At least a dozen young children were injured when a school bus was involved in a crash with five other vehicles on westbound Interstate Highway 80 in Berkeley this morning, according to the California Highway Patrol. 

The crash happened when the bus rear-ended a Nissan van near the Ashby Avenue exit at about 10 a.m., CHP officials said. That crash caused a chain reaction that involved four more cars. 

At least a dozen children and four adults on board the bus suffered minor injuries, including bloody noses and scrapes, according to the CHP. The drivers of two of the other cars were also injured but not seriously. 

Some of the children and all of the adults were taken to Alta Bates Summit Medical Center for treatment, CHP officials said. 

Two lanes of the highway were closed for more than an hour while the CHP investigated the crash. Officers remained in the area into the afternoon, allowing parents to pick their children up near the crash scene, according to the CHP. 

The group of children as young as 5 years old were on a field trip, according to berkeleyside.com, from Camp Kee Tov, of Berkeley's Temple Beth El, to Middle Harbor Shoreline Park in Oakland, CHP officials said. 

CHP officers will inspect the bus to make sure there are no mechanical problems that contributed to the collision.

I respectfully ask the Berkeley Tenant's Union to reconsider and reverse its endorsement of a proposed increase on the Business License Fee assessment on gross revenues from residential rents. 

This note is divided into four parts: 

In part 1 I will briefly review some facts about the incidence of such a tax -- who pays the tax and how. 

In part 2, turning to the conditions specific to Berkeley, I point out strong indications that the tax increase will mostly likely harm tenants, workers, and Berkeley's capacity to regulate new development. 

Further, while the proposed tax is meant to increase public funds available for affordable housing projects, countervailing effects must be taken into account: it is far from clear the tax will increase rather than decrease the number of affordable units created in the future. 

In part 3 I will examine the arguments BTU has made in favor of the tax, pointing out some flaws in these arguments. 

In part 4 I will suggest alternatives to the proposed tax. 

 

Part 1: Incidence of taxes on rent. 

In Berkeley, residential landlords must obtain a business license from the city. As part of payment for such a license, landlords are assessed 1.081% of gross receipts. (E.g., a $1,500 per month unit currently produces $16.22 per month in tax.) 

The proposal before City Council is to increase the assessment of gross receipts from 1.081% to some amount between 1.8% and 4.9%. 

Proposers estimate that this increase would increase the taxes per month, per unit by between $30 and $60 on average. 

Annualizing the increase ($360 to $720 per unit per year) makes it clear that the amount is far from trivial. 

The question arises? Who will pay? Landlords? Renters? Someone else? (What is the "incidence" of such a tax?) 

Predicting the incidence of tax on rents of real property is notoriously difficult but some general rules can be stated: 

1. In the short run the burden of any new tax falls on the party least able to shift the burden to another party. 

1a. Landlords may have options to shift the tax to tenants, employees, or the public. Landlords can shift the tax directly: rent increases on tenants or wage reductions on workers. 

Landlords can shift the tax indirectly: reductions in services to tenants or high productivity requirements on workers. 

Landlords automatically shift a portion of the tax to the public because the additional revenue collected by the city is no longer taxable by the state or federal government. 

1b. Tenants may be able to resist the tax burden if standing tenants move and new potential tenants decline to pay higher rents. 

1c. Workers may be able to resist the tax burden if they can seek jobs elsewhere or refuse demands to intensify their labor to raise productivity. 

1d. Of particular note for Berkeley: regulation may limit a landlord's option to shift the burden of a tax. 

2. In the longer term, a tax may become capitalized, which is to say it may absorbed as a decrease in the value of real property effected by the tax. This in turn has effects on the future course of development. 

Part 2: Tax incidence in Berkeley, 2015 and in the future 

In part 1 I produced a list of factors that may allow a landlord to shift the burden of the proposed tax, as well as countervailing factors that may prevent the tax from being shifted. 

In part 2 I will examine each of those factors from the particular perspective of Berkeley. The factors to be examined are: 

1. Landlord options to shift the tax by rent increases.
2. Landlord options to shift the tax by service reductions.
3. Landlord options to shift the tax by wage decreases.
4. Landlord options to shift the tax by intensifying work.
5. Tenant options to move.
6. Worker options to quit or refuse job intensification.
7. Capitalization of rent-tax increases.

One by one: 

1. "Landlord options to shift the tax by rent increases." 

1a. Uncontrolled and vacancy-decontrolled units 

Since the crisis of 2008, Berkeley landlords of uncontrolled rental units have been trying hard to discover an upper bound on rents but there is no sign they have yet found it. 

Month over month rents have been climbing faster than inflation, and faster than regional household incomes. 

Rental bidding wars appear to be (in my eyes, at least) the exception, not the rule in Berkeley. There are no anecdotal indications that many new tenants are paying below advertised rent "asks". 

Consequently, it appears that Berkeley landlords are gradually discovering how high rents can go and that they haven't yet found it. 

In this circumstance, it should be easy to pass through the tax increase in uncontrolled units. For example, consider an uncontrolled unit renting for $2,500 / month. 

A 2% tax, passed through, would raise the rent by $50/month. 

It is implausible, in that example, that tenants could leave to save $50/month (and go where?) or that no new tenants could be found at $2,550. 

Students overcrowded into such a unit, or a family, would have little choice but to cough up the extra $600 per year. 

1b. Controlled units. 

A large number of Berkeley units would be subject to the tax but are also price controlled by the rent stabilization ordinance. 

Under the ordinance, rent increases normally may take effect only once per year and may not raise rent above a ceiling imposed by the City. The rental ceiling is annually increased by 65% of measure of the regional cost of living. 

On its face that would seem to prevent landlords from passing through the tax as a rent increase but this is not obviously the case. 

Berkeley's Rent Stabilization Ordinance would seem to prevent a simple pass-through but this conclusion must be qualified. 

Provision 13.76.120 allows a landlord to apply for adjustments to the ceiling, including adjustments to compensate for "Unavoidable increases or any decreases in maintenance and operating expenses". (13.76.120(C)) 

(Other provisions of 13.76 ensure landlords a right to a consolidated hearing for adjustments to all similarly impacted units.) 

The rent stabilization board's examiner must judge individual adjustments on the basis of a "fair return" on the landlord's expenses. 

"Fair return" is not directly defined in the ordinance but has a complex history in California courts. 

Landlords would appear to have a very good case that: 

• The Annual General Adjustment to rent ceilings tends to hover around 2%.
• The proposed business license tax increase would completely eradicate a full year's adjustment.
• The level of adjustment is designed to preserve a "fair return".
• Therefore an individual adjustment upwards is necessary to preserve a fair return.

NOTE! If the rent stabilization board attempts to systematically decline this pass through, it is plausible that landlords (e.g., perhaps acting through the newly formed political action and legal defense fund), will challenge the ordinance vigorously in court. Raising taxes on rent incomes would seem to raise the legal peril to this very important ordinance. 

2. "Landlord options to shift the tax by service reductions." 

Becoming a landlord is, in almost every case, a long-term investment. 

Literature that offers advice to landlords and potential landlords focuses on rate of return as a measure of business success. 

A landlord's typical goal is not usually to maximize their short-term profit but, rather, to sustain a good, stable rate of return on investment. 

A new tax on rental revenues first appears as a drop in each landlord's rate of return. 

All landlords will tend to seek ways to shift the burden of that tax, in order to restore their rate of return. 

Service reductions to tenants are one way for landlords to proceed. These may include (to give some examples): 

• Reducing the hours of on-call service.
• Increasing fees for amenities such as laundry and (unbundled) parking.
• Reducing aesthetic expenditures such as landscaping or frequency of garbage collection.
• Increasing the length of time it takes to answer maintenance requests.
• Downgrading fixtures (e.g., stoves and refrigerators) when replacing them.
• Increasing penalty fees (late rent, bounced check, etc.)
• Increasing pet fees.

In these cases, although tenants are not literally paying more in rent, the landlord has still achieved pass through by spending less per tenant, to the tenant's detriment. 

3. "Landlord options to shift the tax by wage decreases."
4. "Landlord options to shift the tax by intensifying work." 

Landlords who control more than a few units rely on direct and indirect employees to manage properties and provide basic services to tenants. 

Faced with a tax increase, landlords have the option to make due with fewer employees, or to offer smaller raises, or to replace tenured employees with lower-wage replacements. 

5. "Tenant options to move (with no tenant to replace them)."
6. "Worker options to quit or refuse job intensification." 

Against all of the above options for a landlord to shift the burden of a tax to tenants and workers, we have but two these countervailing pressures, neither of which is plausible. 

7. "Capitalization of rent-tax increases." 

If Berkeley's effective taxes on rental income are higher than those in the region, the difference will appear as a relative reduction in Berkeley property values (of the taxed properties). 

At first glance that may seem absurd since, no matter what, Berkeley's property values tend to be higher than most of the region. Nevertheless, the property value detriment of a new tax can still have significant impact on city policy. 

While the effect is hard to quantify, the addition to rental operating expenses makes it harder to justify investing in new Berkeley development (rather than investing in a nearby city). 

In Berkeley, because of the structure of our land-use regulation ordinances, an increase in rental operating expenses per unit raises the demands developers can make on the city for a proposed project. 

Negotiations concerning zoning variances, community benefits, and affordable housing mitigations often invoke the issue of "viability". A developer can make stronger demands if, otherwise, a project would not be "viable". 

In short, what Berkeley might gain in the short term from a tax on rental revenues it will easily lose in the future in concessions to developers as a result of that extra tax. 

 

Part 3: Examining the Berkeley Tenant's Union Position Statement 

In reply to my inquiry, the Berkeley Tenants Union replied with a statement of their endorsement for the tax increase, and their arguments for that endorsement. 

I will now examine these arguments. 

