help the landscape and make it grow but we don’t believe it’s true.” 

Residents walking their dogs or commuting through the Bateman Mall on Monday complained about the puddles created by the standing water. 

“It’s not just the rotting grass I can smell, it’s dog poop, too,” said Kathy Brady, who lives a block away. “I get it every time I bring my dog here and it’s gotten worse in the last few days.”  

Berkeley’s traffic court is moving to Oakland as of Jan. 1, taking eight jobs and Court Commissioner Jon Rantzman along for the ride. 

Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington and Osha Neumann, an attorney who represents the poor, both said they’re outraged at an action they say will prove costly to the city and its citizens. 

Also headed south is small claims court, the real-life version of the People’s Court where citizens can argue their suits directly with each other if the total amount sought is $7,500 or less.  

Judge Wynne Carvill will remain in Berkeley to handle suits for larger amounts and other non-criminal trials in the Berkeley court facilities at 2120 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. 

Criminal cases had already been moved to Oakland in 2002. 

And starting Friday, all tickets issued for infractions in the city will require appearances at the Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse at 661 Washington St. in Oakland, said Sweeten. 

The actual move will occur during the holiday lull between Christmas and New Years. 

“We’re trying to manage the courts appropriately with the limited amount of resources available,” said Alameda County Superior Court Executive Officer Pat S. Sweeten. 

“They’re telling us this at the end of November?” declared Worthington. “This has dramatic potential costs to us as a city, because I assume they aren’t going to be covering the costs that will fall on the jurisdictions and the public. 

“On the face of it, it sounds like this will be a very expensive proposition.” 

Osha Neumann, an attorney who represents the indigent and homeless through the East Bay Community Law Center, said the move will be disastrous for his clients, as well as a major burden to the Berkeley Police Department. 

“It’s going to have a really negative impact on Berkeley from all points of view,” he said. 

The change of venue will prove especially hard on the poor, and on the homeless, many of whom aren’t willing leave their shopping carts and dogs, he said. 

“I estimate that 45 percent of the people who make appearances are poor and indigent defendants,” Neumann said. 

Sweeten said she didn’t have specific numbers of citations or cases now heard by the Berkeley court. 

While Sweeten said the move will be convenient to Berkeley residents because parking is more accessible at the Oakland courthouse and BART and bus access is convenient, Neumann said that’s not the case for his clients. 

“Many can’t even afford the fares,” Neumann said. “It was bad enough before, but this will be a major inconvenience.” 

The same will be true for police, he said, and for others who can afford transit fares or drive and pay for parking.  

“Right now, all the police have to do is walk out of the door a few steps from the Public Safety Center to the courthouse. But now they’ll be driving to Oakland, and they’ll have to wait around the courthouse for their appearances,” he said. “There will be a lot of lost time when they could be out on the streets.” 

The officers will also have to take their tickets there to file them, yet another source of lost time, Neumann said. 

Because of the added time and the press of other duties, some officers could wind up missing court appearances, he said. 

Worthington said he was also surprised to hear that tickets issued Friday will reflect the change of venue. “The court appearance location is printed on the tickets,” he said, “so they must have already ordered them before telling us.” 

“I would really like to get some kind of notice of why this is happening, and what kind of options were considered,” he said. 

A representative of Police Chief Douglas Hambleton said late Monday afternoon that Berkeley’s top cop had just learned of the move and wasn’t ready to comment yet. City Manager Phil Kamlarz and Mayor Tom Bates did not return calls from the paper. 

The Berkeley Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee may have violated local election laws, according to Councilmember Dona Spring who says she is preparing a formal complaint against Business for Better Government Berkeley Chamber of Commerce PAC.  

Spring plans to submit the complaint for consideration at the next Fair Campaign Practices Commission meeting, which is in January. 

In a separate challenge to Chamber politicization, Spring intends to ask the City Council Dec. 12 to request a legal ruling on the viability of city membership in the Chamber, because of the Chamber’s endorsement of local candidates and measures. 

Spring alleges that the Chamber PAC skirted local election law that restricts donations to individual candidates to $250 and prohibits corporate donations. “They did not report according to Berkeley election law,” Spring said. 

The Chamber PAC raised and spent about $100,000 to defeat Measure J, oppose Councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Dona Spring (and thus support Worthington challenger George Beier and Spring challenger Raudel Wilson) and to support Mayor Tom Bates, according to city and county election records. 

As an independent committee—independent from any candidate or measure—the Chamber PAC files reports with the county, thus reserving the option of supporting candidates outside of Berkeley, according to PAC treasurer Stacy Owens. And the PAC, unlike a candidate committee, is obligated to file in Berkeley only at the time it makes expenditures for Berkeley candidates or measures, she said: During the period in September and October during which the PAC raised the bulk of its money, but spent none, it was obligated to file its reports only with the county. 

But Spring argues the PAC does not function as a truly “independent” committee. According to California law, independent expenditure committees support or oppose candidates or measures “not in coordination with the candidate or his or her campaign committee.” 

Spring argues that, by all appearances, Raudel Wilson’s campaign coordinated with the PAC. Literature sent out by the PAC and by Wilson resemble each other closely, she says—both pieces, for example, criticize Spring in similar ways as causing the closure of Radston’s, a downtown stationery store.  

“It’s too close to be a coincidence,” Spring said. 

Moreover, Spring points out that PAC treasurer Owens was also Wilson’s campaign treasurer. During the campaign, Wilson told the Daily Planet that he had known Owens for years and there was no relationship between her work as his treasurer and as the Chamber PAC treasurer. Wilson also said at the time that his attendance at a September PAC fundraiser had no relationship to his campaign. 

Spring also argues that it was improper for the PAC to lump all its contributions into one pot. Contributions should have been segregated to indicate how much as designated from each contributor to each candidate or measure, Spring said. 

For example, the public does not know if Berkeley resident George Battle’s $14,000 PAC contribution went toward defeating Measure J, attempting to defeat Spring or Worthington, or supporting Bates. 

Chamber President Roland Peterson said in a brief Nov. 16 interview that the PAC has noted, internally, the intent of each of the contributors.  

This year, the Berkeley Chamber, in an action the organization says was distinct from the PAC campaigning, endorsed candidates Bates, Wilson, Beier and District 8 Councilmember Gordon Wozniak in addition to endorsing against Measure J.  

But, noting that Richmond recently quit its chamber for reasons of conflict of interest, given that the Richmond Chamber endorsed candidates, Spring said she thinks Berkeley is in a similar position. Its Office of Economic Development, the Police Department and the Fire Department are listed as Berkeley Chamber members. She will bring the issue to the council Dec. 12. 

Jesse Arreguin, rent board commissioner active in the Worthington re-election campaign, says he will go to the state, since the local Fair Political Campaign Practices Commission ruled Nov. 16 that, while a Chamber of Commerce PAC omission of sender identification on a campaign mailer was a violation, it was a simple mistake.  

“The local FCPC wasn’t willing to enforce the law,” Arreguin said, adding that he and others will consult an attorney who specializes in campaign law to help write the complaint. 

“I’m very disappointed with the local commission’s action,” he said. “They were not willing to investigate the issue of willful intent. I hope the state will be more diligent.” 

A recently released report on young men of color by a national commission chaired by the incoming Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums may provide a roadmap to priorities and policies in the city for the next four years. 

With murders in Oakland projected to reach 150 for the year, most of them young men of color, and the city’s public school system in a downward spiral after three years of state receivership, such a roadmap could come none too soon. 

One of the report’s major recommendations, for universal health care, was a key part of Dellums’ platform in his successful run for Oakland mayor earlier this year. 

In a report released earlier this month in Washington, D.C., the Dellums Commission of the national Joint Center For Political And Economic Studies Health Policy Institute concluded that national policies of the past 35 years, including “punitive and ineffective drug laws, educational inequities, anti-union government interventions, regressive tax policies, stagnation of the minimum wage, disinvestment in social and legal services, and discriminatory housing policies, including the abandonment of public housing” have “devastated communities of color,” striking American youth of color particularly hard. 

Saying that youth has become “a minefield of trip wires for males of color,” the report noted that “misguided” national policies addressing troubled youth of color “compound the problem … [forcing] schools, police, courts, and juvenile authorities to adopt practices that result in marginalization, exclusion, confinement, and punishment instead of constructive solutions.” 

The report called such conditions “unacceptable in a democracy with the resources and capabilities of the United States.” 

Giving examples of positive programs addressing the problem already in place across the country, the report lists specific local, state, and national solutions in the areas of health, education, workforce and economic development, family support and child welfare, juvenile and criminal justice, and the portrayal of youth of color in the media. 

Noting that “the diminished life options and outcomes that young men of color confront in today’s America is not a natural phenomenon,” Health Policy Institute Director Dr. Gail Christopher said in a prepared release that during its 18 month long study, the Dellums Commission “uncovered a series of policy decisions over the past three decades that have had a harmful impact on the way minority youth develop in our society. We have a duty to stop them now and reverse course. We cannot give up on our youth, and we must ask that they not give up on us.”  

Joint Center chairman Elliott Hall called it “the first time in our nation’s history that an esteemed group of scholars, public officials, community activists and legal experts have investigated the problems faced by youths from every large minority group in the U.S.” 

The full report and 12 accompanying background papers by national experts are available on the Joint Center’s website at www.jointcenter.org. 

Dellums called the 27-page report and background papers “a guidebook for legislators, community wellness advocates, concerned citizens, and the private sector” for “a large and growing body of knowledge and expertise about what works to combat this growing blight on America.” 

The report did not specify, however, exactly how the projected solutions and policies would be advocated or carried out. 

Founded in 1970 by black intellectuals and professionals at a time when African-Americans were just beginning to win positions in large numbers in cities, state legislatures, and in the national House of Representatives, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies is a national, nonprofit research and public policy institution organized initially to provide training and technical assistance to those newly elected black officials. It has since grown into a Washington D.C.-based think tank investigating public policy areas of particular concern to African-Americans and other communities of color in the country. 

The Dellums Commission was funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.  

The report put a good deal of blame of poor perception of youth of color on the media, which it said often perpetuates “pervasive negative stereotypes that engender popular fear, anger, and misunderstanding of minority youth. Mainstream news organizations help to cultivate these attitudes mostly by what they omit: context.” 

The report called on state, county, and city governments to help facilitate discussions of negative news coverage between media outlets and community groups, as well as calling for media reform activists, foundations, and other nonprofits to “create outlets for young men of color to tell their own stories in alternative media.” 

On the federal level, the report called for the Federal Communications Commission and Congress to repeal the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which the report said “paved the way for more consolidation in media ownership,” and to restore the Fairness Doctrine that “required broadcast station coverage of controversial issues to be balanced and fair.” The report also asked media outlets to “provide more air time to the subjective voices and perspectives of young men of color.” 

Among the commission’s other policy recommendations: 

• In the area of education, the report recommended that local school districts “aggressively and creatively” stem the high dropout rate among young men of color, and called for the elimination of “the policy of zero tolerance for behavioral offenses in schools.” The report also called for equity in school funding, “ending the common practice of shortchanging urban centers or rural communities where students of color live,” and blasted President George Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, which it said “makes it virtually impossible for low-performing schools to improve.” 

• In the area of economic development, the report called for the raising of the minimum wage on both the federal, state, and local levels and for state and local government to “encourage banks and other lending institutions to expand operations—at fair, non-predatory terms—in underserved areas.” In addition, the report called on local governments to “promote … economic development opportunities in distressed communities by providing access to capital to establish viable business initiatives”  

If instituted by Dellums in Oakland, that policy alone would be a marked departure from that of his predecessor, Jerry Brown, who concentrated economic development into the creation of new neighborhoods in Oakland—the Jack London Square loft district, the Forest City Uptown project, and the Oak to Ninth development—rather than rehabilitating existing ones. 

• In juvenile and criminal justice, the report called on the “expan[sion of the] use of youth courts, drug courts, and community-based counseling as alternatives to incarceration for youth, the majority of whom are low-risk, nonviolent offenders.” The report also said that states should “mandate standards for legal counsel for young men of color, who are often poorly represented by counsel or provided no counsel in the juvenile justice system.” 

• In the area of health, universal health care should be instituted, the medical care industry should be encouraged to develop “culturally competent medical professionals,” and state and local governments should develop early intervention into potential health problems. The report also recommended that “local governments should fund school-based health care and/or provide incentives for insurers, health care providers, and other business sponsors to participate in these programs at the K-12 level.” 

The report noted that San Francisco’s youth-initiated Wellness Centers, which it said were located in seven high schools in the city, “demonstrate that public schools can be innovative, practical sites for health care services.” While the City of Berkeley was not mentioned specifically in the report, Berkeley’s city-run health department runs a successful student health clinic at Berkeley High School. 

The report noted that in 2005, the state of Illinois ”extended health care coverage to all uninsured children through the age of 18.” California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently set universal health care for the state’s youth as a “goal” for his administration in his next four-year term. 

While its musical form, an arpeggio, consists of the notes of a chord played in rapid succession, the progress of the Berkeley Arpeggio has been anything but speedy. 

And ditto for the still unspecified but equally controversial project proposed for western parking lot of the Ashby BART station. 

That less-than-apt Arpeggio moniker refers to the project once known as the Seagate Building, once hailed as the tallest building planned for downtown Berkeley since the Power Bar edifice hulked upwards at the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street. 

A combination of bonuses granted for providing cultural space and setting aside some units for the less than affluent led city planning staff to declare that the building was entitled to 14 floors, nine more than the basic downtown maximum. 

That in turn triggered a review of the whole bonus process and a hastily enacted ordinance passed by the City Council which became void the day after the Nov. 7 election because Proposition 90 didn’t pass—a ballot initiative that would have hamstrung new regulations on development. 

Construction of the Arpeggio had once been slated to commence in September, but the only work to occur to date happened in June on the site on Center Street west of Shattuck that faces the new Berkeley City College building. 

Bulldozers and crews leveled the existing buildings on the site, with a company representative promising work would begin in August on the posh, 186,000-square-foot, nine-story condo complex. 

All that exists of the project today is an expanse of bare earth where excavating equipment will begin carving out a rectangle of earth to house the project’s 160-car, two-level underground parking lot. 

In addition to 149 luxury condos, the 2041-67 Center St. Arpeggio also would house a small amount of ground floor commercial space, a public art gallery plus the 9,000-square-foot full-time performance and rehearsal venue run by the non-profit Berkeley Repertory Theatre. 

The project was known originally as the Seagate Building after the name of the first developers—the company that also owns the Well Fargo tower immediately to the east—who bought the land and won the necessary permits from the city. 

That package was sold in May 2005 to SNK Captec Arpeggio, a limited liability corporation created by an Arizona development firm and a Michigan finance firm. Seagate retains an interest in the project. 

Construction of the college building stalled the project for fears that building two massive structures just across from each other on a narrow city street would overwhelm traffic in the area. 

Shortly after the purchase, project representative Darrell de Tienne said construction would start no later that July 2005.  

Then came the promise of September 2006. 

But City Planning Director Dan Marks said Monday the project is still working its way through the building permit process. “There are some issues still to be resolved,” he said. 

Meanwhile, the Seagate’s status as Berkeley’s tallest building project in decades has already been eclipsed, with the unveiling of plans by a Massachusetts developer to build a 19-story hotel and conference center at Center and Shattuck that would become the city’s tallest building—through still well short of the Campanile on the UC Berkeley campus.  

Ashby BART 

Another and possibly even denser project proposed for the main parking lot of the Ashby BART station appears to be stuck in legal limbo. 

Originally proposed as a project with more than 300 apartments built over ground floor commercial spaces, the project stalled after angry neighbors protested and the California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) rejected in May a city-sponsored application for a $120,000 project planning grant. 

Meanwhile, the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Council (SBNDC)—the city’s chosen oversight agency—had appointed a task force, partly in response to criticisms from worried neighbors. Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmember Max Anderson said they wanted to keep the task force in existence regardless of the outcome of the grant application. 

After CalTrans killed the original grant application, the City Council responded in July by coughing up $40,000 of its own funds to keep the task force going and to expand the suggested scope to include not only the lot but Adeline Street as well. 

Bates had suggested moving the weekend flea market that meets at the parking lot onto Adeline on the weekends and closing the street on those days—a notion later rejected in a city-funded traffic study. 

The task force was last scheduled to meet Oct. 3, but the meeting was called off by the city attorney’s office in response to questions from Task Force Co-chair John Selawsky and others about the legal status of the meetings in light of the Brown Act, which governs open meetings of government agencies. 

The main reasons for the legal questions revolve around the use of city’s funds and the task force’s role in formulating a proposal. 

“Lots of people had questions,” Selawsky said, “and you would think that the city attorney’s office could come up with the answers in two months.” 

Ed Church, the planning consultant hired by the SBNDC to shepherd the process, said he hadn’t heard anything new from the city since the request to call off the October meeting.  

“I’m still waiting to hear from them,” he said. 

So was the Daily Planet when deadline rolled around late Monday afternoon without a call back from the city attorney’s office. 

While the City Council passed an updated Creeks Ordinance in concept Nov 14, approval is back before the council tonight (Tuesday), so the body can vote on the formal ordinance, said City Councilmember Laurie Capitelli. 

That could, however, re-open deliberation on a matter that has been under discussion for two years. 

Also before the council is the re-appointment of a library trustee, an appeal of a landmarked property at 2411 Fifth St., and a hearing for Vijay Lakireddy’s nonpayment of rental property inspection fees. 

Creeks 

After the approval of the ordinance two weeks ago, Capitelli, who abstained on the matter, sent a letter to his council colleagues criticizing them for their “rush to approve the CTF [Creeks Task Force] recommendations….” Capitelli argued that at the meeting there were several council members “not given the opportunity to fully comment, ask questions and explore the possibilities of unintended consequences.”  

While approval of the formal ordinance is on tonight’s council consent calendar—a list of routine items the council generally passes without discussion—Capitelli said he plans to “pull” the Creeks Ordinance revision, allowing opportunity for further discussion.  

Among the issues still outstanding for Capitelli is whether culverts and creeks should be regulated together as they are in the revised Creeks Ordinance rather than addressing culverts separately as part of the city’s storm-drain system.  

Library trustees 

The normally routine reappointment of a library trustee is before council tonight.  

There are five trustees. Four of them are selected by the existing trustees. A councilmember selected by the council also sits as a trustee. 

But in recent years, the public has called for greater input into the library. Recently, the library staff’s conflict with the previous director in part caused her resignation. And the community has been vocal over library decisions made with minimal public input, particularly around the controversial radio frequency identification markers placed in books for easy checkout. 

“Selection by internal nomination (can be) a recipe for an institution well insulated from outside influences,” Jim Fisher of Berkeleyans Organized for Library Defense (SuperBOLD) said in an e-mail to the Planet. “If the Board’s philosophy could be articulated, I think it would be that the public interest is best served when the public itself is kept at a measurable distance from policy-making.” 

Fisher concludes that the answer could be a new way of selecting the trustees, something that would have to be instituted through a charter change: “Would the public be better served by an elected board or one directly nominated by City Council members? It’s an issue on which the public really should speak up.” 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington said he intends to pull the item from the consent calendar. He said he didn’t want to target trustee Terry Powell, who is up for re-nomination, but “we definitely need fresh perspectives,” he said. 

Landmarks designation at 2411 Fifth St. 

In August, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated 2411 Fifth St. a structure of merit.  

Under current law, a structure of merit is a fully recognized historic building, which, while altered, still reflects fundamental elements of the original structure and is considered worthy of preservation. 

The owner of the Queen Ann Victorian Cottage-style structure, Laura Fletcher, is appealing the landmark designation. She says the house is in such poor condition that it is too expensive for her to renovate. She wants to sell it and has advertised that the sale would be a good investment to a developer who would “rebuild it or begin anew.” 

Fletcher argues in a letter to the council that by designating the house a structure of merit, “…the Commission not only made it all but impossible to develop the property in accordance with the zoning for this area, but also greatly devalued my property.” 

Sixty-six neighbors have petitioned the council to uphold the designation. Architect Erick Mikiten, writing to the council, says that the structure of merit designation “essentially requires the front of the building to remain, but allows raising it up, relocating it, removing the garage, and changing the stairs …. It is possible with almost any 115-year-old historical resource to nit-pick and find details that have been replaced or repaired. But the overall historic character and quality of this building is still intact.”  

Hearing: Lakireddy lien for nonpayment of housing inspection fees 

To recuperate $7,800 in Rental Housing Safety Program (RHSP) inspection fees owed the city, the housing department wants to put a lien on 2033 Haste St., owned by Lakireddy Bali Reddy.  

Reddy’s son Vijay Lakireddy is appealing the fees. 

The RHSP was initiated in 2001 to respond to tenant complaints and to randomly inspect buildings where violations have been frequent. The Haste Street property was inspected because of frequent past violations. 

“The inspection found one or more housing code violations in the common area as well as 47 of the 60 rental units,” a report by Housing Director Steve Barton says. Most the violations were fixed but 13 had to be inspected twice. One violation remains outstanding, according to city reports. 

Reddy owns numerous apartments in Berkeley. In 1999, Chanti Jyotsna Devi Prattipati died in one of his apartments at 2020 Bancroft Way from carbon monoxide poisoning due to a blocked wall heater vent. The death was ruled accidental but led to the revelation that Reddy and his sons were involved in bringing minor girls to the U.S. for sex and work. The elder Reddy is serving a seven-year prison sentence. Vijay Lakireddy served a two-year sentence for conspiracy to commit visa fraud. 

The council will also discuss traffic-calming and parking enforcement policies. 

Two city land use meetings are scheduled for Wednesday night, both at the same time—7 p.m.—and in the same building—the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

The Planning Commission, which meets on the ground floor, has three hearings scheduled, including two that concern tweaks to the ordinance governing the Design Review Committee. 

The legislation would eliminate the requirement for the chair of the Zoning Adjustments Board to sit on the committee, reduce number of lay members and eliminate appeals to the city council of final design review findings. 

The other legislative change eliminates legal conflicts in the city attorney’s office in hearings on nuisance abatements. As currently drafted, the process requires two attorneys, who are then barred from communicating with each other; the proposed change would eliminate the conflict and allow the process to be handled by a single lawyer. 

The commission will also hear a report on the methods used by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) to prepare the Regional Housing Needs Assessment for 2007-14.  

As a regional agency, ABAG can impose standards on municipalities within its jurisdiction, and the housing assessment has been a controversial issue because of the way UC Berkeley students are considered in assessing the demands placed on the city for creating new housing. 

Also up for discussion—but not action—is the City Council’s Nov. 14 directive to the commission to create zoning amendments to allow small dealerships for electric cars to open in the central Shattuck Avenue business district. 

The change is needed because currently the addition of any new car dealerships is barred by city ordinance, and the council wants to support electric car sales. 

Downtown landmarks 

The second meeting focuses on the role of historical buildings in the upcoming new downtown plan, now being prepared by city staff working with the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC). 

Comprised of four members each from DAPAC and the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the panel will meet upstairs at the senior center. 

The committee is slated to review drafts of historical context statements prepared by the Architectural Resources Group consultants hired by the city to assist in preparing the historical building sections of the new plan. 

The statements concern patterns of history in the downtown as reflected in the architecture of existing buildings in the area. 

The new downtown plan, which covers a larger area than the current 1990 plan, was mandated in the settlement of last year’s city lawsuit challenging UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan 2020. 

DAPAC was created to advise the city on the plan, and the subcommittee was created after landmarks commissioners insisted they be given a role in the planning process, citing city and state legislation.

A forum to discuss how Berkeley public schools can be more welcoming toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families in the community will be held at the Berkeley Technology Academy today (Tuesday). 

Coordinated by the Parent Outreach Office, the discussion aims to initiate a support network among LGBT families. 

“We also hope to talk about how to make our schools safer and more inclusive, how to work with the parent community and how to incorporate these issues into overall anti-bullying work,” said Lisa Warhuus, who works with the Parent Outreach Office. 

Warhuus added that that the forum was a follow-up initiative of a group of administrators who had recently attended a conference on supporting LGBT families in elementary schools. 

Judy Appel, director of Our Family Coalition in San Francisco, will be the discussion facilitator. 

BUSD spokesperson Mark Coplan said the event was part of the district’s goal to bring communities together.  

“We want to give the LGBT community the same opportunities as other families,” he said, and added that the forum would also bring up issues affecting LGBT students. 

The forum begins at 7 p.m. at the Berkeley Technology Academy, 2701 Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

A family feud over a brother’s death likely led to the Thanksgiving Day shooting in an Oakland apartment complex that killed two women and one man and injured two more, Oakland Police Department spokesman Roland Holmgren said. 

On March 1, 2006, Winta Mehari called 911 and told dispatchers that her husband, 42-year-old Abraham Tewolde of Berkeley, was having difficulty breathing, the Alameda County Coroner’s Office reports. 

Tewolde had no history of drug use, was athletic and had no health issues, said Deputy Sheriff Mike Bitle. According to Bitle, Tewolde’s death was not considered suspicious, but its cause could not be determined. 

On Thursday, police suspect Tewolde’s brothers, Temodros and Asmeron Gebreselassie, burst in on 28-year-old Winta Mehari of Berkeley, her 17-year-old brother Yonas Mehari and their mother Regba Baharengasi, both of Oakland, and shot and killed them before fleeing to a neighboring apartment. 

Yonas was a student at Berkeley High where he was a member of the football team. 

Holmgren reports that the shooting was likely the result of a family feud between the victims and the two Gebreselassie brothers over just exactly how their brother Abraham Tewolde died. 

According to Holmgren, officers were called to the third-floor apartment 305 at 5301 Telegraph Ave. at 3:10 p.m. Thursday after receiving reports of broken glass and screaming. 

Holmgren said when officers arrived, the three victims shot at the Keller Plaza apartment had already perished. 

Holmgren reported one man in apartment 305 escaped the haze of bullets unharmed. A 22-year-old man was shot in the foot and a 28-year-old man was shot in the arm and broke his back after he escaped the gunfire by jumping from a third-story window.  

Holmgren said the 28-year-old remains in the hospital and will likely be paralyzed.  

Red Cross spokesman Alan Tobey said police called the Red Cross to the apartment complex at 8 p.m. to provide shelter and mental health services to the 200 people who were evacuated from the apartment complex and stood on the street for hours as SWAT teams scoured the area for the shooters.

A 19-year-old Oakland man was sentenced Monday to nine years in state prison for shooting to death a Berkeley man who was hosting a party for his three children and their friends in March. 

Antonio Harris, who originally was charged with murder and attempted murder and faced a possible sentence of life in prison, pleaded guilty on Oct. 23 to the lesser charges of voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm for the March 25 death of 36-year-old Aderian Gaines at his home in the 1500 block of Prince Street. 

Nathaniel Daniel, a friend of Gaines, was wounded in the incident. 

Prosecutors said they thought it would be difficult to convict Harris of murder and attempted murder because witnesses’ statements varied widely and the party was crowded and dimly lit. 

Co-defendant James Freeman, 29, was sentenced last week to two years in state prison for his role in the incident. 

Freeman, who has previous convictions for armed robbery and assault with a firearm, pleaded guilty on Oct. 23 to being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm. 

After the guilty pleas by Freeman and Harris last month, Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Greg Dolge said he allowed Harris to plead guilty to lesser charges because “after a thorough review of the case and talking to witnesses, there were some significant questions that we’ll never get an answer to.” 

Gaines and his wife, Afeni Gaines, were hosting a party for their three children and their friends. They charged $2 for admission and searched guests for weapons. The party was the fourth they had hosted in an effort to give their children something to do on a weekend night, according to Berkeley police. 

Dolge said Gaines disarmed Harris and kicked him out of his house after discovering that Harris had a gun. But he said Harris was able to get his gun back and return to the party. 

Dolge said the prosecution’s case was complicated by the fact that Gaines had a rifle with a fixed bayonet in his house that was prominently displayed and was in the possession of three different adult chaperones, including Gaines, at various times during the party. 

“The unanswerables were significant enough to make me less confident that we could prove the murder and attempted murder charges beyond a reasonable doubt,” Dolge said.

On a divided vote, Richmond city councilmembers last week approved a contract to provide services for a casino planned for unincorporated North Richmond. 

Pressured by community groups eager for promised jobs and enticed by the promise of substantial new revenues, the council approved a pact that will give the city $335 million over 20 years, primarily in return for providing police and fire services. 

With the city agreement in hand, all the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo-speaking Native Americans needs now are federal approvals of their plans to buy the 29.87-acre site on Richmond Parkway and to build a 225,000-square-foot, 1,940-slot Las Vegas-style gambling parlor. 

One key element of the Richmond council’s action offered a major step in that direction in the form of a guarantee that the city would support the tribe’s bid for federal approval. 

One of three votes against the measure came from Councilmember Tom Butt, who, unlike fellow opponents Mayor-Elect Gayle McLaughlin and Councilmember Tony Thurmond, said he is not an outright opponent of gambling. 

“I just thought the city ought to get something up front,” he said. While he thought a $3 million good faith payment was probably a good figure, he settled on $1 million—but couldn’t get a second. 

“It’s typical in real estate deals to put up some money up front as an option payment or a deposit,” he said. “We’re being asked to wager on the ‘come,’” he said, referring to a bet on a craps table. “I thought we ought to get something even if the come doesn’t come.” 

Assemblymember Loni Hancock, who represents the district encompassing the casino sites, lamented the decision, invoking biblical imagery. 

“They’re selling out their birthright for a mess of pottage,” she said. 

What remains to be determined is if the Bureau of Indian Affairs will grant the tribe permission to establish a reservation on land to which critics say it has no historic ties. 

While the state has little statutory power to stop the casino, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has written a letter of opposition, and Hancock, the East Bay Democrat, is a stalwart foe of all urban casinos. 

Hancock’s opposition includes both the second, and far grander casino resort planned inside Richmond city limits at Point Molate, as well as the existing machine gambling at Casino San Pablo. 

If the two pending applications are approved, the East Bay would have three casinos within six miles of each other. 

The Point Molate project is the grandest of the trio, and would feature a luxury hotel, an upscale shopping center and a major entertainment venue. Though it combines the resources of a Berkeley developer, a powerful Washington lobbyist and Harrah’s Entertainment, the world’s preeminent gambling company, the project may rest on a shakier footing, given its environmentally sensitive location and a pending buyout offer for Harrah’s by Texas Pacific Group and Apollo Management. 

The lobbyist, Republican William Cohen, was Secretary of Defense for President Bill Clinton and now runs a well-connected political persuasion business—the Cohen Group—in the nation’s capital. 

Their tribal partner and ultimate owner of the reservation would be the Guidiville Rancheria band of Pomos. 

Harrah’s is a preeminent name in the ranks of modern casinos, while Noram Richmond LLC is a special purpose corporation formed by Alan H. Ginsburg of Maitland, Fl., a wealthy but little know figure who has become a major player in the world of tribal gambling. 

Unlike the Sugar Bowl developers, Upstream and its partners have paid Richmond $3.75 million to date for their option on the former naval refueling base, with another $3 million payment due in mid-January. 

“We’ll see if they make it,” said Butt, who said he doubts the Molate casino will win federal approval. 

Hancock said she is less certain. “There is so much money in play,” she said. “Tribal gambling interests are now major political contributors in California, with two-thirds of their money going to Republicans.” 

But James D. Levine, the Berkeley developer who launched the project, said the project is moving foward with a draft einvironmental impact statement due in the spring. “We’ve already presented all the data on the Guidiville ethnohistory to the National Indian Gaming Commission.” 

Harrah’s remains the one question. “You never know with these big companies,” he said. 

The shift of both congressional houses from red to blue could help with pending legislation from Senators Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and John McCain (R-AZ) aimed at stopping so-called reservation shopping by tribes looking for lucrative casino sites.  

San Pablo gold 

Tribal casinos can become powerful players in local government, as can be seen in neighboring San Pablo. 

Casino San Pablo had been the subject of a proposed compact between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Lytton Rancheria band of Pomos that would have allowed 3,500 Vegas-style slot machines and a monopoly on Bay Area casino play. 

But when the deal foundered on strong opposition from state and local legislators, the tribe took advantage of a legal loophole and installed “bingo machines” that look and play a lot like the prohibited slots. 

The one key difference between the two types of machines is that players who feed the bingo slots play against each other rather than the house, as is the case with traditional slot machines.  

The National Indian Gaming Act loophole made the tribe and the impoverished city vastly richer than the legal card room play which had taken place at the club. 

The fast-paced machines play more like slots than the slow business of playing traditional bingo with its cards, markers, spinning ball cages, and number callers. 

For that reason, critics have called for slowing down the play, as well as for reducing the hefty house take from each game. Revisions now being considered by the National Indian Gaming Commission have prompted proposing tighter rules on the Class II bingo machines. 

One outspoken critic of the proposed changes is San Pablo Mayor Genoveva Garcia Calloway, who sent the commission a letter of opposition on Sept. 25. 

“The Tribe has been able to provide significant financial support to ... assist with law enforcement, provide programs for the city’s neediest citizens and to reduce taxes for all the City’s citizens. Currently, 67 percent of the City of San Pablo’s general fund comes from money received from the tribe,” she wrote on Sept. 25. 

The Sugar Bowl, which would be built between Parr Boulevard and Richmond Parkway in North Richmond, would offer stiff competition to Casino San Pablo with the more conventional gambling machines and table games. 

