UC Berkeley’s controversial plans to convert its historic six-acre Laguna Street extension campus in San Francisco into a private development featuring condominiums and a shopping center are moving forward. 

The development of the Laguna Street property is the focus of producer/director Eliza Hemenway’s documentary film Uncommon Knowledge: Closing the Books at UC Berkeley Extension, which premiered in San Francisco on Thursday. 

The San Francisco Planning Department has not yet approved rezoning for the site at 55 Laguna St. A public comment period has been set for next month. 

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors also need to approve the zoning changes.  

The proposed plan is facing strong resistance from community members who want UC to honor its mission as a Land Grant University, retaining public use on the Laguna Street property. 

Neighborhood groups from San Francisco’s Hayes Valley and Lower Haight are creating petitions for a citizens’ advisory committee to help save the UC Berkeley Extension Laguna Street Campus. 

“The real issue is to maintain public zoning,” Hemenway, a graduate of New College of San Francisco, said on Thursday. “There are plenty of places to eat and shop. We need to focus on what our culture will look like if we take away spaces to learn, make art and create community.” 

She said she hoped her film prompted a public outcry to save the campus. 

Grey Brechin, author of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin, agreed that the time had come to resist UC’s efforts. 

“I had taken the series of wonderful buildings, the wide corridors, the big classrooms and the New Deal art in the Laguna campus for granted,” he said at the premier of Hemenway’s film. “But I can’t take it for granted any more.” 

Brechin said that the University of California’s immense real estate belongings had turned the UC Regents into real estate agents. 

“What is happening here is not unique,” he said. “Community-based learning is slowly being destroyed and levels of bureaucracy have increased. There is a political economy behind this.” 

UC Berkeley has leased the property to A.F. Evans, a Bay Area developer, for 75 years to bring about the proposed development. 

Touted as being good for “the heart, soul and lungs,” the proposed UC residential and commercial project promises to provide residents with alternative energy sourcing, water reuse and conservation, bike-centric design, creation of a new 20,000 square feet of parkland and gardens. 

It would include 328 market-rate rental units (20 percent of which will be affordable to households making 50 percent average median income), 80 rental units of senior housing with comprehensive services that welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender older adults, a 20-plot community garden, which will be built, operated and maintained by the developer at no cost to the City, 10 City Car Share spaces (the largest group in the City) and over 100 secure on-site bicycle storage spaces. 

According to the developer, the historic buildings on site will be preserved and renovated for residential units and public community space.  

There will be a community center for youth and seniors and a restaurant on Laguna Street which will help open up an otherwise blank wall to create interaction in an existing commercial zone. 

San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said that the City of San Francisco was not doing enough to explore alternatives for the site or include local residents in the discussions. 

“The proposal with its creative-use green space, rental units for citizens and the LGBT seniors recreation center is satisfying emotional needs,” Mirkarimi said. “It feels right but somehow cheats us of what we want the project to be. I would like to see more open mindedness when it comes to deciding the fate of this large piece of land that is designated as public. Once we lose that, we might not be able to get it back. What bothers me is the dissmissiveness of UC to not even entertain the community’s proposals and that is something I would like to confront.” 

The UC Laguna campus is home to several historic buildings and has a history of public use that goes back 150 years. It was used by the city as an orphanage from 1854 onwards until the San Francisco State Normal School was established in the 1920s to accommodate public school teachers. 

It finally went on to become San Francisco State University, but the need for more space forced the institution to move to its current location near Lake Merced in 1957. An empty site and the urgent need for the UC Berkeley Extension to move into expanded quarters made the governor approve an act of emergency legislation that transferred the campus to the UC Regents.  

The transfer, however, had one caveat: the property on the 55 Laguna St. campus was to be put to “university uses.” 

During UC Berkeley’s use of the campus for its continuing education program for over 50 years, the infrastructure was neglected and the historic buildings were not brought up to code. 

In 2003, UC sent e-mails to employees and students at the extension which said that the campus was going to be shut down because its deteriorated state was too expensive to be maintained and upgraded to current seismic and disability codes. 

“These issues have been used as a smokescreen,” Nigel French, UC Berkeley Extension graphic and web design director, commented in the movie. “There are probably deeper issues involved as to why the campus was shut down.” 

“Nobody communicated with us,” said Angie Adams, a UC Berkeley Extension registration desk employee who lost her job in the layoffs that were announced before Thanksgiving in 2003. “All the custodians at the extension lost their jobs after the campus shut down. Dean James Sherwood told us that if we read the papers we would find out that a lot of people were getting laid off everywhere.” 

According to the documentary, none of the custodians was placed in new positions following the layoffs. The university has been paying more than $2 million in rental space while the campus, which prior to closing in 2004 served 15,000 students a year, has been sitting empty for the past two years. 

For more information on the film Uncommon Knowledge: Closing the Books at UC Berkeley Extension, see www.hemenwaydocs.com. 

For more information on the project at 55 Laguna St., San Francisco, see 

www.55laguna.com. 

To contact the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, see www.sfgov.org. 

The Berkeley Chamber of Commerce PAC broke local campaign laws when it left its name and identification number off of a political mailer, but the omission was inadvertent, the city’s Fair Political Practices Commission ruled 6-0-1 on Thursday.  

The commissioners subsequently voted down a motion 4-3 to take the violation to the state Fair Political Practices Commission.  

Supporting the initial motion were Commissioner Chair Eric Weaver and Commissioners Jocelyn Larkin, Patrick O’Donnell, Dennis White, Stephen Bedrick and Gordon Gaines, with Commissioner Taymyr Bryant abstaining. (There are two vacancies on the commission.)  

Opposing the motion to take the question to the state were Commission Chair Eric Weaver and Commissioners Jocelyn Larkin, Patrick O’Donnell and Dennis White. 

Jesse Arreguin, a zoning board commissioner and member of the Rent Stabilization Board, filed the complaint Nov. 3, stating that Business for Better Government, the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce PAC, “did not list anywhere on the piece who had paid for the mailing and the address of the entity that sent it. This action is clearly in violation of state Government Code Section 84305 and Berkeley Election Reform Act Section 2.12.325.” 

The mailer supported defeated District 7 candidate George Beier by pairing him with the more popular mayor, saying, “What do Tom and George have in common?” (Bates endorsed no candidate for the District 7 race.) 

There was no dispute that the Chamber PAC omitted required information. The question was whether the omission was deliberate.  

“It looks as if the committee’s actions were inadvertent rather than knowing or willful,” Deputy City Attorney Kristy van Herick, secretary to the FCPC, wrote in a Nov. 16 report to the commission.  

In a Nov. 13 letter to Van Herick, Chamber PAC treasurer Stacy Owens wrote: “…the committee did not become aware that the identification was not on the mailer until after the pieces had been sent. The committee hired a local designer who contracted with Modern Postcard, a mailhouse in Carlsbad, Calif., to print and ship the mailer. The mailer was shipped directly from Carlsbad, which did not give any committee member a chance to do a review of the final mailer before it went out.” 

Owens told the committee Thursday that the information “got dropped in the printing process.”  

Van Herick, who investigated the complaint, talked to the Chamber of Commerce, but called neither Modern Postcard in Carlsbad, which printed and mailed the piece, nor BBDI (Brand Guidance Design Intelligence), the local business hired to design its mailings. In a phone interview Thursday, she said time constraints prevented her from doing so and that the fact of the violation was not contested. 

On Monday, Michael Foster, the quality assurance lead for Modern Postcard told the Daily Planet in a phone interview: “We only print what we’re given.”  

Modern Postcard gets approvals from the customer before any printing is done, he said, noting they got digital files from BGDI.  

BGDI President Steve Donaldson was out of the officer for a few days and unavailable for comment. 