The central BTU claim I dispute is this: 

"It will tax landlords' windfall profits from rising rents without harming tenants." 

In part 2 I believe I offered substantial reason to believe otherwise. It is easy for landlords to shift the burden of the new tax; hard for tenants and workers not to bear the brunt. 

Why does BTU think otherwise? 

BTU says: 

"It is certainly true that the landlord uses the tenants' money to pay the tax, just as they use the tenants' money to pay their mortgage and insurance and for their own profits. But the tax can only harm tenants if the landlord can raise their rents even more than they already do." 

As noted above, landlords can seek to recoup the tax through reductions of service that harm present tenants. Developers can seek to recoup the tax through more stringent demands for new projects, harming future tenants. 

BTU appears to be myopically focusing on the alleged prospect of $2M to $3M annually added to the affordable housing trust fund; a rate of trust fund income that will produce very little actually affordable housing any time soon. 

BTU continues: 

"The landlord can't [pass through as a rent increase], and here's why." 

"First, most Berkeley tenants are covered by rent control. The landlord can only increase the rent by 65% of the increase in the Consumer Price Index. The landlord cannot increase the rent just because the taxes go up." 

In fact, the stabilization ordinance gives the right for landlords to preserve a fair rate of return through individual adjustments to the rent ceiling. 

The Rent Stabilization Board is charged with a duty to provide owners of many units with an efficient, consolidated hearing. 

The Rent Stabilization Board can not interpret the ordinance so as to constructively deny landlords their AGA adjustment. 

"But what about when the current tenant moves out and a new tenant moves in? Can't the landlord raise the rent then? Yes, they can, but they already do. Landlords already raise the rent to the maximum the market will bear. They can't raise it any higher than that." 

Since Berkeley rents charged do not commonly exceed the "asks" of landlords (bidding wars aren't common here), it remains likely that the market can bear more than what is currently being charged. 

Sadly. 

"What about tenants whose home is not covered by rent control? There are two main groups of tenants who rent from for-profit landlords and are not covered by rent control, those in single-family houses and certain duplexes and those in newer apartment buildings built after 1980. One and two-unit properties are exempt from the tax, so those landlords are not affected by it." 

On this point we agree, although rent increases in other units make it easier to charge higher rents in those exempt units. 

"In the new apartment buildings, we all know that the landlords raise the rent as fast as they can, sometimes even more than a year." 

That's because they haven't yet discovered the top of the market. 

Because of the state of the global economy, it is unclear that there is a top to the market. 

"They already charge the maximum the market will bear," 

That statement contradicts BTU's own observation that rents increase month over month. 

"and they can't raise it any higher than that." 

BTU here asserts that (for example), a $60 per month increase at a large downtown apartment building will send tenants fleeing and make it nearly impossible to find replacements. 

Does that sound even remotely plausible? 

No. On the contrary. Tenants will just be losing more of their income to rent. 

BTU chides: 

"This is basic economics. If there is lots of supply of a retail good, such as heirloom tomatoes, then competition between the suppliers keeps the price down to the minimum price necessary to cover the costs of producing the tomatoes and providing the producer with enough profit to stay in business. Then, if taxes go up, the price has to go up to cover the costs. But apartments in Berkeley rent for double the national average, far above the minimum necessary to profitably operate and maintain the buildings. Anywhere from half to a third of the rent is paid not for the physical apartment but for the location, the privilege of living in Berkeley." 

That is not "basic economics", it is a fallacy. 

To put it in folksy terms: 

If taxes start to hurt heirloom tomato buyers, those buyers easily seek substitutes. 

If taxes start to hurt Berkeley renters, too bad. In most cases, moving will be an even worse option. Even if people are forced out of their homes by this tax, replacements are waiting in the wings. 

(Aside: Rule of thumb -- any argument that begins "This is basic economics," is almost certainly false.) 

BTU concludes: 

"BOTTOM LINE: Landlords already charge as much as they possibly can. If they could charge tenant an extra 2% or 4% to cover this tax, THEY WOULD ALREADY BE DOING IT." 

BTU simply has no basis for that implausible assertion. 

In fact, BTU says itself that rents are going up month over month -- a fact that says landlords have not yet discovered the top of the market. 

part 4: Alternatives to endorsing the proposed tax. 

As I'm sure current members know, the name "Berkeley Tenants Union" had a lot of punch in the 1970s. 

Today's BTU is caught up in the soap-opera drama of RSB elections and proposed ordinances but it is a shadow of its former self. 

The time is ripe to do what unions must do and organize. 

Beyond repudiating the proposed increase in tax on rent income, I hope BTU can find a way to organize tenants in preparations for not just better endorsements, but better actions. 

In solidarity is strength. 

BTU will be once again a union when it organizes the residents of a property like Library Gardens. 

BTU will once again be a union when students can collectively bargain for school-year rentals (kept in good repair, no less). 

BTU will be a strong union when a large membership can be called upon to help defend a weak individual tenant who is under threat. 

BTU should be more than a de facto PAC, if you ask me.

I just read that the Planet was interested in first-hand stories of the Troop Train protest of 50 years ago. Gar Smith mentioned that I had been “on the tracks” and wondered what I had to report. Well, here it is. 

I had been attracted to Berkeley by the beatnik/political scene and quickly became involved in the small group of general-purpose campus radicals upon my arrival in 1963 - I had the honor of picketing Madame Nhu in October of that year with Allen Ginsburg. After service in the Free Speech Movement I was naturally attracted to the Vietnam Day Committee’ efforts to protest the growing war. I hung around the VDC house on Fulton Street and did what I could to help. 

When word came in that troops would be moved by train to debarkation for Vietnam, I was all ears. Being a railfan I had a certain amount of knowledge of train operations an an appreciation for the physics of a rapidly moving mass of steel. I knew about how much distance it took to stop a train - I thought people doing the planning ought to know some of the facts. 

There was the problem of finding the time of arrival. A fellow named Smith at VDC - a natural leader who would be “officer material” in any organization, start dialing up desert stations on the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific. “Hwut tahm’s the trewp train comin’ thru?” he would ask and the station agents were glad to give him the scheduled time so this patriotic American could come down with his family and wave to the boys. We worked out when the train should arrive this way. 

From my knowledge of rail routes in the Bay Area I found a point on the map in Richmond where someone could observe whether a train was on the Santa Fe or the Southern Pacific - after which it could not switch to the other route. Direct observation would give us for-sure knowledge that the train would be here in so many minutes. As the time approached we dispatched a volunteer to observe the crucial crossing and report in from a phone booth. 

Back at the VDC house the Steering Committee - the “heavies”, including a then-Maoist Jerry Rubin in his trademark jacket and no tie - was meeting to decide the slogans for the signs. We workers, including Bart Abbott - Jack London’s grandson and a Longshoreman - waited for their decisions. We informed the Steering Committee of their deadline for decision - after all, there was a train coming! The deadline passed and we got busy painting signs with any damn slogan we cared to write. “Be a Lover, Not a Fighter” was Abbott’s contribution. “Don’t Die for a Dictator”, "Refuse to Kill for Ky and Thieu” were others. I painted one saying “Were You Volunteered?”, with the long word diagonal, which I carried and which can be seen in the photos of the event. 

Just as we finished someone came in and informed us that the Steering Committee had made up its mind, and then found that they had been rendered powerless by a workers’ revolt. We all went down to the Santa Fe station on University near Jefferson and awaited the train arrival. 

When it came I was surprised to see it spouting a cloud of steam in front of it - it was a diesel engine but as a legacy from the days of steam power had a steam generator to power the heating and cooling system in the cars. The only point to that steam was to obscure what was happening immediately ahead of the engine. They were willing to kill - the engineer had orders to proceed without stopping - but didn’t want the world to see what that killing looked like. That made me mad. 

The train consisted of sleeping cars and we could see the faces of the soldiers passing by. A few were standing in the doorways - the side doors were dutch-doors where the top half could be opened - and some words were hastily exchanged. One of the soldiers in the door pointed to my sign and shouted “Were YOU?”. “We protest!” shouted Pat Porth, who was standing next to me. It seemed like an exercise in futility, but we protestors were used to that. 

A day or so later the protest moved down the line to Emeryville, where the tracks ran down the middle of the street. I was given a red flag on a short stick - the kind used in railroad signaling - and was briefed by one of the math professors active in VDC at the time to wave the flag in a figure-eight motion. I knew this already - it was how you avoided curling the flag around the stick, and I took my place on the sidewalk where a police car was parked with the cop chatting with the neighbors. I knew that I would step out, wave my flag (railroad workers knew that this was an automatic signal to stop) and be arrested by the cop. I began to rehearse my statement to the court. 

The train hove into sight and got about two blocks away - I stepped out and began waving my flag the wrong way, curling it around the stick and rendering myself ridiculous, when someone else charged out into the street a block up the line with a HUGE red flag which he waved vigorously. The cops jumped into their car and roared off after him, and I was ignored. For one brief, futile moment I had been the point flagman, only to be upstaged. 

Not long thereafter the transport of troops to VIetnam was changed to charter air travel, flying into military airfields with vastly fewer opportunities for disruption by civilians. It seemed we did have an immediate effect, but of course, the images of the attempted blockade went around the world

Fifty years ago this Thursday, August 6 (Hiroshima Day), a group of Berkeley students and Bay Area peace activists took a stroll down University Avenue and unveiled two large paper banners. One read: "STOP." The other read: "The War Machine."

What made this protest memorable was the place where it was staged. It was not on the University of California's Savio (née Sproul) Steps nor was it on the streets of Oakland.

Instead, a determined crowd of 150 demonstrators converged to stand on a line of railroad tracks near a rail station just off one of Berkeley's main thoroughfares. 