San Pablo Finance Director Bradley Ward said casino funds rose from less than $2.5 million before the bingo machines were installed to $10 million. 

“Basically, it’s enabled the city to stay alive,” Ward said. 

Before the machines were installed, city officials had discussed ending the city’s incorporation and reverting to being part of the unincorporated area of Contra Costa County. 

The casino revenues, which amount to 7.5 percent of the gross betting “handle,” almost equal the entire amount of the city’s $10.9 million police budget, and the money has enabled the city to pay down unfunded pension liabilities and other unfunded retiree benefits. 

Another piece of proposed federal legislation could torpedo plans to turn the San Pablo casino into a full-scale casino by reversing a special rider to a Bureau of Indian Affairs funding bill that backdated the grant of the casino. 

Reversing that legislation would force the Lyttons to undergo the normal reservation granting process, essentially starting anew.

The Dijon mustard that was called for in the brussel sprouts recipe was in my garage. I couldn’t get to it because the cops posted outside my 53rd Street duplex had ordered me to “Stay inside, Lady.” Their drawn revolvers convinced me to obey. I did, for the next few hours on Thanksgiving Day, as a huge tragic drama unfolded across the street at the Keller Plaza apartments.  

So near and yet so far. I’d heard a woman’s shrieking wails earlier but dismissed them. A lot of screams are heard in this topsy-turvy, drug-dealing Temescal neighborhood. Gunshots, too. But I didn’t hear those precede this woman’s screams on Thanksgiving Day. Perhaps I was whirring cranberries and oranges in the Cuisinart as revenge was being exacted on two Eritrean women and a teenager across the way. 

The unrelenting helicopter buzz told me something bigger than usual was going down, but I just kept cooking, with an occasional crawl out into the living room to check out the scene on our cul-de-sac. Same four cop cars blocking the Keller Plaza garage. Same cops standing around. Probably a drug incident, common enough over there, this one perhaps with more violence than usual. Whatever. 

Cranberries and brussel sprouts almost done, ready to pack up and transport to dinner in Moraga. Have to leave out that Dijon mustard, though, what with the police presence outside. Fellow guests will understand: she lives in Oakland, Murder Capital—when it’s not just also a terrific place to live. More terrific for some than others. 

The disenfranchised young black men have another story to tell, one that doesn’t feature deprivation of fancy mustard. Many immigrant groups have less rosy tales to tell too, with pressures of language, money and different cultures pressing heavily on daily life. In some cultures, revenge is honorable. The rule of law in the United States, however, does not excuse or protect avengers. This may have been the case for the Eritrean brothers who murdered their dead brother’s widow, her mother and her young brother across the street this Thanksgiving Day.  

Only as I drove out of 53rd Street did I begin to realize the enormity of the afternoon’s events: police blockades on Shattuck, Telegraph and the nearby cross streets; news trucks everywhere; crowds gathered on street corners; people wrapped in blankets; yellow police tape even on my own side windows. What the hell is going on? I learned from media bits later that the men I’d seen being backed out of the apartment directly across from mine were two brothers who had just executed three people on this most American of holidays, a holiday originating from another group of immigrants facing life in an unknown, inhospitable environment.  

Until arriving in Moraga, I had no idea that three of my neighbors had been executed as I whirred cranberries and missed mustard across the way. Thousands of miles and years of history separated us.

Kali Grosberg of Berkeley lay down on the sidewalk in front of the Oakland Federal Building on Tuesday. Two friends wrapped her in a shroud and placed green rosemary springs on her still body. 

Fourteen other “bodies” lay scattered in a way that people entering the Federal Building had to walk through the “living graveyard” coordinated by the Ecumenical Peace Institute of Berkeley to remind people of the 2,500 U.S. and allied troops killed in Iraq and the estimated 665,000 Iraqis who have perished. 

“My conviction from the beginning was that the war was illegal and immoral,” said Berkeley resident Tom Luce, who was distributing flyers. “The war started illegally. The militarism has ruined our reputation as a democratic country. We want to be the bully on the block.” 

Passers-by looked at the bodies, which often sparked conversation. “We never should have been there in the first place,” said one man to no one in particular as he passed quickly by. 

Another, who declined to give his name, was unsympathetic. He told the Daily Planet his son is fighting in Iraq. Asked why the son was fighting, the man said, pointing to the demonstrators: “For Iraqi freedom—he’s fighting so they can do this crap.” 

UC Berkeley officials are pushing ahead with plans to transform Bowles Hall into a corporate executive education center with a new call for a seismic consultant. 

Berkeley City Planning and Development Director Dan Marks called the project “really distressing,” especially when considered along with other major projects planned at and near UC Memorial Stadium. 

If plans move forward, California’s oldest state-owned and frequently rowdiest undergraduate student residence hall would become a venue for corporate brass taking special executive education at the university’s Haas School of Busi-ness. 

According to an early planning document, the project will include guest rooms and “state of-the-art instructional and conference spaces for up to 300 participants in residential and nonresidential programs,” along with “up to 100 guest rooms; and requisite support facilities.” 

The Request for Qualifications posted by the university declares the university’s intent to retrofit the existing structure as guest housing and add 50,000 to 80,000 square feet of conference and support facilities. 

Added to the 451,000 square feet of other new construction nearby, those figures would increase the total to more than a half-million square feet of new space—and more than 650,000 square feet when including existing space construction that would be replaced by new construction. 

Most of the Bowles addition would be built between the hall and the William Randolph Hearst Greek Theatre, built in 1903 and recognized as a landmark by the city, state and National Register of Historic Places. 

The theater, like Memorial Stadium itself, was designed by John Galen Howard; Bowles Hall, a city landmarks and a National Register site, was conceived by George Kelham, chief architect of the 1915 Pan Pacific Exposition in San Francisco and Howard’s successor as architect for the university. 

Opposites 

The controversy over the future of Bowles Hall pits project neighbors and three institutions in a struggle already blazing over the nearby university projects—all of them bank-rolled by corporations, Cal graduates and other deep-pocket donors. 

City officials have voted to sue if UC Regents give final approval to the other projects, and so have members of the Panoramic Hill Association (PHA). 

Opponents claim the university will violate the California Environmental Quality Act if they approve the final project environmental impact report (EIR) for the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects (SCIP). 

Among the city’s claims is that the EIR is flawed because it fails to include the Bowles project, which will add to the cumulative impacts of the other construction on city streets, landmarks, an imperiled somewhat pastoral setting. 

The Bowles Hall Alumni Association raised the argument in Nov. 10 letter to the UC Board of Regents, delivered just prior to Nov. 14 meeting when the board’s Committee on Building and Grounds approved project plans and backup funding for the athletic training center but withheld approval of the EIR—which includes all the other SCIP projects as well—until a committee meeting, probably over the phone, in the first days of December. 

The geological survey is critical to the project because of the Alquist-Priolo Act, which bars new construction on active faults. The western of two known “traces” of the Hayward Fault runs under the northeastern corner of the existing building. 

An early seismic study by a private consultant concluded the fault—while there—hadn’t been active in the last 11,000 years. Presence of an active fault would prohibit any expansion and kept the cost of renovations below half of the value of the existing building. 

Federal geologists rank the Hayward fault as the most probable site for the next major Bay Area earthquake. 

At fault? 

The one good thing about the university’s approach to the project, Marks said, was the fact they decided to do the seismic study before they went ahead with the plans. 

UC Berkeley officials had contracted for plans for the 132,500-square-foot Student Athlete High Performance Center on the west side of the stadium before conducting earthquake safety studies. 

A seismic study for that project was only ordered after plans were drawn up for the center and the stadium. The training center seismic study was prepared by the same consultant which had conducted the earlier Bowles Hall study and concluded the training center was exempt from Alquist-Priolo Act. 

Similar findings were reached for the parking structure, though the university acknowledges that the stadium renovations are with the law’s purview. 

Marks said plans for the Bowles project have been presented to the university’s Design Review Committee, where he had seen them. 

Much of the addition would be built underground, Marks said. “It’s a very large structure,” he added. 

Conveniently for the business brass attending meetings at the repurposed Bowles, one entrance to the proposed addition is just a few steps across Stadium Rim Way from the 912-space, 325,000-square-foot-plus underground parking lot the university plans to build at the site of Maxwell Family Field.  

The hall and annex face not only the lot, but the stadium itself and the athletic training center site along the stadium’s western wall. Western facing rooms at Bowles also overlook, just across the landmarked Piedmont Avenue/Gayley Road, the site of the proposed 186,000-square-foot building that would join functions and offices of UC Berkeley’s business and law schools and provide a new venue for conferences and gatherings.  

“We are very concerned about the quite significant cumulative impacts to what had been a pastoral setting and to significant resources, including Bowles Hall, the Oak grove next to the stadium, grasslands, the Greek Theatre. I said all of that to the Design Review Committee,” said Marks. 

“This one is really distressing to a lot of folks,” he said. 

Traditions 

The residence hall was built in honor of UC Berkeley graduate and former UC Regent Phillip Bowles with a $350,000 construction grant from his spouse. 

Prejudice played a central role in the rise of Bowles. At a time when fraternities reigned supreme, Jews weren’t welcome among the Greeks but they were embraced by the Bowles culture, along with others who didn’t fit the confinements of fraternity row, said Lesley Emmington, a member of Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Commission who also works for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. 

Bowles alumni, among them corporate executives and punk rock stars, are willing to fight for a cherished institution. 

“As a result, you have many of the business leaders in San Francisco are Bowles alumni,” Emmington said. “Many of them are very concerned about the university’s plans to end its use as a student residence.” 

Students originally lived in the Gothic structure throughout the four undergraduate years, though university officials later limited the hall to first-year students. Rooms are organized in suites. 

Few Berkeley institutions are more colorful than Bowles, or embody such an odd assortment of venerable and not-so-venerable—though invariably colorful—traditions, among them a copyrighted song and an assortment of titles and rituals. 

The building’s only break from undergraduate life came during World War II, when the army took over the facility to house soldiers taking training classes at the university. 

Residences and alums have fought for the hall before, and it was in response to university plans to demolished the structure that led students and graduates to lead a successful drive to have the building listed landmarked and enrolled in the National Register. 

For more on Bowles Hall, see www.bowles-hall.org and the Wikipedia entry at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowles_Hall.

It’s not often that Berkeley Technology Academy students get a chance to fly, but last week was different. 

On Nov. 15, a group of 16 seniors and juniors from the school, formerly known as Berkeley Alternative High School, got the opportunity to travel to Atlanta, Ga., to participate in the four-day 18th Annual Fall Black College Tour. 

Made possible through funds collected from bake sales, car washes, raffles and a $6,500 grant from the Berkeley Public Education Foundation among others, the tour aimed at turning the possibility of attending college for these students into a reality.  

“It’s hard to find examples where the school board agrees, the parents agree, the staff and the administration agree for a continuation school to go on any tour at all,” said B-Tech principal Victor Diaz, under whose administration the school has witnessed an all-time high in attendance. 

“It changes the expectations of everyone involved with the school,” he said. “Parents, teachers and administrators start having higher expectations and students start setting higher standards for themselves. In this case, we are not just telling the kids to attend college, we are putting them in the environment.” 

Many of the students were excited about their first plane-ride or their first out-of-state trip, and the possibility of attending college in the South next year made them ecstatic. 

“It opened up a whole new world for us, a better world,” said Brianna Williams, a senior who plans to major in Mass Media Arts at Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Ga., and host her own TV show one day. “I felt like I was at home. For once people were not looking at us like we were robbers and drug addicts. They walked up to us and welcomed us.” 

Clark Atlanta University, Moorehouse College in Atlants, Ga., and Alabama A&M University in Normal, Al., topped the list of college choices for the majority of students who attended the tour. 

“I want to apply to A&M because they opened up the whole campus to us,” said John Howard Sr., who took his SATs two weeks ago. “I will also try for Clark because they have a strong psychology and business department. There is something about the southern hospitality that makes me want to go back there.” 

The youngest of five children in his family, John will become the first among his siblings to attend college. 

“It helped us realize that college ain’t no game,” said Ashandra Singleton, who plans to major in Computer Science at Alabama A&M. “We got to work hard and stay on top if we want to make it big. I would encourage my juniors to go on this trip if they get a chance. Believe me, it will change your life. I wasn’t even thinking of going to college, but after visiting Alabama A&M, I know that’s where I want to be.” 

Parent volunteer Nancy Williams, who helped organize the trip along with Della Tours, said that the trip had been planned to provide encouragement to students applying for college. 

“These kids have never been considered to be college material,” she said, adding that she would like to make the tour into an annual event. “They have always been stereotyped as the bad kids and told not to dream or to dream small. But with the proper support, they too can aim high and build a career.” 

While some students found motivation in the rich cultural history of the South, others were inspired by the successes of their piers or the schools’ alumni. 

“Spike Lee went to Clarke,” said Brianna. “So did a whole bunch of people from BET. I always wanted to go to Clarke but the visit assured me that this was definitely where I want to be.” 

“It was great to see people of my skin color and people with similar experiences succeed in school,” said Kashay Striplin, another senior. “It made me realize that if they could do it, so could we.” 

She continued: “These students were dressed in business suits and talking about classes, textbooks, G.P.As and internships. There was none of that talk about guns, drugs and fights. None of that hostility you see in the Bay Area toward blacks. People were walking up to us and talking to us.” 

Derrick Underwood, a junior from B-Tech who said he recently had a policeman point a gun at him in a case of mistaken identity, added that the visits to the slave cemeteries and plantations had helped him get in touch with his roots. 

“We have never seen anything like that in the Bay Area,” he said. “It made us realize that there was more to black history than selling drugs and worrying about making money. It has given us back our confidence, our will to do something worthwhile.” 

While a new governance structure for the Berkeley Housing Authority may buy federally subsidized renters more time in their Berkeley homes, subsidy cuts could force them out. 

A BHA decision last week, aimed at creating a governing board that can provide adequate attention to low-income housing needs, will scrap the present governance structure of the agency that oversees subsidized housing in Berkeley. 

The BHA board currently consists of the mayor, City Council and two low-income tenants and generally meets once each month for about 40 minutes each time. The problems facing the agency, including poor data collection, inadeqate inspection of units, poor maintenance of the waiting list and more, have been, in part, blamed on inadequate board oversignt. 

Had the BHA not supported an alternate structure, the Department of Housing and Urban Development would likely have placed the local agency under the jurisdiction of an outside organization, such as the Oakland Housing Authority, or under the jurisdiction of HUD itself, Housing Director Steve Barton said in an interview Tuesday. 

HUD told the city that the new form of governance “is the only way to do this if you want to maintain local control.” Barton said. 

Berkeley oversees about 1,600 units in the HUD-run Section 8 rental voucher program, which provides about two-thirds of a very low-income family’s rent, with the tenant paying about one-third. HUD offers market-rate rents to landlords who accept Section 8 vouchers. Many Section 8 renters are elderly or disabled. 

Last week’s council resolution approved, in concept only, the new governance structure, consisting of five commissioners appointed by the mayor and approved by the City Council and two tenant commissioners. The city must work out new contractual relationships with the Housing Authority to continue providing services such as personnel and accounting. 

The new structure will likely be in place in July, the beginning of the new fiscal year, Barton said, explaining that he believes HUD will be unlikely to take the BHA functions away from the city before giving it time to put the new structure into place. 

Low-income housing activist Lynda Carson, who holds a Section 8 voucher in Oakland, said maintaining local control is vital for Berkeley residents with Secton 8 vouchers. Outside control “would cause a huge displacement of low-income people out of Berkeley,” she said. 

If another agency took over, payment standards might be lowered to the average rents in other parts of the county, preventing people from finding places in Berkeley that they can afford to rent, she said. “Future generations of Berkeley citizens will no longer be given a voucher—they will be directed to the county as a whole.” 

While the new structure should give some assurances to local Section 8 renters that they will be able to remain in their apartments, another anxiety-provoking issue remains. 

HUD has said that the Fair Market Rent—the gross amount that landlords receive from HUD including the tenant one-third participation and HUD’s two-third’s share—will decrease March 1 in Contra Costa and Alameda counties. If that happens, tenants will either have to make up the difference, which is impossible for most, or they will have to move either out of Berkeley or to a lower rent district in Berkeley.  

That would result in a greater concentration of lower-income people in one area, something that HUD discourages, Barton said. The city and county are lobbying HUD to allow the higher rents, commensurate with the high cost of housing in the area. 

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland-Berkeley, weighed in on the question in an Oct. 10 letter to the San Francisco HUD office. 

“I urge you to consider maintaining local control of BHA programs,” she wrote. “As you may know, Berkeley rents are, on average, higher than rents in neighboring cities and higher than the county average. These vouchers need to reflect the local housing market of the households that are using them …. Many Berkeley residents who depend on BHA programs for shelter also use supportive services offered by the City of Berkeley.” 

The question of governance is separate, though related, to the “troubled” housing agency status. If the agency does not improve in a number of areas, HUD has said it could remove the agency from local control.  

HUD rates the BHA in a number of areas, one is data collection. At one point in recent months the city thought it could break out of the “troubled” category, but HUD deemed the agency’s data collection inadequate, among other problems. Barton said he thinks that, as new systems are put in place – one is contracting out for inspection services – agency scores will improve, but he said the “troubled” designation might not be lifted for one year. 

One large task underway is determining which of the 5,000 people on the Section 8 waiting list since 2001 are still eligible for and want Section 8 vouchers. The waiting list has not been updated for six years.  

Barton acknowledged that people could have moved from their 2001 addresses without notifying the housing authority that they were moving. Some may be homeless.  

Although Monday was the deadline for returning waiting list forms, Barton said those with good reasons for turning in the forms late could appeal. 

He also said he hopes as the BHA sets up a new waiting list, that social service agencies will allow persons with housing needs to use their addresses. “If you are homeless, you may get knocked off the list,” Barton said. 

Further, Barton noted he had wanted to prioritize some Section 8 vouchers for people with severe disabilities, but HUD rules would not accommodate that. “We formally made the case to HUD that the wait list process discriminates against people with disabilities,” he said. 

Barton said he thinks that the when the Democrats take over Congress, they may be more flexible with Section 8 rules. “Having the Democrats doing oversight may result in HUD focusing more on their mission and less on detailed rule enforcement,” he said.

The man who was the lead drafter of the Instant Runoff Vote language that eventually became Oakland’s Measure O says that the chance that differences in vote-counting procedures in various forms of IRV could affect the outcome of an election are “incredibly small,” and the example cited in a recent Daily Planet article would not affect an election outcome at all. 

In addition, Chris Jerdonek, Northern California Representative of FairVote organization, says that the city clerks in IRV-approved cities in Alameda County have been meeting for many months now to help plan implementation of IRV in the county, and “all of them want the system to be the same in each city.” 

Jerdonek’s comments were in response to a Nov. 14 Daily Planet article that reported, in part, that “just what form, or forms, [the IRV] system [in Alameda County] will take has not yet been determined. … [D]ifferent forms of IRV have different methods of elimination that can have widely varying effects on the eventual winner.” 

Under the Instant Runoff Voting system, also referred to as ranked choice voting, voters in a political races with more than two candidates running are allowed to rank those candidates by order of preference. Instead of holding a runoff in the event that no candidate receives a majority of the initial vote, IRV allows a winner to be declared by eliminating the lower-choice candidates after the first round of balloting, and adding their second or third choices to the totals of the candidates remaining. 

Voters in San Leandro in 2000 and Berkeley in 2004 approved the use of IRV instead of a runoff in municipal elections in those cities, but did not specify details of what type of IRV system should be used. In November, Oakland voters also approved IRV for use in that city, with the measure including details on how that system should operate. 

Earlier this year, Alameda County Supervisors approved a contract with Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems to provide voting machines and software for Alameda elections capable of handling IRV by November of 2007. 

Jerdonek said that because it is likely that Alameda County cities will eventually adopt one IRV system, and that the instances where a different method of handling a vote amounts to less than 1 percent of votes cast, “saying that the details [of different IRV systems] will have ‘widely varying effects’ on the outcome was a harmful exaggeration and unfortunate.” 

The Alameda County Registrars office has been coordinating a countywide effort to prepare for the implementation of IRV since Berkeley passed its IRV-authorizing measure in 2004. Under intense pressure from voting activists to begin implementing IRV, former registrar Elaine Ginnold formed a task force that included voting rights activists, members of the League of Women Voters, county supervisors, and representatives from several Alameda County cities. Eventually, in the summer of 2005, the task force created a document called an IRV Roadmap, which outlined the methods to be used for IRV implementation in the county. 

Jerdonek says the IRV Roadmap was the foundation for the IRV language in Oakland’s Measure O, and that it has the support of the city clerks in the three Alameda County cities—Oakland, Berkeley, and San Leandro—where IRV has been authorized. 

The IRV task force had a final meeting under acting registrar Dave Macdonald. Jerdonek said he does not expect the task force to continue to meet, since, he says, “the ideas are pretty much finalized,” and it’s time now for Sequoia to put the software in place. Jerdonek says he does not think there will be much bickering among the city clerks as to what form IRV takes in their cities. “I think they’ll just be happy to have it,” he said. 

But the mayors and city councilmembers in Berkeley and San Leandro have not yet weighed in on the issue, and it is they—not the city clerks—who will make the final decision on how the system is implemented. 

Representatives of the Alameda County Registrars Office did not return telephone calls in connection with this story. The public information officer for Sequoia Voting Systems said that the company employees most familiar with Alameda County are currently on Thanksgiving holiday. She promised to provide information on the company’s plans following the holiday break.

The incident involving 23-year-old UCLA student Mostafa Tabatabainejad, who was shot with a taser by campus police officers last week, has sparked off debate in the national media and led to protests at the UC Berkeley. 

According to published reports, Tabatabainejad, who had been using the UCLA Powell Library Computer Lab on Nov. 14, had been asked to show identification after 11 p.m., as per university policy.  

He refused to do so and officers used the taser gun to subdue him, an action which was caught on a students’ cell phone camera and broadcast on Youtube.com. 

In the video, Tabatabainejad is shown struggling with the officers while screaming “Here’s your Patriot Act, here’s your fucking abuse of power.” 

UCPD officers were repeatedly heard to ask him to stand up and to stop fighting them. The controversy has led the University to announce an independent investigation of the incident. 

UC Berkeley students held a demonstration against the actions of the UCLA police on the Sproul Plaza on Monday and addressed letters to UC President Robert Dynes, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and UC police at both Berkeley and UCLA. 

The letter demanded that a moratorium on Taser guns be established, that action be taken against the officers involved in the incident and that a commission be created for review of all UC police departments. 

No one from the UC Berkeley Police Department or the University’s Public Affairs Department could be reached for comment.

Jim Slaten’s sewing machine service shop has been on Solano Avenue for more than four decades. Slaten says he doesn’t need an organization to help keep his sidewalks clean and certainly doesn’t need a new planter in front of his store. 

So why belong to the Solano Avenue Business Improvement District? asks the outspoken small business owner, argues that the BID taxes business owners but gives them nothing in return. 

Others on the avenue disagree, however. Jan Snidow, who chairs the BID board of directors and owns Powder Box Salon, says the BID brings together the Berkeley and Albany sections of Solano into a more comprehensive unit. 

The Solano Business Improvement District, established by a vote of the Berkeley City Council in 2003, assesses every business owner in the district an annual fee from $65 to $500, depending on the size and location of the business. 

The BID was initiated by a petition circulated by business owners on Solano Avenue and enacted after the City Council held the requisite public hearing. Like any city assessment, the council approves the mandatory fees, if they are not opposed by a significant number of those who will be affected, said Dave Fogarty, manager in the city’s Economic Development division. 

A public hearing renewing the BID and approving the Solano Avenue 2007 workplan is scheduled for the Dec. 5 City Council meeting. Critics and supporters can address the council on the question at this time. 

Snidow told the Daily Planet that the BID “tries to make the community cohesive” through its connection to the Solano Avenue Association, which serves the Berkeley and Albany portions of the Avenue. (The BID contracts with the SAA for services.) 

“The BID offers us all sorts of things: cleaning sidewalks, planters, marketing,” Snidow said, arguing that assessment fees are “not gigantic.” 

“You can’t please everyone,” she added. 

Susan Powning began her business, By Hand, as a sewing collective and then moved to Walnut Square some 31 years ago. The business has grown and changed. She relocated to Solano Avenue 11 years ago, where she still includes hand-made merchandise among her offerings. 

Powning said she has been critical of the limited services she gets from her assessment to the BID, but she changed her mind after a recent community meeting. Listening to the pros and cons, she said she started looking at the big picture and has come to believe the BID plays a more intangible role “nurturing the neighborhood as a whole.”  

While some merchants complain they don’t like the Solano Stroll, an event that brings huge crowds to Solano Avenue and is sponsored by the BID and the Solano Avenue Association, she said she understands that, even if people don’t buy things from her store that day, new people see the business and come back later.  

“People can close their stores that day and that’s fine,” she said. 

Solano Avenue Association Executive Director Lisa Bullwinkel—SAA services are contracted by the BID—says the BID came into being because some people refused to give voluntary contributions to the SAA and “got a free ride.”  

Among the services the BID provides are street cleaning twice a week and steam cleaning once a month, she said. 

“Most the people complaining did not want to pay [into the SAA] in the first place,” she said. “They are not happy campers about joining things.” 

But, disparaging Bullwinkel’s $60,000 annual salary, paid for in part by the BID, Jim Slaten says all the district does is “create jobs for a few people.” 

He argues that it should be the merchants’ responsibility to install planters and clean the sidewalks in front of their businesses.  

Slaten says during his 42 years on Solano, he’s seen the business district go through “the same thing any business district goes through.” Businesses that don’t do well go under and those that provide something people want survive, he said.  

“We don’t need a business district for that,” he said. 

Two men—and possibly a third—were shot Tuesday night as gunfire shattered the evening on Sacramento Street. 

Police were able to locate two of the victims, who were rushed by Berkeley Fire Department ambulance to Highland Hospital, where both are expected to recover, said Berkeley police spokesperson Office Ed Galvan. 

The third victim—if he exists—remained at large. 

Information is scanty, Galvan said, because neither victim is cooperating with detectives and potential eyewitnesses said they didn’t see anything. 

“We don’t have any descriptions of suspects or of getaway vehicles,” Galvan said. 

The city’s emergency switchboard “began lighting up” at 8:16 p.m. with reports of shots fired with injuries outside of Bob's Liquors & Deli at 2842 Sacramento St., Galvan said. 

When emergency responders arrived, one victim was found collapsed on the sidewalk near the store, and a second was found near where he’d been hit as he attempted to flee into a nearby clothing store. 

Neighbor Laura Menard said the attack took place outside Penny’s Caribbean restaurant at 2836 Sacramento. 

Menard said both victims lived nearby, which Galvan confirmed. The young men are 20- and 24-years-old, Galvan said. 

He declined to confirm Menard’s contention that the pair may have been in contact with Oakland drug dealers who have been moving into an area already staked out by neighborhood dealers. 

“What was going on that night we don’t know yet,” Galvan said Wednesday afternoon. 

Tuesday’s attack came scarcely a month after another shooting less than two blocks to the east at 1610 Oregon St. 

In the incident, a 19-year-old San Leandro man was shot in the back in the rear yard of a home at 1610 Oregon St. previously identified by Berkeley narcotics detectives as a major source of neighborhood drug dealing. 

The young man is recovering from his injuries. 

Menard said Tuesday’s shooting raised new concerns from neighbors worried about open drug dealing and other crimes in the area. 

“We have requested a meeting with a few key business and community members and officials from the police department and city manager’s office,” said Menard. “We are going to ask them to carry out specific actions.” 

One person not invited is City Councilmember Max Anderson, who defeated Menard when the two of them ran for the district’s council seat two years ago. 

Menard and Anderson have clashed over the demands of Menard and other neighbors that the city seize the house where the Oregon Street shooting occurred. 

The Nov. 17 shooting was the second act of violence at the house this year. On Feb. 8, police arrested a 17-year-old woman, a relative of owner, after she allegedly stabbed her boyfriend in the back of the head. Those injuries were also non-lethal.

The Berkeley City Council and Police Review Commission will meet behind closed doors on Monday to discuss a Berkeley Police Association lawsuit against the city, although the requirement for a closed session meeting is disputed by a least one councilmember. 

On Nov. 14 Alameda County Superior Court Judge Winifred Smith took the case under submission and is yet to rule. At issue is whether Berkeley’s police complaint hearings will be held in public, as they were for some 30 years. 

The joint meeting, preceded by a public comment period, will be at 5 p.m. on the sixth floor of the administration building, 2180 Milvia St. 

The lawsuit pits the BPA against the city, with the police arguing that Police Review Commission public hearings on complaints against the police is illegal because police personnel records must be kept confidential. The city says that because the PRC does not discipline the police, its complaint hearings should be open to the public. 

The city attorney closed the PRC hearings on police complaints in September, following a state Supreme Court case, similar to the BPA case, that addressed the confidentiality of police discipline records.  

The public notice of Monday’s closed session provides only the name of the case to be discussed, without further information. City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque was out of the office and unavailable Tuesday and Wednesday to further explain why the council and commission were meeting in executive session. 

PRC Officer Victoria Urbi, who staffs the PRC, said she had not been informed of why the session had been called, but believed it was “to give us advice on what to do in the meantime.” 

The choices could include re-opening the hearings, continuing to suspend the hearings, or holding closed-door hearings. If that is what is to be discussed, said Councilmember Kriss Worthington, the meeting should be held in public. 

“The public knows the strengths and weaknesses of the various options—they have a pretty intelligent analysis,” Worthington said. 

Discussing it in closed session is a policy call. “The city should err on the side of keeping the meeting open,” he said, arguing further that the hearings never should have been closed without a public discussion and vote of the City Council.

San Francisco Opera singers and fourth-graders at Malcolm X Elementary School joined forces in a one-hour production of Rossini's Barber of Seville at Malcolm X last week. 

Lead singers from the opera were Joseph Wright (Figaro), Sandra Rubalcava (Rosina), and Chris Corley (Count Alamaviva); pianist Ron Valentino provided the accompaniment. Malcolm X lead singers were Elliston Franks (Doctor Bartolo), Alice Rossmann (Berta, the maid) and Lydia Raag (Don Basilio). The production was sponsored by the San Francisco Opera Guild and its “Opera a la Carte” program. 

The participants are: 

Ensemble, on stage (left to right):  

Hansel Aklikokou, Clem De Giovanni,  

Eduardo Paz-Leja, Elliston Franks, 

Alice Rossmann, Joseph Wright,  

Sandra Rubalcava, Chris Corley. 

Chorus (left to right):  

Parrish Ingram, Helena Noriega, Bobbi Brown, Ashley Longares, Arianna McDonald,  

Marche Hayes, Alexa Pupillo, Samantha Mejia, Tayo Ogunmayin, Jamel Parrish.

Fowl delivery 

Berkeley police and members of the Berkeley Boosters began passing out $5,000 worth of turkeys and other Thanksgiving fare Tuesday morning. 

The food was purchased with the proceeds of the department’s annual Turkey Ride, where officers bike from the City by the Bay to Lake Tahoe, raising pledge money as they pedal. 

This year officers raised $10,000, dispersing half the proceeds this week with the rest to be distributed before Christmas, said BPD spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan. 

Bottled 

A 19-year-old Hayward man refused to tell Berkeley Police who bashed him in the head with a bottle on Nov. 14, said Officer Galvan. 

Police learned of the attack only when an emergency room nurse at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Hayward made an obligatory report at 5 p.m. that day. 

The only thing police were able to learn was that the assault had taken place in the 1900 block of San Pablo Avenue earlier that day. 

He delivers 

A pizza delivery man toting a pair of pies to an address near the corner of Seventh Street and Bancroft Way was forced to hand over not only pizzas but cash when he was confronted on the street by four young toughs just after midnight on Nov. 15. 

PlayStation bust 

With all the furor over the must-have, much-hyped, just-released PlayStation 3, one Berkeley man just couldn’t resist when he saw a 19-year-old employee of Touchless Car Wash at 2176 Kittredge St. proudly displaying his new acquisition to fellow workers shortly after 1 a.m. Saturday. 

But the co-workers weren’t about to take the crime sitting down, so they took off after the fleeing bandit, running him to earth at the corner of Allston Way and Shattuck Avenue, where Berkeley Police traded the PlayStation for a nice pair of shiny handcuffs. 

The fellow was a 20-year-old Berkeley resident with a zeal to play. 

“If you have to fight to buy one, then fight to keep it, I don’t want one,” said Officer Galvan. 

Takes Wallet 

A lone gunman wielding a semiautomatic pistol braced a 25-year-old El Cerrito man as he was walking along the 1400 block of San Pablo Avenue shortly before 1 a.m. Saturday. The gunman demanded the victim’s wallet, and once he was handed it, he headed off with both the wallet and the cash inside. 

Last seen, he was headed for the hills and his victim was making haste to a nearby liquor store, where he called police. 

The suspect was described as a teenager wearing a black jacket. 

Wallet rejected 

A pair of robbers, one making with the old I’ve-gotta-pistol-in-my-pocket routine, decided not to keep the wallet they stole from a 47-year-old Berkeley man. The pair of heisters spotted their intended victim near the corner of Channing Way and Edward Street just before 1 a.m. Saturday. 