According to its website, BGDI, located on Fifth Street in Berkeley, has 20 years experience in advertising and direct campaigns. Its clients include Fortune 500 companies. “Steven Donaldson, president of BGDI, is intimately involved in every aspect of his Berkeley, California direct marketing agency, from initial strategy to final creative execution,” the website states. 

Speaking before the commission, Arreguin said he didn’t think the omission was innocent. “I think this is a deliberate action. It’s a violation of state and local laws.” Arreguin urged the commission to investigate further and subpoena the designer to “find out if it was a mistake.”  

Speaking for the PAC, Chamber President Roland Peterson defended the organization: ”We had no intention of being devious,” he said, explaining to the commission that as soon as the chamber discovered the error, it sent out press releases to local newspapers and put an advertisement in the Daily Cal to apologize for the error. 

But Dave Blake, who designed and produced the mailers for Councilmember Kriss Worthington’s successful District 7 campaign, called the Chamber response a “dog ate my homework answer.” Blake said the necessity of including the legally-required identifying data “never leaves my mind for a minute as I produce the literature.” 

Van Herick explained that if the commission believed the omission was deliberate, it could send the complaint to the district attorney. “That requires evidence of willful conduct. It’s not sufficient to show willful conduct,” she said. 

Commissioner Bedrick called on the commission to send the case instead to the state FPPC. 

But most of the commissioners agreed with van Herick that the omission was a mistake and that the complaint should not be pursued. “It does not met the threshold of willful conduct,” said Commission Chair Weaver. 

Arrequin said he is considering taking the complaint to the state FPPC. 

In other actions, the commission asked van Herick to continue to investigate a poll conducted in July whose questions touched on the Nov. 7 ballot Measure J and various local politicians. Payment for the poll has not been disclosed on any campaign expenditure forms.  

The complaint was filed Oct. 11 by Roger Marquis, treasurer for the Yes on Measure J (Landmarks) campaign, about a poll that some recipients said they thought was a “push poll,” a pseudo poll that actually is a marketing device, intended to convince recipients about something. The poll was conducted by Communications Center, Inc. of Washington State on behalf of San Francisco-based David Binder Research.  

Van Herick said she has had difficulty reaching those polled. Anyone who was polled can contact her at 981-6950. 

With Oakland’s proposed new condominium conversion law set for a return to the Oakland City Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee on Nov. 28, and then to the full council on Dec. 5, the issue is heating up among politicians and tenant groups in the city. 

On Saturday, tenant rights organizations and two members of City Council—Jean Quan and Nancy Nadel—rallied in downtown Oakland and then gathered signatures on anti-conversion-law-change petitions in various neighborhoods of the city. 

The tenant rights activists say they want the new conversion ordinance put on hold until a comprehensive review of the proposal can be completed, including its potential impact on current renters. 

The battle has pitted activists who wish to preserve the city’s existing rental housing stock against a City Council maverick—Desley Brooks—who would like to make it easier for existing renters in the city to convert to home ownership, and who has long argued that her East Oakland district has been a dumping ground for low-income rental units. 

“Many of the opponents of my proposal say that they would rather move forward with inclusionary zoning,” Brooks said, citing a proposed city ordinance that would require any new housing developments receiving city assistance to include a percentage of units within the price range of low and moderate income renters. “But condominium conversion can create low and moderate income housing opportunities faster than inclusionary zoning can.” 

Brooks said that the current effect of the loss of rental housing in Oakland is particularly devastating on the city’s African-American population. 

“At the rate that the proposed inclusionary zoning would move, many more black people would continue to be pushed out of Oakland,” she said. 

According to the staff report by City Administrator Deborah Edgerly, the purpose of the proposed amendments is “to increase [Oakland’s] home-ownership rate from 41 percent to at least 50 percent in 10 years while generating nearly $20 million for a new Affordable Housing Trust Fund.” 

The Trust Fund is proposed to be set up to assist low and moderate income renters. 

But in her staff report, Edgerly has also conceded that only around 10 percent of Oakland’s existing 90,000 renters have enough median income ($75,000) to meet the $375,000 projected price tag of most converted condominium units. 

Even with city subsidies to help renters purchase their condominiumized units, Edgerly said that there remains “a huge affordability gap” for most Oakland renters trying to purchase homes in rental units converted to condominiums. 

Opponents of the proposed law changes say that even if Brooks herself is sincere in trying to convert existing renters into home owners, the proposals are also being promoted by real estate developers who care little about renters, and only want to make a profit. 

In an online letter urging citizens to oppose the proposed changes, Councilmember Nancy Nadel wrote earlier this month, “Two years ago when Councilmember Brooks brought some real estate investors to meet with me proposing to change condo-conversion laws in my district, they claimed that tenants would not feel a difference and that their monthly mortgage payments would be the same as their monthly rent. When I asked for the actual numbers and compared them to my constituents’ rent, there was a huge difference, and that didn’t even cover the down payment requirements.” 

Nadel added that easing the way for low to moderate income citizens into home ownership by lowering the upfront costs “does not stabilize them or the neighborhood at all. In fact, it can lead them into a far worse situation with no money for first and last months’ rent if they lose their newly purchased condo.” 

Oakland’s original condominium conversion law was passed by council in 1981, with a number of amendments added in the years immediately afterwards. 

In 2002, Councilmember Brooks said she became interested in modifying the ordinance after a constituent came to her with the idea of increasing home ownership in her East Oakland district. 

“Before that,” Brooks said, “I didn’t know a thing about condominium conversion.” 

But Brooks could generate no interest among other councilmembers in her proposed changes. In addition, her proposals generated intense community opposition. 

The dry language of the proposed new ordinance’s staff report reads that “in 2004, staff recommended changes to the Ordinance that were reviewed and considered by the Planning Commission. These changes did not move forward due to the high degree of public concern.” 

Brooks’ solitary battle changed late this year when Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and At-Large Councilmember Henry Chang signed on as co-sponsors, leading to the possibility that the proposals could receive enough Council votes either to pass outright, or to tie 4-4 and then receive approval through a tie-breaking vote by outgoing Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown. 

Key Changes to Oakland’s Existing Condo-Conversion Law 

Following are the key provisions of Oakland’s existing condo conversion law, along with the changes proposed to the law by Councilmembers Brooks, De La Fuente, and Chang. Provisions of the existing law are in bold type: 

1) 60-day notice to tenants by the owner prior to beginning the conversion filing process, including the right of tenants to attend and give testimony at a public hearing on the conversion;  

Existing law contained no penalty to the building owner for failure to notify the tenants. The proposed new law would include a penalty of six months rent on a new unit for every tenant who was not given proper notification of the intent to convert to condominiums. 

2) notice to tenants by the city of their rights under the law when their buildings are converted, as well as notice of any hearings or meetings to be held concerning the conversion;  

This provision is retained as-is in the proposed new law. 

3) the right for a tenant to continue occupying their dwelling for 180 days following the issuance of the conversion approval;  

Retained in the new law. 

4) if the tenant chooses to move, the right of the tenant to break any lease and move out with a minimum of 30 days notice without penalty;  

5) assistance by the owner for tenants to purchase their rental units under the conversion as well as to relocate in the event the tenants choose not to or are not able to purchase their rental units; 

Relocation assistance under the existing law is limited to $1,000—a maximum of $500 for actual moving expenses and another $500 for renting a new home. That amount is increased to $3,000 in the proposed amendments—a maximum of $1,000 for actual moving expenses, as well as a maximum of $2,000 for rent of a new home. In addition, while tenants can only get reimbursed for the first month’s rent of a new home (to a maximum of $500) if they choose to relocate, the new ordinance would allow reimbursement for first and last month’s rent (to a maximum of $2,000). 

6) a right of lifetime lease and rental of any unit that contains a tenant 62 years or older, as well as the right to transfer those leasing rights to any other available unit in the dwelling to be converted (in other words, elderly tenants cannot be kicked out of the building due to condominium conversion); 

The proposed new ordinance retains the right of seniors to remain in their existing units as renters, but eliminates their right to move into any other available unit in the building. 