City officials had been advised that the Pentagon planned to send a train loaded with young soldiers through Berkeley on their way to the Oakland Army Terminal, to board ships to Vietnam where they would ordered to kill the "Viet Cong." It was clear that many of them would not be coming back. 

Many of us walked to that intersection filled with memories of the day in 1964 when, as students, we spontaneously sat down around a police car driven onto the Berkeley campus to arrest an activist named Jack Weinberg. That nonviolent sit-in not only immobilized the squad car, it stopped the arrest and kicked off a little ruckus called the Free Speech Movement (FSM). 

"What if?" we thought. "What if a group of nonviolent protesters occupied those railroad tracks and brought a Pentagon's war machine to a halt?" 

The tracks are long gone (replaced by a tidy bicycling and walking path that crosses the city while the Berkeley School has since taken up residence on the site of the old station building) but what happened on West Street that day made headlines around the world—and raised the stakes in the growing public opposition to the US war in Vietnam. 

Details of the lead-up to the demonstration have faded with time but there is one moment that survives indelibly. I remember standing in the middle of those tracks with others grouped closely alongside. I remember the sound of the approaching engine's horn as it began to blast ominously in the distance—even before the train became visible. 

A member of the Berkeley police department's "Red Squad" stood at my left—at a safe distance from the rails. As the train appeared and began to close in, we raised our banners and stood our ground. 

That's when I noticed the head of the Red Squad (appropriately enough a red-haired cop in a suit) had suddenly turned tail and was running due west, away from the onrushing locomotive. 

The train was almost on top of us when I had my epiphany: Contrary to my idealistic expectations, I suddenly realized: This. Train. Is. Not. Going. To. Stop. 

Everyone else seemed to have gotten the same clue—but a bit earlier. Glancing quickly to my left and right, I noticed I was the only one left holding up the sign. 

I barely managed a leap to the right, wielding the banner like a bullfighter's cape (as if the paper banner could protect me from a 2,700-horsepower, seven-ton juggernaut). 

I felt the huge mass of metal pass within inches. 

My girlfriend, Ruthann, was on the other side of the rails. She thought for sure she had just seen me struck and ground into a lump of Leftist leftovers. A Chronicle photographer caught my near death-by-diesel pas de deux and it landed on page one the next morning. 

As the train rumbled by, I looked up toward the cabin and saw the face of the engineer. He was gazing downward with one arm hanging out the window. His expression was implacable. He could have been staring at a road sign—or roadkill. He showed no emotion as the locomotive rolled south. No show of concern, just a board look of passing curiousity. 

The hundreds of young soldiers being carried off to war were much more demonstrative. Many shouted insults as they passed but a few flashed peace signs and that gave us immense hope. 

We returned to the empty tracks to gather up the remains of the banner—now sliced to pieces by the train's steel wheels. We voted to fold it up and mail it to Washington, addressed to President Johnson. 

Later that night, I placed a personal call to the head of the railroad company. I reached him at his home. Of course, he knew what had happened, he said: it was on the evening news from coast to coast. 

I asked him why the train did not stop. Why put innocent lives at risk? 

He replied curtly that: "Stopping a train is a federal offense." 

I granted him that point but repeated my main question: "Why didn't the engineer stop the train when he saw there were fellow Americans standing on the tracks?" 

Just before he hung up, the man from Santa Fe provided the following explanation for the engineer's behavior: "He was simply following orders." 

The Protests Continue 

Other attempts to block the trains followed. On August 7, two more trains rolled through Berkeley and were met by hundreds of protesters. When the second train barreled through, several protestors sat down on the tracks. On August 12, Jerry Rubin and the Vietnam Day Committee organized a fourth protest. As many as 1,300 protesters showed up to block the tracks and, this time, 30 demonstrators managed to leap onto the coaches. Several made it to the top of the carriages. One tried to stop the train by pulling on an airbrake. They were beaten back by police swinging two-foot batons (which left a three protesters badly injured). But the engine was forced to a halt. 

The next day, people across the country read the eyewitness accounts of how young protesters had clung to the outsides of the 20 passenger coaches rumbling down the rails. "One woman missed her footing as she tried to get on the Santa Fe railway train to distribute anti-Viet Nam leaflets to the soldiers," the Chicago-Tribune reported. "She fell and was struck by a spring box under the carriage, which hurled her away from the wheels of the slow-moving train. Several demonstrators sat on the tracks as the train approached. They were seized by plainclothesmen and thrown from the tracks." 

The train was forced to slow to six miles an hour as police, gripping their riot sticks with both hands, pummeled the backs and arms of protesters clinging to the outside of the moving carriages. "About one-third of the demonstrators," the Chicago Tribune noted, "were women, some carrying babies." 

(Ronald Reagan was quick to put a rightwing political spin on the Berkeley protests. In 1966, he linked the activities of the Vietnam Day Committee and the FSM to a Senate Subcommittee on UnAmerican Activities report that concluded UC Berkeley "has become a rallying point for Communists and a center of sexual misconduct.") 

Despite the outrage of pro-war politicians, the Pentagon was forced to abandon further attempts to ship young soldiers off to war via the East Bay. So, in the end, the protests were successful. While we were not able to stop the war machine in its tracks, we were able to stall and divert it. And we sent a message to Washington that the anti-war movement was only going to grow in numbers and intensity. 

 

SF Bay Area protests against the war in Vietnam in 1965. Clips from Hot Damn! by Harvey Richards. Available through the Harvey Richards Media Archive, at http://www.http://estuarypress.com/peace_antiwar_films.html 

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Postscript: There are few surviving photos of that first demonstration. A recent check with the Chronicle's photo archivist found no original surviving prints or negatives and no one knew how to contact the photographer, Terry Morrison. One of the few surviving photos appeared on the cover of Rag Baby magazine (Volume 1, Issue A), which contained a 7-inch vinyl LP by Country Joe and the Fish. One of the two recordings on this rare October 1965 disk was "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag." 

I recently discovered that one of my FSM colleagues, Lee Felsenstein, was also on the tracks that morning. At the time, most of us were strangers to each other. The Planet would love to hear from others who were on the tracks that day or who participated in the larger Vietnam Day Committee demonstrations that attempted to block subsequent troop trains in Berkeley, Emeryville and Oakland. 

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Coverage of the Troop Train Protests: Reports from the SF Chronicle and the Berkeley Barb. 

(Thanks to the Berkeley Public Library for granting access to its rare historical collection of Berkeley Barbs.) 

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G.I. Train Scatters Bay Pickets

By Paul Avery / San Francisco Chronicle 

(August 6, 1965) -- A peace demonstration came within a terrifying split-second of ending in tragedy yesterday when pickets protesting US actions in Vietnam were almost run over by a troop train traveling through Berkeley. 

The Santa Fe Special—airhorn blasting a frantic morning —was only a few yards away when it finally dawned on the pickets at the train wasn't going to stop. 

There was a sudden scramble of several men who abandoned the positions they had taken up in the middle of the tracks. 

Two almost didn't make it. The huge red-and-yellow diesel engine rolled by, at its normal crossing speed of 10 mph, missing the men by inches. 

"I could have wiped my nose on the side as it went by," said Gar Smith, 22-year-old University of California graduate student. 

"It scared the hell out of me," 16-year-old Gregg Williams said with a shudder. "We were sure it would stop if we just stood there." 

The troop train didn't even slow down. 

The engineer—Santa Fe declined to identify him—kept at his steady speed as he went through the University Ave., Crossing at 11:22 AM. 

Aboard the train were about 300 soldiers clad in green field fatigues who made it obvious they took a dim view of the 150 demonstrators along the tracks. 

One GI leaned out of the window and grabbed at the placards the pickets were waving. He grinned gleefully when he managed to snatch one—reading "Fresh Bullet Bait"—out of the hands of a bearded youth. 

Two other soldiers stood at a window in another coach car with their hands cupped around their mouths shouting "Kooks… Kooks." 

It only took a couple of minutes for the train—made up of two engines, several baggage cars, and 11 troop-filled coaches—to rumble through the Berkeley crossing and onto the Oakland Army Base. 

Just where the soldiers came from is a military secret—but the train was from out of state. It was assumed they were bound for Vietnam. 

It was to protest the war there and America's role in it that the 150 tickets gathered. 

One of the protestants was folksong writer Malvina Reynolds whose "Little Boxes"—poking fun at tract housing—was a hit two years ago. 

"I feel we shouldn't be fighting . . . . We should be negotiating for peace," she said. "That's why I am here." 

Dr. Steven Smale, a 35-year-old UC mathematics professor, said he considered the demonstration successful "even though it didn't accomplish all that we had hoped." 

"If the train had stopped, we were going to talk with the troops and explain why the war in Vietnam is wrong and try to talk them out of going," he said. 

Smale, chairman of the committee coordinating the efforts of several peace groups, scheduled a meeting late last night to make plans for new demonstrations. 

"Don't forget there are two more troop trains scheduled to go through Berkeley Friday," he said to the crowd as it started to break up." Let's all turn out." 

"And this time, let's stop the train," someone shouted. 

There was a loud cheer. The train was out of hearing by that time. 

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Protesters Injured. Train Protests Greatest Since 1916.

Peace Action: GIs Cheer; Trainmen Jeer 

Bob Randolph / The Berkeley Barb (Vol. 1, No. 1) 

(August 13, 1965) -- The recent events at the Santa Fe stations in Berkeley and Oakland have been front-page news. It is not often that American citizens attempt to stop troop trains with their cargo of GIs headed overseas, this time to South Vietnam. Not since 1916 has such opposition to US war moves existed. 

It was big news, yet the commercial press ignored the most revealing part of the story—the crudely lettered signs in the windows of one of the trains, held by some of the troops onboard. "I don't want to go," said one of them. Others said, "Lucky civilians," and "Keep up the good work, we're with you." 