Confronted with the choice of his money or his life, the fellow handed over his wallet. After extracting the cash, one of the bandits threw the wallet back. 

The robbers, one in his 20s and the other in his teens, were last seen beating the pavement eastbound on Channing, said Officer Galvan. 

Rape reported 

A nurse at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Oakland called Berkeley police at 10 p.m. Saturday to report that a young Berkeley woman had come into the emergency room for treatment following a sexual assault. 

Officer Galvan declined to give further details, citing the fact that the victim was underage, other than to say the incident “appeared not to involve strangers or an abduction.” 

The incident allegedly occurred in the 1900 block of Haste Street, according to the police department’s Community Crimeview website. 

Campus robbery 

UC Berkeley Police report that a trio of robbers attacked a man as he was walking along Sports Lane on campus very early Wednesday morning, listening to tunes on his iPod. 

The trio approach the young man from behind shortly before 12:42 a.m. and began to pummel him, taking his iPod in the process. 

Once they had the goodie, the robbers ran off towards Dwight Way, possibly escaping in a 1990s-era beige four-door sedan. 

Their victim received only minor injuries, according to the official report by the UCPD Criminal Investigation Bureau.

New station opens 

Berkeley’s newest firehouse opened for business in the Berkeley Hills Wednesday morning as crews and engines left their old station at 2910 Shasta Road and rolled into their new quarters at 300 Shasta. 

Deputy Fire Chief David P. Orth said firefighters rolled to their last call from the old station at 11:57 p.m. Tuesday night and rolled the doors of the new station opened for business at 8 a.m. Wednesday 

“The new location gives us much better access for answering calls,” said Orth. 

An oops fire 

The resident of a studio apartment at 2698 Sacramento St. learned the hard way Saturday night that’s it’s not a good notion to pile belongings atop a floor furnace. 

“It was a one-story stucco apartment, and flames and smoke were visible through the front windows” when firefighters arrived in response to a 10:54 p.m. call, said Orth. 

By the time the flames had been doused they had done $30,000 in damage to the building and incinerated or otherwise damaged $10,000 worth of its contents. 

“It’s that time of year when we have this kind of fire,” said Orth. When the weather first turns cold, and floor furnaces kick in, the first things to catch fire are flammables carelessly left on the grills above them. 

The culprit Saturday night was a box of clothing and shoes, he said. 

Unwatched pot 

Another unwatched pot not only boiled but burned Sunday afternoon. 

The blaze, which consumed a crock pot, also charred kitchen cabinetry in a communal kitchen at 2613 Benvenue Ave. Orth said he had no dollar estimate on the damage. 

Not too long ago the Planet received a letter from a reader asserting that E.Y. Harburg, the author of “Happy Days are Here Again,” was once a Republican. The writer is a frequent and cordial correspondent, and we didn’t want him to embarrass himself in public, so instead of running the letter we wrote back respectfully and said that we were positive that Yip Harburg, whose son we had known, was never a Republican. We didn’t cite sources, since we didn’t have any on hand, but we urged the writer to check his. After a bit of back and forth, he discovered that the author of the Democratic fight song “Happy Days” was indeed a Republican, but that Yip Harburg (a noted leftist) didn’t write it. Case closed. 

This exchange prompted some thought about the question of whether the opinion pages should be open to supposedly factual assertions that the editors know to be untrue. It’s no favor to readers to fill their heads with pseudo-facts, and it’s a disservice to the reputation of the erring writer. Ah, but how do we decide what’s not true? And if we think it’s untrue, when do we find time to research what we remember? The editor’s memory is aging like the rest of her—last week I relocated Illinois to Ohio, for example.  

But in some cases, where we’ve been part of the action ourselves, it’s hard to let misstatements of fact slip by. This is the case with the remarkable string of untruths and half-truths which were ginned up and published by the Chamber of Commerce as part of their successful campaign to defeat Measure J. In several cases letter writers probably didn’t know they were repeating a manufactured falsehood, but that doesn’t make their statements any truer. For example, last week we printed an update of a commentary by a West Berkeley property owner and developer which had been submitted too late for pre-election publication. It purported to recount the history of six years of attempts to revise the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, a subject which I know in painful detail since I was on the Landmarks Preservation Commission for four years of the six.  

The author said that “In a clear case of anti-democracy in action, initiative backers sought to supersede six years of community dialogue and compromise. While anti-growth activists repeatedly referred to Landmarks Ordinance revisions under consideration by the City Council last summer as ‘the Mayor and Councilman Capitelli’s draft,’ that is a distortion. In fact, the revisions are the product of extended discussions between homeowners, preservationists, businesspeople, and city planning staff dating back to 2000.” 

Well, no. In 2000 the city manager and the council simply charged the LPC with amending the LPO to correct a purported conflict between the ordinance’s timetables and the state of California’s permit streamlining act, which had been passed after the LPO was written. As the only attorney on the LPC, and an inactive one at that, it took me a while to figure out, with the help of outside legal advice, that one very simple change of wording would have accomplished that goal, and quickly. I repeatedly brought this fact to the attention of City Attorney Zac Cowan, who was charged with drafting the needed amendment, and he never denied it. But he had his own agenda.  

For the whole time the ordinance was under consideration, Cowan was an officer or board member (now he’s vice-president) of Greenbelt Alliance, an advocacy organization which promotes “smart growth”—filling in open spaces within cities in hopes of preserving open spaces (“greenbelts”) outside of cities. Its goals are laudable, but some of its ideas are now viewed as naïve. (How many homebuyers will pass up suburban single-family homes with yards in favor of condos on South Shattuck in Berkeley?) 

In retrospect it seems clear to several of us—who participated in good faith and made numerous compromises in the LPC’s four-year effort to produce an acceptable draft of a revised ordinance—that Cowan’s successive drafts were designed to make it easier to tear down older buildings and replace them with denser infill. His personal espousal of the Smart Growth ideology was the motivation for the language he recommended, a clear conflict of interest. 

The opinion commentator continued: “Recall that back in 2000 the City Council requested a review of the ordinance in response to a spate of complaints about LPC malfeasance…In a number of instances commissioners ‘protected’ properties with no historical merit in order to block development, when the city’s other land-use processes were not expected to generate the outcome desired by anti-growth extremists or hostile neighbors.” 

In fact, from 2000 to 2004 complaints were few and far between, and almost always from property owners who wanted to tear down genuinely historic properties in order to build new developments. In every case that I can recall, such property owners eventually got their way, since the LPC was usually overruled by a developer-funded City Council. But the pro-growth extremists wanted more. 

When Tom Bates took over as mayor in 2003, one of his first acts was to launch a Task Force on Permitting and Development, chaired by Laurie Capitelli. It was dominated by developers, major contributors to Bates and Capitelli’s recent campaigns, with only one neighborhood activist included as a member. Virtually its only product was a mandate for city planning staff to produce a new LPO draft, which eventually materialized. 

Opponents of Measure J, including the opinion commentator, made much of the final “endorsement” of the resultant draft, quite properly ascribed to Bates and Capitelli, by the Landmarks Preservation Commission which was in office at the time it was finished. But that endorsement was engineered by the time-honored technique of packing the panel.  

The process started with the mayor’s first appointment to the LPC when he took office: branding guru Steven Donaldson, now known to be the author of the Chamber PAC’s notoriously mendacious postcard campaign against Measure J. But Donaldson showed little interest in preservation—he never came to a single meeting, and was eventually replaced by another of Bates’ longtime political allies. As the time came for the LPC’s final vote on the draft, Max Anderson replaced Maudelle Shirek’s LPC appointee with Burton Edwards, an architect and District 8 resident with no ties to Anderson’s flatlands district, and Bates buddy Darryl Moore appointed realtor-developer and Chamber PAC Chair Miriam Ng to the commission. These changes were enough to carry the LPC vote on Bates-Capitelli. 

And those “extensive discussions” of the new ordinance which started under the Bates regime? In the last year many meeting with all sorts of people, including credulous preservationists, were held Sacramento-style, behind closed doors in the mayor’s office, but these produced few homeowners or preservationists willing to endorse the product at the public hearings held after the draft was submitted to council. 

How long does it take to get true facts in front of voters, especially in the face of a well-funded disinformation campaign? Forty-three percent of them in the last election supported Measure J, remarkable under the circumstances. The last 8 percent needed to put it over the top were probably hornswoggled by the Donaldson/PAC postcards, and might have changed their minds if they’d known the postcards were phony. Is two years long enough to educate these voters to change their choice? If a referendum goes on the ballot, we’ll find out. 

Today (the day after Thanksgiving) is widely believed to be the biggest shopping day of the year in the United States. Actually, according to the invaluable and entertaining Wikipedia, the days before and after Christmas are days when more retail dollars change hands, but Black Friday, as it’s called, wins out in terms of bodies on the streets and in the malls, though some of them are just shopping, not buying. One folk explanation for the name is that retailers finally make it into the black on that day after almost a year of red ink.  

Actions generate re-actions, so P.C. wannabes, nostalgic for the counter-culture, have been trying to re-brand Black Friday as “buy nothing day.” The implication is that all commerce is inherently bad, and a lot of sanctimonious Berkeleyans with pursed lips would agree. Having a good number of Puritans in my gene pool, I was almost persuaded of that theory for a while. What changed my mind was meeting a distant German relative in Hamburg. He explained proudly (or defensively) that his family, like many in that northern port city, were not the kind of Germans who’d started the big wars of the 20th century. “War’s bad for trade,” he said, so merchants like him have always opposed war. Makes sense.  

This is not an endorsement of unbridled global capitalism, which has done a lot to damage the reputation of business. Or of the kinds of mega-businesses which seem to have taken over the Chambers of Commerce in Berkeley, Oakland and Richmond, and which tried in the last election to take over the governments in those cities. Richmonders in particular seem to have said an emphatic no to the Chamber’s political pushiness, with Green candidate Gayle McLaughlin beating off the thousands of dollars spent by the Chamber’s “RichPAC” to defeat her. 

We’ve gotten suggestions from readers that people who don’t approve of the actions of the Chamber PAC should stop shopping in Berkeley or Oakland or Richmond. That’s a very poor idea, particularly since the vast majority of local retailers don’t belong to the Chambers. When we shop close to home, sales taxes come back to benefit local government, so it’s a good investment.  

Other anti-shoppers decry what they perceive as an excessive emphasis on consumption. But “re-use” is one of the three corners of the environmental triangle, and there are many retailers in the urban East Bay who make meeting this goal easier. Urban Ore, at the corner of Ashby and Seventh Street in Berkeley, is an awesome emporium covering many square feet of all things reusable around the house, from bathtubs to books. Berkeley’s used books stores are world-famous, on Telegraph and elsewhere. The area around the Ashby Bart station is home to many antique and second-hand merchants, and the weekend flea market in the BART parking lot is delightful. Used clothing can be found at lots of stores, from basic to fancy. Men in particular swear by Out of the Closet on University, which benefits HIV/AIDS victims. There are specialty used clothing stores for all kinds of people: stout ladies, kids, punks.  

Another frequently heard complaint is that many new items are now manufactured in other countries under dubious working conditions. The best way to enjoy the pleasures of international shopping without supporting sweatshops is to patronize the many local stores which offer now fair-trade merchandise. Global Exchange, on the corner of College and Russell in the Elmwood, is the grandmother of fair-trade retail. Everything in their stock has a carefully vetted political pedigree—tags tell inspiring stories about worker-run collectives in India and independent artists in Mexico.  

And of course the most successful small industry in the urban East Bay, starting in Berkeley and spreading out, has been the food business. The winter solstice is a traditional time for consumption of luxurious caloric treats, and our bakeries are ready and willing to help in that effort. Crixa Cakes, conveniently located across the street from the Berkeley Bowl, sells pastries which are easily as good as anything one might find in Budapest or Vienna (and here we must acknowledge that they are an anchor Planet advertiser, but we’d patronize them even if they weren’t). Our bread bakers are world-renowned.  

Farmers’ markets are open somewhere in the urban East Bay every day except Monday, and they offer all kinds of locally produced goodies for gifting. Hand-made crafts are another lively local industry you can support with your shopping dollars—they can be found at the farmers’ markets, on Telegraph in Berkeley, and elsewhere.  

The very best thing about shopping locally is that you can avoid the traffic you’d find at the malls on Black Friday. In our East Bay cities, these businesses or others like them are usually located within easy walking distance of home. We’d like to get suggestions from our readers about other local businesses that they recommend—if we get enough, we’ll do a special feature on them in December. 

Eisa Davis’ upcoming play by Shotgun Players is Bulrusher, not Bulrushers as was printed in the Nov. 17 issue of the Planet. One of the characters is a visitor from Birmingham, Ala., not Montgomery, as was printed. And, Davis first saw Aaron Davidman, now the artistic director of A Traveling Jewish Theatre, as Mack the Knife in a 1985 Berkeley High production of Threepenny Opera.

FRIDAY, NOV. 24 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and Aquatic Park, ongoing until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

“Buena Vista Social Club” Wim Wenders documentary profile of the classic era of Cuban popular music, at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., between Broadway and Telegraph, Oakland. Donation $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

SATURDAY, NOV. 25 

Aquatic Park Stroll with Berkeley Path Wanderers Assn. and Aquatic Park EGRET to view winter birds and discuss how to improve habitat in these manmade lagoons. Meet at 10 a.m. at the west end of Addison St. at Bolivar Drive. Park at Sea Breeze Deli, University Ave. just west of I-880/580, and cross the pedestrian bridge. 549-0818.  

Autumn Amble A three mile hike to explore the seasonal colors of nature and learn native plant lore. Bring water, layered clothing and a snack. Meet at 2 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Solo Sierrans Walk in Elmwood-Claremont Area to explore the streets and steps below the Claremont Hotel, for about one and a half hours. Meet at 3 p.m. in front of the Safeway on College near Claremont. Optional dinner afterwards. Rain cancels. 647-3513.  

Womyn of Color Arts and Craft Show Sat. and Sun. from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. 

Dramatically Speaking Toastmasters with Pamela Swingley and Jeff Byers at 9 a.m. at 1950 Franklin St., Oakland. RSVP required. 581-8675. 

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

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755. 

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

SUNDAY, NOV. 26 

Too Much Turkey? Join a seven mile hike traversing the diverse habitats of Tilden and Wildcat Canyon. Meet at 12:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Open Garden at the Little Farm Join the gardener for composting, planting, watering and harvesting at 2 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Rain cancels. 525-2233. 

Berkeley City Club free tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at 2315 Durant Ave. Sponsored by the Landmark Heritage Foundation. 848-7800 or 883-9710. 

Free Sailboat Rides from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Cal Sailing Club in the Berkeley Marina. Bring change of clothes, windbreaker, sneakers. For ages 5 and up. cal-sailing.org  

Tibetan Buddhism with Jack Petranker on “Opening to the Dharma” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, NOV. 27 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. in the East & West Pauley Ballrooms, MLK Student Union, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com  

TUESDAY, NOV. 28 

Tuesday is for the Birds An early morning walk for birders through Bay Area parklands. Bring water, sunscreen, binoculars and a snack. This week we will visit the Crockett Hills. For meeting location or to borrow binoculars, call 525-2233.  

Anti-Torture Teach-in and Vigil with Gregory Wood at 12:30 p.m. at Boalt Hall, School of Law, UC Campus. 649-0663. 

Self-Acupressure Techniques for holiday stress relief at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Center for African Studies, Graduate Student Fall Lecture at 4 p.m. at 652 Barrows Hall, UC Campus. 642-8338. 

ASUC Benefit Art Sale from noon to 5 p.m. at ASUC Art Studio, Lower Sproul Plaza, UC Campus, through Dec. 2. 642-3065. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at the 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. 

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

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 29 

“We Voted! Now What?” with State Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. Sponsored by the Gray Panthers. 548-9696. 

“Sikh-Americans and 9/11: Five Years Forward, a Hundred Years Back” with Jaideep Singh of the Sikh American Legal Defense Fund at 2 p.m. at the Bade Museum, Holbrook Bldg., Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. 849-8244. 

Woman’s Snowshoe Workshop at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

New to DVD “An Inconvenient Truth” at 7 p.m. at the JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Video Games for Grandmas and Grandchildren Sponsored by the American Association of University Women at 7 p.m. at Claremont House, 500 Gilbert St., Claremont Ave., Oakland. 531-4275. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 3 to 4 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Healthy Eating Habits Seminar at 6:30 p.m. at New Moon Opportunities, 378 Jayne Ave. 465-2524. 

Dream Workshop at 1 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

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. 

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 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 

THURSDAY, NOV. 30 

“Indigenizing the Museum” with Majel Boxer, UC doctoral candidate and member of the Sisseton/Wahpeton Dakota at 7 p.m. at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum, UC Campus. 643-7649. 

“Indies under Fire” A doumentary about independent bookstores, followed by a conversation with the director, Jacob Bricca, at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Best Of The New Way Media Fest Films & Videos With Michael Rhodes at 7 p.m. at PSR Chapel at the Pacific School of Religion,1798 Scenic Ave. 707-836-9586. 

“Military Build-up in Guam” A report on issues of cultural preservation, environment, indigenous rights, self-determination, and efforts to address how US military realignment and corporate globalization schemes impede attempts to decolonize, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave.Cost is $5-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Project BUILD Holiday Party to support youth empowerment in under-resourced communities at 5:30 p.m. at Sequyah Country Club, 4550 Heafey Rd., Oakland. RSVP to 650-688-5846. 

Parenting the Highly Sensitive Child at 6 p.m. at Habitot Children’s Museum. Registration required. 647-1111, ext. 14. 

Natural Holiday Gift Wrapping Bring a small gift in a box and learn how to wrap without tape, at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

ONGOING 

UN Association’s UNICEF & Fair Trade Gift Center Closing Sale, Tues.-Sat. noon to 5 p.m. to Dec. 16, 1403 Addison St., 849-1752. 

Holiday Food Drive Sponsor a Food Drive at your business, school, place of worship or community center. Help the Food Bank reach its goal of collecting food for families in need during the holiday season. 635-3663, ext. 318. www.accfb.org  

Magnes Museum Docent Training Open to all interested in Jewish art and history. Classes begin Jan. 18th. For information contact cultural.arts@sbcglobal.net 

CITY MEETINGS 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Mon., Nov. 27, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers. Mark Rhoades, 981-7410.  

Zero Waste Commission Mon., Nov. 27, at 7 p.m., at 1201 Second St. 981-6368.  

TRADER JOE’S 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I second Alice Jurow’s Nov. 21 letter. With a new Trader Joe’s plus residents, traffic on University and MLK will be unbearable! When I lived in San Francisco I was fortunate I could walk to the T-J at Geary and Masonic, both of which are heavily used. They do employ uniformed Traffic Directors to keep drivers and pedestrians relatively road-rage free. Even so, whatever the hour of day or night, it was usually an obstacle course to weave through idling cars bumper to bumper, waiting to pounce on, or eject from, a parking space. 

Nancy Chirich 

• 

BAD IDEA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Putting a Trader Joe’s at the corner of University and MLK is a really bad idea. Anyone who lives in that area or drives that stretch of MLK knows that traffic there is already a big problem. That is where MLK reduces down to two lanes of traffic. It already causes a bottleneck that sometimes backs up traffic for blocks during peak hours—especially someone makes a left turn off of MLK. Trader Joe’s will change an area with already bad traffic into a driving nightmare. Parking will also be a major problem. No matter how many parking spaces are promised, there will not be enough. This project will have an extreme negative effect on those who live, work or drive in this neighborhood. 

Why not put Trader Joe’s in a commercial area that is designed for such heavy traffic and parking? They chose such areas for the Trader Joe’s in Emeryville, El Cerrito Plaza and Lafayette. Surely there is a better location in Berkeley for Trader Joe’s. 

Debbie Dritz 

• 

NEW LIBRARY DIRECTOR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read recently that the Berkeley Public Library is searching nation-wide for a new chief librarian. They need to look no further than within the current system. I think that the board should identify the person who is responsible for the excellent online catalog and automated check-out system. All the patrons I have encountered at the library love these systems. Whoever is responsible for the development and implementation of these high-tech innovations should be commended, rewarded, and considered for the highest position in the library system. These changes allow the librarians to cease being clerks and to return to what they do best—being librarians. 

Tom Burns 

• 

UNIVERSITY PROJECTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Many thanks to Richard Brenneman for his illuminating “City Challenges UC’s Stadium-Area Project” piece in the Nov. 24 Daily Planet. 

The slow-motion conversion of the oldest student residential hall within the UC system into a Haas School of Business Executive Education venue adds a new wrinkle to the university’s age-old “Decide — Announce — Defend” strategy for introducing new projects to the public. 

First, we had the stigmatization of those rowdy Bowles Hall men and their wild parties. 

Last year we had the Lobotomization phase: only first-year men were admitted as Bowles Hall residents, effectively erasing decades of in-house memory and tradition. 

Now, it appears that we’re entering the corporatization phase.  

Will another chapter follow? That’s up to potential litigants and the courts. Call it the litigation phase.  

Note that the final EIR boundaries for the university’s massive bundle of southeast quadrant projects (known as SCIP), now before the UC Regents, conveniently skips over any mention of renovations at Bowles Hall.  

The last I heard, project “piecemealing” is still a no-no under CEQA case law. 

Jim Sharp  

• 

LIKE SOME FEUDAL LORD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m sick of the University of California acting like a feudal overlord that can loot and pillage whatever it wants of Berkeley; Panoramic neighborhood, our downtown, the ancient Oak Grove, People’s Park, Bowles Hall, Strawberry Canyon, Gill Tract. How can they be allowed such unpopular reign in a democracy?? Kudos to elements in the Berkeley city government trying to stop them. I sure hope our next mayor will have more backbone. UC owns and does not pay taxes on a full one third of Berkeley’s land and Berkeley is the only host city not to receive payment for our services to UC. It’s time to consider major structural changes. No taxation without representation. We need real democracy now! 

Jonathan Jackson 

• 

IMPENETRABLE, OUT OF TOUCH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

John Kenyon’s Nov. 24 article on modern design on the UC Berkeley campus left me flabbergasted. Kenyon’s often impenetrable piece revealed a perspective completely out of touch. The very buildings he trumpets—the MLK Student Union, Stanley, Wurster—face receptions ranging from indifference at best, to outright revulsion. Wurster may have been a “breakthrough,” but most now regard this structure as the ugliest on campus, challenged only by the hulking Evans Hall. The campus’s most cherished buildings remain the regal monuments of Doe Library and Wheeler Hall, and modern rejection of Neoclassicism is generally seen as a mistake. Many view the nearly-finished Stanley as another blunder in the university’s foray into an incongruous green-slate-sea-monster style of architecture. Sure, the art museum’s cantilevered concrete has a certain gee-whiz factor, but it doesn’t change the popular view that it’s a bulky, gray deathtrap. If the Art Museum achieves landmark status, will it sit as a seismically unsound—pray empty—tribute to a building style that’s had its day? Pure modernism, with its no-frills baldness and repudiation of context, has been discarded as an unfortunate architectural misstep. Rather than continuing to add discordant buildings, the university should look towards a union of contemporary design and Neoclassical heritage, as is being done with the new Tien Center for East Asian Studies. Architecture should incorporate bold new ideas, but we need to acknowledge when these ideas fail functionally, aesthetically, and in the court of public opinion. 

Eric H. Panzer 

Environmental Science Major, 

City Planning Minor, 

UC Berkeley 

• 

RETRO KENYON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

John Kenyon’s views of UC’s architecture are retrograde. He has never moved beyond the modernist dogmas of the 1950s and 1960s. 

Kenyon apparently considers himself a daring critic of the status quo because he attacks neo-classical architecture and admires the breakthrough architecture of the University Art Museum and Wurster Hall. But neo-classicism was the status quo a century ago, and the architecture he admires was considered a breakthrough a half-century ago, when modernists decide that buildings should be designed as a sort of modern abstract sculpture. 

Since the 1960s, the modernist architecture that Kenyon admires has become the status quo, and it has transformed American cities dramatically for the worse. Kenyon is so busy criticizing the status quo of the early 20th century that he apparently has never thought critically about today’s status quo. 

Kenyon seems to be unaware that a new architectural humanism has emerged since the 1970s, which says that the modernist establishment creates inhuman architecture because it designs buildings as sculptural objects rather than designing buildings that are good places for people to be. One of the most important theorists of the new humanism is Berkeley’s own Christopher Alexander, and I suspect that Alexander’s ideas were stimulated by the ugly brutalism of Wurster Hall. 

Kenyon should stop thinking of architecture as a sort of modern sculpture meant to impress us by how new and different it is, and he should start thinking about what it takes to design good places for people. If he did, he might begin to appreciate the original neo-classical design of the UC campus. He might even move beyond the cliches of mid-20th-century modernism. 

Charles Siegel 

• 

PARKING COSTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In his Nov. 24 commentary, Charles Siegel gives a great summary of Donald Shoup’s ideas about the disadvantages of low-cost parking. Shoup may be a professor, but his ideas about parking sure are based on practical experience. 

If we have to accommodate everyone who comes to Berkeley in a car, then we ought to ask the car drivers to pay for their parking privilege. Collecting high enough parking fees gives the additional benefits of funding downtown improvements—and ensuring that drivers will nearly always find parking available. 

If visitors can depend on finding parking, then they won’t spew pollution while they search for a slot, and they will enjoy coming to Berkeley to shop, eat or do business. 

Aren’t these benefits worth asking people to pay a little more for parking? 

Steve Geller 

• 

“NO ON I” CAMPAIGN NOT FINISHED 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Rent Board commissioners, City Councilmembers and neighborhood activists who care about tenants met in August to put together a city-wide campaign to defeat Measure I, the “condo conversion” initiative. Put on the ballot by a small group of landlords and disguised as a “home-ownership opportunities” initiative, Measure I would have reduced the number of tenants under rent control and with protection from eviction by about 500 every year. 

By winning by almost a 3-to-1 margin, we proved once again that Berkeley voters (1) can read past simple sound bites, and (2) value the welfare of their fellow residents more than windfall profit opportunities for a small group of landlords. For resoundingly defeating the most anti-tenant ballot measure of the past decade, thank you Berkeley! 

We made sure each voter heard our message, but even with scrimping and a 100 percent volunteer effort a $6,000 debt remains. Even though my annual income is only $24,000, I’ve given the most ($1,000) and will give more if necessary. Please help me retire this debt. Contributions should be made out to the Committee to Defend Affordable Housing (CDAH), 2007 Stuart St., Berkeley 94703. 

Thanks for pitching in. 

Howard Chong 

Tenant, Student and  

Rent Stabilization Board Chair 

• 

RACIST REMARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want Glen Kohler, the author of the Nov. 17 commentary piece entitled “A Glimpse at What It’s Like To Be Homeless,” to realize that his words—“walking down the street like ragged gypsies”—are racist toward the Romany people (also called Gypsies). In fact, even the term “Gypsy” is derogatory toward Romany people, since they are not Egyptians like Europeans assumed they were when they became a significant population in Europe after arriving from India. Thanks. 

Adam Silber-Becknell 

Oakland 

• 

ARIZONA TALES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to Susan Parker’s Nov. 21 column, “A Phoenix Rising from the Ashes.” 

Your visit to Scottsdale sure brought back memories. 

Moving from this “cult”...er Berkeley, to the Valley of the Sun was cultural whiplash. That was in the ’70s and ’80s, and I’ve been wondering if it’s changed much, aside from sprawl. 

My wife (Marin) and I made our home in Tempe. Winter weather there was delightful, but getting lost as a pedestrian where all roads led to a Circle K can be fatal. Under that sneaky dry sun, a person could be dead hours before being aware of it. 

I wore shades there a lot, but it wasn’t so much because of the pounding sun, but in defense against the glare of white belts and white shoes from the retirees and tourists. I hope I never see another Izod sport shirt. It’s a personal problem. 

At the time, the Phoenix area could be compared to El Paso and L.A.—a little of both with nothing in between. It was nicknamed “the City of Beige”—a color invented by the Phoenician artist philosopher Mediocrites. 

Isn’t it great being back in good ol’ Berkeley? Home isn’t necessarily where the heat is. 

O.V. Michaelsen 

• 

PARKING TICKET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I would like to share with your readers the following letter that I have sent to Dwayne Williams, City of Berkeley Parking Meter Enforcement Supervisor: 

Dear Mr. Williams: 

On Oct. 31, I received what I regarded as an unfair parking citation. In my anger, I placed the ticket under the epaulet of the parking enforcement officer’s jacket. Although I wrote to the officer that same day apologizing for my behavior, I have subsequently come to a much fuller understanding of the extraordinary pressures and tensions that the job of parking enforcement officer entails. It is an understanding I did not have immediately after the incident, when I wrote a description of my experience following the parking citation that was published on Nov. 7 in the Berkeley Daily Planet. 

My wife, who is presently a City Councilmember, was quoted in the press agreeing with a police spokesman who said: “We will not accept the community or any suspect going hands on with any city employee.” Of course they are right. And I have come to recognize that even placing the ticket under the officer’s epaulet could, under the routine circumstances of her work, constitute a highly alarming act. I am especially chagrined that others, purporting to write in support of my behavior, have invoked the notion of doing “something worse to a meter maid than [sticking] something in her epaulete.” 

I have retained Don Jelinek, a highly regarded attorney and former member of the Berkeley City Council, to represent me in upcoming court proceedings. He has brought to my attention a report that he authored in 1990 on the subject of “Abuse of [City] Staff,” which makes it clear that many of our city employees have regularly faced various forms of abusive behavior from angered citizens, some of it truly violent. I attach a copy of the report. Such behavior is deeply abhorrent to me, and I am disheartened to think that anyone might in any way associate me with such behavior.  

In my commitment to understanding and avoiding inappropriate and disrespectful responses on my part, I have enrolled in a series of eight workshops on the subject of anger management (through Options Recovery Services), the second of which I will attend this week. I will also make this letter public, in hopes of helping our community understand both my sincere regret and disapproval of my action and, more importantly, the challenging conditions that our enforcement staff must contend with on a daily basis.  

I hope you will express my sincere apologies to the members of your department, particularly to the officer who issued my ticket, and assure them that at least one Berkeley citizen will be writing and speaking against anyone emulating my errant behavior. 

Rob Browning 

• 

HUNGER AND FOOD SECURITY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has officially eliminated 11 million hungry Americans. No, god has not imparted the secret of multiplying the “fishes and the loaves” to his good friend, George W. Instead the USDA will no longer use the word “hunger” when referring to people who do not have enough to eat. Who says the Bush administration does not come up with creative solutions to large problems? From now on the USDA will refer to “people formerly known as hungry” as people with “very low food security.”  

During the last five years of the Bush regime the number of hungry (I mean people with very low food security) people in the United States has increased. According to the USDA, 35 million people “could not put food on the table at least part of last year.” Eleven million of these people reported being hungry due to the inability to afford food. 

But do not worry. According to Forbes magazine between 2005 and 2006, the four hundred richest billionaires increased their collective wealth by $120 billion, to a total of $1.25 trillion. Most of this wealth was due to Bush tax cuts and other favorable policies of the Bush regime. Just one relevant example—in 2005, the USDA gave out $23 billion in farm subsidies, with most of the money going to the corporate farmers. I am sure the 35 million Americans who have trouble putting food on the table appreciate this. 

How much longer will we put up with an administration that does not eliminate problems, but rather finds ways to conceal them? The world can’t wait until the Bush regime leaves office in 2009. It must be driven from power now. For more information on how to do this, please see worldcantwait.org. 

Kenneth J. Theisen 

Oakland 

During the next 15 years, southeast Berkeley will be radically transformed by the realization of the 2020 Long Range Development Plan (2020 LRDP), the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects (SCIP), the Underhill Parking Lot, and the proposed development at and near Bowles Hall. The long range plan and parking lot are already approved; SCIP approval which includes another parking lot is imminent, while the Bowles Hall expansion and reuse proposal is a cumulative impact and inevitable byproduct of all that precedes it.  

On a mundane level, the scope of these proposed developments will add new sources of noise pollution, light pollution, additional commuter traffic, additional special event traffic and additional construction vehicle traffic. Already bad traffic on Gayley and Piedmont Roads will make travel from the north Berkeley Hills to the south Berkeley Hills appreciably more tedious and time-consuming having the effect of shifting more traffic to the Fulton-Oxford north-south arterial.  

On a more philosophical level, the project scope will shift the values toward commercial enterprises and revenue-generating activities and away from sustainability and protection of natural and cultural resources. The change in value orientation will create an environment less able to support stable residential communities and more able to accommodate visitors with their need for attendant services and commodities. Some visitors will be in the form of service providers, e.g. vendor operators; others will be short-term guests, e.g. heads of state and corporate executives; still others will be spectators, e.g. for football and other capacity events.  

The mundane and the philosophical intersect at the point of traffic. When the university was a place dedicated to education, traffic was primarily limited to faculty, staff, and student commuters. As the university becomes more corporate, more “professional” and more financially self-sufficient, even more traffic is the natural byproduct of this enlarged university role and function.  

Although the topography of the southeast area creates natural barriers and development limitations, UC will eliminate natural and cultural resources to the extent possible in order to squeeze in the oversized SCIP development. The Cheney Houses located at what was once the end of College Avenue will be demolished. The vast majority of the mature Coast Live Oaks in the west Memorial Grove will be “removed”. The stadium rim will be raised on the west and east sides blocking views of the game from Tightwad Hill, views of the Bay from Rim Road and Panoramic Hill, and views of Strawberry Canyon from inside the stadium itself.  