7) for every building converting five or more units, a comparable number of rental units must be added by the owner to Oakland’s housing supply so that condominium conversion does not decrease the amount of available rental housing; 

The proposed new ordinance keeps this one-to-one rental stock addition for every rental unit taken off the market through conversion, but also adds a second option. Instead of adding a new rental unit, the building owner could instead pay into a Housing Trust Fund set up by the city. The Housing Trust Fund money would then be used for “any housing assistance programs for very low to moderate income Oakland residents.” A criticism of this provision is that while it would provide assistance to renters who need it, it would not prevent the loss of rental units in the city due to condominium conversion. 

8) denial of conversion if it is proposed for a “conversion impact area” where the city’s rental housing stock has been depleted by previous conversions; 

The proposed new ordinance keeps this provision, but—as with the one-to-one rental unit addition—it adds the alternative of payment by the building owner into the Housing Trust Fund even if the proposed condominium conversion is in a “conversion impact area. 

In addition, the proposed new ordinance puts a cap of 800 rental unit conversions to condominiums per year (there is currently no cap on the number of possible conversions), and adds a 10 percent discount to the purchase price of condominium units for tenants currently renting that unit. 

Anyone attending the panel charged with producing a new downtown Berkeley plan on Wednesday night would have heard a lot of words and paper flying over a very short statement. 

With a year of meetings under its belt and less than a year left to finish a complex new plan, the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee has yet to draft any of the basic elements that will go into the plan itself. 

The latest debate, which has generated a flood of paperwork and long hours of discussion, centers around a one-paragraph vision summary that is supposed to declare the intent of the new plan for an expanded downtown area that must cope with a million square feet of UC Berkeley expansion. 

The current downtown plan, created in 1990, contains a succinct summary describing its vision: 

“The Berkeley Downtown Plan seeks to establish the Downtown as a compact, economically vital historic city center with a defined core area and transition zones buffering residential neighborhoods. The plan respects the City’s values for protecting its historic character, cultural diversity, social equity, and human scale of development, while improving economic vitality and the physical environment.” 

DAPAC staff have now generated the draft of a new summary, based on vision statements submitted by individual committee members, which was discussed but not approved on Wednesday. Their version is greener and adds new emphases: 

“Create an economically vital, inclusive ‘green, sustainable downtown’ that is the heart of the City, celebrates its historic roots, is oriented towards pedestrians with plazas, tree-lined streets and other amenities, and accessible to all segments of the community. Downtown shall be a high-density residential neighborhood in its own right, with a highly diverse housing stock serving all segments of the community, with safe streets and supportive services.” 

But for all its high-minded sentiments, this statement will be a minuscule fraction of the final plan. The 1990 document, covering a smaller area, runs to 196 pages, noted Gene Poschman, and this one will probably need to be even longer. 

A member of the Berkeley Planning Commission, Poschman also serves on the DAPAC, which is now hammering out its recommendations for the document mandated in the legal agreement between the city and UC Berkeley which ended a lawsuit. The settlement was conceived and approved behind closed doors by university and city officials. 

The suit arose when the university announced a Long Range Development Plan through 2020 that proposes—among other things—to add a million square feet of uses on off-campus land downtown. 

“We don’t want to get stuck on the vision statement,” city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks told DAPAC members last week. “We tried to identify the points where I think we have general agreement.”  

“We need to add a jobs and housing balance,” said Dorothy Walker, a DAPAC member and retired UC Berkeley administrator. “There needs to be a reference to new and green architecture,” not just historic buildings. And add tax revenue generation too, she said. 

Wendy Alfsen said she wanted to keep a key phrase in the 1990 statement—“protecting its historic character”—rather than the proposed “celebrates its historic roots.” 

Former Councilmember Mim Hawley wanted to celebrate historic resources, but to add the words “while looking forward to the future.” And strike the “high density” before “housing,” she said. 

Take out the word “economic” before vitality in the revision, said Lisa Stephens, and add a sentence reasserting the need to buffer a high-density core from surrounding residential neighborhoods. 

“The more I read the 1990 vision, the more I like it,” said Jenny Wenk. 

“‘High density’ turns me off,” said Poschman, who attributed the push for housing to a “fiscalization of land use policy” that sees new construction as a revenue generator for governmental coffers. 

Another impetus for housing, he said, came from the unrealistic quotas set for the city by the Association of Bay Area Government. 

Juliet Lamont saw strength in both statements. 

“The 1990 statements says downtown is just perfect, thank you very much,” said DAPAC Chair Will Travis, who urged members to “dream the grandest dreams and keep 1990 for 1990.” 

“You just explained exactly what my paranoia is,” said Patti Dacey in response to Travis’ calls for dreaming. 

“Keep it short and inspirational,” said Steve Lustig, one of the university’s ex officio representatives to the committee. “But we have not talked about how to maintain economic and cultural diversity. 

“It’s really important we get economic vitality in,” said Raudel Wilson, a DAPAC member and recipient of a campaign contribution from Travis in his recent unsuccessful run to be the downtown’s representative on the City Council. 

Planning Commission Chair Helen Burke said she liked another tweak, with the phrase “an economically vital green downtown” used in the vision statement “because green and economic vitality can go hand-in-hand.” 

“It should be short and sweet, with a focus on housing, arts and entertainment and better green space,” said Rob Wrenn, who also wanted to keep the high density emphasis—but in the plan’s body and in the accompanying zoning ordinance changes. 

Poschman had noted earlier that the zoning ordinance changes needed to realize the 1990 plan were never implemented. 

Supporters of the new statement included James Samuels and Linda Jewell, another UC ex officio representatives. 

Another concern was how to address the always controversial issue of “street behavior,” specifically the conduct of high school students, eccentrics and the homeless. 

Lisa Stephens said she was concerned that incorporating the term might stigmatize poor people, students and others over what she termed a trivial problem. 

“I agree,” said Winston Burton, who works to find jobs for the poor and homeless. “Behavior is a community standard, not an economic development issue.” 

“It’s not a behavior problem, it’s a perception problem,” said student and Housing Commissioner Jesse Arreguin, who added that housing shouldn’t be considered an economic development issue either. “We need housing because people need to live here.” 

Add street behavior to the plan’s section on pedestrians, said Hawley. As for separating housing development from economic development, that was fine. “We could soften revenue generation for people who don’t like revenue,” she said. 

Billy Keys, who runs security for Berkeley High School, said street behavior could be subsumed in the concept of making streets safe and inviting. 

Lamont said she agreed with Hawley, Keys and Linda Schacht that ”a safe and inviting environment is an economic draw.” Maybe street behavior could be addressed elsewhere, but keep the safe and inviting, she said. 

In the end, committee members voted 10-6 to include wording about the importance of revenue generation. They agreed unanimously to include language setting out a goal of figuring out how to pay for public amenities. 

As for sitting down to tackle the plan itself, members like Poschman and Arreguin are pushing for immediate work, while Travis and the staff are urging patience, with the promise that the actual drafting will commence with the first meeting of the new year. 

“We’ve made a lot of progress,” Marks told the committee. “We’re moving forward.” 

“I’m no so sure,” Arreguin said later.

Vacant office space in Berkeley is growing scarce, says commercial real estate broker John Gordon. 

“We’re seeing vacancies going down and the quality of space going up,” said Gordon, himself a major downtown landlord. 

Gordon put the current vacancy rate for the city center at 8.9 percent, while NAIBT Commercial Real Estate, an international firm with a strong Bay Area presence, puts the downtown Berkeley rate at 8.3 percent. 

NAIBT puts the office vacancy rate for West Berkeley at 4.7 percent, while Gordon doesn’t track the area. 

Colliers International, another brokerage, offers figures for two types of offices, Class A and Classes B/C and Flex. They show a downtown Class A vacancy rate of 18 percent, with a 13 percent figure for the other classes. There is no Class A figure for West Berkeley, while the rate for the other classes is listed as 11.4 percent. 