As the dingy old passenger cars passed the demonstrators at the Berkeley depot shouting "No! No! No!", dozens of GIs pressed their faces to the windows, some waving to the crowds outside, some quiet and reflective, some in groups in the dining cars, holding their rifles and looking out with looks of sarcasm and hostility. 

The day before, the first of the three trains pushed through Berkeley without accelerating speed and narrowly missed grinding two young pickets under the wheels. As I heard of this, I thought back to the days in the early 1950s, when I worked for this railroad, and I recall that warm summer afternoon when a fireman on board one of the streamliners had risked his life on the engines cowcatcher on the Martinez trestle in a vain attempt to scoop up a two-year-old child playing between the rails. He reached at the last instant and missed, and the child was cut to pieces. Yet he had tried. 

Now, in 1965, another trainman pursued his work under a different code, as did the conductor who leaned out of his vestibule and shouted invectives at the demonstrators in Berkeley as they attempted to do what they could to save more remote children caught in the path of another juggernaut in Vietnam. 

The use of police in both Berkeley and Emeryville, advancing slowly along the tracks ahead of the trains, tearing down picket signs, roughly pushing the protesting demonstrators out of the path of the troop trains, also marked a new symbolic aspect of the accelerating American juggernaut. 

What is perhaps not new is the series of actions taken by the Berkeley City Council. On the main issue of the developing war in Vietnam, the City Council, in spite of its liberal majority, failed utterly to express itself. It confined its actions to the relatively petty complaint that Santa Fe take its troop trains somewhere else, [away from] the Berkeley residential area through which they had run until recent years when all passenger trains from Richmond to Oakland were curtailed. 

This is not new. In times of war and crisis, only the hardiest of the opponents of the government's war moves have taken their stand. It is an example of the liberal's propensity to ineffectualness when courageous, uncompromising action could count the most without regard to political consequences and that is why the Establishment never really has to take him seriously. He'll come around. The only question is how much pressure will it take before he does. 

Well, Berkeley is only a microcosm of the world stage. And what difference does it make whether the troops bound for Vietnam come through Berkeley or East Oakland? Perhaps these railroad episodes may bring many of those here who call themselves "liberal" to question the sufficiency of that political position—particularly at a time of growing world peril such as we face at the present. 

 

 

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Troop Train Protests Continue

August 12: A Black Day for Berkeley 

Roving Ratfink in The Berkeley Barb (Vol. 1, No. 1) 

Thursday, August 12, 1965—A day of brutality in Berkeley. Some of it was subtle and some was gross, but it all bespoke a growing ugliness in American life. 

The Vietnam Day Committee told this reporter that it notified the Santa Fe railroad, the City of Berkeley, and the Army of its intentions to demonstrate. It charges them with responsibility for today's injuries. 

This is what happened. 

1. A 20-car Santa Fe troop train forced its way into the ranks of demonstrators stretched along a mile and a half of track from Albany to the Berkeley station, scattering them indifferently, like cattle.
2. The engineer loosed clouds of live steam from the locomotive to clear them from the track, but in fact the steam blinded them to the danger of his rapidly advancing engine.
3. Berkeley police clubbed and dragged protesting demonstrators from the sides of the train. The civilians were clinging there in an effort to reach the troops caged inside. Three demonstrators were injured, two with suspected broken limbs. (They have been released from the hospital and their present condition is unknown.)
4. A plainclothesman knocked a woman off the track and, in his panic, left her lying stunned, 8 inches from the rail. A friend pulled her to safety at the last instant.
5. Paralysis of Berkeley's city Council continued in the face of the real elements of the crisis. This is guilt by inaction, a subtle form of brutality now central to American life.
6. The people of Berkeley and the rest of the country are generally and deeply ignorant concerning the issues in Vietnam, which this is all about. This is every day, not just this August 12th, and politically it is the American way of life. It is for this more than anything else that many foreign visitors are horrified.

7. he quality of the American war rubbed off on Berkeley. The Vietnam war is beyond brutality. It is obscenity. It is the immediate and direct cause of the present events at the Santa Fe tracks in Berkeley.

What are railway engineers? Automatons or human beings? 

Two more troop trains are due in Berkeley next week. Suppose 1,000 or more of the Berkeleyans who do have troubled feelings have a firsthand look? Perhaps they will find some of their comfortable liberalism dislodged forever, to be replaced by feelings of outrage. 

What would they say on hearing the GI on today's radio who, in fact, shouted through the glass, "Stop the train! Stop the train!" 

What does the cry of this prisoner tell us?

Dry thunderstorms moving through the Bay Area through Friday morning could increase the risk for wildfires, the National Weather Service said today.  

The weather service issued a Red Flag Warning starting at 2 p.m. Thursday afternoon and lasting through 11 a.m. Friday. The warning has prompted the closure of some Bay Area parkland as a precaution.  

Thunderstorms in the San Francisco Bay and Monterey Bay areas were expected to begin Thursday afternoon and continue through Friday morning. 

The chance of thunderstorms will diminish by late Friday morning, according to forecasters. Weather service officials said they expect associated lightning strikes to be the most frequent in Monterey and San Benito counties initially, then spread north. 

The thunderstorms will produce little or no rain and consequently increase the risk of wildfires. Isolated downbursts of wind may make fighting existing fires more difficult, forecasters said. 

The lightning would also pose risks to campers, hikers and people at outdoor sporting events, weather service officials said. 

The high fire danger in the Bay Area has prompted the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to close 23,000 acres of wildland on the Peninsula. 

The Peninsula Watershed -- which comprises the land around the Crystal Springs Reservoir, Pilarcitos Lake and San Andreas Lake -- was closed at noon today and will remain closed tomorrow, according to the SFPUC. 

The reservoirs help provide drinking water to 2.6 million SFPUC customers in San Francisco, Alameda, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties and the land around them has popular trails for hiking, running and biking. 

All trails in the area are closed through Friday and the SFPUC is limiting its own activities in the area as well. In addition the SFPUC is closely monitoring the 36,000-acre Alameda Watershed in the East Bay. 

Massive wildfires have consumed thousands of acres of drought-ridden land in California in recent weeks, including nearly 70,000 acres in Lake, Yolo and Colusa counties and 8,000 acres in Napa and Solano counties.

Don’t you wish you were in France right now? If you were, however, what you’d find is that many shops and even tourist sights that you might want to visit have locked the door and posted signs: “Fermé pour les vacances” (Closed for vacation.) The months of July and August are dedicated to the lengthy vacations that a lot of French workers are entitled to. That’s a civilized custom, now alas somewhat on the decline.

This custom is also traditionally observed in Berkeley—the City Council takes off mid-July and won’t be seen until mid-September. Many are happy to see them go, though not their pet developers lusting after new permits.

Builders are eager to Get On With It without a break: constructing those Cash Register Multiples that are once again in vogue in Berkeley­ and throughout the Bay Area, luxury apartment blocks poised to swell to enormous heights and produce enormous profits.

Dig We Must, utility companies used to say in Manhattan during the regime of mega-builder Robert Moses (not the civil rights hero). Now, right here in Berkeley, those out-of-town money men who are eagerly engaged in strip-mining downtown Berkeley for profit are saying Build We Must.

While the City Council is away at play, the commissions which are supposed to watchdog land use in this city have been hornswoggled into staying around to fast-track the Council Majority’s pet project, the Residences at Berkeley Plaza (RatBP) at 2211 Harold Way at Shattuck, to be built on the landmarked site of the Shattuck Hotel and the Shattuck Cinemas.

Mayor Tom Bates has already said (on the TV news, no less) that he supports the plan to build about 300 luxury units on that block , despite the fact that the project has yet to come before him at council meetings. That’s why he’s able to take long vacations abroad every summer, including this one—his minions know the drill and will carry on regardless.

The worker bees at the Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Zoning Adjustments Board are still buzzing around the honey. What exactly are they in town to do? That, dear reader, is the $64 million question. I wish I could tell you the answer—I’ve tried, but I still don’t know what the script is supposed to be. You'll have to find out for yourself by going to the LPC meeting on Thursday. 

I sat down this morning fully prepared to figure exactly what the LPC will be up to next Thursday. With some difficulty I found the agenda for their announced August 13 special meeting on the city’s gosh-awful web site. Don’t look for it on the semi-official community calendar, because, as of this writing, it’s not there. It is, however, eventually findable using a text search. 

To make it easy, you can click here to see it if you’re a glutton for punishment. 

And what are the commissioners being asked to do? Buried deep in pages of miscellaneous links is the staff report prepared for this special meeting, which appears to have been scheduled just for the purpose of koshering this very special project. Nine Berkeleyans are staying in town just make Mark Rhoades (the fixer for the land owner) happy. 

Click here to download the report yourself. 

This is where I started to get lost, right at the top of the report: 

The Landmarks Preservation Commission is being asked, among other things, to approve permits to allow service of distilled spirits, beer and wine, and to permit amplified live entertainment, all at what seems to be an on-site restaurant. Just exactly how is the LPC qualified to issue liquor licenses? 

And that’s just the beginning. The rest of the document is dauntingly over-stuffed with data and drawing, most irrelevant and meaningless. I talked to a good number of knowledgeable people—a former councilmember, a retired City of Oakland planner, a high-level campaign consultant and several others, and while they’d all looked at the packet, none of them could explain exactly what the council was supposed to do on Thursday. 

I did manage to flip through the whole packet, but I seriously doubt that the Landmarks Preservation Commissioners have managed to read and consider any significant percentage of it. Someone with a lot more nerve than me might use the audience question period to ask each one individually if they’ve read everything in the packet. I bet it would be hard to get a straight answer from all of them. 

At least one of the commissioners might have had trouble plowing through it all since she was just recently appointed by the Mayor, after he axed his previous appointee for admitting that as a preservationist she had doubts about this project since it requires demolition on a designated historic site. But the new commissioner can probably guess how she’s supposed to vote if she’s going to keep her seat, so she needn’t bother to do all that reading. 