The footprint of the SCIP project is a tight fit at the mouth of a canyon in an area already identified as subject to landslides, penetrated by the active Hayward Fault, and underlain by the largest creek in Berkeley, i.e. Strawberry Creek. Low impact uses have been the prevailing wisdom for the past 83 years of the stadium’s life span with only occasional lapses in judgment. In 1960, for example, Memorial Stadium was leased to the Oakland Raiders but the area-wide impacts were so detrimental that the use was ultimately abhorrent to university administrators and not just Berkeley citizens.  

The constituency of football fans and alumnae is well-resourced both in terms of organization and money. Whether these resources translate into good decision-making is another matter. Certainly the university has used these resources to its advantage so as to move forward even in advance of CEQA-mandated citizen participation. The result would seem to be expedient rather than well-reasoned.  

Planning assumptions have been guided predominately by fundraising and revenue-generating considerations rather than sustainable development policies. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the public discussion of the seismic issues where hardly a word has been said about public liabilities from the “risk of loss of life, injury, or property”. Although individuals may estimate their individual risks as low, administrators have the responsibility of confronting collective risks that should influence policy.  

As various entities prepare to sue, it has become increasingly obvious to cognoscenti that the project reach extends far beyond the project area. The veritable planning debacle pushes development into an area dense in cultural and natural resources while Telegraph Avenue is left wanting for an anchor tenant of substance and sophistication. Likewise the development of downtown amenities will be truncated to the extent the development center of gravity is shifted east.  

When all is said and done, the area will be transformed by intensified use, additional uses, destruction of the existing, construction of the new. Whether Mother Nature transforms the setting back to its earlier form may or may not occur in any of our lifetimes. Meanwhile, the broad interest in the grove of coast live oaks west of the stadium and east of Piedmont Avenue is a visceral response to an anticipated taking informed by a history of taking pieces of Berkeley. The first step in the physical transformation of a larger landscape begins there.  

Janice Thomas is a Berkeley resident. 

The November election results represented an important political breakthrough for the Green Party of California. Nationally, including California, the Green Party fielded 375 candidates for 66 different elected offices in 38 states. Prior to the November general election, the party held at least 223 local, municipal, county and state elected offices nationwide. 

In a dramatic election development, Green Party of Contra Costa County candidate Gayle McLaughlin stunned local Bay Area political observers by capturing the City of Richmond mayor’s office. 

In terms of population and significance, Richmond is one of Northern California’s largest cities after San Jose, San Francisco, Sacramento and Oakland. Mayor-elect McLaughlin defeated a sitting Democratic Party incumbent mayor seeking re-election—by any measure, a remarkable and nearly unprecedented electoral accomplishment. 

Ms. McLaughlin’s victory against incumbent Richmond mayor Irma Anderson—who brazenly accepted $110,000 from Chevron Oil, Pacific Gas and Electric and other corporate interests during her campaign—sent a political shock wave across the Bay Area by highlighting the Green Party’s organizational maturity and strong progressive values. True to her Green Party principles, Ms. McLaughlin refused corporate contributions during her campaign. 

Meanwhile in Oakland, Green Party City Council candidate Aimee Allison received a solid 46 percent vote total in an unsuccessful but spirited effort to topple incumbent Councilmember Pat Kernighan, an establishment politician backed by the Oakland Chamber of Commerce and corporate real estate developer interests. 

Along with Oakland mayor-elect Ron Dellums’ earlier election victory, Ms. Allison’s strong progressive campaign has arguably transformed Oakland’s political landscape: the progressive movement centered around Ms. Allison’s campaign has injected new political energy and space into Oakland that is now acting to counter—and confront—the entrenched political forces that have operated in Oakland with impunity for decades. 

In a testament to the political momentum generated by Ms. Allison’s campaign, during the City Council campaign’s final weeks, Ms. Allison’s Democratic Party opponent desperately repackaged herself as a progressive candidate in her literature, and attempted to distance herself from her closest City Council ally, Ignacio de la Fuente, whose Council office is currently under FBI investigation for corruption. 

In Berkeley, incumbent City Councilmember Dona Spring—the longest serving Green Party City Councilmember in the nation—won re-election with a 70 percent vote margin. An unprecedented four Green Party candidates (seeking five open seats) won commissioner seats on the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board. 

In Sonoma County, the City of Sebastopol maintained its Green Party City Council majority by re-electing Larry Robinson. Green Party City Councilmembers have served as a majority in Sebastopol for six consecutive years, since 2000. 

In San Francisco, Green Party Board of Education candidate Jane Kim captured first place out of 15 total candidates seeking three open School Board seats. A second Green Party candidate won a city Community College Board seat. 

Outside of California, Illinois Green Party governor candidate Rich Whitney captured 11 percent of the statewide vote, a historic margin matched only by a third party candidate 86 years ago. Mr. Whitney’s vote total enabled the Green Party to receive ballot status in Illinois, the first time a national third party has achieved ballot status since 1920. 

Meanwhile, Maine Green Party governor candidate Pat LaMarche won 10 percent of her state’s vote, another historic vote total. Also, Green Party-supported or promoted ballot measures calling for US troop withdrawal from Iraq passed in at least 150 municipalities and cities across Wisconsin, Illinois and Massachusetts, including the cities of Chicago and Milwaukee. 

The 2006 election was an unqualified success for the Green Party as the party continues to make important gains in membership, political recognition and ballot access both in California and nationally. 

Chris Kavanaugh is a Berkeley resident.

Now we’re told (Daily Planet, Nov. 24) that the misleading Chamber PAC mailer violated state and local election laws by omitting the identity of the groups who got it out to Berkeley voters just days before the election. Three of the potential four perpetrators have weighed in with denials: the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce (we’re not the PAC); the Chamber PAC (we outsourced the work and didn’t proofread prior to mailing); and the printer/mailer company (we just print and mail the stuff we’re given). That leaves the company that supplied the content and artwork, Brand Guidance/Design Intelligence, and its chief hooter Mr. Steven Donaldson.  

Unfortunately, Steven was out of town and unavailable at press time. I hope the Daily Planet continues to press its inquiry, because this fellow seems to specialize in misleading hit pieces just prior to big decisions affecting his friends.  

I have firsthand knowledge of this. In the Daily Planet’s June 13 issue, he said something false, misleading, and damaging about my reuse and recycling company, Urban Ore. Here is what he said: 

...And special thanks (for killing the West Berkeley Bowl) to the owners of Urban Ore, the City of Berkeley subsidized business that has put up the good fight to keep their business operating with a positive cash flow from your taxes and who has continually opposed the Berkeley Bowl locating in West Berkeley.  

First off, far from being killed, the Big Bowl sailed right through the council with only three abstentions. With Steven’s connections to wealth and power in Berkeley, he probably knew full well which way the council vote was going to go, but rather than defend the project on its merits he chose to attack its critics, including me and my wife Mary Lou Van Deventer.  

Next, Urban Ore is not “subsidized” with “positive cash flow from...taxes.” Urban Ore is a free-standing independent business. A full 99 percent of our income derives directly from our primary service to Berkeley’s businesses, individuals, and institutions: keeping resources from being wasted at Alameda County’s few remaining permitted landfills. We receive discarded materials all day long at Seventh and Ashby from many sources, then sort, process and sell them either for reuse or recycling. This is an important disposal service, for which there is no direct cost to Berkeley at all. In fact, we pay lots of taxes: sales taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes, and business license fees, which is one reason our books have to be so accurate. Berkeley receives a share of our income, via fees and taxes, which we are glad to pay.  

Just 1 percent of our revenue is a direct payment from the City of Berkeley, but it is service fees that are paid us, not tax dollars. The distinction is important. Right now it costs $100 per ton for anyone to dispose of mixed discards at the City of Berkeley transfer station. The city collects this money and uses it to finance its site operations. Overall, the city’s waste management service is profitable: about $4 million per year on revenues of over $26 million. Urban Ore makes a direct contribution to this profit amounting to about $50,000 per year. How? Urban Ore is licensed to provide salvagers at the city’s transfer station every day whose job is to recover usable materials from this incoming supply. These employees work hard, and come back home to the Urban Ore Ecopark each night with weight slips amounting to from two to six tons saved from landfill. For this service we are paid $28 per ton. Again, these are not tax dollars, but a share of disposal service fees paid at the transfer station fee gate. The city gets to keep $72 per ton for all of our tons because they don’t have to haul these materials to landfill. We salvage over 750 tons per year currently; at $72 per ton that’s worth over $50,000 to the city. If we bring anything back next day, we pay $100 per ton to dump it, just like any hauler, so there is no subsidy there, either.  

We got two business loans from the City of Berkeley, which paid for leasehold improvements to the old Pacific Pipe Company building we occupy at Seventh and Ashby. We’re working hard to pay these loans back early, with interest, so the city can recycle the money to other deserving businesses. Loans aren’t subsidies, and cities commonly provide various kinds of financial assistance to businesses they want to retain or attract. These loans were preceded by a unanimous Council resolution directing staff to work to retain Urban Ore in Berkeley when we were forced out of properties at Sixth and Gilman by our landlords’ decisions to sell back in 1999. Council called us a “Berkeley Treasure” at the time.  

And the last falsehood: Urban Ore was very careful never to oppose the original plan for the West Berkeley Bowl, which would have been a store the size of Andronico’s or Whole Foods. We opposed tripling its size, which we thought and still think will cause triple-sized traffic impacts that all Berkeley citizens will subsidize with their time and patience while stuck in the Ashby, Seventh Street, and San Pablo Avenue traffic trying to get to and from this new regional draw. Nevertheless we, like all the other nearby business opponents, were continually smeared with the charge that we were opposed to any neighborhood grocery store in our vicinity.  

Interestingly, the notorious Chamber PAC mailer also targeted Kriss Worthington and Dona Spring for defeat in the just-concluded election . They were two of the three abstaining votes on the Big Bowl council decision, and the only ones up for re-election. This pro-development bunch punishes their opponents, and they brook no opposition, even from the truth.  

Dan Knapp is president of Urban Ore, Inc.

CORRECTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Becky O’Malley’s recent editorial, “A Few Rays of Sunshine Pierce the Fog,” incorrectly posits that Tammy Duckworth ran for congress in Ohio. 

In actuality, Ms. Duckworth ran in Illinois’ sixth district. 

Danny Moss 

• 

UC BUILDING PLANS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In your Nov. 21 article “UC Extension Building in SF May Become Mall, Condos,” you write “UC Berkeley’s controversial plans to convert its historic six-acre Laguna Street extension campus in San Francisco into a private development featuring condominiums and a shopping center are moving forward.” Further on in the article you describe the development as having affordable and market rate rental housing with one restaurant. This does not appear to be condominiums and a shopping center. You also note that the project is opposed by neighbors. You fail to mention the more than 400 letters of support for the project that have been sent to the Board of Supervisors. If you would like to talk to the developer of the proposed project, I would be happy to discuss it with you. Thank you for your consideration. 

Ruthy T. Bennett 

Vice President,  

AF Evans Development 

Oakland 

• 

INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In last Tuesday’s Daily Planet, J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s article on instant runoff voting implementation incorrectly stated that “different forms of IRV have different methods of elimination that can have widely varying effects on the eventual winner,” claiming that eliminating more than one candidate in each round as under Oakland’s recently passed Measure O could result in a different winner than eliminating only one candidate in each round. 

In fact, the version of IRV specified in Oakland’s Measure O and the version where only one candidate can be eliminated in each round will always produce the same winner from a given set of choices by the voters. A group of candidates is eliminated simultaneously only when, if candidates were eliminated one at a time, they all would inevitably be eliminated before any other candidates (because the total of votes for all candidates in the group is less than the number of votes for the next lowest candidate). 

For example, if the first choices in an IRV election gave candidate A 10 votes, B 15, C 20, D 200, E 230 and F 300, candidates A, B and C would be eliminated simultaneously because their total of 45 votes is less than D’s 200 votes. Even if second and third choices from eliminating A and then B all went to C, candidate C would still have only 45 votes, fewer than D’s, E’s and F’s, so C would be the next candidate eliminated. The only potential differences would be the order of finish of losing candidates (in the example, which of B and C finished fourth and which fifth) and what would be in the reports for the official election results. This might matter to a few losing candidates who are desperate for a slightly bigger small accomplishment to claim, but in the real world, the only difference is the specifications the elections software vendor has to meet. 

Dave Kadlecek 

Oakland 

• 

KPFA STORY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your article listing 22 rounds for the KPFA board election results was one of the stupidest things you have ever run (“KPFA Elects New Board,” Nov. 21). What does it mean? Is the Planet into running press handouts now? 

What is important is knowing something about who the winners are, why the election matters, and what a new board means to the station not each round in, what could politely be called, a boxing match. The voting system the station uses means that one top vote getter on a slate drags most others on that person’s slate onto the board with them. Other slates and individuals have a tough time winning a seat. It precludes the possibility of a diversity of people or ideas and is a winner takes all system. You could have at least explained that if you are going to list “rounds” in lieu of reporting. 

John C. Sanderson 

Oakland 

• 

OAKLAND CONDO CONVERSION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The proposed changes in the present Oakland condo-conversion laws by Councilwoman Desley Brooks will eventually drive thousands of poor tenants out of the city and either into housing in the cheaper cities of the Central Valley or into the streets as new homeless. Contrary to her assertions, her proposed changes in the present condo conversion laws will not create one additional “housing opportunity.” It will merely change the rules and conditions for occupancy by making it two or three times as expensive. Assume that a tenant is currently paying $1,200 per month rent for a modest Oakland apartment. If this unit is converted into a condominium priced at $375,000, the new mortgage would be about $2,866 per month, based on a 5 percent FHA down payment of $18,000 (the normal real estate down payment is 20 percent, which would be about $75,000). 

This calculation is based upon a 6 percent mortgage simple interest rate that would amount to $1,875 per month plus a straight-line payoff of a 30-year mortgage principal of $357,000 at $991 per month. This totals to $2,866 per month. Also, where would a poor tenant get the $18,000 needed for the minimum down payment? Any financial “help” provided by the City of Oakland in this area will take tax-payer funds and neatly deposit them into the mortgage lender’s bank accounts and the landlord’s bank accounts… 

All of this additional expense and onerous new debt load for the dubious privilege to continue to live in a modest apartment in Oakland! Condo-conversion is the proverbial golden parachute for a landlord to cash out of being in the rental property business. Somehow, the waving of the condo-conversion wand does not turn an apartment into a “home.” To me, a home is stand-alone single-family house with its own front yard, side yard and back yard. 

Please note that the above rough calculations neglect the additional costs of mandatory property insurance, condo association monthly dues, the compounding of mortgage interest (banks love to charge interest on interest…) and other closing costs. The streets of condo-conversion are lined with landlord-gold. This plan sounds like it was designed by the Bush gang to drive poor people out of Oakland. 

James K. Sayre 

Oakland 

• 

FIRST AMENDMENT  

CREDENTIALS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Terribly sorry I frightened Mr. Cohen with my letter (not really). But then, he seems easily frightened. And, like others of the mayor’s opponents with no real issues, Mr. Cohen also seems fixated on Mayor Bates’ brief lapse of judgment four years ago.  

But of course, I’m always ready to be enlightened by experts about the First Amendment, which I cherish. I guess my years of civil liberties law practice, including defense of the Free Speech Movement in 1964-66, left gaping holes in my knowledge. For example, I naively thought that the First Amendment was not absolute in the area of election reform, and that contributions (“political speech”) to candidates could be regulated by amount and source (which does, now that I think of it, seem to be the law). Thus, it seems to me that by deviating from its normal practice of offering the paper only at news racks, the Daily Planet’s election issue which was home delivered, constituted an unreported (and therefore illegal) in-kind contribution to those candidates and measures. After all, that paper contained prominent endorsements (in addition to it’s slanted news stories) at no apparent charge to its endorsed candidates and initiatives. Perhaps I am wrong (I think it may be a close question), but I thought it appropriate to raise the problem directly with the paper rather than making a complaint to the local regulatory body. And to anyone who bought the paper’s reply that, inferentially, the practice was unrelated to the election or it’s endorsed candidates (some of whom I also endorsed), I have a couple of bridges I can let you have, cheap.  

Mal Burnstein 

• 

ROCKWELL’S QUEST 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Paul Rockwell continues his quest for a nefarious explanation for Pat Kernighan’s victory in Oakland’s District 2, this time accusing the Oakland Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle of “white press journalism” and of setting a different standard for an African American candidate because they are members of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce. 

First off, the obvious: The Oakland Chamber of Commerce has repeatedly endorsed African American candidates for both local and state races, including Assemblymember-Elect Sandre Swanson and Oakland City Councilmembers Desley Brooks and Larry Reid. If the Chamber, and by Rockwell’s implication, the Chronicle and Tribune, opposed Aimee Allison simply because she is black, he should at least explain what the Commerce was doing in the three cases I site above. 

Secondly, despite Rockwell’s outrage, Allison is indeed fairly “associated” with hit pieces and a push-poll because both were done on her behalf. “Associated” does not state that her campaign did them, but rather that there is some connection, which there is. If Rockwell holds Kernighan accountable for OakPAC’s actions on her behalf, which I think is fair, the street should run both ways. 

Thirdly, Rockwell is supposedly shocked that Chip Johnson did not believe Allison knew nothing of campaign activities done on her behalf. Chip is a columnist and gets to be opinionated and his opinion is nowhere near as ethically-challenged as Allison’s own public statements that she did not believe Pat’s same denials. That’s mud-slinging, my friends. When one candidate calls another a liar, how can that candidate take the moral highground? Where is Allison’s evidence? 

Fourthly, despite Rockwell’s paranoia, both articles he sites spend considerable space legitimizing the Allison campaign and pushing their framing of the race as “establishment” vs “change.” Indeed, just three days before, the Tribune dedicated a whole article to Aimee, providing space for her to declare her opposition to big business and big developers, alleged backroom deals in City Hall and to tout her promise to be an independent voice on the council. If the Tribune and the Chamber wanted her campaign dead, I can’t see how that article helped their case. 

Fifthly, the Pat mailer Rockwell mentioned slammed 4 candidates, not just Aimee. The comment about Aimee was something along the lines of her being big on rhetoric with no concrete experience. That remained true through her third loss, and the Allison campaign never once contested that Aimee had no actual record in District 2. The race issue in the flyer had nothing to do with Aimee, but rather concerned Shirley Gee, whom columnist Peggy Stinnet, charitably described by Rockwell as “respected,” openly supported. Gee eventually lost the race, but outpolled Allison. 

Rockwell needs to encourage Allison and all her allegedly “progressive” supporters to go back to the drawing board and create a real campaign. Allison can obviously motivate people to campaign for her, but she has nothing concrete to show to voters as evidence of her declared effectiveness. Until she has that, opponents as strong as Pat Kernighan won’t need some outrageous conspiracy to keep their seats--it’ll continue to be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. 

Jerome Peters 

Oakland 

• 

VOTING MACHINES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Even though California has some of the best election laws in the country, there are still significant issues. In the Nov. 7 election the touchscreen machines paper trail had problem after problem. Paper jams, inadequate training on loading the paper rolls, and difficulty in reading the rolls for the mandatory 1 percent manual audit are just a few. These machines should be outlawed. Optical scanning machines are far superior in many respects. With a sufficient audit of their results and open source software, these systems will fix many of the problems faced by voters, Registrars of Voters, and election integrity advocates. 

Michelle Gabriel 

Oakland 

• 

HIT AND RUN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On Oct. 7 at about 8 p.m. I was struck by a car at Hearst and Ninth. I would like to thank all the people who stopped to help me. It comforted me to know that there were people around and that help was on the way. Again thank you everyone who stopped what they were doing to help me.  

That being said, I would like to talk about how the flower circle at Hearst and Ninth played a part in this unfortunate hit and run. First, the signs are vague. The continuous black indicator line, with directional arrows, does not have a break where the stop line is. This gives drivers the impression that they can continue without stopping. There is a stop sign at the intersection, but the ambiguous flower circle sign is the one that is right in front of drivers. The black circle should be a stop sign to reiterate to drivers that they must stop first then proceed. Making small changes to the flower circle signs should clear up any confusion as to how to proceed when confronted by your neighborhood flower circle.  

Second, the City of Berkeley should regulate the plants that are planted in the flower circles. Currently the city leaves the planting of the flower circles up to anyone who wants to plant something there. The flower circle at Hearst and Ninth has some tall plants in it that partially obscure the view across the circle, this is especially dangerous at night. When views over flower circles are obstructed it creates a dangerous situation for drivers and pedestrians alike. It is irresponsible of the city to leave something as important as pedestrian safety up to civilians. I agree with the police woman who stayed with me in the hospital and took my report. She said the flower circles should be cement discs, not nearly as pretty, but much safer.  

Third, the crosswalks need to be clearly marked. It just so happened that the one at Hearst and Ninth, on the south side of the circle, has a full crosswalk, but many only have a stop line. This makes it very unclear as to how pedestrians should proceed to cross the street. If we walk on the inside closer to the circle, then we are placed in the way of traffic entering the circle. If we walk on the other side of the stop line we are placed in the way of oncoming traffic. The city needs to be consistent and clear when marking crosswalks, especially around these flower circles that seem to be sprouting up everywhere.  

I would like to finish by saying, “keep your head up,” the life you save may be your own. There is no way this accident could have happened if the guy who hit me had his head up and was looking forward. I was clearly in the crosswalk, only a few steps from the other side of the street when he hit me. There are so many people in the world today; we no longer have the luxury of being distracted drivers, cyclists, skateboarders, or pedestrians. Let’s all try to watch out for one another, because next time it may be your grandmother, mother, sister, or daughter who is left lying in the middle of the road.  

Lastly I would like to say to the guy that hit me: Karma Muthafucka. 

Brenda Benson 

FOR THE WEB 

• 

INNACCURATE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your editorial comments regarding Tammy Duckworth were laughably inaccurate. First of all, she is from Illinois, not Ohio, and was influenced to run by Senator Dick Durbin, who was Assistant Minority Leader, also from Illinois, not Ohio. Secondly, she was very progressive on Marriage Equality and advertised the Human Rights Campaign endorsement of her. She also refused to take to back away from equitable immigration reform, despite its portrayal as “amnesty” by her Republican counterparts. Finally, she lost by less than four percentage points, whereas the last candidate who “almost won” lost by three times as much and was far less targeted by her opposition. 

Kap Pratt 

• 

DUCKWORTH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Tammy Duckworth ran in IL-06 not Ohio. I volunteered for her. The rest of your post is just as off target. Christine Cegelis didn’t come close in 2004 and never would 

have won in 2006. 

In 2004 Hyde spent $804,000 defeating Christine with no help from the NRCC. God knows how much he donated to other candidates that year. He hardly campaigned because he was old and infirm then. He’s in a wheelchair now. Christine raised all of $189,938 in 2004. She got 44 percent in the district when compared to Obama’s 67 percent and the thoroughly swiftboated Kerry 47 percent. 

For 2006 she continued right on running after 2004 hoping to discourage any other challengers and raised all of $363,331 before closing her books in June. 16 months. Roskam who was unopposed in the primary raised a million by the primary after declaring in May 2005. 11 months. Duckworth raised about $750,000 before the primary after declaring in December 2005. 4 months. Tammy didn’t get a dollar from the DCCC before the primary. She got $250,000 each from Hillary and Kerry for commercials with Obama to give her name recognition. The rest came from all the free media she earned. 

Cegelis’s vaunted groundgame failed her on March 21. She lost by 4 percent when Lindy Scott the rightwing candidate got 16 percent of the vote. The moderate - by your standards - Duckworth got 44 percent and the supposed progressive Cegelis got 40 percent. I’ve never seen so much as a peep out of any Cegelis supporter against Scott even though he entered the race in August 2005. No wonder. In a two way race with Duckworth Cegelis would have been crushed. 

Rahm didn’t pick Duckworth. Dick Durbin coaxed her to run. In exchange she got a promise from him to get her enough financing to win both the primary and general. He then brought in Obama, Kerry, Hillary and Rahm. BTW what office has Cegelis ever held? What race has she ever won? 

If she expects to try again I suggest she go the Melissa Bean route. Buddy up to the Chamber of Commerce and milk it for all it’s worth. No single House candidate raised as much money as Bean this year. Repubs spent about $10 million defeating Duckworth robbing their other campaigns of desperately needed money and staffers. There’s no way Christine can win without a fundraising effort like Duckworth had. In the end Tammy outraised Roskam by about $400,000.  

Mark Garrity 

Downers Grove IL 

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi isn’t checking her motherhood at the door. Addressing the House of Representatives, the microphones falter and she says, “Do I have to use my mother-of-five voice?” She has also begun numerous sentences with: “As a mother and grandmother and the leader of the House Democrats…” 

Politicians who are working mothers are not new. The difference is that Pelosi doesn’t cover up, downplay, or apologize for her role.  

Why does she keep saying she’s a mother? Perhaps she knows what we all instinctively know but rarely hear—that what good leaders do closely corresponds to what good parents do. Much of what she needed to know to run the House she learned by running her own home. 

Acts of leadership occur both in the House and at home. Any mother who has raised five children has built expertise in dealing with irrational behavior, listening to multiple points of view, multitasking, and helping rivals get along. Conservative Democrat from Mississippi Gene Taylor nailed Pelosi’s management style when he said, “She puts a very big premium on people who have ideas, but not if you think your idea is to the exclusion of everyone else’s input.” 

Of course she does. That’s what good mothers do. And that’s what good leaders do. What our society sometimes forgets is that mothers demonstrate acts of leadership everyday as they guide their children through the twists and turns of life. They negotiate conflicts, manage emotions, facilitate decisions, and listen with patience, all the while keeping sight on the bigger picture which is to create an environment in which their children can develop to their maximum potential. It’s no surprise that Pelosi, after raising five children, is able to deal with the myriad of daily crises, competing priorities, and important decisions that land on her desk.  

And yet, our culture minimizes the enormous sophistication of the skills parents need to raise children. Headlines like “Temper Tantrums Solved Overnight” trivialize the skills required for good parenting. Stay-at-home moms, when asked what they do, reply that they are “just” moms.  

Even in today’s postfeminist era, working mothers have to downplay their role if they want status, promotions, or raises in the American workplace. Bosses still question, explicitly or implicitly, how much time mothering takes away from their jobs. Being a mother is still seen as taking away from instead of enriching work responsibilities. There are 26 million working mothers in the U.S. But the workplace values have still not caught up.  

Workplaces are slowly catching on that women and mothers naturally have what it takes to be great leaders. Women naturally build relationships, collaborate, and focus on team accomplishment. As Judy Rosener documents in America’s Competitive Secrete: Women Managers, “Women speak and hear a language of connection and intimacy, and men speak and hear a language of status and independence. Men communicate to obtain information, establish their status, and show independence. Women communicate to create relationships, encourage interaction, and exchange feelings.”  

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “A home requires all the tact and all the executive ability required in any business.” Pelosi takes good housekeeping to a whole new level. By leading by example, and as a woman, leader, mother, and grandmother, she has the opportunity to bring new respect for America’s momkind. 

Jamie Woolf, an organization development consultant, does webcasts and conferences for Working Mother Media and consults on how parents can become leaders through The Parent Leader, www.theparentleader.com.  

Art Goldberg’s complaints (“Myopia, Not Vision, in North Shattuck Plan,” Daily Planet, Oct. 20) about the proposed North Shattuck Plaza amount to a cry of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” 

But take a look at the east side of Shattuck between Rose and Vine: it is a triple roadway of pavement, parking and traffic. Many people agree that this sea of pavement has been broken for a long time. It is both ugly and wasteful AND as un-green as it can be—why should we have such in our city? 

To replace that ugly, wasteful feature, the current design for North Shattuck Plaza proposes the development of a park (we’ll get to parking later) in an active market, a very active shopping area, a park where people could stroll, go shopping, relax, sit in the shade, bring their children, meet their friends. This pedestrian zone would be built following the principles of greening by the use of permeable surfaces, and ample plantings of native species of trees and plants. It could serve as a prime example of how existing overly paved areas can be made into attractive green pedestrian friendly locations. 

Mr. Goldberg makes a lot of assertions that are simply not true: 

Assertion: The plaza is a stalking horse for a major high-rise condo development. 

Response: We are flabbergasted at this off-the-wall and untrue assertion. The plaza is proposed to be built exclusively on a public right-of-way that will need the approval of the City. It will be a purely public amenity built with appropriate public input and approvals. 

Assertion: People involved in planning the plaza don’t live in the area. 

Response: Another absolutely untrue assertion. Eight out of the 10 North Shattuck Plaza, Inc. board members are long-time North Berkeley residents. Others are local business people who own, lease, or manage the businesses along the proposed park or close to it. We are neighbors, not developers. Learn more about us: www.northshattuckplaza.org 

Assertion: there will be two treeless, barren parking lots. 

Proposal: A new parking lot would be built where there is now paving and parking (the Farmers Market area). This new lot would be separated from the Long’s parking lot by a wide area of 20-25 new trees and many other green, growing plants. There would also be café/patio- style chairs and tables.  

Assertion: Three buckeye trees will be torn out. 

Proposal: While these trees will be lost, the proposal calls for planting a total of approximately 50-60 new trees (including the 25 adjacent to the new parking lot) to grace the new plaza—including additional trees in front of Bel Forno and the health food store. Our landscape designers tell us that these trees will be healthier because the plan provides for adequate soil depth and drainage.  

Assertion: Traffic problems connected with Long’s parking lot will be made worse. 

Proposal: The plan will actually improve the situation at Long’s. North-bound cars will have more parking spaces within easy walking distance of Long’s entrance. 

Assertion: Traffic needs to slow down as it passes through the new parking lot. 

Proposal: True. This is intentional in order to encourage through traffic to use alternate routes to go north and east. 

Assertion: Plaza supporters refuse to do a traffic study. 

Response: Such a a traffic study was done for an earlier version of the plan, which was found to have no significant negative traffic impact. The plan now being prepared will be reviewed by the city which may decide that additional traffic studies are necessary. Overall, there will be no net loss or gain in parking. 

Assertion: The kiosk that is proposed to be located on proposed for the plaza is to store benches that are to line the walkway. 

Proposal: The “benches” referred are presumably the ones visible in the proposed design. Those ‘benches” are actually stone planters which would be of sitting height, permanent features of the park. The kiosk will store any light-weight chairs and tables that may be used in the park. By the way, this is only one function of the kiosk, which may include a food vendor, public restroom and community information center. 

Assertion: A 50-foot wide pedestrian area is not necessary to obtain the benefits that the plaza would bring. 

Response: Fifty feet would provide space for a range of activities - sitting, walking, restaurant tables, children’s play - and for sufficient green area to make a visual and environmental impact. Anything less would amount to a sidewalk widening, which might be worth doing but would not yield the safety and the graciousness that Plaza supporters, including virtually all of the store operators facing the Plaza, feel would result from something close to the current proposal.  

We held a very productive community meeting last month and plan other community work sessions and tours. We urge everyone desiring to participate in improving our neighborhood to find out more at www.northshattuckplaza.org and/or get on our e-mail list by contacting us at info@northshattuckplaza.org. 

David Stoloff, 

Chair, North Shattuck Plaza, Inc. 

Helene Vilett, Vice Chair 

Mim Hawley, Secretary 

Laurie Capitelli,  

City Council District 5, Board Member 

Judith Bloom, Treasurer 

Lloyd Lee, Board Member 

Judith Lubman, Board Member 

Peter Levitt, Owner, Saul’s Deli, Design Committee Member

Unlike Mr. Rivera, I do not deem myself a student of violence. Rather, I like to think of myself as a student of human nature, of which violence is one facet. I have, however, been in dozens (possibly hundreds) of physical altercations in a professional capacity, as a doorman at some of the biggest and busiest nightclubs in San Francisco. 

In his response to Rob Browning’s letter to your publication, Mr. Rivera contends that he is in a position of weakness when he’s patrolling the mean streets of Berkeley, because like the London bobby he is not armed with a pistol. This necessarily implies that most (or at least some) Berkeley citizens out there are armed. This, of course, is laughable. 

In performing his duties, Mr. Rivera has his radio and Berkeley’s finest at his beck and call. This puts him in a position of supreme advantage over his irate victim, as the best that the recipient of a parking citation is going to do is get on his cell phone and call his cousin in El Cerrito to vent. (And unless this cousin person works for the sheriff’s department, it will take them at least a half hour to get to the scene to provide backup to said parking transgressor, what with traffic and all. BPD will be there in less than two minutes, with sirens flashing and guns at the ready.) Does Mr. Rivera presume to suggest that Berkeley citizens would heap less abuse on their meter maids if the meter maids were armed? This is ridiculous. I know people. I’ve seen things that would make Mr. Rivera’s hair stand on end. I can tell Mr. Rivera—if he cares to listen—that any person who would physically accost a city employee will do so irrespective of whether said city employee is armed. A gun is not a deterrent to violence. Anyone who would raise a hand against a civil servant is either too much of a lunatic to care about a gun or knows full well that no official personage will ever discharge a weapon unless their life is threatened. A punch on the nose from an unarmed individual does not constitute such a threat. End of story. 