“Colliers has their own way of calculating,” said Gordon. 

A fourth firm with an international reach, Grubb & Ellis, provides only a figure for the city as a whole and offers an estimate of 10.4 percent. 

“Grubb & Ellis has absolutely no presence in the (local) marketplace,” said Gordon. 

Berkeley’s vacancies are the lowest or near the bottom for East Bay cities, according to the chain evaluations. Grubb & Ellis reports that only Hayward has a lower vacancy rate than downtown Berkeley, and nowhere else has a lower rate than West Berkeley in both the Colliers and NAIBT figures. 

Vacancy rates have dropped significantly since the end of 2003, when NAIBT in its earlier incarnation as BT Commercial Real Estate estimated downtown vacancies at 12.25 percent and gave a figure for 11.46 percent for West Berkeley. 

The lowest rates that firm recorded in recent years came in 2000, when BT estimated the downtown rate at 2.21 percent and set West Berkeley vacancies at 3.62 percent. 

The dot-com collapse that year witnessed the bankruptcy of a legion of high-tech firms capitalizing on the expanding Internet, resulting in massive layoffs and sending the office market into a tailspin. 

“That’s over now, and Web 2.0 is coming on,” said Gordon, referring to the new Internet and technology boom. “We’re seeing a lot more high-tech jobs,” he said, many with companies working in connection with academic departments at UC Berkeley. 

“We’re seeing vacancies going down and the quality of the space going up. Owners are locking in their space” with long-term leases, and the lack of new office construction is tightening the market even further, Gordon said. 

With heightened demand comes an increase in rents, though still not up to the record highs charged before the dotcom collapse. 

NAIBT reports that current the average rent per square foot for the downtown is $2.47, compared to $2.04 at the end of 2003 and $3.29 in 2000. West Berkeley rents average $1.67, while the equivalent space rented for $1.82 in the fourth quarter of 2003 and $2.81 in 2000.  

Another big winner has been Emeryville, once dubbed “Emptyville” because of its vacancies. While the empty space rate had once topped 30 percent, NAIBT estimated vacancies for the third quarter of this year at 9.7 percent. 

Michael Caplan, recently appointed as acting head of the city’s Economic Development Department, said Berkeley has traditionally had low vacancy rates, in part because of the limited numbers of offices available. 

“If a firm wants to locate in Berkeley, there are not a lot of choices,” he said. 

Rates can also vary drastically because the move of a single large tenant will impact the numbers more than a similar move in a city with more spaces. 

Caplan will include figures on office spaces among the other economic indicators he’ll be reporting to the city council on a quarterly basis. 

He said the city hopes to come up with its own numbers for office vacancies and other indicators, and to provide breakdowns for individual neighborhoods and districts.  

Whither offices? 

An ongoing discussion among citizens working to help the city draft a new plan for the downtown area has focused on offices and whether the plan should emphasize offices or housing as the major tenants for new downtown construction. 

City planner Matt Taecker, hired with university funds to help draft the new plan, drafted several scenarios for consideration by the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC). 

That group, appointed by the Berkeley City Council, is advising city staff on elements to include in the new plan, which was mandated because of city lawsuit challenging the university’s expansion plans through 2020. 

UC Berkeley plans to add a million square feet in new uses downtown, much of it in offices. The university’s plans include demolition of the old California Department of Health Services highrise  

Taecker’s scenarios, presented at the Nov. 1 committee meeting, included one full-page treatment dubbed “Employment Emphasis” which emphasized “new regional office space” as a key component of a transformed downtown. 

That scenario placed new office buildings along University and Shattuck avenues—including new highrises. 

The committee derailed the discussion by a vote which determined that members should first adopt an overall vision statement before launching into a discussion of specific alternatives. 

Gordon says offices are a good way for the downtown to go, but added that current zoning laws favor housing over office space. A key factor, he said, is the density bonus, which allows developers of mixed used projects which place apartments or condos over ground floor commercial space to add height above limits that are strictly applied to office buildings. 

Another factor, he said, is parking. Office developers have to provide 1.5 parking spaces for every 1,000 square feet of office space, while housing builders can get away with less. Gordon noted that the demand for offices is highest for space that is close to BART.  

“As long as the zoning is the way it is, you’ll get more housing,” he said. “But to me, that’s backwards. People like housing downtown because they don’t have to drive to work.” 

The Library Board of Trustees huddled in closed session Saturday afternoon and evening to interview finalists for the director position.  

“No action was taken,” said Trustee President Susan Kupfer in a phone interview Monday. Kupfer said the trustees were doing “due diligence.” She declined to elaborate. 

The board will meet Nov. 29 to discuss the matter further, at a time and place to be determined. 

Selection of the library director is a particularly sensitive matter at this time, since the former director resigned having lost the confidence of much of the staff and vocal members of the community, especially the group SuperBOLD, Berkeleyans Organized for Library Defense. 

Four candidates appeared before a number of panels on Thursday and Friday that included members of the City Council and School Board, as well as staff and members of the Friends of the Berkeley Library and the Library Foundation. 

On Saturday, they were interviewed in a four-hour public session, which drew about 40 people. 

The process, organized by June Garcia of the Atlanta-based consulting firm Dubberly-Garcia, was publicized in newspapers and at the libraries, but was criticized by Peter Warfield of SuperBOLD for lacking broader community outreach. 

Many of those attending the public session were library workers. “We’re looking for someone who understands community needs” and staff’s abilities to contribute, said Andrea Segall, Acting President of the Berkeley Chapter of Service Employees International Union 535.  

The union was disappointed in the process: while library staff had participated on the panels, there was no formal union representation, she said.  

And “we weren’t part of the process until this stage,” Segall said. 

This was also a criticism Warfield expressed. Both groups would have wanted to play a role in setting the criteria for a new director and participating in selection of the search firm. Both said they wanted the trustees to take their time making a decision, listening closely to the communities from which the candidates come. 

Library worker Roya Arasteh said she was looking for someone who would “co-create a vision” with library staff. 

“People come with an already prepared vision and try to force it on staff,” she said. 

Members of SuperBOLD were anxious to learn about the candidates’ view of Radio Frequency Identification tags, which they say the former director pushed through without adequate public consideration. 

Garzon 

Gerry Garzon was one of the four finalists. He began his career as a bookmobile driver in Ventura County and is now deputy director of the Oakland Public Libraries. 

Addressing the future of librarians, Garzon said he thinks people need education to use electronic databases. People think if they find something on the Internet, it’s true, he said, but “the library can help people differentiate.” 

On the question of RFID, Garzon said, “We tested RFID [in Oakland] and pulled the plug.” 

Its future should be a decision of the board and community and staff, he added. 

Garzon talked about working with unions in Oakland, meeting with them regularly, not only at bargaining time. One of the challenges he faced was having staff relocate in order to staff a new outreach program at one library. 

“It was for the good of the public, but required us to make a change,” he said. 

Sass 

Rivkah Sass directs the libraries in Omaha, Neb. She called herself a risk-taker. “You don’t learn if you don’t take risks,” she said. 

She talked about making the library more “entrepreneurial,” by which, she explained to the Daily Planet after the presentation, she meant a variety of things—from getting funds from wealthy people for the library foundation, to locating an independent bookstore next to the library. 

“I’m very worried about the future of public libraries,” she said.  

Responding to a question about diversity, Sass said, “I don’t think Berkeley is all that diverse” racially and economically.  

And on RFID, she said: “My dog is chipped,” but explicitly declined to get involved in the question at this point, knowing that it is a controversial subject. It’s important to know “if RFID makes it easier,” she said. “I need to know the concerns.”  

Gross 

Valerie Gross, who directs the Howard County (Maryland) Libraries, talked about the importance of working with staff. For example, in a staff development session, “I give credit, praise. I make her shine,” she said.  