A couple of meetings back several of her fellow commissioners said at some length that they supported the project because it contained housing units—even before they’d reviewed the evidence. One of them opined that it would bring culture to Berkeley since it would attract rich people, and we all know rich folks have culture. 

It’s hard to imagine that the project will get an unbiased informed de novo review under the circumstances next Thursday. But I hope to be proven wrong. 

And then there’s the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). CEQA reports (Environment Impact Reports) are supposed to inform decision-makers about how a proposed project will affect the environment. 

Urban legends say Environment Impact Reports are evaluated by the pound, not by the logic of their arguments. This one’s big all right, but the authors (in a contract firm which has another big contract with the city for another task) managed to miss Berkeley High, right next door, altogether. The Berkeley Unified School District has asked that this be remedied, but nothing has happened so far, and most likely nothing ever will. 

At their last meeting the Zoning Adjustment Board voted (furtively) to certify that the Final EIR was adequate for its purposes. The public can still appeal this vote to the City Council—but here’s Catch 22: the appeal can’t be filed until the planning department issues a Notice of Decision about ZAB’s action. Which they haven’t yet done and won’t do until it’s convenient for them. 

How can the LPC rely on an EIR which could still be overturned either by the City Council or in court if opponents wanted to appeal? And even if it were perfect, it’s pounds and pounds of paper to parse. 

I just don’t believe that commissioners can say in good faith that they’ve read it all and are prepared to make the best decision. They are human beings, after all, and this is an inhuman task. 

What’s most discouraging about the way downtown Berkeley is being carved up for greedy speculators like Rhoades and allies is that the voice of the people no longer seems to count. Proponents have fat wallets, and are willing to spend spend spend to hire consultants of all stripes to make their mess of pottage look tasty. Opponents must rely on unpaid volunteers and the small number of attorneys who are willing to work cheaply for the public good. 

The RatBP project is a cynical evasion of the intent of the Downtown Plan which many citizens labored for years to produce. Yes, the plan anticipated a few tall building scattered around the historic Downtown. No, it did not anticipate demolition of historic structures, popular theaters and educational facilities in order to make room for these new tall structures. It did not anticipate three bulky buildings disguised as one to dominate almost a whole city block. 

It’s rumored that the only thing that impresses decision-makers in Berkeley is the sheer number of speakers who turn out at meetings. Let’s hope that this is true, because if it’s not we must believe that campaign contributions and consultant expenditures are the true source of power in this city. Of course, there are always lawsuits, but they are a poor alternative to getting it right the first time, costly to both appellants and taxpayers. 

If you haven’t turned out for these events before, this is your big chance to be part of the growing movement to take back Berkeley from the power elite, to preserve it as the beautiful and diverse city we’re proud to live in. 

I must say that, win or lose, it’s been an inspiring experience to be one of the increasing number of passionate and well-informed Berkeleyans who do show up for these civic struggles. The people you meet there are the kind of people you’d like to know. Many of them are also active in other good causes—quite a few are veterans of the Tony Thurmond campaign. 

It’s much better than staying home surfing the Net and whining about the state of the world. Think of it as part of the entertainment budget if nothing else. It can be fun. 

See for yourself what’s going on, and do speak truth to power if the spirit moves you: 

Event: Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission 

Date: Thursday, August 13, 2015
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Place: North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Avenue 

 

 

 

 

 

Squeezed out: The shrinking availability of Berkeley’s affordable housing

The construction of the first, true high-rise in the city of Berkeley (in this case the Harold Way Project), will forever change the nature of our very unusual, human-scale city. Under the unfortunately voter-approved Downtown Plan, once the high-rise limit is breached, the city will never turn back as it rushes forward to become part of what Bay Area planners sometimes admiringly refer to as “the vernacular of today”. And there is no way the skyscrapers will be forever restricted to just three—as envisaged in the Plan. Urban planning, and urban developer dynamics over the long term just don’t work that way. 

The old adage concerning contentious negotiations about urban architectural development is that "you can’t beat something with nothing”. The Harold Way Project fits within an ideological model developers are using to create synergy between their desire for profit, and the public's interest in environmental issues, under the rubric of “smart-growth”. The “smart growth” meme is the “something” upon which they are hanging their hats. They, and city planners, have persuaded the public into believing that only skyscrapers can save city downtowns from economic decline and environmental degradation—when the truth is that—with rare exceptions—the move to high-rise urban profiles simply adds greater fuel to the environmental problems of pollution and gridlock that “smart growth” is supposed to combat in the first place. 

To battle this “something” zeitgeist, opponents have to develop an equally powerful meme to oppose it. Simply bleating and wringing one’s hands in opposition results, unfortunately, in a struggle tactic of simply “nothing”. What is needed is an equally powerful counter-ideology of appropriate urban land-use planning, including the development of relatively low-rise(four to six stories) residential structures to meet density and infill needs, coupled with visual and emotionally-charged vehicles for articulating a counter-meme. In this regard, the "Campanile Way Visual Corridor” protest movement combines several creative elements of what is necessary for the marketing of an effective opposition strategy. Visually, it confronts the images the developers and planners put forward of their “exciting” skyscraper expressing the “vernacular of today”, with compelling photographic reconstructions of how that building would desecrate a long-beloved view corridor from the UC campus. And, while the Campanile Way movement provides an excellent visual vehicle to give emotional charge to opposition strategy, it also brings in young people and a long and cherished tradition of UC Berkeley student activism to change the shape of society. 

Of course, a critical part of opposition strategy to the high-rise meme has to be a clear articulation to the voting public of how, and why, Berkeley’s overall architectural profile and style is so unusual among American cities. Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that, as a percent of Berkeley’s overall population of 112,000, only a rather small minority have ever actually voted in favor of a high-rise downtown concept (26,727 in the latest iteration under the Prop R vote). Thus, sadly, at this point Berkeley citizens generally have little grasp of the tsunami of high-rise monoliths that are now headed towards them as part of their so-called, “citizen-approved” architectural future. The citizenry of some other Bay Area cities, such as Palo Alto, appear to be much better informed and have firmly held off developer and planner efforts to explode their downtown core skywards. Countless other, highly successful cities world-wide have also strictly limited building heights. High-rise may be entirely appropriate, and necessary, in places like Manhattan and Chicago—but not for Berkeley. 

Ideally, what now is urgently needed is a thought-provoking essay by a known architectural or social critic about what, historically has made Berkeley such an unusual place to live in from an architectural standpoint, and why this way of life is headed for complete, radical transformation under current development dynamics. And, what also is needed is a “marketing strategy” for creation of the Berkeley of tomorrow-- while preserving its rich legacy of the past. Among the many parts of this marketing strategy must, of course, be a keen focus on environmental aspects of any construction proposals, and a clear understanding of how to preserve enough affordable housing for all strata of society. 

In conclusion, somehow, we must ensure going forward that the citizens of Berkeley and its civic leaders comprehend that if they go forward with the Harold Way Project as presently conceived, they will forever sacrifice the character of this unique, beautiful university town and its unusual place in American history, and instead transform this city into a generic replica of the sad, dehumanizing banality characteristic of so much of new urban architecture in America today. 

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This opinion was first published at berkeleyside.com.

A major detriment of the 2011 Harold Way plan is the demolition of the very popular 10-screen Shattuck Cinemas (275,00 to 300,000 tickets sold per year). The Shattuck Cinemas bring both popular and little known films to Berkeley and draw loyal patrons from all over the East Bay each week whose patronage extends beyond seeing movies to benefit Shattuck Avenue merchants, cafes and restaurants, as well. These theaters, then, are a cultural and entertainment attraction that draw several hundred thousand people to downtown Berkeley each year and contribute significantly to the vitality of our downtown and to Berkeley's cultural richness. 

Mark Rhoades and Joseph Penner must not be allowed to confuse mitigation of the demolition of these theaters with the conferring of significant community benefits, as Mr. Penner does in his July 30 interview with Berkeleyside regarding his revised plan for 2211 Harold Way, which includes space allotments for 10 screening rooms: 

"Penner agreed to add the theaters, but told the city of Berkeley that the inclusion should count as part of the project’s 'significant community benefits.' Theaters generally lose money. Landmark currently pays below market rent and Penner agreed to continue that arrangement after the new theaters were built. The construction, rent reduction and loss of other rental opportunities, however, would cost Penner $16 million over the next 20 years, he said. Penner said he wanted that included in the benefits package." 

The revised plan would place 6 of the 10 proposed theaters in the basement below street level, some underneath the Shattuck Hotel—hardly comparable to the existing 10 beautifully-decorated theaters at street level he plans to demolish (see photos below), and potentially a deadly place to be in time of a serious earthquake. Mr. Penner considers this poor if costly replacement to qualify as a significant community benefit. However, in fact, this would merely be a partial and inadequate mitigation of the huge loss that his demolition of our theaters would represent. It is essential that if the people of Berkeley are to have our downtown disrupted for several years of construction, the natural light to our main library forever blocked by this hugely out-of-scale building, our infrastructure impacted to a point that will require substantial and immediate repair or expansion of water and sewer lines, emergency services, parking, public transit, etc. that he be required to mitigate the detriments posed by his project. His consideration of significant community benefits to be provided to the city should only follow the mitigation of detriments resulting from construction of this building. 

It should be requisite that if a developer proposes to demolish a viable Berkeley business, and especially one that is a cultural resource as well, this business should be provided at equal rent comparable space in the new building and the cost of temporary space be paid by the developer during the construction of the new building. Berkeley city government claims to support local businesses, so it is baffling that this should be an issue at all. We are concerned for the future of Ace Hardware, The Missing Link bike repair cooperative, and Berkeley Vacuum Center as well—all valuable downtown businesses under threat by proposed new development. 