Unlike law enforcement officers, parking enforcement personnel do not regularly come into contact with the criminal element, just people who have used poor judgment in parking their cars. Or more frightening, people who are busy and have neglected to put money in their meter. This is why most cities around the country have deemed it unnecessary to arm meter maids. 

The particulars of Mr. Browning’s case will undoubtedly be sorted out in the Berkeley courts. As a public employee who presumably has regular contact with the court system in the course of discharging his duties, Mr. Rivera really should know that he’s behaved in a less than commendable fashion by putting all sorts of hearsay out there in the press. 

But more despicable than Mr. Rivera’s attempt to try this matter in the press is his liken himself to a battered woman. Is it fair to ask when the last time was that Mr. Rivera’s husband beat him up? If Mr. Rivera feels as helpless as all that, perhaps he should take some defensive tactics classes, and start with a therapist. Or maybe find another line of work. 

Peter Glikshtern lived in Berkeley for 14 years.

Berkeley’s Warm Pool is important and magical. It is important to everyone who goes there to partake of the healing waters. 

It is magical because of the people who go there to heal themselves and one another. 

This is a very special place. It has power in its magic and importance. 

Power comes when people form a community without hidden agendas. Any community based solely on the happiness and well-being of its members is important. 

Power comes from people coming together as a healing force. Those people have magic. 

I have a strong attachment to my friends at the Berkeley Warm Pool. They are loved and loving. These important and magical people are kind, generous and very healing human forces. I am biased where they are concerned. 

If I wrote only about specific individuals, I would get too sentimental. That might dilute the magic and importance I hope to conjure up here. 

Therefore, I will write about the sad political aspect of the battle to save Berkeley’s Warm Pool. 

If you close the warm pool, the people who benefit from it so much will have nowhere to go. 

The warm pool provides a safe haven for the incapacitated and aging who are frequently abused and left behind by our ignorant youth-oriented society. 

Also, I ask that you please vigilantly remember that these people are responsible for your jobs. If you are in a public service position, these are the people you serve. 

As a result of the recent elections this nation is, I pray, moving toward true humanitarian ideals. The Larry Ellisons, Jeffrey Skillings and Tom DeLays of the world are not going to get away with just a symbolic slap on the wrist anymore. 

The Warm Pool is not a nation-wide issue like the nightmare of Iraq. It is not a major issue for the State of California. 

It is an issue for the City of Berkeley. Therefore, it is your issue. 

Whether we like it or not, we are engaged now in the real battle to regain America’s good standing in the world community. We know that when we hurt someone very deeply, we can only encourage them to have faith in us again by displaying honesty and integrity. 

The Warm Pool community would like to know that you are honest. They would like to believe that those individuals they have entrusted with guiding and protecting Berkeley have real integrity. 

Let those noble qualities guide you when you make your decision regarding Berkeley’s Warm Pool. 

Maybe you will only get to do one good thing in your political career. We have to do those good things step by step. 

Good deeds done in our cities, then our states and finally for the healing of our nation; with this right action we can recapture the magical qualities of our important country. 

Please make that one good political thing you do saving Berkeley’s Warm Pool. 

Robert Strom is a Berkeley resident.

Annette Fleming never used to stop to pick up dinner in Old Pasadena. It used to take five or 10 minutes each way to walk between the restaurant and the parking lot, and she did not have that extra time on her way home from work. 

Now, Annette stops in Old Pasadena once or twice every week to get take-out food for dinner. She can always find a metered parking space on the same block as the restaurant, so it only takes a minute to pick up her food. How did Old Pasadena get these convenient parking spaces? It adopted Donald Shoup’s proposals for pricing parking. 

Most cities have low prices for parking meters, thinking that this will attract shoppers. Donald Shoup, a professor of city planning at UCLA, points out that when meters have low prices, they all get taken by commuters and by other long-term users. There is no short-term parking left for shoppers who want to stop for a few minutes to buy something or to stop for an hour to eat a meal. 

Shoup says we should charge a high enough price for parking meters that there are always a few spaces open on each block. This means that different meter prices are needed in different parts of a shopping district; we need higher prices on the busiest shopping street than on less busy side streets. 

Shoup also says we should spend the extra revenue from parking meters on improvements to the shopping district. In Old Pasadena, they raise over a million dollars a year, which they spend on landscaping, advertising, security, removing graffiti, and cleaning sidewalks and alleys. These improvements plus the more convenient metered parking transformed Old Pasadena from a skid row into a prosperous shopping district. 

Downtown Berkeley can learn a lesson from Old Pasadena. Today it is very difficult to find metered parking near shopping destinations in downtown Berkeley because 30 percent of all metered parking is taken up by downtown employees who feed the meter all day, and more spaces are taken up by other long-term parkers. 

If we had the right price for metered parking, these long-term parkers would shift to off-street parking or to alternative transportation, opening up the metered spaces for short-term customers. Customers using the meters for short-term parking would still pay relatively little because they stay in the space for a short time. There would be quick turnover of metered parking, accommodating many more customers. 

Downtown Berkeley would generate much more revenue from this policy than Old Pasadena. Imagine what downtown could do with that money! We could have more performances on the streets of downtown. We could plant more trees, which are badly needed on side streets. We could provide more street furniture like the old-fashioned light standards that were added several years ago. We could fund the improvements in the BART plaza that downtown businesses support. We could make downtown the most attractive destination in the Bay Area. 

We could also fund Eco-Passes for downtown employees, which would shift hundreds of commuters to public transporation, opening up hundreds of parking spaces for shoppers. 

We need all the stakeholders to look at Shoup’s proposals carefully and tailor them to the special needs of downtown Berkeley. For example, many performing arts venues that rely on on-street parking and their managers say that using parking structures in the evening can be a safety issue for women. For this reason, we should continue to make metered parking free in the evening, as we do now. 

Though we need to work on this sort of detail, there is no doubt that Shoup’s plan would be a major win for downtown Berkeley, as it has been for Old Pasadena. There would be more convenient parking for customers, and there would be funding for major improvements in downtown. It is impossible to add more on-street metered parking downtown, so we have to use the parking meters that we do have as effectively as possible, rather than letting them fill up with meter-feeding employees. 

When Shoup spoke to Berkeley’s DPAC, the committee liked his ideas. The DPAC will be considering similar proposals soon. 

I do not see how anyone who cares about the future of downtown could oppose these proposals. It is very obviously true, as Shoup says, that the right price for parking meters is the price that makes it possible for customers to find convenient parking. 

Charles Siegel is a Berkeley resident. 

A few things need to be said regarding the issue of Pacific Steel Casting. While the following opinions could be controversial, and perhaps even disagreeable to some readers, I do believe that they need to be said. To begin with, I am a resident of West Berkeley, whose family has resided in the East Bay since about 1903. For most of my fifty plus years on this planet, I have been an environmentalist and a staunch advocate for a clean and healthy San Francisco Bay. During the most recent election, I voted Green. Nevertheless, I have certain reservations about the growing local movement against Pacific Steel Casting. While I most strongly agree that toxic pollution is a grave problem in our community, and must be rigorously contained and controlled, I do take issue with those who would want to find a solution by simply shutting down Pacific Steel’s foundry. 

There are good reasons not to do this. America’s once mighty steel industry, which up to thirty years ago was substantial, is today no more than a hollow shell. The only type of mills and foundries still left are those like Pacific Steel, who use scrap metal for their castings. At this very moment, America is rapidly losing its manufacturing base, especially small to medium sized firms. And, here in the Bay Area, they are fast becoming an endangered species. Yet, it is these very same manufacturing industries that are still a vital part of the Bay Region’s economic health. They create locally made products, and are a source of employment and tax revenue. Further, as these businesses tend to be locally owned, the dollars tend to stay and circulate in the local region. The ever increasing cost of fuel will soon make imported products expensive to regional customers. As steel is an essential material for the functioning of our society, it makes practical sense in every way to have a local source of supply at hand. And, with the increasing probability of a major economic recession occurring in the coming years, local manufacturing industries will be an essential part of a community’s economic survival. 

Now, I am in no way a conspiracy theorist, but I find it interesting that the volume of protest against Pacific Steel has increased almost simultaneously with the increase in West Berkeley property values. I have also read in the Berkeley Daily Planet that the former Urban Ore site on Gilman Street had been slated to become a bus yard, but that Mayor Tom Bates is fighting tooth and nail to keep this from happening. By the way, I don’t hear very much protest about the noise and noxious poisons that emanate in far greater quantity from the auto and truck traffic right next door on Interstate 80, not to mention San Pablo Avenue. By all signs, it appears that the powers that be have, for the sake of pursuing a quick buck, decided to de-industrialize West Berkeley. One only has to look next door at Emeryville, which in the space of 20 years has changed from a manufacturing center with low and middle-income residents, to one giant high-priced mega condo shopping mall. Indeed, those who are protesting Pacific Steel’s emissions could unknowingly be playing into the very hands of those whose plan is to “Economically Cleanse” the neighborhood. This could again become a classic example of the proverbial throwing out of the baby with the bath water. 

That we can have a manufacturing sector and still be friendly to the environment is not an impossibility. Here is something to consider as a potential solution: How about, with agreement of all parties involved (and with government assistance if need be), rebuilding Pacific Steel Casting into a state of the art, environmentally friendly, and profitable steel mill. There is already existing technology that can do this, and it has been done quite successfully in Germany and in other European countries. This could become an example for the rest of the nation, and again show that our city is once more at the forefront of creativity and innovation. 

John F. Davies is a Berkeley resident.

On the heels of the GOP’s resounding defeat in the mid-term elections came news that only 31 percent of Americans approve of President Bush’s handling of Iraq. This will increase pressure on the new Congress to do something about Iraq.  

Democrats should resist the temptation for quick fixes. They must step back and take a broader view: acknowledge America has lost the war in Iraq and is in danger of losing the “war” on terrorism. 

Americans aren’t used to defeat. We envision ourselves the number one country and, in many ways, we are. Nonetheless, the premiere military power in the world has failed in Iraq. Moreover, the United States has a dysfunctional national security policy that’s not proving effective at curtailing terrorism. 

Recently, there’s been a wave of books about the failure of the Iraqi occupation. They range from Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor’s authoritative Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq to Bob Woodward’s tell-all State of Denial. Beyond the technical details—not enough troops were sent to handle the occupation, the military chain-of-command failed to recognize the rise of the Iraqi insurgency—these books paint an appalling picture of White House leadership. 

Of course, no one who studied the career of George Bush should be surprised that he was ill prepared to serve as commander in chief. Nor that Dick Cheney was poorly equipped to be Bush’s second in command. But, what’s disturbing is how weak their team has been: Apparently, Colin Powell had no influence on Bush and Cheney. 

It’s said that Condoleezza Rice is completely out of her league, totally unprepared for the terrorist threat and the resulting turmoil in the Middle East. And Donald Rumsfeld, supposedly the most seasoned member of Bush’s team, became increasingly dysfunctional: turned into an egotistical martinet who wouldn’t hear criticism and, therefore, neutered the Joint Chiefs of Staff and surrounded himself with sycophants. 

The disturbing truth is that America is stuck with this failed leadership for two more years. This has ominous consequences: the war in Iraq will probably drag on. Get worse. Meanwhile, al Qaeda is making a comeback in Afghanistan and the Iraq war is fueling terrorism in the Middle East. 

This grim reality provides the context for the 110th Congress: a failed administration, a lost war, and an increasingly dangerous world. Thus, Democrats have two huge challenges: First, they must propose a new strategy for combating global terrorism. Then, they have to find a way to move their plan forward in the face of Bush’s unwillingness to consider anything but “staying the course” in Iraq and his national security policy. 

On March 29, Democratic leaders unveiled their own national security strategy, “Real Security: The Democratic Plan to Protect America and Restore Our Leadership in the World.” “Real Security” has five components: military preparedness, the war on terror, homeland security, Iraq, and energy independence. We can expect the Democratic majority to pass legislation mandating some of these changes. 

Incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi promises to focus on homeland security from the beginning hours of the 110th Congress. The Democrats’ homeland security plan has four aspects. 

It begins with a promise to “Immediately implement the recommendations of the independent, bipartisan 9/11 Commission including securing national borders, ports, airports and mass transit systems,” something that the Bush administration has neglected, and which Pelosi plans to address in “the first 100 hours” of the new Congress. A vital component is screening of all containers and cargo bound for the US. Another essential is the safeguarding of “America’s nuclear and chemical plants, and food and water supplies.” 

Nonetheless, many of the failures of the Bush administration will be difficult to address from Capitol Hill. This dilemma is dramatically apparent in the matter of WMDs. “Real Security” promised that Democrats will “Secure by 2010 loose nuclear materials that terrorists could use to build nuclear weapons or ‘dirty bombs.’ ” MIT Professor Stephen Van Evera noted, “Amazingly, in the two years after 9/11 no more loose nuclear weapons and materials were secured than in the two years prior ... This policy lapse is among the worst failures of government in modern times.” Unfortunately, Democrats can’t force the Bush administration to address the WMD problem. 

The new Congress will be able to address some of the administration’s national security failures. And, Democratic leaders will have improved access to the bully pulpit. Realistically, these changes are unlikely to move the president from his dysfunctional policies towards Iraq and national security. 

What Democrats must do is begin the 2008 presidential campaign in January of 2007. Candidates such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should challenge the president on national security and tie these failures to the GOP and begin a national debate on the failures of a Republican administration. 

President Bush has lost the war in Iraq. That doesn’t mean we have to lose the “war” on terrorism. 

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

I have received a lot of advice since Ralph passed away. It has been given with good intention and compassionate concern.  

Many people have made suggestions that involve money and lawyers, stocks and bonds, taxes and creative loopholes.  

“Have you got your finances figured out yet?” my dad asks everyday.  

“Have you thought about getting a job?” asks Mom.  

“I think you should move,” suggests a neighbor.  

“No,” says another. “I think she should stay right here for the next six months.”  

“At least a year,” argues a third person.  

“What’s her hurry?” asks someone else.  

“Get your hair styled differently and go on a long vacation,” says my friend, Amy. “To India,” she adds. “That’s where you should go. You’ll get some perspective and see how your own problems don’t matter.”  

“Have you seen a therapist?” asks Karen.  

“Are you taking your meds?” inquires Corey.  

“When are you finishing your MFA?” asks Pearl.  

“Have you thought about getting a job?” repeats Mom.  

Andrew insists I go wireless. “You only need a cell phone and a modem,” he says, then looks at my face and changes his mind. “Better get cable,” he adds. “You know, in case you need something to do.”  

Ann from Idaho suggests I follow a raw vegan diet. “No meat, cheese or eggs.” she recommends. “Eat fresh fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed nuts at the same time each day, but never in combo with one another.”  

“Drink only bottled water,” adds her husband, Tom. “And maybe an occasional beer.”  

“Drink only dirty martinis,” says Dad. “Make sure you use good vodka, and olives with a bite.”  

“Everything in moderation,” cautions Mom. “Have you thought about getting a job?”  

“Get the house professionally cleaned, the windows washed, and the weeds pulled,” instructs Suzanne. “Plant daffodil and tulip bulbs so you’ll have something to look forward to in the spring.”  

“Join a gym,” says my brother, Bill, “and work on those abs.”  

“Join a country club,” says my sister-in-law, Chris, “and take up golf and bridge.”  

“Come up to Tahoe and ski with us,” invites Diane.  

“Come to Bend and ski here,” counters Patrick.  

“Come out to Crested Butte and ski with me,” insists Jill.  

“Don’t go anywhere,” says Mom, “until you get a job.”  

“What about a cute little pet?” asks my nephew, Bryce, holding something fuzzy and wiggly close to his chest, “My hamster just had babies.”  

“Here, drink this protein shake,” demands Taffy during a visit with her over Thanksgiving. “And take these special vitamins.”  

She hands me a large glass full of yogurt, brewer’s yeast, and wheat grass, then rips open a small sealed cellophane bag and spreads five large white capsules on the table in front of me. “These are special,” she says again.  

“How?” I ask.  

“I had them custom-made.”  

“Explain that,” I say, staring down at the pills. They look like plastic bullets.  

“I sent a urine sample and a large check to a lab in Chicago and they did some tests and came up with a formula based on what they found. Then they put it into powder form, stuffed it into capsules, and shipped it off.”  

She smiles. “One-of-a-kind,” she says. “Or in this case a thousand. It was a very big check.”  

“Do you really think vitamins created especially for you will work for me?” I ask.  

Just then Taffy’s husband walks into the kitchen. “Whose vitamins are you taking?” he interrupts. “Yours or mine?”  

“Mine,” says Taffy. “But tomorrow we’re taking yours.”  

I listen to every piece of advice I am given. I consider each new recommendation and proposal. I shake my head up and down and side to side, and smile with cautious resignation. I take Taffy’s special pills on Sunday, and Gary’s special pills on Monday, but I turn down, with regret, the generous offer of a free hamster. Next week, perhaps, I’ll start looking for a job.

I’m stretching the boundaries of “East Bay” because I just like this odd tree. I first encountered it a few years back, along a dirt road east of Fairfield, where we look for mountain plovers. I spotted a number of unlikely objects on the grassy shoulder: Osage oranges, hedgeballs, Indiana brains, Maclura pomifera fruit. They were strewn along the roadside for yards, under a row of little deciduous trees.  

The trees didn’t look like much: short, scruffy, a bit thorny, nearly bald. The fruit on the ground was a startling contrast. Each was a bit bigger than a softball, densely textured in little geometric fissures, bright limey-chartreuse. When I picked up a few, they were slightly sticky, heavy, and had a mild citrus scent with just a hint of sour latex. The stickiness was odd, but I found them pleasant to handle. I brought some home just to look at. 

They’re notorious for having little use; “not worth a bushel of hedgeballs” is one of those Midwesternisms that William Least Heat-Moon quotes in his chapter on the tree in PrairyErth. Some small animals will chew through the pulpy fruit to get at the seeds, but nothing seemed to have been interested in the lot I saw lying unmolested on the road. Herein lies a puzzle.  

Plants need not only pollinators but seed dispersal agents. They can use wind (thistles, maples, cattails) or water, but many use animals, by attaching burrs to our hides or inviting burial in caches by birds, or by hitching a ride through digestive tracts via fruit.  

Some horses will eat Osage oranges, though supposedly cattle choke on it, and nothing here seems to like it. All that pulp, so biologically expensive to make—what’s it for?  

Connie Barlow, in The Ghosts of Evolution, advances a pretty notion: It’s among the North American plants whose seed dispersers, our missing megafauna, are extinct.  

North America used to have horses, long before Europeans brought them back. We—well before there was “we”—had elephants and rhinos, or something like them, and all manner of super-hyenas and saber-toothed beasties and outsized thingatheriums. Some were equipped to bolt Osage oranges (and avocados, and pawpaws) and leave whole seeds in their dung, far from the parent plant.  

When they died out, the plants that had evolved with them found themselves in reduced circumstances, their former broad estates shrunk pitifully. Osage orange was a hot trade item among native Americans because its tough and resilient wood made excellent clubs and bows (it’s also called bois d’arc, or, phonetically, “bowdark”) and it grew only in a small part of the southern Midwest.  

The live tree regained it some of its former range because it makes a good hedge, “pig-tight, horse-high, bull-strong,” in places without enough forest for fence rails or stones for walls. Before barbed wire, it was the best and cheapest barrier available, and it thrives far north and west of its pre-European range—in Indiana, for example. And, as a souvenir of someone’s Midwestern roots I guess, in Solano County. 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan 

A few Osage orange fruits persist on thorny winter-deciduous branches.

One of the more persistent guessing games in Oakland politics these days is who will be the next president of the Oakland City Council. 

Under the days of Elihu Harris and before, the mayor of Oakland used to sit on the City Council and serve as the council president. All that ended with the passage of Jerry Brown’s strong mayor measure in 1998. As we later learned, Mr. Brown had no interest in being a strong mayor, if, by that term, one means being “strongly” involved in the running of the city. Instead, Mr. Brown confined himself to a limited number of projects, leaving the council and the city administrator to pick up the slack and do the rest. Under that system, the council president—Ignacio De La Fuente—built that position into a seat of considerable power. 

Unlike Mr. Brown, incoming mayor Ron Dellums is not expected to be a slacker and will almost certainly try to restore a more executive/legislative balance to the city (where the council sets the policy and the mayor directs the carrying out of that policy). 

But Oakland is a city that often makes it up as it goes along, doubling back on its own policies when it is convenient and abandoning what the citizens have already thought was decided. That has been the charge of environmentalists and community activists in the massive Oak to Ninth development deal, which appears to have violated Oakland’s carefully crafted Estuary Plan. 

And so once it was settled that Mr. Dellums had defeated Mr. De La Fuente for the mayor’s office in last June’s election, it was widely believed that if Mr. De La Fuente returned as council president, the two powerful men—Mayor Dellums and Council President De La Fuente—would conduct an epic battle over the next four years over Oakland’s direction. 

There was only one councilmember thought powerful enough to challenge Mr. De La Fuente for the council presidency—North Oakland Councilmember Jane Brunner. When I covered Oakland City Council as a reporter some years ago (in the years before Desley Brooks and Jean Quan were elected), it was my observation that Mr. De La Fuente and Ms. Brunner were the two powers on the council. I often saw one of them or the other build a winning coalition to pass something without the other’s vote—it did not matter whether Mr. De La Fuente or Ms. Brunner was on the winning side—but I never saw anything pass in council in those days by a councilmember putting together a coalition if both Mr. De La Fuente and Ms. Brunner were opposed. 

It is thought that Ms. Brunner is dissatisfied with another four years as a City Councilmember, and nothing more. She seems to have once been interested in running for the state assembly, but got gerrymandered out of the district that she was supposed to be interested in running in. In recent months, it was thought that she would run for the office of Oakland City Attorney, once that office was vacated by John Russo on Mr. Russo’s way to the state Assembly, himself. However, Mr. Russo failed to oblige her, losing to Dellums ally and former Congressmember Barbara Lee aide Sandré Swanson in the Democratic primary last June for the 16th Assembly seat currently occupied by Wilma Chan. So Ms. Brunner, like many other ambitious Oakland politicians, may be stuck in limbo. 

But while others have speculated about Ms. Brunner’s ambitions, she herself has taken no public position about whether she was interested in running for Council President. 

Some thought that Ms. Brunner was waiting to see the results of the District 2 council race between incumbent Pat Kernighan and challenger Aimee Allison. Allison argued during the campaign that she was the best candidate qualified to assist in promoting Mayor Dellums’ platform, and Mr. De La Fuente vigorously supported Ms. Kernighan. That led to widespread assumption that the District 2 race was actually a surrogate race between Mr. Dellums and Mr. De La Fuente over the council presidency, with Ms. Kernighan certain to support Mr. De La Fuente when the new council president is chosen, and Allison supporting whoever might challenge Mr. De La Fuente. In a deeply divided eight-member City Council, with five votes needed for the presidency, the District 2 seat was almost certainly the swing vote. 

On election night this month, in fact, after it was clear that Ms. Kernighan had won, a Kernighan supporter told me that the one question he had feared during the various District 2 debates was, “Who will Pat Kernighan support for council president if she wins?” The question was never asked, so she never had to answer. 

Because of that, it is not yet certain who Ms. Kernighan will vote for in the council president election. One could argue that because of Mr. De La Fuente’s support for her campaign, she is pledged to him. On the other hand, Mr. Dellums pointedly kept neutral in the District 2 race, saying that District 2 voters were smart enough to make the choice on their own, and that he could work with either candidate. One could make an argument that with Mr. Dellums’ endorsement and active support, Ms. Allison might have beaten Ms. Kernighan—I’m not saying would have, only might have—and that by his staying out of the race, Ms. Kernighan already owes him a favor. I don’t have any idea if there was some agreement with Mr. Dellums and Ms. Kernighan over the council presidency. I’m not suggesting there was. I just know that sometimes political deals are made in that manner. 

In any event, the council presidency landscape may have suddenly changed, either because of the District 2 election, or by some other means. The new rumor—and this one is being passed along by people who have access to inside information—is that District 7 (far East Oakland) Councilmember Larry Reid may be running for the presidency. If so—and it is still unconfirmed—it is not clear whether this is being done with Mr. De La Fuente’s approval, or against Mr. De La Fuente. 

Mr. Reid—who once served as an aide to former Mayor Elihu Harris—has been a De La Fuente ally on the council, providing the council president with one of his most secure votes on swing issues. But Mr. Reid has his own mind, and his own ambitions. He once had his eye on the 16th Assembly seat himself, but seemed to lose interest in it after the more popular (and then seemingly invincible) City Attorney Russo made it known he was running. 

The rumor you get from some quarters is that Mr. Reid may be running for the presidency—if, indeed, he is running—as a placeholder for Mr. De La Fuente, the thought being that Mr. De La Fuente has weakened himself in some quarters of the city in recent months and does not have the votes to return as president. 

But another theory is that seeing that Mr. De La Fuente may not have the votes to return as president, Mr. Reid is stepping out on his own. Where does that leave Ms. Brunner? I don’t know. 

Is any of this true? I don’t know that either. As they say in the courthouse, these things are not offered for the proof of the matter asserted. It only appears that in the waning days of the mayoral administration of Jerry Brown, there is considerable political turmoil in Oakland, the winds of change are blowing, and though we cannot completely see the direction in which the city is heading, it does appear that there will be a different view. 

As the dust begins to settle from the mid-term elections, popular thinking is that, over the next two years, the Democrats will force the Bush administration to edge away from the unilateral militarism that has entrapped the nation in two open-ended wars.  

You might not want to bet the rent on that. 

Indeed, if you are putting down a wager, the odds are better than even that sometime in the next two years the United States will attack Iran, an assault that may have more support on both sides of the aisle than one would assume. 

The administration’s bombast on Iran is well known. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the United States “may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.” 

Similar comments have come from leading Israeli officials. The Jerusalem Post reported Nov. 12 that an Israeli Self-Defense Force (IDF) spokesperson told the newspaper that “Only a military strike by the U.S. and its allies will stop Iran obtaining nuclear weapons,” while Israeli Defense Minister Ephraim Sneth openly threatened to attack Iran’s nuclear sites. Israeli Ambassador to the United States Danny Ayalon said that he is confident that Bush “will not hesitate to use force against Iran in order to halt its nuclear program.” 

Some of that rhetoric has been echoed by Democrats, particularly incoming speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi. In 2005, she told a meeting of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), “The greatest threat to Israel’s right to exist … now comes from Iran.”  

AIPAC has long been associated with some of the more extreme sectors of the Israeli political spectrum, and the organization is particularly aggressive in lobbying for war with Iran, a war that polls show the U.S. public is strongly opposed to. 

The Democrat’s close ties with AIPAC and the Israeli government are already causing problems. The Democrats won the election on a platform of getting the United States out of Iraq, but AIPAC and the current Kadima-Labor government strongly support that war.  

Following an hour-long meeting with President Bush last week, Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert told the press, “We in the Middle East have been following the American policy in Iraq for a long time, and we are very much impressed and encouraged by the stability” that the war in Iraq has brought to the Middle East. 

A number of Democrats angered by the comments, although so far, Pelosi has remained quiet. 

Olmert’s remarks also feed into the myth that Israel led the United States into the Iraq war. While Israeli concerns did play a role in influencing the march toward war, the United States invaded Iraq for its own reasons, mainly centered around controlling strategic oil reserves and as a warning to other countries in the region not to get out of line. 

The problem for the Democrats is how to extract the United States from Iraq, and few observers think that can be done without addressing the Israeli-Palestinian question. In a recent editorial “Changing Iraq policy is not enough,” the Financial Times argued that Israeli expansion on the West Bank “is what constantly threatens to set the region alight.” 

A recent survey by Israeli retired Brigadier General Baruch Spiegel, a former assistant to Israel’s Defense Ministry, found that the IDF and West Bank civil authorities are suppressing what the newspaper Haaretz calls “the systematic illegal expansion of existing settlements … in blatant violation of the law.” The newspaper called the survey—which is yet to be reported in the United States—“political and diplomatic dynamite.” 

Yet Pelosi explicitly rejects the argument that the occupation has anything to do with the current crisis between Israelis and Palestinians. “There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza,” she told the AIPAC audience. “That is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.” 

Aside from AIPAC, the Bush administration’s neo-cons, and the Israeli right wing, few would agree with that formulation. Even British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently argued that an Israeli-Palestinian settlement was “the core” of a broader effort for peace in the region. Indeed, elevating the conflict to a matter of Israel’s survival plays into the hands of extremists on both sides. 

AIPAC and Olmert make the same survival argument about Iran, in spite of the fact that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threats to wipe out Israel are not backed up by any ability on his part to carry them out. As Scott Ritter points out in the Nov. 20 Nation, Ahmadinejad has no authority over anything pertaining to national security, the armed forces, the police or the Revolutionary Guard. He is, as one former Iranian president commented, “a knife without a blade.” 

The authority to go to war rests with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in May 2003 offered to open up Iran’s nuclear plants for inspection, rein in Hezbollah, accept a two-state solution, and cooperate against al Qaeda. He also issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons. The initiative was shot down by Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. 

In a Nov. 27 New Yorker article, Seymour Hersh says the CIA has “found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.” Buying into the arguments of the Bush administration and the Israeli right wing on the Middle East is a formula for catastrophe.  

For all their rhetoric, the vast majority of Democrats do not want war with Iran, but under our system of government, the president has enormous powers. According to Rice, the administration has already been authorized to attack Iran under powers given it by the congressional legislation on the war on terrorism. 

Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel and strategy teacher at the National War College, the Naval War College and the Air Force War College, says President Bush is determined to attack Iran. Gardiner says Bush compares himself to Winston Churchill and “talks about the Middle East in messianic terms, and is said to have told those close to him that he has got to attack Iran because even if a Republican succeeds him … he will not have the same freedom of action that Bush enjoys.”  

According to Hersh, during a recent discussion on national security, Cheney said that the Nov. 7 election “would not stop the administration from pursuing a military option with Iran.” 

Rhetoric by the Democrats that projects Iran as a threat to Israel’s survival plays into Bush and Cheney’s vision of the Middle East.  

The Democrats are going to have to make some hard choices if they are going to keep the loyalty of those who voted for an end to the Iraq War and military adventurism. For starters they must call for: 

1) An immediate end to Israeli settlement expansion. 

2) Immediate negotiations with all Palestinian parties culminating in full Arab recognition of Israel and a full withdrawal from all occupied Arab land. The U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should guarantee to defend Israel within its 1967 borders. 

3) A regional conference, including Iran, Syria and all elements in Iraq, to reach a peace accord and the withdrawal of all foreign troops from the region. 

It is time to go to work, Madame Speaker.

Although travel is educational not much can be learned from short, packaged tours. You learn more from longer than from shorter tours especially if you’re on your own. I was in the Air Force in the 1950s and stationed on Guam for two years. I learned a little bit there but in two short trips to Japan I learned next to nothing. Not so when I earned my living in China for two years doing the same job Chinese did.  

Teaching may be a greater learning experience than travel. If you’ve ever tried it I don’t have to tell you how marvelous the learning can be, and doubly so when you, a foreigner, work in the homeland of your students. Although I learned a lot it has taken years to digest it and find the right words to express it.  

So here I am almost a quarter of a century from the academic year 1982-3 that I spent teaching English at Anhui Normal University, a residential institution—or a walled enclave—in the middle of a commercial city on the south bank of the Yangtze River some 150 miles up-river from Nanjing, China’s ancient southern capital. Wuhu was, by China’s standards, a middle-sized city with a population of nearly half a million, few of whom had ever seen an American—westerners were not allowed except for a few who had relatives there.  

I returned to China for another teaching stint (1986-7), this time near the Yellow River in Shandong province. Although Liaocheng is on the famous Grand Canal, the ancient waterway connecting the southern and northern capitol, and had been a rest stop for merchants trading between eastern and western regions, it had declined. The once magnificent canal was a dried-up dusty ditch and the once thriving crossroads of commerce had shrunk into a dull, desiccated place where peasant farmers congregated to trade and traffic. The college, residential walled enclave like the one in Wuhu, was off-limits to foreigners and ignored by the local peasantry. Thus, because of the isolation, the job and its duration, I was deeply immersed in a Chinese way of life, ancient, undiluted, undisguised and undecorated with tourist attractions. It was a way of life practiced by the greatest majority people, and as a consequence I learned things that could not be learned any other way.  

To appreciate the importance of what I learned from China it helps to bear in mind a quip attributed to a renowned 20th century British émigré, Christopher Isherwood, herewith paraphrased:  

He little his homeland knows who only knows his homeland.  

A summary of what I learned, therefore, is this: A startling amount of similarity exists and at the same time enormous differences persist; the Chinese viewing us from a distance, culturally speaking, see things that we do not, and visa versa.  

My students 

On October 1, 1949, the day Mao Zedong announced the birth of the Peoples Republic of China, I was 22 years old and so was Ma Lingshang who would later become my student. Although we lived on opposite sides of the planet we had some things in common; we were college students, we enjoyed Russian novels and For Whom the Bell Tolls with Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper was our favorite movie.  

Following that first National Day and because of contentiousness between my government and his, our common experiences evaporated. Three decades passed and suddenly Mr. Ma’s work was terminated and we met. He was ordered to change from teaching Russian to teaching English and I had the job of helping him and eleven of his colleagues learn enough American English to teach it, a job for which I was poorly prepared and had not applied. 