She said she wants to work with schools and pointed to a program in Howard County where struggling readers read to therapy dogs so that they are not embarrassed by their reading difficulties. 

On RFID, Gross said she “had fewer concerns than many do,” but that she would listen to concerns and would “get information from IT [information technology] experts.” She noted, also, that a lot of money had already been spent on the technology, “taxpayer money.”  

“The board is the ultimate decision-maker,” she said. 

Gross said staff development was important and pointed to areas such as time management and personal responsibility. 

Corbeil 

Donna Corbeil is deputy director at the Solano County Library. Asked about RFID, she said that she knew it was controversial in Berkeley, but that “the board of trustees has made a commitment to it.” She added, however, that “privacy is a very important issue for librarians.”  

One of the complexities of RFID is that it helps staff with their workload, she said, and “it’s not fair for me to judge a previous decision.” 

Addressing staff development, Corbeil said it is important to “grow your own,” that is, to support people who may come into the library as shelvers and help them to become librarians.  

Corbeil said she generally learns what staff concerns are in staff meetings, but said staff would also be able to express themselves though “anonymous e-mails.”  

Users of People’s Park met Sunday to discuss the future of the berms which UC wants to remove on both ends of the Community Garden in the park. 

More community input, park users decided, was important before any action was taken to remove the berms. Users also said on Sunday that removing the berms would hurt the university’s relationship with the community.  

In an effort to help the police to see through the park without getting out of their cars, the university recently laid out a plan to bulldoze the berms. 

At a People’s Park Community Advisory Board meeting last week, UC and the Berkeley police departments explained the need to thin the vegetation in order to allow the police to see through the trees. 

“Both Chief Dough Hambleton and the UCBPD have repeatedly said that the dense vegetation in the park makes it difficult to patrol that area,” said Irene Hegarty, UC Berkeley community relations director. “The foliage in the west end is particularly dense which allows drug use to carry on.” 

Hegarty added that no decision had been made yet about the future of the berms. 

“At the last advisory board meeting, we had a discussion on what action might be taken,” she said. “At the next advisory board meeting on Dec. 4, the board will give advice about what could be done to create a sightline for the police. They might or might not take any action. But nothing will be done before that meeting.” 

The university has begun thinning and pruning some of the vegetation in the park. 

“We are not sure whether the destruction of the berms would help in reducing crime,” said Terri Compost, a Berkeley naturalist who attended the meeting.  

The park users decided to prepare a plan that would include establishing a free store in the park and social workers who would provide counseling to the homeless. 

“The free store would act as a replacement of the free box and give fair access to resources,” said Compost. “This would help to reduce crime. We are ready to look at possibilities that would help re-design the edges to make them look attractive, but everything should be done through community involvement. The park should not be like a prison yard.” 

Hegarty said that while some community members wanted the park to remain exactly the way it was, there were others who wanted changes that would help make it a safe place to visit.

Nine people were elected to the KPFA Local Station Board using ranked choice voting, where voters rank candidates according to their preferences. 

There were 3,983 people who cast votes, 15.3 percent of the members eligible to vote. Five members of the Concerned Listener Slate, two members of the Alliance for a Democratic KPFA, and two independents won slots on the board: 

• Sarv Randhawa of the Concerned Listener Slate and vice chair of the Pacifica Board was elected in the first round; 

• Conn Hallinan, also of the Concerned Listener Slate was elected on the second round; 

• Henry Norr of the Alliance for a Democratic KPFA was elected on the seventh round; 

• Phoebe Anne Sorgen of the Concerned Listener Slate was elected on the 14th round; 

• Andrea Turner of the Concerned Listener Slate was elected on the 14th round; 

• Noelle Hanrahan, independent, was elected on the 18th round; 

• Vida Samiian, independent, was elected on the 18th round; 

• Ernesto (Tico) Chacin of the Concerned Listener State was elected on the 18th round; 

• Sasha Futran of the Alliance Slate was elected on the 22nd round. 

Details on the 22 rounds it took to elect the 18 people can be found at www.kpfa.org/elections/2006/TransferDetailReport.txt. 

Berkeley’s first and most nationally honored landmark, the First Church of Christ Scientist, is $118,000 richer this week, thanks to Internet voters. 

As the first place winner in the American Express Partners in Preservation initiative, the church will receive the funds to pay for seismic repairs and restoration of the church’s Sunday School facilities, said Jennifer Bennett, publicist for the event. 

Designed by the legendary Bernard Maybeck, the church is both a city and a national landmark, an embodiment of the Arts and Crafts Movement that celebrated craft and woodwork. 

While the winners were determined by a widely publicized vote over the World Wide Web, which allowed proponents to cast one vote a day, the sums awarded the winners were determined by a panel that included San Francisco business, political and non-profit luminaries and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. 

Coming in second in the voting was the Angel Island Immigration Station, which will receive $84,000 to repair a mess hall and roof. 

The third place winner and second place funding finisher was the carousel at Tilden Park, which is receiving $97,000 of the total of $1 million pledged by the charge card company. 

Other East Bay winners include $75,000 each to the Richmond Plunge, which is currently undergoing a seismic retrofit, and the Fox Oakland Theater. The Cleveland Cascade Park in Oakland will receive $50,000. The Berkeley City Club receives a $5,000 Recognition Award.

Drive-by slaying 

Oakland police are investigating the drive-by murder of a 20-year-old Oakland man who was gunned down Saturday on the street near the intersection of 63rd and Baker streets, one block south of the Berkeley city limits. 

OPD spokesperson Sgt. Michael Poirier said Marcel Campbell was struck by multiple rounds during the attack that occurred moments before 5:40 p.m. 

The injured man was rushed to Highland Hospital, when he died of his injuries, becoming Oakland’s 134th homicide victim of 2006, said Sgt. Poirier. 

ATM heist 

Berkeley police are seeking a bicycling gunman who robbed a customer at a downtown ATM machine. 

According to Berkeley Police spokesperson Officer Joe Okies, the man approached his victim and forced the person to walk with him to a nearby ATM and withdraw cash. 

Unbeknownst to the suspect, a camera built into the machine captured images of the robber, who is between the ages of 18 and 20 and is described as a mixed-race man who stands six feet tall. 

He was wearing a cap and the ever-popular hoodie. 

Anyone with information on the suspect is urged to call BPD’s Robbery Detail at 981-5742, and anyone who sees him is asked to call 911, or 981-5911 if using a cell phone.

Jane Micallef’s name was spelled incorrectly in the Nov. 14 article “One-Stop Homeless Shelter Opens in Oakland.” 

Micallef, the secretary of the City of Berkeley’s Housing Commission, was not interviewed during the homeless shelter event, but had spoken to the Planet for an article in February, from which her comments were taken.  

LOS ANGELES—A couple of years ago Fox News duked it out with NBC to see which one would be the first to land and air a Simpson interview on the 10th anniversary of the murder case. So Fox’s latest Simpson media dance was not merely a cheap stunt by a network to cash in on the notoriety of a disgraced superstar turned double-murder defendant. The case punched and continues to punch every hot button in the book: race, class, celebrity and sports idolatry, domestic violence and especially tabloid sensationalism. 

The major TV networks and newsweeklies took the tabloid’s favorite obsessions—sex, drugs, violence and the antics of high profile celebrities—and eagerly applied their shock reporting to the Simpson case. In the process, they turned much of the public into gossip junkies. In the decade since Simpson’s acquittal, newspapers and the TV networks have force-fed the public with a bloated diet of Simpson-style gossip and rumor in the Laci Peterson, Robert Blake, Phil Spector and other celebrity or sensational murder cases. This was a carbon copy of the type of saturation coverage they perfected in the Simpson trial. 