As the LPC considers this proposal, which would so radically affect the character of our city, I request once again that the developer be required to contract with a licensed professional to provide story poles to delineate the volume and height of this huge project and notify the public of the schedule. 

Below is my 4/21/15 comment to the Zoning Adjustments Commission regarding the numerous detriments to the city of Berkeley posed by the 2211 Harold Way project: 

The detriments to the city posed by approval of this project far outweigh any possible benefits. 

1. This project contains no units of low income housing, which is obviously the great need in our city. Instead the developer will enjoy the "discount" of $8,000 per unit of the $28,000 in lieu fee. If the city continues to approve market rate and luxury developments, there will be no space left for inclusionary housing for Berkeley residents with moderate or low incomes and no solution to our critical lack of inclusionary and affordable housing. 

2. The 2 to 4-year construction period will inhibit access to our Main Branch Library, our downtown Post Office, the YMCA, and to the 3000-student Berkeley High School a block away. 

3. Construction of this hugely out-of-scale project proposed for Berkeley's historic district will not only disrupt downtown traffic during the years of its construction but the majority of the 302 units will be owned or rented by people who will bring additional cars to Berkeley's already very congested downtown, thus increasing our contribution of greenhouse gases rather than reducing it, as we must do. 

4. The developer of this project would demolish the successful, well-attended Landmark Shattuck Cinemas, that provide thousands of residents of Berkeley and the surrounding area highly-valued programming of independent, foreign, and documentary films not offered elsewhere. Film is a major art form and the Shattuck Cinemas provide our city with a significant cultural benefit. We don't want this enrichment to our lives sacrificed to luxury housing. 

5. The 2211 Harold Way project would also demolish the thriving Habitot, with its convenient location adjacent to the YMCA and the Public Library, all of which provide Berkeley families with ready access to children's programs. Surrounding restaurants and cafes also benefit from the attraction of young families to downtown Berkeley, so they too will lose business if Habitot is forced to move. 

6. Exacerbation of traffic congestion, closed sidewalks and streets, and construction equipment blocking parking will make it greatly more difficult to reach the existing businesses, restaurants and cafes in the Shattuck/Kittredge/Harold Way/Allston Way block and in the adjacent areas. Should the proposed hotel be under construction at the same time, the damage to downtown businesses from the resulting traffic congestion will be dire. 

7. This huge building project is within the school zone of Berkeley High School. The decibel level and pollution emissions during the construction period would quite possibly exceed what the law allows in a school zone. 

8. Adding 302 more units to the downtown area, in addition to the several large buildings built here in recent years, would significantly increase water use and demands on fire and police services, sewage disposal, city streets and aging infrastructure. There is no effort to meet the Zero Net Energy standards California will require of residential buildings in 2020. There is no provision of affordable units, so workers unable to find housing here will be forced to commute into Berkeley. In these ways too, this project would significantly increase production of greenhouse gases rather than reducing it. 

Before any more development proposals are approved, it is essential that we examine the cumulative effect of the many large building projects recently completed, under construction, or awaiting approval in the downtown area and throughout Berkeley. To allocate the few available building sites to for-profit developers will radically change the demographics of our city and force city workers to commute longer distances, thus increasing our production of greenhouse gases rather than reducing it. To interject into our city's handsome historic area so obtrusive a building that does not serve our city's need is among the detriments to the community that this project represents. 

In an age when network ‘news’ is becoming increasingly irrelevant, more and more young people are seeking alternative news sources and comedy to escape the highly repetitious FOX, MSNBC, CNN . . Talking points. It hardly seems that 16 years have passed since Jon Stewart took over the "The Daily Show" anchor desk. His quick wit and biting satire made a complete mockery of network news exposing their journalists as shallow and witless.  

The program won Peabody Awards in 2000 and 2004 for its election coverage and has won numerous Emmys. It was no accident that the producers of ‘Meet The Press’ requested Jon to host the program validating his well-deserved reputation as being one of the best interviewers on television. Jon occasionally suspended his comedy monologue when he thought it would be appropriate to do so. The murder of nine people at a black church in Charleston, S.C. revealed a somber and immensely sad Stewart. Jon has also been at the forefront of demanding justice for 911 first responders and has worked quietly running a training program to place veterans in television and movie jobs. Good luck Jon in your ongoing career – you will be sorely missed.

October 1 marks the 50th anniversary of the 1965 genocide in Indonesia that left between 1 to 3 million people dead. Human rights groups are circulating petitions calling for the U.S. and other governments, most notably the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan to acknowledge their role in the genocide and to release CIA, military and other governmental records related to the mass killings. Sukarno, the first Indonesian president who led Indonesia out from Dutch colonialism, was ousted because of his ‘grievous crime’ of wishing to stay independent from Western and Soviet Union alliances. 

The United States provided the Indonesian army with financial, military and intelligence support at the time of the mass killings. US embassy officials compiled lists of thousands of names of public figures in Indonesia and handed these to the army saying, "Kill everybody on these lists and check off the names as you go, and give the lists back to us when you’re done." Buoyed by US support, the Indonesian government went on a killing spree and wiped out one third of the people of East Timor who were seeking independence. 

Joshua Oppenheimer produced two film documentaries highlighting the genocide, -“The Look of Silence" and a companion film titled "The Act of Killing" which have been nominated for an Academy Award. 

In light of these findings, it seems hypocritical for the US to constantly wag its finger at other nations for their human rights shortcomings when past US government have engaged in such horrific mass killings.

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This is a Very Good Deal. Go for it! 

Many political observers were surprised by the success of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. This is an instance of the proverbial “chickens coming home to roost.” Republican politicians have grown fond of telling their constituents, “You can’t trust Washington.” This paved the way for Trump, the ultimate outsider. 

It’s been 16 years since George W. Bush announced he was running for president. At the time, few liberals took “Dubya”, another outsider, seriously. There’s a parallel between Bush and Donald Trump. Since Trump announced his candidacy, many liberals have written him off. That’s a mistake. 

When George W. Bush entered the 2000 presidential race, the frontrunner was John McCain. Many political observers thought McCain would trounce Dubya, because Bush was a lightweight with few political credentials. We were wrong because we didn’t know about Karl Rove and, therefore, underestimated the Bush campaign. 

When Donald Trump entered the 2016 presidential race, the frontrunner was Jeb Bush. Many political observers thought Bush would trounce “the Donald,” because Trump was a political neophyte. We were wrong because we underestimated how media savvy Trump is (and how feckless Jeb can be). 

In 2000, Bush prevailed because he was able to portray himself as an “outsider” who could “fix” Washington – “I’m a uniter not a divider.” Now it’s Trump who is the outsider. 

In Trump’s favor is the fact that voters don’t trust Washington. A recent CNN poll found that 68 percent of respondents did not feel “the government in Washington represents the views of people like yourself.” “That figure spikes among Republican and Republican-leaning voters. Among GOP voters, 53% say they don't feel their views are well represented in Washington at all.” 

The CNN poll observed, “Republican voters who say their views are not represented at all by the government in Washington are far more likely than other Republicans to back Trump's run for the White House.” Writing in Newsweek, Libertarian Jeffry Tucker observed that Trump has absorbed into “his own political ambitions every conceivable resentment (race, class, sex, religion, economic) and [promises] a new order of things under his mighty hand.” 

For Trump to win the Republican presidential nomination, he will have to appeal to the disparate wings of the GOP. 2014’s Pew Research political typology identified three distinct sets of Republican voters. The first is “steadfast conservatives… very conservative attitudes across most issues, including social policy and the size and scope of government.” This group comprises 15 percent of registered voters. 

Trump appears to be conservative on most social issues; he’s pro-life and supports traditional marriage. His views on immigration, deport all undocumented immigrants, are strongly supported by steadfast conservatives. 

The second set of Republican voters is “business conservatives… traditional small-government Republicans.” They comprise 12 percent of registered voters. 

Trump’s business pedigree is likely to appeal to this wing of the GOP. So will his 5-point tax plan that includes repealing estate and corporate taxes, as well as lowering individual, capital gains, and dividend taxes. 

The conservative media is split on Trump. Fox News loves him. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t. Writing about Trump in a WSJ op-ed, Peggy Noonan harrumphed, “Sometimes an ill wind feels like a breath of fresh air… Mr. Trump is not a serious man, which is part of his appeal in a country that has grown increasingly unserious. He’s a showman…” 

The third set of Republican voters is “Young Outsiders… [who]express unfavorable opinions of both major parties. They are skeptical of activist government; a substantial majority views government as wasteful and inefficient.” They comprise 15 percent of registered voters. 

It’s tempting to describe this group as libertarian but Pew observes that they display “strong support for the environment.” If that’s true then they are unlikely to support Trump who famously called global climate change “a hoax.” 

In 2000, George W. Bush easily won the Republican nomination because he held the two key GOP segments: steadfast conservatives and business conservatives. In the 2000 presidential election, Dubya easily won the evangelical vote and that of the wealthiest Americans. 

What remains to be seen about Donald Trump is whether or not he can hold the vote of evangelicals. Pundits aren’t sure. Religious writer Sarah Posner cites Trumps “revolving-door marriages and past support for abortion” as some of the reason why evangelicals are lukewarm on the Donald. On the other hand, religious writerDavid Brody gushes, “They like [Trump’s] boldness.” 

Of more critical concern to the Trump campaign is his persistent unfavorability ratings. The political website 538 notes that in terms of “net favorability ratings,” Trump is ranked 13th among likely Republican Iowa/New Hampshire voters. (Among all voters, Trump’s favorability ratings are strongly negative: 59 percent of voters views him unfavorably versus 27 percent who have a favorable opinion.) 

Nonetheless, Trump will be around for a while. And it’s clear that Donald Trump is the candidate Republicans deserve. 

