Today’s Daily Planet marks a departure from our usual format, in which we have—save for our comics pages and year-end reviews in photographs, editorial cartoons and the BART fare hike notice—turned our pages over to you, our readers. -more-
TUESDAY, DEC. 30
TUESDAY, DEC. 30
“Ma, I wanna talk to you. -more-
On a cool, sunny afternoon last week, I took a break from the political obscenity choking our country to visit two museums in downtown Oakland, catching a pair of important shows you can only see through New Year’s Eve. -more-
Children, the earth is tilted, and that explains so much. Now in December, the days are short and the sun is low. Most living creatures have biological clocks that adjust to these changes, and I don’t think the seasons would bother us if they didn’t carry the holidays with them. -more-
BART rings in the new year with extended service for holiday celebrants followed by a 10 percent system-wide fare hike—the agency’s second consecutive January price increase, with this year’s boost twice the rate of last year’s. -more-
The holidays are an unusual time of the year. They invoke many different memories. For many people this is their favorite time of year. Times of Christmas past are remembered fondly. It is a time for family and friends. But for one homeless woman, the memories are bittersweet. -more-
You are just finishing your daily two-mile walk. Along the way you talked to and petted two cats and watched as a third ran up a driveway after spying on you. The three make you smile. Peet’s is just up the way, where you’ll have your first cup of morning coffee. The Berkeley Daily Planets are in a rack in front of the post office, and you grab one before entering the coffee shop. -more-
The other day I was feeling a little insecure so I decided to shake off my blues by taking a walk and picking up a few things at the drug store. -more-
I really know better than to stare at my fellow BART passengers, but the couple diagonally across the aisle riveted by attention. The only thing we had in common was our longevity, but it was our difference in style that triggered a wistfulness in my soul. I felt to white-sliced-bread as I looked at them. -more-
I’m not a small and delicate person—never have been; except perhaps once as a 10-year-old in seventh grade when I was described as “tiny Maya Elmer” in some local school paper. Since those years I am now tall enough, sized-large enough, and always daring enough to collect necklaces which are never modest. Rather conservatively flamboyant. That’s why I have never owned that supposedly elegant string of pearls which rests on the bosom of a cashmere sweater or encircles elitists’ and socialites’ necks. In fact, notice that their dress necklines are always rounded just to accommodate such jewels. Barbara Bush isn’t the only one; there is Nancy, and Mamie before her. Does that say something about Republican women? No; I recall Lady Bird Johnson wore pearls years ago, too. Discreet ostentatiousness, if I may coin an oxymoron; “conservatively flamboyant,” doesn’t count. -more-
Ten minutes into my drive on the Richmond Parkway, on a day with promise in spite of the faint drizzle, I slow down for a traffic light and stop behind a dark dented sedan. The light turns green but the sedan doesn’t move. The back window is opaque, and I can see no one inside. Is the driver ill, I wonder? I hesitate, then tap my horn just once. The driver creeps forward, and I swing around him, barely registering the dark stocking hat and the scowl as I pass. Happy to be unimpeded in the light traffic, I focus on the road until I notice something zooming up behind me. The dark sedan is veering into my lane, nearly kissing my gas cap with the handle of the driver’s door. -more-
After the season finale of Friends, -more-
My grandson Aaron is 12 now, almost a teenager, and very nearly out of my grandmotherly reach. But I still have wistful memories of when he was very young, and we started to go off together on private adventures—just the two of us. -more-
A lovely young princess was walking about -more-
With the close of the year, one of the Bay Area’s greatest scientific and cultural monuments will disappear as we know it. -more-
SATURDAY, DEC. 27
It was 34 years ago last month, but the memory of my first Townsend’s warbler is still vivid: a tiny, brightly colored bird flitting through the trees in the Strybing Arboretum in Golden Gate Park. I was fresh out of North Carolina and everything in the Bay Area—the birds, the trees, the weather, the politics, the music—was new and exciting. It was another “Welcome to California” moment. -more-
Jury deliberations in the multi-million dollar Beretta “unsafe pistol” trial in Alameda County Superior Court may have been closer than a 6-6 deadlock would indicate. So the father of a 15-year-old Berkeley boy accidentally shot and killed by a friend nine years ago says that his family will bring the issue back to court for a third time. -more-
On the twelfth day of Halliburtonmas, my true corporation gave to me: twelve no-bid contracts asmellin’. -more-
å If you think a proper New Years Eve can only be had by weaving your way to San Francisco and back, praying for safe passage, think again. Plot Wednesday evening properly and you can sidle from one Berkeley nightspot to another—getting your fill of food, drink, and revelry—without ever getting near a cab, a limo, or your own endangered set of wheels. -more-
The holidays are bringing a mixed bag to Berkeley’s homeless. -more-
SAN JOSE—Every holiday season, people are told to donate canned food or money to the local food bank to feed our community. I always assumed the food being donated was healthy. I was wrong. -more-
For Berkeley High Librarian Ellie Goldstein-Erickson, Christmas break is no vacation. -more-
In the United States, the most common election system is to have each voter choose one candidate, and the person who garners the most votes wins, regardless of whether that person has achieved a majority. There are many alternative methods for picking one winner out of a field of candidates. Some examples are listed below: -more-
Urban Outfitters, the clothing and boutique chain that found itself mired in controversy over the board game “Ghettopoly,” might draw heat again after distributing a shirt that some say stereotypes Jewish women. -more-
UC Berkeley enrollment held steady this year, according to final registration figures released last week. -more-
If I were blind, there’s one place I’d easily find by following the seductive smells of bread and desserts emanating from their ovens. I’m talking about my favorite bakery, La Farine. Every Wednesday morning I frequent the store on my way to the office. I’m hungry when I arrive, eager to bite into a buttery croissant or scone. -more-
Early one morning last week I woke up to a driving rainstorm outside. The television had been left on for some reason. I lay and watched the public humiliation of an old man, officials probing his hair for lice. This was the monster who menaced the world? I wondered how many others heard echoes of the line from Lawrence of Arabia (“Now we see him without his armor and magic cloaks, bereft of friends and sword, reduced here to his bare and tawdry essence for all eyes to view: a little man, greedy, barbarous, and cruel”), applied, in that case, to the Arab people as a whole. And therein lies the danger in our treatment of the captive, Saddam Hussein. -more-