The skewed tabloid depiction of Simpson, helped generously by Simpson himself, subtly and sometimes openly conveyed the message that Simpson was guilty. This made most Americans expect and demand that Simpson be convicted. The carefully orchestrated TV shots of jubilant blacks high-fiving the verdict reinforced public anger. The avalanche of books on the trial pounded hard on the injustice of the verdict, and in highly publicized interviews their authors rammed home the notion that a black murderer walked free. 

The public longingly hoped that the jury in the civil trial that followed the criminal trial would nail Simpson. It did, but it was a pyrrhic victory. He was not jailed, and for a decade has not paid a penny of the millions that the jury awarded the Goldmans and Browns. This further enraged millions. Simpson’s acquittal and the stiff of the victims’ families confirmed that the rich, famous and powerful have the deep pockets to hire a “dream team” defense team, a small army of high-priced, high-profile attorneys, expert witnesses, experts, and investigators who routinely mangle the legal system to stall, delay and drag out their cases, and eventually allow their well-heeled clients to weasel out of punishment and payment.  

Since most Americans can’t afford anything resembling the legal star treatment Simpson got, it affirmed their belief that justice is for sale and the rich, famous and powerful always escape punishment. Even when prosecutors manage to win convictions against celebrities such as Winona Ryder and Martha Stewart, their money, fame, power and legal twisting often guarantee that they do minimal jail time in a cushy country club prison, or none at all. 

A number of states passed stiff laws mandating arrest and jail sentences for domestic assaults. Police, district attorneys and judges nationwide promised to arrest, prosecute and sentence domestic batterers. Fortunately, the Simpson case insured that domestic violence would remain a compelling public policy issue that the courts, lawmakers and the public could never again ignore. 

Then there’s the interminable racial divide. If a poll were taken today, a majority of whites would still rage that Simpson is a murderer who skipped away scot free, and that the trial and his acquittal were a farce and a travesty of justice. In the same poll, a majority of blacks would rage that Simpson was victimized by a white racist criminal justice system and the verdict was a just one. 

Since the trial, periodic news clips have shown a cheerful, and relaxed Simpson golfing, vacationing, signing autographs and football collectors cards and taking an ill-fated stab at a reality show. Simpson comes off as a devil-may-care guy who laughs at and thumbs his nose at the public. This hasn’t done much to endear him to anyone.  

In the decade since the Simpson case, race continues to divide, and celebrity chit-chat sells bigger than ever. The Simpson case hit too many social, racial and emotional hot buttons for it to ever permanently die away. Whether or not Simpson confessed on Fox and cashed in on a multi-million dollar book deal, the mere mention of him and the case would still be enough to get tongues wagging. 

When it’s past time for rising, cold wet noses find their way under the covers. They know all the drills, days set aside for work and non-work, time of day for meals, snacks and play. You’re always their best friend; warm eyes and wagging tail hold nothing back. Dogs can be loving, stubborn, a comfort and a trial and are usually all four.  

Berkeley and its surrounding neighborhoods know the worth of a true companion. Like other family members, they thrive on attention and love to get out of the house. With a number of dog-friendly parks, self-service dog washing establishments and specialty retail stores Fido will feel at home in Berkeley and be anxious to bark the news to all his friends. 

With a number of off-leash parks reside in Berkeley and nearby environs, there’s something to fit every need. Some offer the security of smaller, enclosed spaces while others provide acres of open space for free roaming. Ohlone Dog Park lays claim as the first leash-free dog park in America and has served as a model for its successors. It boasts being in the top ten, according to Novartis Animal Health US, Inc. and Dog Fancy Magazine. For wandering dogs or those who would rather play than walk, the small park is completely fenced and equipped with water, plastic bags and two picnic tables for owner respites. Bark-chip ground cover tends to get kicked around but the dogs don’t much care. 

Cesar Chavez Park occupies seventeen acres of land bordering San Francisco Bay. Left in its natural state, trails crisscross rolling hills through native turf, shrubs and flowers, depending on the season. Dogs romp off-leash investigating intriguing scents while owners hold on to their hats in the stiff bay winds. While the terrain won’t win any prizes for landscaping, the backdrop is stunning—Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and Mt. Tam. Fido will be having too much fun to notice, but the scenery makes for great contemplation while Frisbees soar.  

Several miles north, fronting the same bay and affording a similar golden landscape and spectacular views, is Pt. Isabel Regional Shoreline Park, America’s largest off-leash dog park. Considered by many as the top-dog, the twenty-one acres of flat natural turf is the site of multi-dog interactions, exercises in dog obedience and solitary dog explorations. There’s enough space for everyone and paved pathways make wheelchair and stroller walks a breeze. The Hoffman Canal and rocky shorelines entice swimmers and mud-hogs, depending on the tides, while picnic tables, benches and the Sit & Stay Cafe entice two-legged companions.  

When woodland and creek side experiences beckon, Tilden Regional Park has several possibilities. As part of the East Bay Regional Park District, Tilden and most regional parks allow dogs off-leash in undeveloped areas. One popular trail begins at the Lone Oak Picnic Area from which wide Meadow Canyon Trail climbs into open fields and park views. At Curran Trail you descend steeply through pines, bay and eucalyptus to the canyon floor and Wildcat Creek. Following Wild Gorge Trail, under lush tree canopy and the rippling sounds of the creek, returns you and your happy dog to the starting point, about three miles. 

Our pooch favorite in Tilden Park is the perimeter trail around Lake Anza. With hills for climbing, large rocks for clamoring, both lake and creek water for cooling off and postcard scenery, this walk is a definite five-wag special. Branching creekside trails lead into canyons with fewer visitors and vacation spot appeal. 

After lakeside romps and mud rolls, our best friends require a different type of attention. While some owners choose the home remedy or spring the cash for professional grooming, it’s comforting to know there’s a third alternative. Hands down, you can’t beat a Do It Yourself Dog Wash. Mudpuppy’s Tub & Scrub has a goldmine location, right at Pt. Isabel Park. With chest-high tubs, shampoos, brushes and towels, the muddiest dog is clean before you know it. The best part, besides the low cost, is looking at the mess your dog has left in the tub and surrounding walls and knowing, YOU DON’T HAVE TO CLEAN IT UP! Berkeley’s Pet Food Express and Albany’s Dog’s Best Friend offer similar services including ambient dryers for disposing of extra hair and giving your pooch that final touch. 

Happy after an exhilarating romp and clean, at least for a while, Fido’s ready for treats. Berkeley offers a broad selection of retail establishments ready to supply Canis familiaris with all he needs and then some. The Cadillac of dog shops is George, on Fourth Street. Appealing eye-candy shines from front to back, from window display to open wood shelves, from sweet-shop glass jars to stacks of dog beds in bright, fun fabrics. Who wouldn’t want a shiny orange ceramic dish, a green-and-white gingham collar and leash, a red chili pepper, surreal frosted donut or burger and fries? Fido may be immune but you’ll have a great time. 

Shifting from fantasy to reality, two establishments have all canine needs covered. Animal Farm Discount Pet Food is reminiscent of a friendly country store. There’s merchandise aplenty but it doesn’t feel cluttered. Leashes and collars tend to nylon in bold primary colors as do dog beds. Play toys are well stocked with a full range of air kongs, squeakers, bouncers, dental sticks and stuff balls, as well as gentler soft tosses. Pet health is well covered with products like Happy Hips Beef Liver, Happy Heart and Dental Care Kits. 

At Alan’s Petzeria I was first met by an assortment of Faithful Friends Dog Clocks, an assurance for your favorite pooch that dinner won’t be late. While satisfying a full range of pet necessities, I was impressed by the selection of organic food options. California Natural, Newman’s Own, Organic Canine Form and Nature’s Variety in Lamb/Oatmeal, Beef/Barley and Venison/Millet should please even the most selective palate. The organic theme is carried into dog shampoos, for those who enjoy cleaning a tub of dog hair. Earthbath Totally Naturally offers Orange Peel, Tea Tree Oil and Puppy, all improvements over eau-de-dog. Brushes, combs, slickers and shedding combs help complete the job, and as a final treat for not shaking in your face there’s Simon & Huey’s Doggoned Tasty Treats in White Cheddar, Kickin Chicken and Luscious Liver. 