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

 

 

 

My wife and I were privileged to go on a number of African safaris in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania, and even Zimbabwe. We watched animals; we did not shoot them except with a camera. We went on each safari in an open land rover. The animals in the game reserve are so used to land rovers, we could drive within a few feet of animals with little or no notice.  

Viewing wild animals up close in their natural habitat is fascinating and very entertaining. We watched female elephants with their young. The babies were cute trying to learn how to maneuver their trunks to put food in their mouths. We watched a group of lionesses stalking a herd of cape buffalo waiting for one to stray from the herd; a female cheetah stalking and then killing an impala; huge crocodiles sunning themselves; silver-backed gorillas with their families; chimpanzees and all sorts of monkeys and baboons; a wide variety of birds; thousand upon thousands of wildebeests gathering for their annual migration north; giraffes; hyenas; zebras; deer and antelope; hippos; lemurs; and white black rhinos; and much more. 

Thankfully, the brouhaha following the killing of Cecil the Lion by Dr. Walter Palmer, an American dentist, has put a much needed spotlight on so-called trophy hunting, the stalking and killing of wild animals for sport. The trophy is the antlers, head, skin of the slain animal plus the "joy of the kill." The hunter is usually armed with a high-powered rifle (a bow and arrow in Palmer's case). The animal doesn't stand a chance. And that's called sport! It would be better to spend the money for such hunts -- $50,000 in Palmer's case -- on protecting the animals' habitat so that future generations can enjoy witnessing them in their natural habitat. 

In memory of Cecil the Lion, let all future "hunts" be with camera, not guns.

Psychosis, in the mind of the person suffering from it, has its own defense mechanisms, much as there are cancers or communicable diseases that have built-in defenses. The psychotic disorder grabs hold of the ego of the individual, and causes the person to defend his or her delusional beliefs with the same defenses that would ordinarily work in our favor, defenses that ordinarily would give us fortitude and persistence.  

Part of the difficulty of getting a psychotic person into treatment is that the illness makes us defend our false ideas and resist facing the truth. Thus, the psychotic illness is backed up by the misappropriated emotional system of the sufferer. The illness has a strategy of hitting the reward button in the brain for letting symptoms proliferate, while hitting the pain button in the brain when truth begins to encroach.  

Delusions can also reinforce themselves by hitting the pain and/or fear button in the brain in general. Rather than the brain rejecting a thought because it is painful, the pain attached to a false thought can open up the brain's gating. In this case, the person's ego is not attached emotionally to the delusion. Because of this, someone suffering from what I will call a "negative delusion" is more likely to cooperate when told it is a symptom.  

Having an understanding of all of the above is one of the reasons I have been able to consistently remain in treatment for the past nineteen years. When a psychotic person is starting to get well, he or she begins to develop compensatory mechanisms. Developing and engaging the "higher self" has a major role in this.  

Medication doesn't necessarily shut down the "higher functions." In my case, medication has turned down the volume on the symptoms, and this has allowed the higher functions to re-emerge, when before they were drowned out by overwhelming symptoms. Once the higher functions become available, they can be used to help combat the illness.  

Gaining insight into what led to being ill in one's past, and learning not to repeat the same mistakes, is one example of engaging higher functions. Learning to "accept the unacceptable" which is the fact of an illness that isn't going away and that needs to be dealt with, is another example. Learning in general to acknowledge uncomfortable realities, is a third example of engaging the higher self. There are numerous ways that the higher functions can help in the fight against psychosis.  

When someone confronts us with some things we would rather not hear, they could be a bully, or, on the other hand, they could be trying to help us. If the message is delivered bluntly with no consideration of our feelings, perhaps we could filter out that bluntness and consider the message the person is giving us. Learning to hear someone's message without blocking it due to the manner in which it is delivered, is a good thing.  

Getting well and staying well, for someone who suffers from delusions, is a battle that never ends. One must be vigilant for delusions and other symptoms, and this has to be ongoing.

A White House Conference is a national meeting sponsored by the Executive Office of the President of the United States with the purpose of discussing a topic of importance to the American public. It is typically created by specific legislation. Some conferences last for a day, others for several. Typical attendees include experts in the particular field, community leaders, advocates and citizens with an interest in the issue. The President usually speaks to a conference general session. The conference concludes by issuing a report to the President summarizing and making recommendations for executive or legislative action. The First Lady has sometimes hosted White House conferences. 

The first White House conference was the Conference on the Care of Dependent Children, held in 1909 under President Theodore Roosevelt. The most well-known is the White House Conference on Aging (WHCOA), which has been held once a decade since the 1950s. Three of the major issues that were not dealt with by delegates to the 2005 WHCOA were end-of-life decisions, lifelong learning, and drawing on the wisdom of elders. 

The 2015 WHCOA was held on Monday, July 13, moderated by 56-year old David Hyde Pierce. Showcasing Administration initiatives was high on the agenda. President Obama spoke in the East Room of the White House. His welcoming remarks included “… one of the best measures of a country is how it treats its older citizens. And by that measure, the United States has a lot to be proud of. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security are some of our greatest triumphs as a nation. When Social Security was signed into law, far too many seniors were living in poverty… Today, the number of seniors in poverty has fallen dramatically. Every American over 65 has access to affordable health care…” 

Showcasing Administration initiatives was high on the conference agenda; many were expressed in future tense. 

 

• HHS awarded grants of37.5 million to improve care for older adults, through the Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program.
• USDA proposed to permit grocery purchasing and delivery services run by government and non-profit organizations to accept SNAP benefits as payment.
• HHS provided $4 million in new grants for falls prevention.
• The Department of Labor will clarify rules about state-based retirement savings initiatives, including state-administered 401(K) plans, the Treasury's starter savings program, and automatically enrolling employees in IRA's.
• HUD will clarify the Equal Access Rule, which ensures that HUD housing is open to all eligible individuals regardless of actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status, including Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly.

This was the first White House Conference held inside the White House. Assistant Secretary for Aging (fifty-fiveish) Kathy Greenlee believes it was the first time a U.S. President ever mentioned the words "elder abuse." 

 

The bipartisan 3000-member Elder Justice Coalition (EJC is at 1612 K St NW, Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20006) had strong praise for the Obama Administration's "significant and historic" actions on elder justice such as a new rule to be issued by the end of 2015 dealing with the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA). According to a White House fact sheet released at the conference and available online, the Department of Justice "will revise the current guidelines by clarifying that VOCA assistance funds may be used to support legal services for crime victims, and emphasize the need to use VOCA funds to support social and legal services to underserved victims, including elder victims of abuse, financial exploitation, fraud and neglect." 

EJC National Coordinator Robert Blancato called the new rule "a game changing action which would finally specify that VOCA funds are to be used to help elder abuse crime victims. The additional significance of this is that it comes after Congress lifted the cap on spending under VOCA from $700 million to $2.3 billion." 

It was announced at the WHCOA that: 

 

• The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will issue a rule that "will update for the first time in nearly 25 years the quality and safety requirements for the more than 15,000 nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities to improve quality of life, enhance person centered care and services for residents in nursing homes, improve resident safety and bring these regulatory requirements into closer alignment with current professional standards."

• The Department of Justice will train elder abuse prosecutors in all 50 states to prosecute effectively elder abuse and financial exploitation and develop online training for law enforcement officers.

• The National Institute of Health will convene a state of the art workshop on elder abuse in the fall to review the science on understanding and preventing abuse, to examine screening tools to identify abuse victims review effective interventions and research in related areas like child abuse and domestic violence that might inform research on elder abuse and focus on gaps and opportunities in this field of research.

• The Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice and its Elder Justice Initiative will fund a multiyear pilot project to evaluate potential means to avoid and respond to elder mistreatment.

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will release before the end of 2015 an advisory to help financial institutions prevent, recognize and report elder financial exploitation.

Grantmakers In Aging CEO John Feather was another invitee-- invitee as opposed to delegate… In My Reflections on the White House Conference on Aging: Celebrating Aging in the Nation's House, he emphasizes that philanthropy plays an important role in fostering new ideas and supporting great work in aging across the country. (Grantmakers in Aging, 2001 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 504, Arlington, VA 22202) 

 

The response to my request for information about delegates consisted of “We have not released a list of attendees.” The aging of America is accelerating. It’s time to start planning a conference spanning several days in 2025 with a multitude of representative conferees. 

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A new (2014) book I’ve previously mentioned is Dr. Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In The End. PBS Frontline’s Feb. 10, 2015 program was based on it. Gawande’s fields are journalism, public health, and surgery. He must have been in his late forties when he wrote this book about the modern experience of mortality. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he went to Stanford for his B.S., Oxford for his M.A., and Harvard Medical School. He has been both a MacArthur Fellow and Rhodes Scholar.  

On Friday, September 18, 2015 from 2-4 PM this Frontline documentary will be shown at the North Berkeley Senior Center (1901 Hearst Av. Corner MLK Way.) Following the screening there will be “a facilitated discussion session [that I do not necessarily recommend] for you to participate in and printed material outlining local resources” [August 2015 page 12 The Nugget]. Presumably, there is no charge. If you do not have a pc or you know someone who does not, or if you missed Frontline’s PBS showing in February, this is an opportunity. The book, Frontline program, and DVD are in public libraries’ collections. 

Mortal is an adjective relating to human beings subject to death. It is also used to mean deadly, fatal. Gawande writes, this is a book “…about what it’s like to be creatures who age and die, how medicine has changed the experience and how it hasn’t, where our ideas about how to deal with our finitude have got the reality wrong.” Mainstream doctors are turned off by geriatrics. “…incomes in geriatrics and adult primary care are among the lowest in medicine…a lot of doctors don’t like taking care of the elderly.” 