Recycling Russian teachers of my generation was one-fifth of my class load, the other four-fifths were classes of young adults.  

In that academic year, 1982-3, Li Jianmei was a 19-year-old sophomore. Let her stand for all 119 young people I taught at Anhui Normal university—when she graduates she will return to her village to teach in its middle school, live with her family and be near her beloved, physically disabled little brother. 

Mr. Dong was 21 five years later, in 1986. Let him stand for 90 freshmen, sophomores and juniors I taught at Liaocheng Teachers College—like all his classmates and students who would become China’s teachers, Dong does not have to pay for room, meals, tuition, books and medical care and, when he graduates, will be assigned a job. 

What did I learn about them and what did it imply about China and about us? 

I 

China’s oldest and most exuberant holiday is the Spring Festival, two weeks of festivities centered on the Lunar New Year. All commerce comes to a stop as one-fifth of the world’s population coagulates in large family units. These assemblies of relatives decorate the homestead, set off fireworks, present children with sweets, money and toys, perform rituals reverencing their ancestors, prepare and eat special foods, and following in-family observances, go into the neighborhood and visit friends. In Guangzhou (Canton) on the eve of the New Year I saw people on bicycles carrying small leafless trees bearing red berries with which to decorate their parlors. Imagine Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year rolled into one and you come close. 

II 

Aphorisms are popular in China and many match ours, e.g. Lost time is never found again, A stitch in time saves nine, No pain, no gain … But while theirs, like ours are used to inspire the young and guide the unlettered, theirs and ours do not match in all aspects.  

Ma Lingshang and his colleagues were surprised that “Time flies” is as popular with us as with them. However, they say “Time flies like an arrow.”  

I couldn’t make sense of the “arrow” reference. With us, the aphorism expresses time’s swiftness and rests ultimately on sidereal reckoning. To affix the phrase, “like an arrow,” introduces trajectory, direction and aim, notions that seemed to me at odds with experience. I refused to ascribe this oddity to the stereotype of Chinese inscrutability, but despite subsequent efforts to explicate “Time flies like an arrow” I remained puzzled. Until, one day, out of the blue, it hit me! For the Chinese what time had in common with the flight of an arrow was not trajectory, direction or goal but termination. Time ends. Not sidereal, clock time, of course, but life time, mine and yours. In Chinese culture the aphorism, “Time flies like an arrow” captures one’s personal inescapable transient condition. “Time flies like an arrow” adds to our notion of time’s swiftness a perhaps typical Chinese self-regard, that one’s time on earth comes to an end … with the speed of an arrow.  

III 

Vocal language and aural comprehension are acquired by imitation accompanied by minimal instruction. Written language, being a complex, arbitrarily invented system, can be acquired only from methodical teaching and attentive practice. This suggests that the particularities of a language and the way it is acquired and functions must necessarily flow out of the particularities of a way of life, a culture. Exploring the difference between Chinese and English, what conclusions about our differing cultures arise? 

Written English is phonetic and partially inflected–each letter of the alphabet corresponds to a specific sound and suffixes are required. Written Chinese, by contrast, having originated in pictographs, remains neither phonetic nor inflected. Each Chinese character consists of strokes, properly configured and precisely ordered.  

Every Chinese character is vocalized by a single syllable, pure or diphthongal. Words are formed from one, two, three and rarely four characters. It is possible for Chinese children to compete in a writing bee, as indeed they do albeit not nationally, but not a spelling bee. Does this mean that the Chinese are more visually aware than we while we are more aurally attuned? 

Word order is crucial in both languages. But in Chinese proper ordering penetrates more deeply into its written form. For example, reverse the order of the two characters that make up the word for “honey” (feng mi) and you get the word for “bee” (mi feng). Without written language it would have been impossible for the Mandarins to govern The Middle Kingdom.  

Note that even as England reached the zenith of its imperial reach its colonial agents never bothered to learn the indigenous language. Language, in written form, was and is an instrument of power. Was that why the PRC hired me to teach in Wuhu and Liaocheng? 

Furthermore, although literate persons throughout China (and even in Japan) can comprehend a written Chinese sentence, its vocalization by Beijing natives will not be understood by Cantonese, Hunanese, Shanghainese, and a few other disparately vocalizing Chinese (nor by Japanese). 

Finally, writing holds a more superior place in Chinese culture than it holds with us: China’s most revered artists are master writers. With us calligraphy is an art craft but with Chinese (and Japanese) writing is much more than a craft. Predating abstract expressionism by millennia, Chinese writing masters capture their inner feelings with every stroke. Every literate Chinese recognizes the distinctive styles of the great masters. Chairman Mao, for example, was a dedicated writing artist and facsimiles of his artwork are ubiquitous and admired, even today.  

IV 

Another way by which linguistic differences echo cultural ones lies with how Chinese are named—the surname comes first. Although this is mundane it is nevertheless significant. Besides, the language makes clear each and every relationship—different words for one’s four grandparents and words for uncles and aunts on the mother’s side that differ from words denoting paternal uncles and aunts. 

It reflects the Confucian teaching whereby the primacy of the family takes precedence over that of the individual. But more can be learned from ordinary naming practices.  

Nearly one billion Han Chinese share a few hundred surnames which make duplications inevitable and at the same time makes a name less important. For example, a majority of the residents of Qufu, the birth city of Kong Fu Tse (Confucius), carry the family name Kong, thus blunting the point of individuality while also voiding the possibility of ordering a telephone directory by surname.  

With us and with Chinese one’s given name functions as an identifying label—“Marvin” is mine. I might just as well be labeled with code, say LSN2 (for Lancelot’s second son). Chinese, however, name people with words taken from everyday speaking—gentle, soft, tender words for girls, “Flower,” “Pearl,” “Joy” and the like, and masculine words such as “Courage,” “Peace,” “Victory” for boys. Thus, Chinese parents have the opportunity to christen (so to speak) their children with specific identifying associations. The given name of a Chinese is less a label than a garment of lofty aspirations. 

More can be said about our inverse ways of naming but one feature ought not be overlooked. With us to give a child the name of an ancestor is to honor that person, but with Chinese such an action is disrespectful, forbidden, and even horrific. While this seems to reflect in the debt that live Chinese owe to their dead relatives, it also echoes the uniqueness of relationships. A Chinese ancestor is not a role model; ancestors are revered, not imitated.  

V 

Traveling in China during school holidays, I saw three separate levels of cost and accommodation: the least for the native born, twice as much for westerners like me and mid-way for “Overseas Chinese,” so-called. At the time all costs were fixed by the central government and thus it was strange that “Overseas Chinese” would be an officially recognized category. I imagined myself informally as an overseas American and yet I was intrigued by the unhesitating ubiquitous use the terms “Overseas Chinese”(and ABC = American-Born Chinese) in contexts that seem to exceed their literal meanings. I did not resent it but I wondered what there was about Chinese culture that allowed the government to give my Berkeley neighbor, say, a 50 percent discount. Does being “overseas” mean something more for my imagined neighbor in China than being “overseas” means for me in Guam? 

Consider some possible implications. It may have been accurate to call Henry Kissinger an overseas American when he was in China pursuing ping-pong diplomacy but would such a designation be proper? I imagine that JFK would not have liked being called an overseas Irishman and I feel certain that Nancy Pelosi would reject being referred to as an overseas Italian. What does “Overseas Chinese” say about the Chinese? 

This locution together with perhaps more significant facts such as the worldwide urban enclaves of Chinese where the way of life differs little from that of the ancestors, i.e. Chinatowns, and the universal appeal of Chinese cooking, indicate that being Chinese takes precedence over being anything else. China is a country, true. But China is less a nation than it is a people.  

Thus, to view China as a peoples’ republic is to acknowledge, not so much its form of governance as much as the cohesiveness of its population. (Note that in the official designation the apostrophe is omitted.) Everywhere the Chinese have made their home, which is everywhere, they have brought their culture with them. And they live it, not just on St. Patrick’s Day or Columbus Day but every day. 

VI 

Finally, a few words about religion and morality.  

Throughout its long history China has known factional conflicts and bloody wars but it has never deployed warriors in order to defend a religious creed or to spread one. Despite this fact, religion lies deep in Chinese culture. (The word for heaven is ubiquitous—it also means sky—and simple, only four easy strokes.) 

Buddhism prevails but not exclusively, and because Buddhism is naturalistic and relatively thin on dogma, Buddhists are soft on heresy. For the Chinese, therefore, it is possible to be simultaneously Catholic, Baptist, Methodist and Buddhist. And thus, unlike religions of the book, Christianity in particular, that view history as divinely a guided linear procession through time towards “the city on the hill,” or the City of God, Chinese tend to view history as cyclic, spiraling endlessly toward a heaven/sky populated by ancestors. Religion is history and visa versa. 

To account for what I learned about Chinese ethics I sought a common thread among some disparate observations.  

In the year before I went to China, Jian Qing, Mao’s widow and guiding spirit of The Gang of Four, was formally criticized and sentenced for the part she played in the Cultural Revolution.  

A good friend and colleague confided a secret, that Anhui Normal University had expelled two girls who’d gotten pregnant: two out of 5,000-plus, or a dumbfounding rate of less than .04 percent.  

I once asked a friend, the mother of two teenage boys, how she and her peers taught good behavior. Since Communism holds religion to be “the opium of the people” and provides no alternative list of “commandments” I was curious to learn what moral standard is used.  

“After you’ve explained the proximate justifications and your son still wants to know why he really should not do something, what do you tell him?” I asked.  

She thought for a moment and delivered this forthright answer: “It’s not Chinese.”  

Begging the question? Not really. 

What connects criticism that results in a jail sentence, sexual abstinence among young adults living six or eight to a room, only flights of stairs and concrete walls separating men and women, and virtue/vice based on cultural heritage, plus, of course, saving face?  

I am not sure but allow me to offer a solid clue gleaned from an anecdote.  

I asked a Chinese friend to teach me the word for sin. He hesitated and I repeated “sin” several times. My friend took a small electronic dictionary from his hip pocket and that action told me all I needed to know.  

In Chinese the word for “sin” is not ready to hand. The way we think, i.e. without sin there is not guilt, without guilt there is not punishment, is reflected in our language.  

Chinese culture as I observed it, ignores sin, diminishes guilt but upholds punishment.  

We are so much alike and yet so different. 

Marvin Chachere is a San Pablo resident.

It is not yet light, but the day has started, led by a conspiracy of gizmos throughout the house, each doing its assigned duty. These devices are awake already and, untouched by human hands, start to organize my day. The heat is on. The coffee is brewing. NPR lulls me awake with overnight news, weather, and traffic reports.  

Getting up is like stepping on a conveyor belt. Lying in bed feels like time is standing still, and then I am launched into the day. Now is the time for me to engage in all those activities that require time be measured and allocated. I’m preparing to be on time, not to waste time, and to have a good time. The consciousness of time is like a net in which I am caught and carried along.  

Awareness of time constrains, but it can also create opportunities. Some years back, my younger daughter’s boyfriend worked at a bicycle shop. For his birthday I gave him an armband watch with a compass. He had never had a watch before. He told me later that once he had that watch, he started paying attention to time. He started coming to work on time, he became more effective. Before long, he got a promotion and, after a bit, became the manager.  

“What time is it?” may be the most asked question in the world. We are marinated in time, which seems to quietly lurk in the background—though at this time of year, as the days are getting shorter, awareness of time seems to move to the foreground. Time is so pervasive that we don’t even think of it as something. The gentle invisibility with which time envelops us tricks us into viewing time as soft and benign, and we forget the extraordinary power of time, which brings with it the inevitability of our own end. 

We believe we understand time, but the notion is difficult to grasp. If a finger is caught in a car door, it seems like an eternity before a rescuer appears. Precious hours with a lover seem to rush by. Even a small time change, a single hour, can have an awesome effect. We get discombobulated when the body clock and the external clock are desynchronized, whether from jet lag or the semi-annual ritual of clock changing.  

I welcomed the recent changing of the clocks, nuisance though it was, because it was a physical manifestation of this invisible force, putting me in touch with time. At least 37 timepieces under my jurisdiction needed to be changed: Wristwatches, radios, thermostat, kitchen clock, oven clock, telephones, computer clocks, car clocks ... the list seems endless. Some of these timers change time on their own. Others are automatically set by radio signal from Boulder. For most, changing the time is a fairly simple procedure. For a few, it’s not so easy—they require almost complete disassembly and fiddling with fingers. Setting them precisely is tricky. Synchronicity among all the clocks is hard.  

How simple time telling was when time was not sliced into fractions of seconds. One imagines waking with the sun and not needing anything or anyone to tell you to get up. Lightness and darkness were self-explanatory, with instructions for their use built into the very code of life. It is interesting to speculate when our ancestors began to anticipate the future in light of the past, and the application of present effort for future ends became not only respectable but necessary for survival. 

In the tiny village of the Carpathian Mountains where my grandmother lived, watches were a rarity. My grandmother, a World War I widow, somehow managed to raise six children without a timepiece of any kind. People woke in the morning when the cock crowed and the sun came up. In the evening, a kerosene lamp was lit when it got too dark. If you wanted to know the time, you looked up at the clock on the church tower, and everyone within hearing of the church bell was perfectly synchronized.  

When my parents bought me my first watch—when I was 12—it was both an honor and a vote of confidence. With the watch went responsibility; you were considered an adult, or at least on the way. The watch had one little knob for winding it up, and you could change the time by pulling the knob out to its final stop. This watch didn’t do anything fancy, but it was a rather nice watch with a reassuring tick—and it still keeps time very well.  

A timepiece handmade by a master craftsperson is a thing of exquisite beauty—a fusion of skill, science, and art. Today’s energy choices are endless. Wind-up, electrically driven, battery powered, wrist motion driven, light driven. Clocks that chirp, chime, play a melody, glow in the dark, work under water or in space. We’ve come a long way from the church tower clock. 

Given the core importance of time, the preoccupation many of us have with it is understandable. Time has been explored by the finest minds, from Einstein to Hawking to Greene. Scientists grapple with notions of chaos, entropy, different sizes of infinity, time travel, and other ideas that remain elusive to most of us.  

I’m awed by how dynamic and perishable time is. You leisurely stretch out on the grass, enjoying the sunshine, scrutinizing the daisies, while time roars by at warp speed. By the time you get up, that moment is thousands of miles away. 

Time is precious and irretrievable. Everyone’s year and month and day is equally long—so in a sense we all have the same amount of time. When we’re young, of course, we think our time is unlimited. And as I’m acutely aware, as we get older, time closes in. 

Since the measurement of time now is so precise—we can plan, coordinate, and synchronize time to the fraction of second—does it make a difference? Is time more valuable? Is life any better? Who can say. Time is going by, and the only control we have is to choose how to use it—and to be present, flowing in sync with our own rhythms.  

For Indian-Americans it seems there is much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. By and large they vote Democrat, and the Democrats have regained control of the House and the Senate. And the U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement just cleared the Senate by a whopping 85-12 margin. “Cold War blinkers have finally come off in India-U.S. ties,” rejoiced an editorial in The Times of India, remembering the days when no matter what the issue, the United States reflexively cold-shouldered India because it was perceived to be in the Soviet bloc. 

It should be time to start handing out the mithai (sweets). 

Maybe not so fast. For Indian-American Democrats, life actually got a little trickier. Sure, the Senate bill passed with bipartisan support, but all 12 no-votes came from Democrats. Like Sen. Barbara Boxer. She introduced what India considered a deal-breaker amendment. It linked the nuclear deal to India agreeing to “suspend military-to-military cooperation with Iran.” India complained that was both an unfair intrusion into its sovereignty and not part of the original deal between President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The amendment was defeated 59-38. Republicans didn’t strongly back the bill; only nine voted for it. But of the 29 Democrats who voted in support of it, two are heavyweights being touted as 2008 Presidential nominees who were probably trying to build up their tough-on-Iran street cred—Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. 

Sen. Clinton, incidentally, is also the co-chair of the Friends of India caucus. 

Another amendment that called for reaffirmation of the U.N. resolution that condemned India and Pakistan’s 1998 nuclear tests was routed 71-27. But, again worth noting, the man behind it was a Democrat—Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. While condemning nuclear testing may not be seen as specifically anti-India, resurrecting an old U.N. resolution can easily be seen as an effort to humiliate. 

That feeling was further underscored by another amendment on the bill offered by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), which went down 71-25. Support for this amendment included a by now familiar roster: Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin, Barack Obama and longtime Indian-American community friend Edward Kennedy. Et tu, Brute! 

The Senate and the House will meet next month to reconcile the amendments. The bill will need to be approved again by the two chambers before Bush signs it into law. 

The American opposition is in part about the fear of nuclear proliferation, and there’s no avoiding that a special deal is being cut for India. Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has already demanded “a level playing field for civil nuclear energy,” which should not be “country specific.” Good point, but Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns wasn’t buying it. “India is being treated here by the U.S. as a unique, exceptional country. We are not planning to confer this status on any other country. No other country will qualify,” he said frankly. 

Indian analysts are also seeing considerable pressure from the pro-Israel lobby to rein in India’s fast track to “exceptional status.” Israel wants the bill to be both carrot-and-stick to pressure India to sever its relationship with Iran. 

As the new Congress comes in, analyst T.V.R Shenoy writes in Rediff.com that Indian-Americans might find new roadblocks. It’s not that the Democratic majority is intrinsically anti-Indian. (Russ Feingold sugarcoated his poison-pill amendment by calling India “one of our most important partners”). But several of the newly elected members (e.g ,Sherrod Brown, senator-elect from Ohio) are strongly protectionist. “They may not care a toss for the arcana of nuclear pacts but they can, and do, care about the outsourcing of jobs to India,” Shenoy writes. “And that will make it just a bit harder to push through legislation that favors India.” 

Perhaps that is why the Senate passage has been greeted with cautious optimism by the Indian government, but without the exultant whoops that accompanied the earlier July House vote. When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came to the United States in 2005, he made it clear he was going not with a “begging bowl” but to apprise the American leadership of “India’s aspirations.” 

Here’s the quandary: Indian-Americans are generally Democrats, but the cheerleader-in-chief for India, at least as far as this nuclear deal goes, is President Bush. And when the House and Senate switch over to Democratic control, Indian-Americans are probably going to find themselves caught between their Indian roots and their American lives. 

Already one reader on the popular Indian news portal Rediff.com is demanding that the list of 12 no-voters on the bill be published prominently. “Traditionally, Indians, like all immigrants to U.S., favor Democrats. but if Democrats do not realize it, at least Indians in the United States are entitled to know,” he writes. 

Indians in India, meanwhile, see the deal as part of its ascension into the big boys club. As the Senate passed the bill, The Hindustan Times newspaper was celebrating this new muscle by organizing a leadership summit around the theme “India: the Next Global Superpower?” The next prize would be a seat on the U.N. Security Council. 

But the Democratic opposition hasn’t escaped notice. “The rising star of the Democrats, Senator Obama, has lent his name to an amendment that prevents India from storing fuel for its imported reactors,” pointed out M. J. Akbar, editor-in-chief of The Asian Age. And The Hindustan Times described it as “a clear indicator that doing business with a Democrat-dominated Congress will not be easy.” 

Now as the House and Senate bills move toward reconciliation, the Indian American community will no doubt be watching the Democrats it raised money for and voted for. 

Friends-of-India Democrats might find it’s not going to be enough to just show up at the Diwali function.  

Sandip Roy is an editor at New America Media and host of UpFront, NAM’s weekly radio program on KALW-FM 91.7 in San Francisco.

I suppose it’s the season that’s pulling my thoughts toward the organisms and processes of decay: molds, mildews, earthworms, compost in general. Certainly I’m encountering them a lot lately, in the garden and in the wilds. We’ve had just enough rain to encourage little brown mushrooms to pop up, and the more annoying fungi and their companions on plants and walls and books and shower curtains are getting bolder too. Our winter companions, fungi are often such agents of destruction that we can just plain hate them.  

We depend on fungi, though, directly in the kitchen and less directly in the cellar. Molds make cheese blue, or even bleu; yeasts make bread rise, and wine and beer ferment. Where would we be without those? And there are all those tasty edible mushrooms.  

But we also depend on fungi in their destructive role, uncomfortable though we find it. “Well rotted” is a gardener’s phrase, and as gardeners we get up close and personal with a process that’s more impersonal than our minds would prefer. The manure pile—product of another process we’d rather not have our noses in—and the composter are lively factories of soil-enriching stuff only because they’re also sites of destruction.  

The scent of finished compost is perfume to a gardener, and we can fork the pile over beforehand to see who’s working for us. We might find worms, or sowbugs, beetle larvae, all manner of crawlies. Looking closer, we see the mycelia of assorted fungi threading through the darkening mass.  

Walking in the woods just this time of year, the land damp but not yet sodden, we can see fungi as a delicate white rime on the edges of each fallen leaf in an understory pile. We can see the fruiting bodies of the fungi that are destroying the living trees as well as the fallen leaves and dead wood, and part of what they’re doing is turning living and formerly living things into nutrition and nursery for other living things.  

The forest lives longer than anything in it—though we don’t know for sure how long those intertwined nets of underground life live, come to think of it. As a hen is an egg’s way of making another egg, maybe the forest is the mycorrhizal web’s way of making more mycorrhizal webs.  

We cherish our individuality, and the individuality of the people and other beings we love. I, for one, won’t give up mine till they pry it from my cold dead fingers. But we live on others’ lives, and eventually other lives will feed on what’s left of us, all thanks to the organisms of decay. I still think death is a really bad idea but life on our level hasn’t come up with a way to live, to nurture itself, without it.  

So let us give thanks, however tentative and conditional, to the other side of the web that holds us all and promises a literal, if incomprehensible, continuation of all our lives beyond the beginning and the end of what we can perceive firsthand.  

Dear Matt, 

I read your column with interest, and I have a question for you: 

My wife and I own and live in a 1920s Berkeley stucco bungalow, ca. 2000 sq. ft., four bedrooms, two baths. It is presently insured for $233 per sq. ft. which my insurance agent assures me is an adequate figure. Do you agree? If not what would you suppose a more realistic number to be? This is a question that I haven’t seen addressed in your column, and I’ll bet that others of your readers might be interested. What do you think? 

Best Regards, 

— Roger Moss 

Dear Roger, 

The $466,000 coverage is for rebuilding the house and does not cover the land value of your property, which is reasonable unless you get hit by a bunker-buster. If you do get hit by a bunker-buster, you can sell your story to Rupert Murdock and make way more than you will from the insurance. Actually, I’d sell it to the movies. Oh, sorry. I got lost there, didn’t I? 

Construction costs vary a lot and it really depends on what you’re trying to build. You can certainly build in this area for $233/square foot BUT you won’t be able to build in the style many of us have come to know and demand here in the aesthetic capital of the universe. Some houses cost closer to $500/square foot but they’re pretty amazing (that’s a cool million to build 2,000 square feet). I think you’re actually pretty safe with the $233 but you might want to find out if the price per square foot drops much as you go up. I’d personally try for a bit higher but it depends on what you can afford and what you plan on building when that bomb falls on your house. Jeez, I hope you’re out shopping when that happens. 

Your friend, 

— Matt 

• • • 

Dear Matt, 

OK, I am going crazy here with making decisions that should be fairly simple. Through my process of asking a million questions about how to go about painting my shingled house, well, you guessed it correctly, everyone has such a strong “do, or don’t” point of view on how to paint a shingled house. 

One style of painting shingles would be to stain the shingles. The people who recommend this process of staining shingles seem to feel that this is the “only” way to go. Period. Other painting professionals who suggest painting shingles with a heavier, more traditional exterior paint, say that is the only way to go. What to do? 

I find myself driving around looking at homes to find what I like. Do you have any pro-con advice on the stain/paint debate when it comes to painting shingles? I want a beachie-cottagie, clean, and crisp look to my house, and don’t want to make a mistake in the process while making my decision. I keep hearing, once you make a decision and go with it, there is no turning back. 

Do I need to prime the house first if I am staining? I wouldn’t think so. Do I prime the shingles first if I am using a heavier exterior paint on the house.  

And lastly, I hear if you choose paint over stain, the house needs to be painted quite often, demanding more upkeep? Waaaaaaaaaa! 

What is your take on this seemingly controversial painting de lemma? 

Thank you, Susan Lissberger 

Owner Mill Valley Montessori 

Susan, you poor dear, 

I’m getting stressed out just hearing your woe. This is pretty tough.  

O.K. Here goes. To stain or to paint: 

Your friends who point out that you have to choose one or the other are dead-right. Stain is usually oily and will make painting nearly impossible for years to come. Naturally, once you’ve painted, you won’t  

be removing the paint unless you’re thinking about suicide, divorce or voluntary removal of a vital organ. 

Just pick one. Figure out what you like best. Either will be fine if you take the right steps. If you have really old shingle that’s looking pretty tired, painting is an option that I’ve been known to endorse (but I’m easily given to graft and am largely untrustworthy). 

I’m a bit snobbish about shingle myself and consider painting new shingle to be sort of sad, since it’s so darned pretty but hey, that’s me. I would tend to treat (not stain) shingle with Penofin or a similar  

preservative regularly and save the paint for when things have gone South. I also find the color change in shingle over time to be rather charming and natural. Preservative often have a UV protective element that slows this but eventually all shingle will change color. 

Pardon my teasing. I hope you don’t feel shingled out. 

Matt 

Have You Met Your Neighbors?  

Part 2 

I want to report and brag on two different neighborhood groups in Berkeley (both groups are made up of just the houses that comprise a city block). 

In one group, every house on the block, 12 altogether, are getting together and having automatic gas shut-off valves installed at every house. Needless to say, they’re getting a better price than doing it one at a time.  

The other group has one family that has volunteered to keep extra water (a 55 gallon barrel), food, and first aid supplies for the whole block. It’s stored next to their garage. This is in addition to each family’s kits and supplies.  

The common denominator here is that they have made the effort to meet each other. Congratulations to both groups! I’ll say it again: someone needs to get all the neighbors together—why not you? 

Larry Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and kit supply service. Call him at 558-3299, or visit www.quakeprepare.com.

The news headlines resound of doom and gloom for the real estate market; but what is the back story? Most of these articles refer to the national scene, and to certain parts of the country that are the hardest hit. “18 percent drop here, 16 percent drop there, no relief in sight.” 

In fact, severe corrections in average selling prices occur in areas where the income and employment figures are hard hit. The Bay Area has always been somewhat immune to these factors. Minor corrections have to occur when prices go up too fast, especially when the “flippers” exit the market. 

Flippers are, of course the folks who just buy and sell for a profit. Prospective homeowners have little to fear from this correction in the market, since most of these buyers will stay in their homes for at least 5 years.  

In the meantime, many prospective homeowners could benefit tremendously from the current market by being able to negotiate a purchase price for the first time in years. 

The current supply of homes is higher than it’s been in quite a while, enabling buyers to pick, choose, negotiate, and obtain great concessions.  

Then, sit back, get tax benefits from a mortgage deduction, enjoy the bargain you made and wait for the seller’s market to come back. It always has! 

Tim Cannon has been licensed in real estate in Berkeley since 1978. He is the owner/broker of BerkeleyHome Real Estate at the corner of Hopkins and Monterey. 

TUESDAY, NOV. 28 

CHILDREN 

First Stage Children’s Theater, “The Month Maker’s Magic” at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Cost is $5 at the door. www.juiamorgan.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Burning Man” Photographs and artifacts on display at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. to Dec. 26. 981-6100. 

“Honors Show” at the Worth Ryder Gallery in Kroeber Hall, UC Campus. Reception at 4 p.m.. Runs to Dec. 7. Gallery hours are Tues.-Fri. 1 to 4 p.m.  

FILM 

“Ici et ailleurs” with film curator Akram Zaatari in person at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sarah Katherine Lewis talks about “Indecent: How I Make It and Fake It as a Girl for Hire” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Emily Gottreich on “Mellah of Marrakesh: Jewish and Muslim Space in Morocco’s Red City” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

“Korean Painting: Its Aesthetics and Technique” with Min Pak at 4 p.m. at the IEAS Conference Room, 6th Flr., 2223 Fulton St. 642-2809. 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

CZ and the Bob Vivants at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Taj Mahal Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 29 

THEATER 

Azeem’s “Rude Boy” Wed.-Thurs. at 8 p.m. at The Marsh, 2120 Allston Way, through Dec. 14. Tickets are $15-$22. 415-826-5750. www.themarsh.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Don Halnon Johnson presents “Everyday Hopes, Utopian Dreams” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Stanley H. Brandes describes “Skulls of the Living, Bread to the Dead: The Day of the Dead in Mexico and Beyond” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

Bob Perelman and Mia You, poets, at 6:30 p.m. in the Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall, UC Campus. holloway.english.berkeley.edu 

Poetry Flash with Janine M. Dresser, Stewart Florshein and Marc Hofstadter at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. 525-5476. 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Javanese Gamelan at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

U.C. Jazz Ensembles at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $6. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.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.  

Joshua Eden at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

THURSDAY, NOV. 30 

EXHIBITIONS 

Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle Guided tour at 12:15 and 5:30 p.m. in Gallery 2, Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

FILM 

“Indies under Fire” A doumentary about independent bookstores, followed by a conversation with the director, Jacob Bricca, at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

“Best of the Fest Films & Videos with Michael Rhodes” at 7 p.m. in the Chapel at the Pacific School of Religion,1798 Scenic Ave. Free. 707-836-9586. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Mitchell Schwarzer introduces “Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Area: A History & Guide” at 7:30 p.m. at Builders Booksource, 1817 Fourth St. 845-6874. 

Dylan Schaffer on “Life, Death & Bialys: A Father/Son Baking Story” at 6:30 p.m. at the Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $10-$12. 549-6950. 

Georgina Kleege discusses “Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Spoken Word Swap Meet at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tom Russell, roots country troubadour at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Christy Dana Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Kingsbury/English, modern folk, rock at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

R & D, Joseph’s Bones at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. 

Steve Taylor-Ramírez at 7:30 p.m. at Prism Café, 1918 Park Blvd., Oakland. Donation $2-$5. 251-1453.  

Taj Mahal Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200.  

FRIDAY, DEC. 1 

THEATER 

Altarena Playhouse “ The Man Who Saved Christmas” at holiday family musical Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 p.m. at 1409 High St., Alameda, through Dec. 17. Tickets are $15-$18. 523-1553. www.altarena.org 

Aurora Theatre “Ice Glen” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Dec. 10. Tickets are $38. 843-4822.  

Berkeley Theater Troup “Pirate Winter Fest” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. Tickets are $15-$25. Fundraiser for the January musical. 647-5268. 

Berkeley Rep “All Wear Bowlers” at the Roda Theater, 2015 Addison St. through Dec. 23. Tickets are $45-$61. 647-2949. 

Berkeley Rep “Passing Strange” at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. through Dec. 3. Tickets are $45-$61. 645-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater, “And Then There Were None” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., at Moeser, El Cerrito, through Dec. 9. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132.  

Impact Theater “Jukebox Stories” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Dec. 10. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468.  

Masquers Playhouse “Company” by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through Dec. 16.. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org  

Naked Masks “Far Away” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. Sun. at 7 p.m. at Berkeley City Club. Tickets are $10-$20. Runs through Dec. 17. 883-9872. www.nakedmasks.org 

Shotgun Players “The Forest War” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Jan 14. Sliding scale $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The 99 Cent Show” Reception at 7 p.m. at Boontling Gallery, 4224 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 295-8881. 

“Small Works: A Members’ Show” opens at 6 p.m. at Mercury 20 Gallery, 25 Grand Ave. at Broadway, Oakland.  

FILM 

Janus Films: “The Rules of the Game” at 7 p.m. and “Samurai Rebellion” at 9:10 at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Blue Collar Poems-Journeyman Songs” with Armando Garcia-Davila and David Madgalene, bilingual poetry and prose, at 7:30 p.m. at PSR Chapel, Pacific School fo Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. 707-836-9586. 

“California as Muse: The Art of Arthur & Lucia Mathews” A walk through the exhibition with curator Harvey L. Jones at 7 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200. www.museumca.org 

“How We Almost Lost the Marais” A slide-show with Leonard Pitt on the historic district of Paris, at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Jennifer Abrahamson will discuss her new book, “Sweet Relief: The Story of Marla Ruzicka” the human rights activist who was killed by a road-side bomb in Iraq, at 7:30 p.m. at Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Tickets are $10-$12 at independent bookstores. 415-255-7296 ext. 253. www.globalexchange.org  

Sabrina Orah Mark and Susan Maxwell, poets at 7:30 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble Fall Concert at 7:30 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, Berkeley High School campus. Tickets are $3-$7, available only at the door, Free for BHS students and staff. 528-4074.  

Tallis Scholars at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way Pre-performance talk at 7 p.m. Tickets are $46. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

“Hasta Cuando?” The Other Face of Mexico” with singer, stroyteller and activist Francisco Herrera at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, Marian Hall, 2nd flr., 2125 Jefferson St. (Not wheelchair accessible). 845-4740. 

Young Musicians Program Sing-Along Messiah at 7:30 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $15. 642-2686. 

Carne Cruda at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $5-$7. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Jim Ryan in Trio at 8 p.m. at 1510 8th St., Oakland. Donation $5-$15. sfjazzmusic@yahoo.com 

Culture Shock and Miss Kim’s World Hip-Hop Showcase at 8 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $12-$18. 800-521-8311. 