When you’re filling up your calendar or Blackberry with the day’s jobs, look into those soulful eyes and allocate time for your faithful companion. Exercise, hygiene, treats—Berkeley has so many choices that weeks will pass without a repeat and tails will be wagging happily. 

Ohlone Dog Park: Hearst Ave. west of Martin Luther King Jr. Way, www.ohlonedogpark.org. 

Cesar Chavez Park: 11 Spinnaker Way, North of the west end of University Avenue in the Berkeley Marina, www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/Parks.  

Pt. Isabel Regional Shoreline Park: west end of Central Ave, Richmond, www.ebparks.org/parks/ptisable. 

Tilden Regional Park: entrances off Wildcat Canyon Road and Grizzly Peak Boulevard, Berkeley, www.ebparks.org/parks/tilden.  

Mudpuppy’s Tub & Scrub and the Sit & Stay Cafe: Pt. Isabel, Richmond, 559-8899, self-service $11, 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m., www.mudpuppys.com.  

Dog’s Best Friend and the Cat’s Meow: 525 San Pablo Ave., Albany, 526-7762, self wash $15. 

Pet Food Express: 1101 University Ave., Berkeley, 540-7777, self wash $12 for 25 min. 

George: 1844 Fourth St., Berkeley, 644-1033, www.georgesf.com.  

Animal Farm Discount Pet Food & Supplies: 1531 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, 526-2993. 

Alan’s Petzeria: 843 Gilman St., Berkeley, 528-2155.  

Trent Lott, the new Senate minority whip! At first glance it seemed the Republicans had gone completely cuckoo when they narrowly voted to elevate the once-disgraced senator from Mississippi to Republican second-in-command in the Senate. 

The memory is still fresh of the national firestorm Lott set off four years ago with his tout of segregation—not to mention his decades-long, hard-line opposition to anything that smacked of expanding civil rights and civil liberties protections, or his snuggle-up to unreconstructed Southern bigots and far-right groups. 

The Lott rehab seems exactly the wrong thing for the GOP to do to right its course after the wreck of midterm elections. But GOP leaders have something else in mind with Lott, and that gives a strong hint of just where the party is headed in Congress and how it will play the 2008 elections. 

After his election as minority whip, Lott moved quickly to burnish his image as a statesman-like, lower-keyed, less polarizing leader. He deftly deflected questions from reporters about his role in the Senate, telling them that the spotlight belongs to GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. But Lott’s voting record tells the real story. After his fall from grace he remained the same hard-line opponent and obstructionist to moderate reform legislation. 

He voted for the House’s punitive immigration bill and a constitutional amendment to ban desecration of the flag. He voted for the failed anti-gay marriage amendment and to cut billions from welfare, child support and student lending programs. He voted to make it tougher to file class action suits against malfeasant corporations. He cheer-led the confirmations of conservative Supreme Court justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. 

His penchant for backroom wheeling and dealing and his intimate knowledge of every trick in the parliamentary book, honed from decades of Senate experience, make Lott the ideal one to delay, stall, or stonewall any and every effort Senate Democrats may make to wind down the Iraq war, promote affordable health care, shave off the punitive edges of the Patriot Act, hike spending on education and social services, strengthen environmental and labor protections and reverse Bush’s corporate tax cut giveaways. 

Lott has much greater political value to the GOP beyond his ability to frustrate Senate Democrats. The Lott rehab sends a strong signal that the GOP will do everything it can to win back the thousands of wayward evangelicals and hard-core conservatives who strayed from the flock during the midterm elections and backed Democrats. The estimate is that one out of five white evangelicals broke ranks with the GOP out of anger, disgust and frustration with Bush’s war policies and the GOP’s sex and corruption scandals. A significant block of those disaffected core conservatives are Southerners. That set off especially loud warning bells in the GOP upper ranks. 

The Southern Strategy has been the bread and butter for GOP politicians seeking to bag and hold the White House, stretching back to Dwight Eisenhower. The potential defection of many Southern conservatives, and the boast by Democratic National Chair Howard Dean to contest the Republicans in all 50 states, poses mortal peril to that strategy. 

If the Democrats can unhinge one or two Southern states from the GOP orbit, that could tip the White House to them. A centrist, border state or Southern Democratic presidential candidate, a la Bill Clinton, could do that. He would be competitive with the GOP in the South, especially if Arizona Sen. John McCain or former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is the Republican presidential candidate. Both are considered Republican moderates and would be a much tougher sell to hard-line conservatives than Bush Jr. The appointment of Florida Sen. Mel Martinez to head the Republican National Committee didn’t help matters. It irked some conservatives, who consider Martinez too moderate and too soft on immigration. Lott is the perfect antidote to soothe their ruffled feelings and shore up the conservative credentials of a McCain or Giuliani. 

During his Senate re-election campaign, Lott showed that he could still rev up a crowd and get out the vote. He easily brushed aside his Democratic opponent. That further confirmed that Lott still has real stump value. 

In decades past, GOP leaders’ respectable gray flannel suit opposition to civil rights was the big reason they were able to resuscitate the party from its century of near extinction in the Deep South and make it the dominant force in national politics. Lott played a big part in that resurgence. The GOP banks that he could play a big part of another resurgence in 2008. 

New America Media Associate Editor Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a political analyst and social issues commentator, and the author of The Emerging Black GOP Majority (Middle Passage Press, September 2006).

While the voting tally isn’t final and her opponent won’t concede, Gayle McLaughlin is confident she’ll be the new mayor of Richmond. 

And with the latest election results posted late Thursday afternoon, she has good reason to be confident. 

While returns posted the day after the election gave McLaugh-lin a 189 vote lead with 6,243 votes to incumbent Irma Ander-son’s 6,051, Thursday’s returns increased her lead to 279 votes, or 7,080 to 6,801. Gary Bell remains in third place, with his total increased from 4,382 to 4,834. 

Eight months of precinct walking, a small war chest and an enthusiastic crew of supporters helped the outspoken progressive and Green Party member score a significant upset over better-bankrolled opponents with strong name recognition. 

While McLaughlin refused corporate contributions, Anderson and Bell didn’t—but their massive outpouring of cash wasn’t enough to stave off the upset. 

While Anderson’s campaign and her industrial supporters spent about $200,000 and third place finisher Gary Bell, a former councilmember, spent about $80,000, McLaughlin spent less than $28,000. 

It wasn’t the first time she’d won against the big bucks. Two years earlier she’d been elected as the City Council’s first Green. 

While McLaughlin’s two largest donations this year of $2,500 each came from two divisions of the Service Employees International Union, ChevronTexaco—the city’s largest and most controversial employer—channelled $48,000 into support for Anderson and approximately the same sum bankrolling attacks against McLaughlin. 

Major recipients of Chevron largesse were the Committee for Quality Government and the Committee to Oppose Measure T. Both groups gave to the Coalition to Save Jobs, a creature of the Chevron-backed Council of Industries. 

The coalition spent $63,000 opposing McLaughlin. 

The Committee for Quality Government also gave $33,000 to the Black American Political Action Committee (BAPAC), which in turn gave exactly the same amount to Anderson’s support. Pacific Gas & Electric gave BAPAC another $10,000. 

PG&E also gave $4,000 directly to Anderson in three separate donations. 

Another Anderson donor was sometime Chevron lobbyist and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who gave $2,500. 

And that’s not counting the big bucks that poured into Anderson’s coffers from Democrats and developers—that new amalgam that played such a central role in Berkeley’s election. 

The Richmond Chamber of Commerce’s political action committee RichPAC also weighed in on Anderson’s behalf. 

Corporate concern 

Why such big money to target one candidate? 