The field of palliative care emerged over recent decades to bring this kind of thinking to the care of dying patients. …But, he says, it is not cause for celebration. That will be warranted only when all clinicians apply such thinking to every person they touch. No separate specialty required. 

Hospice is a care philosophy based on belief that every person with a life-limiting terminal illness, regardless of age, is entitled to be as free of pain and symptoms as long as possible. But admission to hospice care is restricted. It is currently possible to obtain physician-assisted suicide, albeit not easily, in three states. Popular literature conveys two pictures of hospice-- an at-home service and a building/program elsewhere. It can be confusing. Some people, including “professionals,” assume that hospice provides assisted suicide. 

Dr. Gawande is saying the ultimate goal of medicine should not be a good death, but rather, a good life to the very end, for what matters in the end is the life led.

In Don Pasquale, one of Gaetano Donizetti’s last operas, the title character is a man in his 70s who foolishly decides it’s time to get married. In Merola Opera’s production of Don Pasquale, which I saw Saturday, August 8 in Cowell Theatre at Fort Mason, the title character is portrayed as a wealthy, sickly nutcase who is paranoid about the possibility of germs infecting him. Don Pasquale’s home looks for all the world like an infirmary. His lounge chair looks like a chair one might find in a hospital examination room, and his servants are all dressed in hospital white and, like the don himself, wear white face-masks to keep away germs. As a staging concept, so far so good; but under Nic Muni’s direction this production of Don Pasquale veers off in several misguided directions which lead nowhere. 

In spite of the directorial miscues, this Don Pasquale is saved by a splendid performance by New Zealand-born soprano Amina Edris, who sings the role of Norina, a young woman who, by means of a plot devised by Dr. Malatesta, is offered to Don Pasquale as his bride (in a sham ceremony) and then makes her ‘husband’ so utterly miserable that he willingly begs out of the (fake) marriage. As Norina, Amina Edris packs plenty of vocal power as well as the breath control to sustain florid coloratura passages, of which Donizetti’s delightful score offers quite a few. Musically and dramatically, Amina Edris proved a charming, strong-willed Norina. My only reservation is that, due to a decision by director Nic Muni and/or conductor Warren Jones, Amina Edris was asked to sing quite shrilly on purpose all throughout her introduction to Don Pasquale. I find that this undermines the whole purpose of the scheme to entice Don Pasquale into marrying this young woman who has allegedly just been released from a convent. I much prefer Norinas who sing sweetly and demurely before the marriage, then switch into a shrill, domineering tone after the marriage, thus emphasizing the contrast and rendering Don Pasquale all the more dumbfounded at the change in his ‘bride’s’ behavior. 

The overture, which is based on Ernesto’s third act aria and on Norina’s cavatina in the first act, was so energetically conducted by Warren Jones I had fears for his health. Had he continued to gesticulate so wildly throughout the opera, I feared he might faint from over-exertion. As the plot gets under way, Don Pasquale tells his friend Dr. Malatesta that he has decided to get married. The role of Don Pasquale was sung by bass-baritone James Ioelu, whose robust vocal power was at times offset by the buffoonish characterization that obliged him to portray Don Pasquale as a weak, sickly and foolish old codger barely able to get around.  

The role of Dr. Malatesta was sung by baritone Alex DeSocio, who acquitted himself admirably as the schemer who sets everything aright in the end. Don Pasquale’s nephew, Ernesto, was sung by Korean-born tenor Soonchan Kwon, who started out strongly but later experienced some ragged edges, especially at the top of his register. Ernesto plays a key role in the plot, for he is in love with Norina, but his uncle, Don Pasquale, refuses to approve this marriage and threatens to disinherit Ernesto if he marries Norina. The scheme devised by Dr. Malatesta entails passing off Norina as his sister Sofronia, fresh out of a convent, and setting her up as a marriage partner for the gullible Don Pasquale. Once the sham wedding ceremony has taken place, Dr. Malatesta advises Norina/Sofronia to behave so outrageously that Don Pasquale will be only too happy to find a way out of his very unhappy ‘marriage’, even to the point of approving Ernesto’s marriage to Norina.  

Where the staging of this opera is concerned, what in the world caused director Nic Muni to interpolate a spoken word dialogue between the first two scenes of Act I? This dialogue was carried out in broken, Italian-accented English mixed with some Italian, and it involved characters who have no part whatsoever in the libretto Giovanni Ruffini created for Gaetano Donizetti. A paunchy, bespectacled man seemed to be a director of sorts, and he argued with a hefty prima donna over the script she was supposed to perform. These interpolated characters then hung around in the wings watching what went on in the rest of Acts I and II. At the finale of Act II, a movie cameraman hand-cranked an old movie camera as the paunchy director signaled for him to film the action going on among Pasquale, Norina, Malatesta, and Ernesto. Why a film is shot of this one moment of the opera is never made clear; and, in fact, the entire conceit of the movie business is dropped from the rest of this Don Pasquale. However, in the opera’s penultimate scene, which takes place in a garden, another arbitrary directorial conceit occurs when Don Pasquale’s servants, who till now have worn hospital whites, suddenly wear green costumes and green face-masks, making them look like elves or garden gnomes. Director Nic Muni, for all his experience, totally missed the mark in this confused staging of Don Pasquale.  

However, Donizetti’s music is pure effervescence. Among the many beautiful numbers in Don Pasquale are Malatesta’s “Bella sicome un’ angelo” (“beautiful as an angel”) when he describes to Don Pasquale his ‘sister’; Ernesto’s “Sogno soave e casto” (“Fond dream of chaste love”), when he despairs of marrying Norina; and Norina’s Act I aria, “So anch’io la virtù magica” (“I too know what spells a glance can dart”). Perhaps best of all is Ernesto’s Act III garden serenade to Norina, “Com’ è gentil’ (“How gentle she is”). With music as beautiful as this, not even a misguided stage director can spoil Donizetti’s Don Pasquale.

On Friday evening, August 7, American Bach Soloists kicked off at San Francisco Conservatory of Music a festival dedicated to the music of the court at Versailles. This music, which ABS designates as The Parisian Baroque, was composed and performed at the court of French kings Louis XIII, Louis XIV, and Louis XV. In 1626 Louis XIII officially established an ensemble of the finest string players in the land called Les Vingt-quatre Violons du Roi. These violinists, violists, and cellists would on occasion be joined by the king’s wind and brass ensemble, La Grande Écurie, and together these ensembles would join the orchestra of the opera. A bit later, under the direction of the Italian-born composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), French musicians at Versailles created a unique sound combining detailed ensemble control, a lightness of sonority, and a graceful reliance on dance structures. Louis XIV, one might recall, was enormously fond of ballet, and he went on stage as a ballet dancer at age 13, subsequently favoring dance music throughout his long reign as king.  

At their opening concert of this Versailles Festival, ABS began with a marvelous work by Jean-Baptiste Féry Rebel, Les Élemens: Symphonie Nouvelle. In this work, Rebel, who lived from 1666 to 1747, set himself the task of writing music to depict the creation of the world from initial chaos to the sorting out of the elements of earth, water, air, and fire. At the outset, Chaos is represented by a shocking chord, which resounds emphatically and is subsequently repeated several times in this work’s opening movement. In a written Preface, Rebel stated that the Bass repre-sents the Earth by its slurred notes and tremolo; the Flutes represent the melodious murmur of Water; Air is represented by Flutes, Oboes, and Horns; and Fire is re-presented by flashes from the Violins. After each of these elements is given its full development, the work utilizes familiar French dance movements to represent the stately calm and order of the created world. Louis XIV much appreciated the originality of Rebel’s music. 

Led by their Music Director Jeffrey Thomas, ABS next performed Suite II in D Major by Jacques Aubert le Vieux. Aubert, who lived from 1689 to 1753, became principal violinist at the Paris Opera in 1728. In his Suite II in D Major, Aubert explores different dance structures such as rondeaux, sarabandes, rigaudons, menuets, gavottes, and a closing chaconne. Each dance movement shines forth with crystal clarity, but the overall effect is one of sameness in diversity. 

After intermission, ABS returned to play the Ouverture and Suite from Nais : Opéra pour la Paix by Jean-Philippe Rameau. Nais, which premiered at Paris Opera in 1749, deals with the amorous intentions of the god Neptune for the water-nymph Nais. The ouverture strikes a forceful note with frequent use of the timpani. Next comes a tender Musette delicately featuring violins, flutes, oboes, and bassoons. Two Menuets follow, then two lively Tambourins featuring the timpani, Another Musette is heard, delivered in a slow, stately rhythm. Then a Sarabande is played, creating a mysterious air. This is followed by a ceremonial Entrée majestueuse de Dieux representing the arrival on stage of the gods. Next come two Gavottes, the first lively and the second light and airy. These movements give way to two Rigaudons featuring much use of the tambourine. The work concludes with an Entrée des Lutteurs, a Chaconne, and an Air de Triomphe. The entire work offers a wonderful diversity of dance rhythms all brilliantly developed by Rameau’s musical sensibility. Along with Lully, Rameau may be considered the pinnacle of the Parisian Baroque, composers who made Versailles one of the musical centers of Europe. My only criticism of Jeffrey Thomas, who is responsible for the selection of works performed in this ABS Versailles Festival, is that he failed to include in any of the concerts even a single work by Jean-Baptiste Lully, who presided over all musical affairs at the court of Louis XIV from his appointment as Maître de Musique of the Royal Family in 1662 until his death in 1687, thereby setting French music on a path whose unique characteristics are still much in evidence today. 

ABS continues its Versailles Festival through August 14. Featured on Thursday-Friday, August 13-14, are two performances of the opera Sémélé by Marin Marais, an opera never before presented outside of France. The life and music of Marin Marais were featured in the 1991 film Tous les Matins du Monde. All performances are at San Francisco Conservatory of Music