John Santos Quartet “Standards the Latin Way” at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Kenny Washington & His Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Albany Music Fun Benefit with Rhythm Bound and Albany High School Jazz Band at 8 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Patrick Landeza, Hawaiian Christmas celebration at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

The Ravines and Stevie Barsotti at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Chow Nasty, The Dead Hensons at 9 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

Nels Cline Singers, Rova Saxaphone Quartet at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Taj Mahal Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200.  

SATURDAY, DEC. 2 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Los Mapaches, traditional songs from the Andes, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Fratello Marionettes “The North Pole Review” at 2 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, Montclair Branch, 1687 Mountain Blvd. 482-7810. 

“Little Nemo in Circusland” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $8-$14. 925-798-1300. www.juiamorgan.org 

Elmwood Theater Matinee Benefit for local schools showing “Sponge Bob Square Pants” at 10 a.m. and noon, and noon on Sun. Cost is $2. Sponsored by Elmwood merchants. 843-3794. 

Andy Z with musical pirates, squirrels, dinosaurs and more at 11 a.m. at Studio Grow, 1235 10th St. Cost is $6. 526-9888. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Winter Bright” ceramic sculptures by Elizabeth Orleans, and acrylic paintings by Rosalie Cassell and Diane Rusnak. Reception at 4 p.m. at the Community Art Gallery, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 2450 Ashby Ave. Exhibit runs through Jan. 5. 204-1667.  

THEATER 

Living Arts Playback Theater at 8 p.m. at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. Sliding scale $12-$18. Reservations recommended. 655-5186, ext. 25. 

FILM 

Janus Films: “Beauty and the Beast” at 5 p.m. and Jacques Rivette “La belle noiseuse” at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lisa Robertson, Stephen Ratcliffe, Marvin White and others read at 2 p..m. at Small Press Distribution Open House 1341 7th St. at GIlman. 524-1668. 

Bay Area Poets Coalition open reading at 3 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Lodge dining hall, 1320 Addison St.Park on the street, not in Lodge parking lot. 527-9905. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Dulcimates, dulcimer music at 3 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Free. 228-3218.  

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra presents Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Copland’s “American Songs” and others at 8 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free, donations welcome. www.bcco.org 

The Maybeck Trio, Roy Zajac, clarinet, Elaine Kreston, ‘cello, Jerome Kuderna, piano, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. TIckets are $8-$12. 549-3864 www.trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra performs Bach’s complete “Christmas Oratorio” at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $29-$67. 415-392-4400. www.philharmonia.org 

Parranda Navideña, with the Venezuelan Music Project at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $13-$15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Zoe & Dave Ellis at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Anoush’s Last Farewell Dance with Brass Menazheri at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Balkan dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Culture Shock and Miss Kim’s World Hip-Hop Showcase at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Tickets are $12-$18. 800-521-8311. 

Sotaque Baiano, Brazilian, at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $10. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

David Serotkin and Brad “The Dudeboy” Rogers at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Fishtank Ensemble at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Kenny Washington Quartet at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12-$18. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Ben Adams Jazz Group at 9 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Mirthkon, Kids & Hearts at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Jean White and Friends, folk, blues, at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7-$10. 558-0881. 

Dekoiz, The Abuse, 2nd Class Citizen, Violation at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, DEC. 3 

CHILDREN 

“Little Nemo in Circusland” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $8-$14. 925-798-1300. www.juiamorgan.org 

Freddi Zeiler introduces “A Kid’s Guide to Giving” at 4 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Los Hilos de la Vida: Threads of Life” Latina themed folkloric story quilts by women and children from Anderson Valley opens with a reception at noon at Women’s Cancer Resource Center Gallery, 5741 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. 601-4040, ext. 111. 

“Generations in Wood” Art Exhibition at Addison Street Windows Gallery, 2018 Addison St. Sidewalk reception at 4 p.m. Exhibition runs to Jan. 14. 981-7541.  

“The Gift of Art” Group show of small art works through Jan. 7 at Cecile Moochnek Gallery, 1809-D Fourth St. www.cecilemoochnek.com 

Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle Guided tour at 1 and 3 p.m. in Gallery 2, Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

FILM 

Beat-Era Cinema “Tarzan and Jane Regained ... Sort Of” at 2 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

Yiddish Films “Mamele” at 3 p.m. and “Kitka and Davka in Concert” at 4 p.m. at the JCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Pen Oakland-Josephine Miles National Literary Awards, hosted by Tennessee Reed and Lucha Corpi, at 2 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, West Auditorium, 125 14th St. Free. 228-6775. 

Aurora Script Club with Paul Heller and Lauren Grace on Chekov’s “The Seagull” at 7:30 p.m. at The Aurora Theater. 843-4822. 

“Ira Nowinski’s San Francisco” a panel discussion with Jack Hirschman, Malcom Margolin and Ira Nowinski at 3 p.m. at Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

Readings of New Books from Zeitgeist Press at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Poetry Flash with Jennifer K. Sweeney and Clare Rossini at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra presents Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms,” Copland’s “American Songs” and others at 4:30 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free, donations welcome. www.bcco.org 

The Temescal Trio “Music for Marfan” Benefit Concert, chamber music at 3 p.m. at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. 415-665-7244. 

Sorelle, woman’s vocal ensemble performs choral selections at 3 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. Free. 228-3218.  

California Bach Society “ In Dulci Jubilo” at 4 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. TIckets are $10-$35. Receptionfollows. 415-262-0272;. www.calbach.org  

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra performs Bach’s complete “Christmas Oratorio” at 7 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $29-$67. 415-392-4400. www.philharmonia.org 

Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble “Voices in Peace” music from the Americas at 3 p.m. at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, Oakland. Tickets are $15-$20. 531-8714. www.vocisings.com 

Cantare Con Vivo performs Bach, Gabrieli, Boito and Grieg at 3 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 27th and Broadway, Oakland. Tickets are $10-$32. 925-798-1300. 

The Takacs Quartet at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Pre-performance talk at 2 p.m. Tickets are $42. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

Handel’s “Messiah” Sing Along at 6 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Suggested donation $10. 525-0302. www.uucb.org 

Mercury Dimes, Pat Nevin and others in a benefit for the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 1305 Shattuc Ave. Cost is $8. 548-3113. 

Twang Cafe featuring Brian Joseph and Lila Nelson at 7:30 p.m. at Epic Arts, 1923 Ashby Ave. Cost is $5-$10, all ages welcome. www.twangcafe.com 

The Bills at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Bill Jackman Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Jeannie Cheatham at 4:30 at the Jazzschool. Cost is $15. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Boots Riley, Ise Lyfe, Ras Mo and others at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $7-$10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Sam Misner & Megan Smith at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

MONDAY, DEC. 4 

EXHIBITIONS 

“The Quarterly at Latham Square” Work by Raymond Haywood, in the lobby at Latham Square, 1611 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Open weekdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. 763-9425. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Gregory M. Franzwa on the transcontinetal road from Manhattan to San Francisco “The Lincoln Highway” at 7 p.m. at the Rockridge Branch of the Oakland Public Library, 5366 College Ave. 597-5017. 

Actors Reading Writers “Christmas Past,” works by Truman Capote and Dylan Thomas at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. 

Amy Gorman will talk about “Aging Artfully: 12 Profiles: Visual and Performing Women Artist Aged 85-105” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Last Word Poetry Series with Janell Moon, Jeanne Wagner and Alice Templeton at 7 p.m. at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave. 649-1320. 

Poetry Express with Hassan Jones-Bay and Jamie K at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

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

MUSIC FROM THREE GREAT COMPOSERS 

The Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra will present Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Aaron Copland’s American Songs and the world premiere of Julian White’s She Walks in Beauty, as well as excerpts from The Children’s Hour and Five Parables, at 8 p.m. Saturday at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Admission is free, but donations are welcome. www.bcco.org. 

BAY AREA ARCHITECTURE 

Author Mitchell Schwarzer will discuss his new book, Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Are: A History and Guide, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Builders Booksource, 1817 Fourth St. 845-6874. 

CLASSICS IN EL CERRITO 

The Cerrito Theater continues its series of weekend classics with Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain (1952) at 6 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. All ages welcome. 10070 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. www.picturepubpizza.com. 

INDY BOOKSTORES 

‘UNDER FIRE’ 

A documentary about the plight of independent bookstores, Indies Under Fire, will be screened and followed by a discussion with director Jacob Bricca, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday Nov. 30 at Black Oak Books. The film tells the stories of three stores fighting for survival: In Capitola, a developer’s plans for a new Borders prompts fierce debate; in Palo Alto, the closing of Printers Inc. Bookstore prompts a local citizen to mortgage his house to save the store, and in Santa Cruz, protests and vandalism ensue when a new Borders moves into town. 1491 Shattuck Ave. 486-0698. 

As the holidays begin, so do the special performances that feature the kinds of song associated with the season, and other musical events that accent its profundity. This coming Sunday, Dec. 3, is Advent Sunday; many concerts are scheduled, some spilling over into the following week. All are an antidote to the canned Christmas music that provides a soundtrack to the rounds of shopping. 

If you’re a singer, and Davies Hall is too vast, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, 1 Lawson Road, is hosting their Messiah Sing-A-Long this Sunday evening at 6 p.m., something of a local tradition. Led by musical director Brian Baker, who oversees a distinguished music program throughout the year, with orchestra and new organist Chris Nordwall accompanying, the church invites all to join in an ensemble to sing Handel’s masterwork. Bring scores or borrow them at the Sing-A-Long for this more intimate local event that also features plenty of free parking.  

East Bay favorite Cantare Con Vivo will combine two children’s choirs from their after-school musical programs with their Chamber Ensemble and 40-voice chorale, accompanied by full orchestra, at 3 p.m. on Sunday at the First Presbyterian Church, 27th Street and Broadway, Oakland, and at 7:30 p.m. Monday, at the Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church, in a program including Gabrieli’s “Jubilate Deo,” Bach’s “Singet dem Herrn,” The Credo from Robert Ray’s “Gospel Mass,” selections from Grieg, Howells, Poulenc, Rutter, Carol Jennings, Mervyn Walter and others--and, by popular demand, a repeat performance of last year’s “A Musicological Journey through the Twelve Days of Christmas.” And the audience is invited to join choirs, orchestra and organ in singing carols and other seasonal songs. 

The other towering monument of choral music for Christmas, rivalling Handel’s “Messiah,” Bach’s “Passion According To St. Matthew,” will be the basis for the Philharmonia Baroque’s “A Bach Christmas,” featuring the Bay Area’s premiere early music ensemble playing period instruments, conducted by artistic director Nicholas McGegan, with the Philharmonia Chorale, directed by Bruce LaMott, Saturday and Sunday Dec. 2 and 3. 7 p.m., at the First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way, with soloists Suzanne Ryden (soprano), Elizabeth Turnbull (mezzo-soprano), Michael Colvin (tenor, The Evangelist), Thomas Cooley (tenor), and Nathaniel Watson (baritone). 

The California Bach Society will present In Dulci Jubilo, music by Charpentier and Buxtehude, English carols, French noels and German Wemachtslieder, Sunday at 4 p.m. at St. Marks, 2330 Bancroft Way. Conducted by artistic director Paul Flight, the program features Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s “Mess de Minuit pour Noel,” based on noels. 

Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble, conducted by Jude Navari, will perform their sixth annual Voices In Peace, “Music of Passion, Mystery and Joy from the Americas,” on Sunday at 3 at the Lake Merritt United Methodist Church and Friday Dec. 8 at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal, 2330 Bancroft Way, featuring Villa-Lobos’ “Mass in Honor of St. Sebastian,” traditional Latin carols, shape note hymns from North America, and premieres of local composer Gabriela Lena Frank’s newly-arranged “Shouts and Lullabies, American Folk Songs for Christmas.”  

The Takacs Quartet, whose Decca recording of Beethoven’s cycle of quartets was just hailed by Gramophone magazine as “a modern-day benchmark,” will perform Quartet in A Minor, Opus 18, Number 5; Quartet in C Minor, Opus 18, Number 4; and Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132, at 3 p.m. Sunday in Hertz Hall on the UC campus, presented by CalPerformances ($42; discounts available. 642-9988 or calperfs@uc.berkeley.edu). Founded by students of the Franz Liszt Academy in Hungary in 1975, the Quartet has been in residence at the University of Colorado at Boulder since 1983, and presently features cofounders Karoly Schran (violin) and Andras Fejer (cello), as well as Edward Dusinberre (violin) and, newly appointed on viola, Geraldine Walter, long principal with the San Francisco Symphony. 

Temescal Trio—Madeline Prager (viola), Karen Wells (clarinet), John Burke (piano)—will perform a benefit, Music For Marfan, Sun. Dec. 3, 3:15 p.m. at St. John’s Church, 2727 College Ave., with selections from Shostakovich, Brahms and Mozart, followed by a dessert buffet. Marfan is an inheritable condition that affects the connective tissue in one in five Americans. Admission for concert and buffet, $20. (415) 665-7244. 

Altarena Playhouse on High St. in Alameda is presenting an unusual Christmas musical, The Man Who Saved Christmas, Fridays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m. through Dec. 17. With book, music and lyrics by Ron Lytle, who wrote last year’s local smash hit, Oh My Godmother!, The Man Who Saved Christmas tells of toy baron A. C. Gilbert, who manufactured Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs, and his crusade against a World War One government ban on toy sales. (Tickets $15-18. 523-1553.) 

The second weekend of Advent, Dec. 8-10, features the California Revels at the Oakland Scottish Rite Theater by Lake Merritt, with a program featuring song and dance of 19th century Quebec, and the Revels’ popular singalong and line dancing. The Berkeley Ballet Theater presents The Nutcracker Dec. 8-10 at The Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave.  

And in San Francisco, Other Minds, founded by former KPFA programmer Charles Amirkhanian, presents their 12th Festival of New Music at the Jewish Community Center, featuring Emeryville composer Daniel David Feinsmith, as well as composers from Australia, Scandinavia and France, and instrumentalists and ensembles from the Bay Area (Del Sol String Quartet, Feinsmith Quartet) and around the world. For more information, see www.otherminds.org or call (415) 292-1233. 

Photograph Courtesy of Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble  

Members of the Voci Women’s Vocal Ensemble preparing for the Voices In Peace holiday concert this Sunday at the Lake Merritt United Methodist Church and on Friday, Dec. 8, at St. Mark’s Episcopal in Berkeley. 

PEN Oakland’s 16th Annual Josephine Miles Literary Awards and 10th Annual Literary Censorship Award will be presented this Sunday at the Oakland Public Library. 

The event, hosted by authors Tennessee Reed and Lucha Corpi, is free and includes reception and booksigning with the authors.  

In addition to the literary awards, a lifetime achievement award will be given to Joyce Jenkins, publisher of the Bay Area’s Poetry Flash, and a Censorship Award to author and television news journalist Bill Moyers. 

“We started these awards because we noticed that many of the literary awards were not multi-cultural and mainly were given to men, and we wanted our awards to represent the Bay Area,” said Kim McMillon, PEN Oakland board member. “Some of the best writing talent in the world comes out of the Bay Area, and especially Oakland, with Jack London, Ishmael Reed, Gertrude Stein and many other women writers and people of color.” 

The award-winning authors, who come from various parts of the country, were chosen by the PEN Oakland board. 

This year’s award winners include four books of poems: 

• Mona Lisa Saloy’s Red Beans and Ricely Yours, which chronicles the author’s life in the 7th Ward in downtown New Orleans; 

• Jennifer Bishop’s Remain; 

• Richard Silberg’s Deconstruction of the Blues, and; 

• A.D. Winans’ This Land is Not My Land, which presents a soldier’s-eye view of American imperialism in Panama. 

“There is a real strong emphasis on poetry this year,” McMillon said. “You always go to the bookstores and try to find poetry and hear that poetry doesn’t sell. We wanted to focus on poetry because it’s not about selling, it about representing American literature and the excellence of multi-cultural literature. It is about looking at what is happening in America and our place in the world. It is a really wonderful opportunity to say hello to a lot of different genres and look at how we feel about life here.” 

Other award winners this year include: 

• Dave Hilliard’s Spirit of the Panther, which examines the life of the cofounder and leader of the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton; 

•Gerald Haslam’s Valley, which explores racism and environmental issues in California’s Central Valley; 

• Mike Madison’s, Blithe Tomato, which offers a view of the food industry from the viewpoint of a small-scale farmer in the Sacramento Valley; 

• Eric Gansworth’s Mending Skins, a novel. 

Joyce Jenkins will be honored with the group’s first ever Pen Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award for her work on behalf of the local and national literary community through Poetry Flash.  

“I’ve known Joyce Jenkins for 12 years and I know how hard Poetry Flash struggles,” McMillon said. “It’s in our backyard and it’s the best place we have to know what’s going on in the poetry scene. It’s a beautiful publication and it’s a shame that something so beautiful has to struggle so hard.” 

PBS television journalist Bill Moyers will receive the PEN Oakland Censorship Award for his work through attacks on his objectivity on the PBS program “NOW with Bill Moyers.” 

PEN Oakland, a Bay Area Chapter of the International Organization of Poets, Essayists, and Novelists was founded in 1989. Josephine Miles, in whose honor organization’s literary awards are presented, was poet, critic, and professor of English at the UC Berkeley.  

PEN Oakland’s 16th Annual Josephine Miles Literary Awards and 10th Annual Literary Censorship Award will be presented Sunday, Dec. 3, from 2 p.m.–5 p.m. at the Oakland Public Library Main Auditorium, 125 14th St., Oakland. 

FOR DADDY V 

By Mona Lisa Saloy 

My Daddy 

loved three families 

ours was the second. 

He outlived two wives, 

buried them in a flow of 

tears and beer 

long as the Mississippi. 

Mostly, I remember lots of 

hugs and kisses, snuggling 

next to Daddy during the  

nightly news on TV after 

dinner daily, or him 

dancing with my dark chocolate Mother 

all night at the Autocrat Club 

on St. Bernard Avenue. 

On Fridays in season, we had crawfish 

by the pound, oyster loaves, or 

hot sausage sandwiches at Mulés Restaurant 

with draft beer we took home in 

a stainless steel pot that 

sealed like a canning jar. 

Springtime brought cawain, 

and daddy’s expert taking of its head, 

then gently removing the neck gland— 

a purple thing of poison if burst. 

He hung the headless turtle, it still 

kicking for three days on the wooden fence, 

even its head snapped for hours in the grass. 

Never lost a cawain, its 21 meat flavors tasting 

of beef, pork, fish, and then some. 

The turtle eggs, Mother’s favorite, promised 

youth, health, and sexy eyes, Daddy said. 

When he shooed aunts, uncles, and Mother 

out of the kitchen, he blended herbs for 

sauté and his special roux before stewing. 

Big Sunday breakfasts with galait— 

stove-top shortening bread—and homemade 

cocoa, omelets whipped just so, to let Mother  

sleep late 

then wake us for church. he wouldn’t come, 

just said “pray for me, and I’ll get to glory.” 

Go long so. 

From Mona Lisa Saloy’s Red Beans and Ricely Yours, recipient of a 2006 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award.

I’m stretching the boundaries of “East Bay” because I just like this odd tree. I first encountered it a few years back, along a dirt road east of Fairfield, where we look for mountain plovers. I spotted a number of unlikely objects on the grassy shoulder: Osage oranges, hedgeballs, Indiana brains, Maclura pomifera fruit. They were strewn along the roadside for yards, under a row of little deciduous trees.  

The trees didn’t look like much: short, scruffy, a bit thorny, nearly bald. The fruit on the ground was a startling contrast. Each was a bit bigger than a softball, densely textured in little geometric fissures, bright limey-chartreuse. When I picked up a few, they were slightly sticky, heavy, and had a mild citrus scent with just a hint of sour latex. The stickiness was odd, but I found them pleasant to handle. I brought some home just to look at. 

They’re notorious for having little use; “not worth a bushel of hedgeballs” is one of those Midwesternisms that William Least Heat-Moon quotes in his chapter on the tree in PrairyErth. Some small animals will chew through the pulpy fruit to get at the seeds, but nothing seemed to have been interested in the lot I saw lying unmolested on the road. Herein lies a puzzle.  

Plants need not only pollinators but seed dispersal agents. They can use wind (thistles, maples, cattails) or water, but many use animals, by attaching burrs to our hides or inviting burial in caches by birds, or by hitching a ride through digestive tracts via fruit.  

Some horses will eat Osage oranges, though supposedly cattle choke on it, and nothing here seems to like it. All that pulp, so biologically expensive to make—what’s it for?  

Connie Barlow, in The Ghosts of Evolution, advances a pretty notion: It’s among the North American plants whose seed dispersers, our missing megafauna, are extinct.  

North America used to have horses, long before Europeans brought them back. We—well before there was “we”—had elephants and rhinos, or something like them, and all manner of super-hyenas and saber-toothed beasties and outsized thingatheriums. Some were equipped to bolt Osage oranges (and avocados, and pawpaws) and leave whole seeds in their dung, far from the parent plant.  

When they died out, the plants that had evolved with them found themselves in reduced circumstances, their former broad estates shrunk pitifully. Osage orange was a hot trade item among native Americans because its tough and resilient wood made excellent clubs and bows (it’s also called bois d’arc, or, phonetically, “bowdark”) and it grew only in a small part of the southern Midwest.  

The live tree regained it some of its former range because it makes a good hedge, “pig-tight, horse-high, bull-strong,” in places without enough forest for fence rails or stones for walls. Before barbed wire, it was the best and cheapest barrier available, and it thrives far north and west of its pre-European range—in Indiana, for example. And, as a souvenir of someone’s Midwestern roots I guess, in Solano County. 

Photograph by Ron Sullivan 

A few Osage orange fruits persist on thorny winter-deciduous branches.

TUESDAY, NOV. 28 

Tuesday is for the Birds An early morning walk for birders through Bay Area parklands. Bring water, sunscreen, binoculars and a snack. This week we will visit the Crockett Hills. For meeting location or to borrow binoculars, call 525-2233.  

Anti-Torture Teach-in and Vigil with Gregory Wood at 12:30 p.m. at Boalt Hall, School of Law, UC Campus. 649-0663. 

Save the Oaks at the Stadium will hold an emergency protest at 6 p.m. before the city council meeting. Meet in front of Old City Hall, at the corner of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way and Allston Way. Bring signs. Stand up for the oaks! 841-3493. 

Self-Acupressure Techniques for holiday stress relief at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Center for African Studies, Graduate Student Fall Lecture at 4 p.m. at 652 Barrows Hall, UC Campus. 642-8338. 

ASUC Benefit Art Sale from noon to 5 p.m. at ASUC Art Studio, Lower Sproul Plaza, UC Campus, through Dec. 2. 642-3065. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at the 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. 

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

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 29 

“We Voted! Now What?” with State Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, at 1:30 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst. Sponsored by the Gray Panthers. 548-9696. 

“Sikh-Americans and 9/11: Five Years Forward, a Hundred Years Back” with Jaideep Singh of the Sikh American Legal Defense Fund at 2 p.m. at the Bade Museum, Holbrook Bldg., Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. 849-8244. 

Woman’s Snowshoe Workshop at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

New to DVD “An Inconvenient Truth” at 7 p.m. at the JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Video Games for Grandmas and Grandchildren Sponsored by the American Association of University Women at 7 p.m. at Claremont House, 500 Gilbert St., Claremont Ave., Oakland. 531-4275. 

Berkeley School Volunteers Training workshop for volunteers interested in helping the public schools, from 3 to 4 p.m. at 1835 Allston Way. 644-8833. 

Healthy Eating Habits Seminar at 6:30 p.m. at New Moon Opportunities, 378 Jayne Ave. 465-2524. 

Dream Workshop at 1 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

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. 

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 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 

THURSDAY, NOV. 30 

“Indigenizing the Museum” with Majel Boxer, UC doctoral candidate and member of the Sisseton/Wahpeton Dakota at 7 p.m. at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum, UC Campus. 643-7649. 

“Indies under Fire” A doumentary about independent bookstores, followed by a conversation with the director, Jacob Bricca, at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Best Of The New Way Media Fest Films & Videos With Michael Rhodes at 7 p.m. at PSR Chapel at the Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave. 707-836-9586. 

“Military Build-up in Guam” A report on issues of cultural preservation, environment, indigenous rights, self-determination, and efforts to address how US military realignment and corporate globalization schemes impede attempts to decolonize, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave.Cost is $5-$10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Project BUILD Holiday Party to support youth empowerment in under-resourced communities at 5:30 p.m. at Sequyah Country Club, 4550 Heafey Rd., Oakland. RSVP to 650-688-5846. 

Parenting the Highly Sensitive Child at 6 p.m. at Habitot Children’s Museum. Registration required. 647-1111, ext. 14. 

Natural Holiday Gift Wrapping Bring a small gift in a box and learn how to wrap without tape, at 7 p.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

FRIDAY, DEC. 1 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

“Hasta Cuando?” The Other Face of Mexico” with singer, stroyteller and activist Francisco Herrera at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker School, Marian Hall, 2nd flr., 2125 Jefferson St. (Not wheelchair accessible). 845-4740. 

Berkeley Theater Troup “Pirate Winter Fest” at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. Tickets are $15-$25. Fundraiser for the January musical. 647-5268. 

“The Motorcycle Diaries” at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., between Broadway and Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

Bay Area Green Health Care Awards at 7:30 p.m. at McKinnon Institute, 2940 Webster St., Oakland. Tickets are $15. RSVP to 558-7285. 

ASUC Benefit Art Sale from noon to 5 p.m. at ASUC Art Studio, Lower Sproul Plaza, UC Campus, through Dec. 2. 642-3065. 

Bay Area Homeschoolers’ Craft Fair from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. Donation of $3 and up goes to the Daytime Women’s Drop In Shelter. 

SATURDAY, DEC. 2 

Help Restore Cerrito Creek Plant natives and help to control erosion. Meet at 10 a.m. at Creekside Park, south end of Santa Clara St., El Cerrito. Wear clothes that can get dirty and shoes with good traction. Heavy rain cancels. 848-9358.  

Berkeley Farmers’ Market Holiday Crafts Fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Center St. at Martin Luther King Jr. Way with local craftspepole, live music and prepared food. Benefits the Ecology Center. 548-3333.  

East Bay Sanctuary Covenant’s Crafts Fair Sat. and Sun. from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way. Proceeds benefit local refugee work, women’s coops in Central America, Africa and Asia, and street children in Haiti. 540-5907. 

Palestinian Handicraft Sale From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Berkeley Friends' Meeting, 2151 Vine, with embroidery, olive oil, olive woodcrafts, hand blown glass and ceramics, soaps, honey, textiles and more. 548-0542. 

Fungus Fair, a celebration of wild mushrooms from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200.  

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour “Historic Claremont Hotel and Gardens” at 10 a.m. Cost is $8-$10. To register and learn meeting place call 848-0181. www.cityofberkeley.info/histsoc/ 

“How to Prune and Divide Perennials” With Aerin Moore at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave., off Seventh St. 644-2351. 

“Lead Safety for Remodeling, Repair, and Painting” This class leads to a Notice of Completion in training and meets the minimum training requirements for some federally assisted housing including Section 8. From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Alameda County Lead Poisoning Prevention Program Main Office, 2000 Embarcadero, #300, Oakland. Call for cost and to register. 567-8280. www.aclppp.org/ledtrain.shtml 

Sick Plant Clinic Dr. Robert Raabe, plant pathologist, and Dr. Nick Mills, entomologist, will diagnose plant illnesses and recommend remedies. Bring a piece of the plant in a securely sealed container. A zipperlock bag is ideal. From 9 a.m. to noon at Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755. 

Small Press Distribution Open House from noon to 4 p.m. with music and author readings and book sale, 1341 7th St. at GIlman. 524-1668. 

Healing Circle for Animals at 4 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Cost is $25. 525-6155. 

Produce Stand at Spiral Gardens Food Security Project from 1 to 6 p.m. at the corner of Sacramento and Oregon St. 

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

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

Around the World Tour of Plants at 1:30 p.m., Thurs., Sat. and Sun. at UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. 643-2755.  

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

SUNDAY, DEC. 3 

Richmond Art Center Holiday Arts Festival with silent art auction, art and craft sale, art activities for children and more, from noon to 5 p.m. at the Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave. at 25th St. 620-6772. www.richmondartcenter.org 

Fungus Fair, a celebration of wild mushrooms from noon to 5 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. Cost is $5-$8. 238-2200.  

Recycled Craft Sale sponsored by The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave., near Dwight Way. 548-3402.  

Benefit for Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters with live music and buffet at 6 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 1305 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $8. 548-3113. 

People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo Banquet honoring organizations and leaders for peace, equality, labor and immigrant rights, at 2 p.m. at the Snow Building, 9777 Golf Links Rd., Oakland. Cost is $40, reservations required. 251-1050.  

“The Divine Feminine in the World’s Religions: Hinduism and Buddhism” with Anna Matt of the GTU at 9:30 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. 525-0302, ext. 306. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Lama Palzang and Pema Gellek on “Sacred Tibet” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, DEC. 4 

“Corte Madera Watershed” with Charles Kennard at the Friends of Five Creeks meeting at 7 p.m. at the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave. Free and open to all. 848-9358. www.fivecreeks.org 

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

Sleep Soundly Seminar at 6:30 p.m. at Oakland Public Library, Lakeview Branch, 550 El Embarcadero.  

ONGOING 

UN Association’s UNICEF & Fair Trade Gift Center Closing Sale, Tues.-Sat. noon to 5 p.m. to Dec. 16, 1403 Addison St. 849-1752. 

Holiday Food Drive Sponsor a Food Drive at your business, school, place of worship or community center. Help the Food Bank reach its goal of collecting food for families in need during the holiday season. 635-3663, ext. 318. www.accfb.org  

Magnes Museum Docent Training Open to all interested in Jewish art and history. Classes begin Jan. 18th. For information contact cultural.arts@sbcglobal.net 

CITY MEETINGS 

City Council meets Tues., Nov. 28, at 7 p.m in City Council Chambers. 981-6900.  

Planning Commission meets Wed., Nov. 29, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Janet Homrighausen, 981-7484. 

FRIDAY, NOV. 24 

CHILDREN 

“Little Nemo in Circusland” at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $8-$14. 925-798-1300.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Whitework Embroidery” at Lacis Museum of Lace and Textiles, 2982 Adeline St. Runs through Feb. 5. Hours are Mon.-Sat. noon to 6 p.m. Free. lacismuseum.org 

“The Black Panthers” Photographs by Stephen Shames and posters from the archives of Alden Kimbrough on display at the Oakland Asian Resource Gallery, 310 8th St., Oakland., through Nov. 30. 532-9692. 

The Photography of Matt Heron “Voting Rights: The Southern Struggle, 1964-1965” on display in the Catalog Lobby, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., through Jan. 6. 981-6100. 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “Ice Glen” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Dec. 10. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Azeem’s “Rude Boy” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at The Marsh, 2120 Allston Way, through Nov. 25. Tickets are $15-$22. 415-826-5750. www.themarsh.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater, “And Then There Were None” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., at Moeser, El Cerrito, through Dec. 9. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132.  

Impact Theater “Jukebox Stories” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Dec. 10. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Masquers Playhouse “Company” by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through Dec. 16.. Tickets are $18. 232-4031.  

Women’s Will “Week 2” Eight short plays, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sinn. at 3 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Tickets $15-$25. 420-0813. www.womanswill.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Golden Dragon Acrobats Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sun. at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $11-$42. 642-9988.  

Stompy Jones at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Shana Morrison, Celtic funk and roll, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Ellen Honert Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

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

somethingfour, Cosmic Mercy, Race at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. 

Re: Ignition, Holy Ghost Circuit, Alexic, 3606 at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Stanley at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Tuck & Patti at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, NOV. 25 

CHILDREN 

Elmwood Theater Matinee Benefit for local schools showing “Robots” at 10 a.m. and noon, and noon on Sun. Cost is $2. Sponsored by Elmwood merchants. 843-3794. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Select Paintings of Anthony Holdsworth” Reception with the artist Sat. and Sun. fron noon to 5 p.m. at 351 Lewis St., Oakland. www.anthonyholdsworth.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joyce Maynard, Jane Meredith Adams, Meg Waite Clayton on “Searching for Mary Poppins: Women Write About the Intense Relationship Between Mothers and Nannies” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Yancie Taylor & the Jazztet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

West African Highlife Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054.  

Laurie Lewis & Tom Rozum, bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Ravines at 8 p.m. at Kensington Circus Pub, 389 Colusa Ave., Kensington. 524-8814. 

The Mad Maggies, Los Diablos at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. All ages show. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Benefit for the Ford Street Studio Fire Sun Kings, Bombay Cruisers, Gunpowder at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $10. 451-8100.  

Rebecca Griffin, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Sonando Quintet An Afro-Carib 

bean Tribute to Stevie Wonder at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Ghoul, Stormcrow, Arise, Hatchet at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 26 

CHILDREN 

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054.  

“Little Nemo in Circusland” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $8-$14. 925-798-1300.  

EXHIBITIONS 

Berkeley Arts Center Annual Members’ Showcase Opening reception at 2 p.m. at 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. Exhibition runs to Dec. 21. 644-6893.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Alfred Arteaga and Joel Barraquiel Tan at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Brazilian Soul at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ.  

Phillips Marine Duo at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

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

MONDAY, NOV. 27 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

ParaSpheres, readings from the anthology with Michael Moorcock at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Daniel Levitin on “Your Brain on Music: The Science of an Obsession” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Poetry Express Between the holidays erotic poetry night at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Khalil Shaheed, all ages jam, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Roger Linn and Bruce Zweig, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Blue Monday Blues Jam at 7:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

West Coast Songwriters Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $5. 548-1761. 

Wayne Wallace at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$12. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

TUESDAY, NOV. 28 

CHILDREN 

First Stage Children’s Theater, “The Month Maker’s Magic” at 7:30 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Cost is $5 at the door. www.juiamorgan.org 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Burning Man” Photographs and artifacts on display at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. to Dec. 26. 981-6100. 

FILM 

“Ici et ailleurs” with film curator Akram Zaatari in person at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sarah Katherine Lewis talks about “Indecent: How I Make It and Fake It as a Girl for Hire” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Emily Gottreich on “Mellah of Marrakesh: Jewish and Muslim Space in Morocco’s Red City” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585.  

“Korean Painting: Its Aesthetics and Technique” with Min Pak at 4 p.m. at the IEAS Conference Room, 6th Flr., 2223 Fulton St. 642-2809. 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

CZ and the Bob Vivants at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $9. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Singers’ Open Mic with Ellen Hoffman at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Taj Mahal Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 29 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Don Halnon Johnson presents “Everyday Hopes, Utopian Dreams” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Stanley H. Brandes describes “Skulls of the Living, Bread to the Dead: The Day of the Dead in Mexico and Beyond” at 5:30 p.m. at University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Way. 548-0585. 

Bob Perelman and Mia You, poets, at 6:30 p.m. in the Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall, UC Campus. holloway.english.berkeley.edu 

Poetry Flash with Janine M. Dresser, Stewart Florshein and Marc Hofstadter at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City College Auditorium, 2050 Center St. 525-5476. 

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

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Wednesday Noon Concert, with Javanese Gamelan at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Free. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

U.C. Jazz Ensembles at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $6. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.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.  

Joshua Eden at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

THURSDAY, NOV. 30 

EXHIBITIONS 

Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle Guided tour at 12:15 and 5:30 p.m. in Gallery 2, Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

FILM 

“Indies under Fire” A doumentary about independent bookstores, followed by a conversation with the director, Jacob Bricca, at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

“Best of the Fest Films & Videos with Michael Rhodes” at 7 p.m. in the Chapel at the Pacific School of Religion,1798 Scenic Ave. Free. 707-836-9586. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Dylan Schaffer on “Life, Death & Bialys: A Father/Son Baking Story” at 6:30 p.m. at the Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $10-$12. 549-6950. 

Georgina Kleege discusses “Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller” at 7:30 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

Spoken Word Swap Meet at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Tom Russell, roots country troubadour at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $20.50-$21.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Christy Dana Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Kingsbury/English, modern folk, rock at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

R & D, Joseph’s Bones at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

Steve Taylor-Ramírez at 7:30 p.m. at Prism Café, 1918 Park Blvd., Oakland. Donation $2-$5. 251-1453.  

Taj Mahal Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com

EAST BAY COMPANIES PERFORM ‘365 PLAYS’ 

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 Days/365 Plays national theater project, which will run the 365 plays Parks wrote in 2002 over the coming year all around the country, will include East Bay companies Woman’s Will and Ten Red Hen. Week two of 365 will be staged by Woman’s Will Nov. 24-28 at the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St. (near 19th St. BART; 420-0813 or www.womanswill.org). During week four,Ten Red Hen will be appearing in different private homes, including an artist’s loft in Fruitvale on Thursday, Dec. 7 (with a special play, The Carpet Cleaner On Pearl Harbor Day, included) and Sat. Dec. 9 at a co-housing community in Berkeley. Venue addresses will be provided with reservations through Ten Red Hen (547-8932 or www.tenredhen.net). All shows are pay-what-you-will. 

INDY BOOKSTORES 

‘UNDER FIRE’ 

A new documentary about the plight of independent bookstores, Indies Under Fire, will be screened at Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave., followed by a discussion with director Jacob Bricca, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday Nov. 30. The film tells the stories of three stores fighting for survival: In Capitola, a developer’s plans to bring Borders to town prompts a fierce debate; in Palo Alto, news of the closing of Printers Inc. Bookstore prompts a local citizen to mortgage his house to try to save it, and in Santa Cruz, when a Borders moves in down the street from the town’s oldest bookstore, protests and vandalism ensue. 

CLASSICS IN EL CERRITO 

The Cerrito Theater will kick off its new series of weekend classics with The Wizard of Oz at 

6 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. Though the theater usually limits attendance to those 21 and over, starting this weekend the Cerrito will open to all ages every weekend.

The splendid early buildings of UC Berkeley’s campus are more radical than first appears. California Hall from 1905, the first unit of John Galen Howard’s Beaux Arts ensemble, looks solidly traditional, yet one of its main features is an enormous skylight that illuminates not only the big attic, but, via a glass floor, an elegant atrium below. There was nothing more truly modern than this until the galleries-hanging-in-space of Mario Campi’s 1970 art museum. 

Yet in its profound stylistic influence on future campus development, Howard’s masterful cluster was and still is a two-edged sword, overshadowing all subsequent attempts to continue the grand Neo-Classical manner so fervently favored for WASP scholarly life. Arthur Brown’s buildings through the ’30s and early ’40s are joyless by comparison, while his Sproul Hall of 1941, self-important but dull, seems to signal an architectural dead end. 

And despite even the trauma of World War II, this “Classical” obsession with symmetry, rows of “dignified” windows and stone, under the mandatory red-tile roof, lingered on for another half-century, as demonstrated by bland Dwinelle of 1952, boring Barrows of 1964, and desperately conforming Tan Hall of 1998. Worse, this respectability crusade is still alive in the naive “guidelines” and seductive watercolor visualizations of the 2002 Long Range Development Plan, which should be re-titled “Red Roofs in the Sunset.” 

In the face of this persisting timidity, we can be thankful for the great architectural breakthrough achieved by Wurster Hall and the Student Center, between 1959 and 1968, thanks largely to Dean Wurster and his gifted architect-colleagues. A competition won by Hardison and De Mars in 1957, resulted in the familiar four-building complex at the top of Telegraph. For elegant details, it doesn’t compare with, say, Mies van der Rohe’s Illinois Tech., but as lively urban design, the ensemble is a success. Wrapped around by a giant arcade that irreverently echoes the above “Classical” tradition, King Student Union is a bizarre affair, but an effective contrast with dignified Zellerbach. The biggest blow so far to this cheerful area is the removal of the main Dining Commons to Channing and Bowditch, leaving the long playful north wing without a vibrant public purpose. 

Wurster Hall, the other half of this ’60s breakthrough, answers that longing many of us felt for a great new artifact that would stand symbolic comparison with Howard’s masterful early works. In 1959, as part of his mandate to expand Architecture into Environmental Design, Dean Wurster was entrusted with the creation of that very thing. 

His project team: De Mars, Olsen, Esherick and Hardison, worked in productive harmony, Esherick eventually becoming lead-designer, with Wurster as a near-perfect “client.”  

Responding to the old master’s request for a non-slick workshop of a building, Esherick and Co. managed to produce a Bay Area original—a Corbusier-inspired complex cranked around a courtyard and dramatized with a Constructivist tower. Concrete sun-control “eyebrows” replaced classical ornament. The building is best seen from the top end of College Avenue, where the big white grid with its assertive tower seems to glide, dreamlike, from behind a huge clump of eucalyptus. 

Not quite on, or of, the academic campus, the delightfully uninhibited Art Museum of 1970, seemed to some of us the final triumph of no-holds-barred modernism at UC Berkeley. Designed by San Francisco-born architect Mario Campi, selected by a national competition, the building is as much an art object as its frequently disturbing contents. With its unadorned concrete structure, ingenious top-lighting and wildly acrobatic ramps leading up to claustrophobic galleries, the museum offers a dramatic variety of settings, equally welcome to a Rothko, a Maillart nude, or an installation of neon tubes. 

All this cantilevered hubris has invited the present tragic impasse—an uncertain future, possible demolition, and a humiliating, almost comic propping-up of the daring structure, inside and out, but the situation is not without hope. Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association’s tireless researcher, John English, is currently preparing an application to get this novel building safely onto the National Register of Historic Places, which should much improve its chances of dignified survival. 

Sad to say, this exciting ’60s breakthrough into Modernism didn’t guarantee quality. In 1971, Evans Hall, an up-to-date but charmless blockbuster, was sited plonk on the axis of the revered Central Glade. Thirteen years later a big, ambitious Sports Facility, windowless on its public side, was shoehorned into a tight space between the Haas Baseball field and Bancroft Way, walling off a stretch of the university’s most eventful edge.  

As if to demonstrate how even “name” architects can become unnerved at the prospect of contributing something appropriate to our revered campus, we have Soda Hall, the College of Engineering’s Computer Science building, designed in the early ’90s by Edward Barnes of New York in collaboration with locally admired Anshen and Allen. 

Sited on busy sideways—sloping Hearst between La Conte and stern-visaged Etcheverry Hall, the basic arrangement is not at all “Classical.” The five-story building, entered from the sides into a mid-block atrium, steps down at the back to gently merge with residential Northside, leaving a problematic campus-facing frontage on Hearst. 

Understandably, the architects decided to liven it up by recessing the top two floors behind a Piano Nobile or sheltered deck, but here, the Designer’s Muse seems to have abandoned them! Instead of some delicate “recall” of the long vine trellis below, they concocted a massive and gloomy arcade reminiscent of an imaginary Piranesi prison, then covered the whole edifice with green mottled tiles that would look—they claimed—“less industrial” to the bucolic neighbors across Ridge Road. 

This perverse avoidance of an appropriately “high-tech” image for a facility sometimes described as a “supercomputer,” strangely parallels the lavish and ambitious Haas School of business, completed just a year later to—apparently—evoke an Arts and Crafts resort hotel. Designed by boldly eclectic Charles Moore, the complex is an architectural anomaly, for while it seems on the surface perfectly reasonable to reintroduce the informal, largely residential Shingle Style that was brought to this same campus by John Galen Howard in 1904 for inexpensive “temporaries,” Moore’s theatrical entrance—arches and stiffly clustered windows—belie the humble informality of earlier precedents such as the “Ark,” Cloyne Court, Anna Head, or even the Foothill student housing of 1991. Haas feels pompous by comparison. 

Perhaps we should be relieved that on the important site east of the Hearst Mining Circle, Stanley Hall, the new, almost completed Biosciences Facility, is neither romantic nor nostalgic, but just plain modern! The Portland architectural firm of Zimmer Gunsul Frasca has made a valiant effort to lessen the impact of this 285,000 square-foot pile of laboratories by projecting the three lowest levels forward as a discrete entrance-facade that will not overpower the much loved south front of the Hearst Memorial Mining Building. 

Rising above and behind this “podium,” the eight-story mass has been fragmented into separated pieces of wall, white against green, like a huge rectilinear sculpture. The white cladding contains the windows, while the swimming-pool green metal “shingles” act as both balustrades and as the building’s windowless top. Perhaps they’ve overdone the playful art-making, but at this stage of raw brand-newness, it’s a bit unwise to judge. Meanwhile we can look forward to the restoration of the handsome reflecting pool and its accompanying landscaping, while noting the crucial importance of big mature trees to tame our taller, bulkier buildings. 

It’s both fascinating and disturbing that the newest completed architectural “statement” on the UC Campus—the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library of 2004, is such a dramatic contrast with the above bland giant. Stanley, with its myriad traditional windows and cheerful extroverted color could easily pass as a vaguely Art Deco city hotel. The music library, a tenth the size, could only be “something special.” 

Most designers would have tried to make it an obvious third element of Gardner Daily’s 1958 two-building complex. Instead the architects, Mack Scogin Merrill Elam of Atlanta, opted for glorious independence. The novel green slate “shingles” that cover the exterior relate nicely to the terra-cotta colored stucco of Dailey’s undramatic buildings, but beyond that, the strange little pavilion stands in total contrast to just about everything around. Elegantly boxed-out windows, some exposed, some lurking behind dense louvers and others deeply recessed, play against tall glass slots in a game of precarious balance exacerbated by the willfully varied grid of slate panels. 

There’s no obvious front or back other than the odd tilting up of the roof toward the building’s southeast corner. Puzzled by the seemingly arbitrary arrangement of the windows, you walk inside, and—big surprise—everything seems orderly and rational and very elegant. A further surprise is the dramatic separation of the relatively delicate box from the gutsy, white painted brace-framing, here featured as an integral part of the architecture. 

So with this eccentric little library that even makes Bartok seem “old world,” we can say that “cutting edge” 21st century architecture has finally arrived on our campus. At least the greater world seem to think so, for Mack Scogin Merrill Elam have all of four projects to date in the prestigious Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture. 

A little Auden poem, written in 1929, ends with this gentle request: “Look shining on / New styles of architecture, a change of heart.”

Never has there been a more perfect show, site-specific in fact, for La Val’s Subterranean than Impact Theatre’s current production of Jukebox Stories, Prince Gomilvilas’ performance of his own prose alongside Brandon Patton singing songs and the interaction between the two—as well as with the audience. 

In the tight space under the Northside eatery and student hangout, the set for Jukebox Stories is like an installation of a basement rec room or in-law apartment inhabited by a desperately single guy. Posters hang above a couple of couches strewn with clothes and pillows that spill onto the floor, under TV trays of bottled water and Jim Beam, plastic cups of beer by candles, to mix with scattered newspapers, an upended chair, a forlorn laundry basket and vagrant luggage, besides a few stray playing cards for good measure. 

Friday night was like old home week, with the performers onstage well before curtain and wandering through the audience, bantering with spectators and welcoming friends, themselves busy greeting each other.  

The ambiance defines much of the show, or vice versa. It’s as modular as the furniture for student housing, so much so that the performers pass around a box with the song and story titles, letting the audience draw the next selection—Jukebox Stories, indeed. 

Prince Gomilvilas is well-known in theater circles here and beyond. He’s been associated with Theater Bay Area and his full-length plays have been produced in cities around America and in Singapore, from which the pull line: “Prince Gomilvilas is a brilliant writer of comic monologues” from The Straits Times. 

That’s the tone of much of Prince’s solo portion of the act, despite its casual conversational sense that engages the audience, like comic monologues or scenarios for humorous sketches. At one point, Prince reads a story in the form of a letter off the page, acknowledging a college rejection letter, but begging for reconsideration, even mentioning an enclosed gift certificate and inviting the admissions officer to visit the restaurant where he works under the domination of his screaming brother, just to see what a good worker he is, and what a pitiful life he can be rescued from. 

The stealthy vaudeville of the presentation, undoubtedly the work of talented director Kent Nicholson, is one apparent reason for its appeal to a relaxed yet excitable audience. Another lies in the wry songs and offhanded delivery of Brandon Patton, who--when he’s not whimsically crooning “I used to play in a rock ‘n roll band ... All the time I was just saying/Help me get paid to talk about myself”--acts the sidekick, cohost, even butt of Prince’s catty tongue. 

But there’s something of a conceptual side, too, to Prince’s appeal. With pop socio-political notions going around to explain the electoral success of W. and Arnold, like the iconic “class president” theory, it would seem that Prince draws his strength from being the antithesis of media friendly, becoming the nonentity, the talk radio complainer who somehow has arrived as host of a game show, or of late night itself, hip by default. 

His stories can be sordid, pointed and funny. Mingling with the mannerisms of nerdy camp, Prince will plunge into the tale of how his soft-spoken, shy little sister (”the way a little Asian girl should be”) charged a breast-implant operation to their mother’s credit card, improving her self-esteem to the degree of becoming the head trainer for Hooters, from whose training manual Prince proceeds to read selections he claims to have copied down while browsing. 

Or, after Brandon passes around Bingo cards that have the stories and song titles in the squares, Prince spins out “Gambling Everything For Love,” in which his uncle, a compulsive gambler—as are all Asians, he assures us, making every Indian casino “look like Little Manila in there”—finds himself pinned down by Prince’s mother and acquisitive aunt, who have concluded he’s under an evil love spell, and defies them by yammering fake Arabic while they wrap his head with a dress belonging to Prince’s dead grandmother, the antidote to the hex ... 

In theory, the fun never has to stop until they call it quits. And so on, after intermission and through the evening, punctuated by Brandon’s songs, more Bingo, further random byplay with, and picking on, each other and the audience. 

Jukebox Stories 

Presented by Impact Theatre at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday through Dec. 10 at  

La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave. 

$10-$14. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com.

The holiday season is the time of year when the big Hollywood studios roll out their best films, the logic being that the Academy Award voters have short memories. But it is also the time when the studios and the smaller DVD companies bring out many of their most prestigious titles, often in special editions.  

This season has already seen the release of a handful of high-quality editions of great films from the around world. Here is a sampling. 

The Double Life of Veronique 

Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Veronique (Poland/France, 1991) is a film of reflections and emotions. Two lives, separate but intertwined through emotion, intuition and sensuality, unfold in a mystic and mysterious movie that is typical of Kieslowski’s work in that it raises more questions than it answers.  

We first follow the story of Veronika, a young Polish woman who is haunted by the feeling that she is never alone. Kieslowski illustrates this by consistently photographing her near mirrors and windows, her reflection providing a double image. Before her untimely death, she happens upon her doppelganger for a fleeting instant, though the double never sees her at all. 

When the plot turns to the double, a young French woman named Veronique, we do not see her reflected in mirrors as she is no longer one half of a composite now that Veronika has passed away. Veronique is alone now, and she intuitively understands this, grieving for the loss which she cannot see or understand but which she feels nonetheless.  

When Kieslowski introduces a puppeteer to the plot, the device may seem a bit trite and contrived, but somehow he pulls it off, shooting the puppetry scenes beautifully and giving the new character a compelling story of his own. And through the puppeteer Kieslowski offers the simplest but somehow the most satisfying explanation of the film: that perhaps God created two Veroniques simply because they were delicate and one was likely to suffer damage.  

Vernoniqe, however, must thus suffer the pain that comes with the awareness that she is the second, that another has suffered so that she might carry on. The puppeteer’s performance depicts an injured ballerina who dies only to transform herself into a soaring butterfly, and Veronique identifies with the story. She knows she has been given a great responsibility. How carefree we are with our possessions when we know we have a spare, and how careful we become when we’re down to the last.  

The Double Life of Veronique was Kieslowski’s follow-up to his monumental Decalogue. It is a departure in that it so lush and mysterious, yet it logically follows up on many of the themes of the previous project. Criterion has just released the film in a two-disc set, complete with several of Kieslowki’s documentary works, interviews with the director and his collaborators and essays by critics. But the most exemplary feature is the commentary track by Kieslowski scholar Annette Insdorf. Too often the commentary track is an abused feature, used simply to laud a film or to provide a shallow glimpse behind the scenes through the voices of a film’s more bankable stars or directors. But Criterion, the company that originated the commentary track, still does it best, bringing in knowledgeable film scholars to provide insight into the medium’s greatest works. 

Phantom 

F.W. Murnau’s Phantom (Germany, 1922) plays with some of the same themes as Veronique. Again an actress plays a dual role. The hero, Lorenz, falls for a girl from a wealthy family at first sight—another character named Veronika. Later he encounters her double, a working-class girl who uses her likeness to Veronika to ensnare the hapless hero, precipitating a rapid fall from grace as the honest, diligent city clerk and poet resorts to thievery, debauchery and gambling to satisfy his mistress’ material desires. Along the way he becomes something of a double himself, for no one recognizes this depraved scoundrel for the chaste, humble man he once was. 

Like Kieslowski’s film, Phantom represents an attempt to visualize psychological processes. But whereas Kieslowski employed a certain mysticism to that end, Murnau relies on the expressionist techniques of his era, using the physical world to reflect the character’s inner life. As Lorenz’s mind falls apart, so does the world around him; buildings threaten to crash down on him, shadows chase him through the streets, and in one extraordinary shot, Lorenz and his mistress, while imbibing in a nightclub, find themselves hurtling downward as though their decadence is leading them straight to hell.  

This presentation on DVD comes from Flicker Alley, a small, independent company with just a few titles to its credit so far. The disc is excellent, reproducing the original tints long missing from the film and providing background material on the movie and the novel from which it was adapted. It also comes with an excellent orchestral score by composer Robert Israel. 

The Maltese Falcon 

As a femme fatale, however, Veronika pales in comparison to Mary Astor’s Brigid O’Shaughnessy in John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941). Again we see a woman using her wiles to charm, seduce and, in at least one case, destroy a man. Yet here the mental processes do not reach the surface in quite the same way. Instead they are embodied in dark, almost archetypal characters who play out the drama in a closing sequence that amounts to a directorial tour de force, with all the main characters in a climactic face-off of rapid-fire dialogue, shifting alliances and taut suspense.  

Finally, Warner Bros. has seen fit to release The Maltese Falcon in a set that does justice to this remarkable and influential film. Though the film is justly famous, it has been underestimated over the years. Huston’s debut has been overshadowed by another stunning debut from the same year—Orson Welle’s Citizen Kane—and, just over a year later, by Casablanca, that film that securely placed Humphrey Bogart at the top of Hollywood’s A list.  

But The Maltese Falcon is where Bogart first shone brightly; it was his first leading role in what is widely considered the first film noir. Many of the techniques that receive such praise in Citizen Kane are also evident in Falcon, including the deep shadows and ceilinged sets. And its stark, uncompromising depiction of a less-than-heroic hero set the standard for every noir that came after.  

The three-disc set also includes Warner Bros.’ first two attempts to adapt the Dashiell Hammett novel, neither of which met with great success. And the set does a nice job of trying to capture something of the era in which these films were made by including what amounts to a replica of a night out at the cinema in 1941, complete with a newsreel, cartoons, a musical short and trailers for coming attractions. 

Also included are a documentary about the novel and its many celluloid incarnations, a commentary track by Bogart biographer Eric Lax that has a few informative bits, but for the most part is awkward and badly edited—at least one section is repeated word for word—and a series of bloopers from Warner movies of the era. What is interesting about these outtakes is how similar they are to today’s blooper reels even though the acting styles are radically different. But even then they sputtered, giggled and stumbled through their scenes. Better moments include James Cagney’s inability to sustain his fast-paced delivery, James Stewart’s surprise as the camera follows him out of the room when he thought his work was done, and Bogart’s rather intense self-flagellation when flubbing a line, releasing a torrent of obscenities at himself.  

Pandora’s Box 

G. W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (Germany, 1929) is one of the most legendary of German films, but one that has been relatively difficult to see.  

Louise Brooks’ femme fatale is not deliberate and manipulative like Brigid O’Shaughnessy, but instead rather childlike and innocent. The film is a showcase for the charm and allure of an actress not much appreciated during her brief career but who has during the ensuing decades come to symbolize the roaring ’20s.  

Brooks’ talent has been much debated; some critics complain that she was just being herself, while others suggest the best evidence of her greatness is that her craft is invisible, that her acting doesn’t at all look like acting. But one viewing of Criterion’s new DVD of the film and it is apparent that Brooks had a remarkable ability to portray precisely the sort of psychological complexity that Kieslowski and Murnau sought in their films. Brooks’ Lulu is a character of intrigue and complexity, and the actress manages to make each internal change register on her face.  

Criterion has published the film in a remarkable set that should serve as a model for other companies looking to preserve and honor the great cinematic works. The set includes essays by film critic Kenneth Turan and by Brooks herself, as well as documentaries and a superb commentary track that provides insight into the film and elucidates its longevity. 

But the best features in the package are the four scores provided, each taking a different approach: a modern orchestral score, a Weimar-era cabaret score, a Weimar-era orchestral score, and an improvised piano score. Each adds greatly to the experience, offering a unique interpretation of the film’s imagery.  

The Fallen Idol 

Criterion has also just released Carol Reed’s The Fallen Idol (England, 1950). The film doesn’t feature a femme fatale, but it does feature the dour and much-demonized Mrs. Baines, whose death provides a catalyst to a complex and compelling thriller. But the real subject matter of the film is the loss of innocence as most of the action is seen through the eyes of young Philip, whose reverence for Mr. Baines, the family butler, is threatened when the man’s fallibility becomes all too plain.  

For a complete review of The Fallen Idol, see the Daily Planet’s May 5 edition at www.berkeleydailyplanet.com. 

Also new to DVD . . . 

49 Up 

This is the most recent installment in what has become the longest running documentary film project in history. The Up Series began in 1964 as an examination of the British class system. Interviewing a group of 7-year-olds about their backgrounds, education and goals. 

Every seven years director Michael Apted has returned to interview them again. 49 Up (England, 2006) revisits the original participants in late middle age. Some of the developments are surprising, some are reassuringly predictable, but each tale has its own brand of drama. This film brings to the surface some of the tensions that had heretofore remained in the background in previous installments. Jackie, for instance, no longer keeps her feelings about Apted off camera; she chastises him for taking what she considers a narrow and condescending approach to her and her fellow subjects.  

And Suzy, who transformed herself from a recalcitrant 21-year-old into a doting mother, reveals that even in her more stable years the project’s intrusion on her life has become nearly unbearable, and she doubts if she’ll take the trouble to participate in the next film. 

Extra features include a conversation between Apted and critic Roger Ebert. Inexplicably bad audio mars the interview, and though it contains a few insights, for the most part it merely restates the premise and its results over four decades. 

For a complete review of the Up Series, see the Daily Planet’s Oct. 6 edition at www.berkeleydailyplanet.com. 

I suppose it’s the season that’s pulling my thoughts toward the organisms and processes of decay: molds, mildews, earthworms, compost in general. Certainly I’m encountering them a lot lately, in the garden and in the wilds. We’ve had just enough rain to encourage little brown mushrooms to pop up, and the more annoying fungi and their companions on plants and walls and books and shower curtains are getting bolder too. Our winter companions, fungi are often such agents of destruction that we can just plain hate them.  

We depend on fungi, though, directly in the kitchen and less directly in the cellar. Molds make cheese blue, or even bleu; yeasts make bread rise, and wine and beer ferment. Where would we be without those? And there are all those tasty edible mushrooms.  

But we also depend on fungi in their destructive role, uncomfortable though we find it. “Well rotted” is a gardener’s phrase, and as gardeners we get up close and personal with a process that’s more impersonal than our minds would prefer. The manure pile—product of another process we’d rather not have our noses in—and the composter are lively factories of soil-enriching stuff only because they’re also sites of destruction.  

The scent of finished compost is perfume to a gardener, and we can fork the pile over beforehand to see who’s working for us. We might find worms, or sowbugs, beetle larvae, all manner of crawlies. Looking closer, we see the mycelia of assorted fungi threading through the darkening mass.  

Walking in the woods just this time of year, the land damp but not yet sodden, we can see fungi as a delicate white rime on the edges of each fallen leaf in an understory pile. We can see the fruiting bodies of the fungi that are destroying the living trees as well as the fallen leaves and dead wood, and part of what they’re doing is turning living and formerly living things into nutrition and nursery for other living things.  

The forest lives longer than anything in it—though we don’t know for sure how long those intertwined nets of underground life live, come to think of it. As a hen is an egg’s way of making another egg, maybe the forest is the mycorrhizal web’s way of making more mycorrhizal webs.  

We cherish our individuality, and the individuality of the people and other beings we love. I, for one, won’t give up mine till they pry it from my cold dead fingers. But we live on others’ lives, and eventually other lives will feed on what’s left of us, all thanks to the organisms of decay. I still think death is a really bad idea but life on our level hasn’t come up with a way to live, to nurture itself, without it.  

So let us give thanks, however tentative and conditional, to the other side of the web that holds us all and promises a literal, if incomprehensible, continuation of all our lives beyond the beginning and the end of what we can perceive firsthand.  

Dear Matt, 

I read your column with interest, and I have a question for you: 

My wife and I own and live in a 1920s Berkeley stucco bungalow, ca. 2000 sq. ft., four bedrooms, two baths. It is presently insured for $233 per sq. ft. which my insurance agent assures me is an adequate figure. Do you agree? If not what would you suppose a more realistic number to be? This is a question that I haven’t seen addressed in your column, and I’ll bet that others of your readers might be interested. What do you think? 

Best Regards, 

— Roger Moss 

Dear Roger, 

The $466,000 coverage is for rebuilding the house and does not cover the land value of your property, which is reasonable unless you get hit by a bunker-buster. If you do get hit by a bunker-buster, you can sell your story to Rupert Murdock and make way more than you will from the insurance. Actually, I’d sell it to the movies. Oh, sorry. I got lost there, didn’t I? 

Construction costs vary a lot and it really depends on what you’re trying to build. You can certainly build in this area for $233/square foot BUT you won’t be able to build in the style many of us have come to know and demand here in the aesthetic capital of the universe. Some houses cost closer to $500/square foot but they’re pretty amazing (that’s a cool million to build 2,000 square feet). I think you’re actually pretty safe with the $233 but you might want to find out if the price per square foot drops much as you go up. I’d personally try for a bit higher but it depends on what you can afford and what you plan on building when that bomb falls on your house. Jeez, I hope you’re out shopping when that happens. 

Your friend, 

— Matt 

• • • 

Dear Matt, 

OK, I am going crazy here with making decisions that should be fairly simple. Through my process of asking a million questions about how to go about painting my shingled house, well, you guessed it correctly, everyone has such a strong “do, or don’t” point of view on how to paint a shingled house. 

One style of painting shingles would be to stain the shingles. The people who recommend this process of staining shingles seem to feel that this is the “only” way to go. Period. Other painting professionals who suggest painting shingles with a heavier, more traditional exterior paint, say that is the only way to go. What to do? 

I find myself driving around looking at homes to find what I like. Do you have any pro-con advice on the stain/paint debate when it comes to painting shingles? I want a beachie-cottagie, clean, and crisp look to my house, and don’t want to make a mistake in the process while making my decision. I keep hearing, once you make a decision and go with it, there is no turning back. 

Do I need to prime the house first if I am staining? I wouldn’t think so. Do I prime the shingles first if I am using a heavier exterior paint on the house.  

And lastly, I hear if you choose paint over stain, the house needs to be painted quite often, demanding more upkeep? Waaaaaaaaaa! 

What is your take on this seemingly controversial painting de lemma? 

Thank you, Susan Lissberger 

Owner Mill Valley Montessori 

Susan, you poor dear, 

I’m getting stressed out just hearing your woe. This is pretty tough.  

O.K. Here goes. To stain or to paint: 

Your friends who point out that you have to choose one or the other are dead-right. Stain is usually oily and will make painting nearly impossible for years to come. Naturally, once you’ve painted, you won’t  

be removing the paint unless you’re thinking about suicide, divorce or voluntary removal of a vital organ. 

Just pick one. Figure out what you like best. Either will be fine if you take the right steps. If you have really old shingle that’s looking pretty tired, painting is an option that I’ve been known to endorse (but I’m easily given to graft and am largely untrustworthy). 

I’m a bit snobbish about shingle myself and consider painting new shingle to be sort of sad, since it’s so darned pretty but hey, that’s me. I would tend to treat (not stain) shingle with Penofin or a similar  

preservative regularly and save the paint for when things have gone South. I also find the color change in shingle over time to be rather charming and natural. Preservative often have a UV protective element that slows this but eventually all shingle will change color. 

Pardon my teasing. I hope you don’t feel shingled out. 

Matt 

Have You Met Your Neighbors?  

Part 2 

I want to report and brag on two different neighborhood groups in Berkeley (both groups are made up of just the houses that comprise a city block). 

In one group, every house on the block, 12 altogether, are getting together and having automatic gas shut-off valves installed at every house. Needless to say, they’re getting a better price than doing it one at a time.  

The other group has one family that has volunteered to keep extra water (a 55 gallon barrel), food, and first aid supplies for the whole block. It’s stored next to their garage. This is in addition to each family’s kits and supplies.  

The common denominator here is that they have made the effort to meet each other. Congratulations to both groups! I’ll say it again: someone needs to get all the neighbors together—why not you? 

Larry Guillot is owner of QuakePrepare, an earthquake consulting, securing, and kit supply service. Call him at 558-3299, or visit www.quakeprepare.com.

The news headlines resound of doom and gloom for the real estate market; but what is the back story? Most of these articles refer to the national scene, and to certain parts of the country that are the hardest hit. “18 percent drop here, 16 percent drop there, no relief in sight.” 

In fact, severe corrections in average selling prices occur in areas where the income and employment figures are hard hit. The Bay Area has always been somewhat immune to these factors. Minor corrections have to occur when prices go up too fast, especially when the “flippers” exit the market. 

Flippers are, of course the folks who just buy and sell for a profit. Prospective homeowners have little to fear from this correction in the market, since most of these buyers will stay in their homes for at least 5 years.  

In the meantime, many prospective homeowners could benefit tremendously from the current market by being able to negotiate a purchase price for the first time in years. 

The current supply of homes is higher than it’s been in quite a while, enabling buyers to pick, choose, negotiate, and obtain great concessions.  

Then, sit back, get tax benefits from a mortgage deduction, enjoy the bargain you made and wait for the seller’s market to come back. It always has! 

Tim Cannon has been licensed in real estate in Berkeley since 1978. He is the owner/broker of BerkeleyHome Real Estate at the corner of Hopkins and Monterey.