Perhaps this statement holds the answer: 

“One of the special things about the job is that it comes with the ability and the responsibility to set a tone for the city,” McLaughlin said. “I can set a tone for important issues where the needs of the people rather than the needs of corporations come first, and I can use the position to really hone in on the needs and interests of the people.” 

And unlike Berkeley, where the mayor is merely first among equals and each councilmember appoints members to city commissions and committees, Richmond’s chief executive has the sole nomination power, though her choices must be ratified by the council. 

“The progressive movement has had a real problem in the past because we have not been able to get people on the commissions,” she said. 

And while Anderson wasn’t conceding in the days after the election, McLaughlin’s deep pocket foes were quick to adapt to the changed reality. 

“I’ve already had calls from the Chamber of Commerce and the Council of Industries saying they want to work with me,” McLaughlin said. 

Longtime activist 

McLaughlin’s been a political activist since her teens. A Chicago native, she was one of five daughters born to a union carpenter and his wife. 

In the 1980s, her progressive politics brought her into CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador—an organization targeted by the Reagan Administration as subversive.  

The future mayor-elect came west after finishing her psychology degree and doing graduate work. Settling initially in Vallejo, she moved to Richmond to be with her future husband. 

“I decided teaching wasn’t really my niche, so I went back into politics—I go through periods of trying something else, then back to politics,” she said. 

Peter Camejo’s run as the Green Party’s California gubernatorial candidate in 2002 provided the inspiration for her involvement in Richmond politics. 

“I got involved with the Greens and I jumped into things with both feet,” she said. “I opposed the PATRIOT Act, and the more I learned about the community, the more I became concerned about Chevron’s lack of pollution controls and their responsibility to pay a fair share of taxes to the city,” she said.  

She co-founded the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA), which is an umbrella organization to bring together Greens, progressive Democrats, libertarians, Peace and Freedom Party members and others who are concerned about Richmond community affairs. 

“We came together in 2004 to say that we need to focus attention on local issues,” she said. 

Two RPA stalwarts ran for city council that November, McLaughlin and Andres Soto. McLaughlin won. 

RPA members took on a variety of local issues, including casinos and the proposed development of a housing project on a toxic waste site at Campus Bay. 

McLaughlin worked closely with activists like Sherry Padgett and Claudia Carr of Bay Area Residents for Responsible Development, and she introduced a resolution as a newly elected councilmember urging the state Environmental Protection Agency to transfer site jurisdiction to the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC). 

Major goals 

In a racially divided city with a troubled economy and serious crime problems, McLaughlin said her creation of a Richmond Youth Corps will offer jobs and education. 

“My goal by the end of my term is to have 1,000 part-time jobs year-round,” she said. “It’s a real challenge and it will take a collective effort. We need to pull in people in the community who have an interest and then we have to explore funding. 

“But to tackle the problem of violence, we really need to think outside the box. The goal is to have 10 hours of work a week plus five hours of education and training. It won’t work unless we can really engage the kids, and for that we need mentors.” 

Another goal for her term is to continue her service on the Community Advisory Group (CAG) created by the DTSC to provide community input on the Campus Bay cleanup. In the time since the CAG was formed, the group has expanded its oversight to other sites in southern Richmond, including UC Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station—a move strongly resisted by UC Berkeley officials—along with Marina Bay and the Biorad plant. 

“Renewable energy is another important goal,” she said. 

McLaughlin already won City Council endorsement of Solar Richmond, a grass roots organization which hopes to generate five megawatts of power through rooftop solar panels on homes and business in the city by 2010 while also pushing for clean jobs. 

While Measure T failed—a ballot measure she endorsed which would have raised business taxes 10 percent and included a new raw materials fee on manufacturing business—she said she remains committed to seeing that industries pay their fair share of taxes to the city. 

Voters rejected the measure, which Chevron-funded hit pieces dubbed “Gayle’s Terrible T,” by a margin of 10,794 to 7,921.  

“While I didn’t propose the measure, I voted with five other members of the council to support it, and a few years back that wouldn’t have been expected,” she said. 

“I also want to partner with the city manager and the police chief, who is steering the city toward a less confrontational form of law enforcement,” she said. 

“I want to protect our hills and shoreline, and I will continue to oppose casinos because we don’t need the added crime and addiction they bring. They’re not healthy for our community, and they’re not long-term solutions to our needs,” she said. 

It’s an ambitious agenda, but it also comes from a skilled activist who’s proved that she can overcome well-financed opposition.

Builders of the hotel planned for the heart of downtown Berkeley want to build a 19-story building that at 205 feet would tower above the current reigning monarchs of the urban skyline, the Power Bar and Wells Fargo buildings. 

The structure would house 210 hotel rooms, 50 two- and three-bedroom condominiums and 200 underground parking spaces. Two public floors would house a bank, a pair of restaurants, a jazz club, a ballroom and meeting rooms. 

The building would stand on the northeast corner of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street, directly across the avenue from the two older towers. 

Architectural sketches and massing studies were unveiled Wednesday night to the Down-town Area Plan Advisory Com-mittee (DAPAC), which is preparing a new downtown plan that could pave the way for construction of the high-rise. 

“We will incorporate it into the Downtown Area Plan to the degree that you allow,” Planning Director Dan Marks told DAPAC members. 

If its features are written into the plan, then the developers wouldn’t need a zoning variance or possibly even a use permit, said Marks. 

The impetus for both the new plan and the hotel complex came from UC Berkeley—the former as the result of a city lawsuit and the latter as the result of a recruiting effort to create a center that could accommodate university-related guests and meetings. 

The plans were presented by Peter Diana, vice president and general counsel for hotelier Carpenter & Co., architect Gary C. Johnson of Cambridge Seven Associates and UC Berkeley Professor of Architecture Donlyn Lyndon, who is also working on the design. 

While the Power Bar building, on the southwest corner of Center Street and Shattuck Avenue, houses 13 stories in its 180 feet, the proposed structure across the street could accommodate six more floors with just 25 feet more in height because hotel rooms typically have lower ceilings than do offices, Diana said. 

The design consists of two central elements, a 70-foot-high structure that would house the hotel, banks, conference facilities, restaurants and jazz club, topped by a smaller, recessed tower that would house the condos and take the building to its full height. 

The lower structure would be close in scale to existing buildings along Shattuck Avenue, while its rooftop terrace—tentatively planned to house plantings, solar cells and solar water heating facilities in addition to public space—would match the height of the landmarked F.D. Chase Building immediately to the north on Shattuck. 

Cars and taxis would enter the hotel through a driveway off Shattuck adjacent to the Chase Building, and would either use a roundabout to turn around or drive into the ramp to reach the underground lot. 

While plans call for 200 parking spaces, Diana said the eventual number depends on the outcome of geotechnical studies which have just begun. With the exception of spaces for condo owners, other spaces would probably be available to the public on a first-come, first-served basis, he said. 

With access to BART and other public transit immediately available, “we are hoping to get fewer car trips than other hotels,” Johnson said. Diana said transit accessibility would be stressed on the hotel’s Internet site. 

The hotel, currently dubbed The Berkeley Charles Hotel after Carpenter’s signature hotel in Cambridge, Mass., will be the country’s greenest, said Diana. 

“I’m concerned about the green elements and that if you go over budget, they’ll be the first to go,” said DAPAC member Jim Samuels. 

“The good thing about green elements is that they will save us money in the long run,” said Diana. “The project isn’t going to happen unless it pencils out, and we are committed to green because it saves money.” 

Juliet Lamont said she was concerned that the project designs presented a hard edge to the street, without any greenery—a trait shared with the hotel in Cambridge. “We are about greenery and trees and ecology and the environment,” she said. 

“We are just beginning an intensive effort,” Diana said, and engineers and green consultants will be weighing in on what additional elements can be incorporated into the plans. 

Jesse Arreguin and Rob Wrenn said they were concerned about traffic, and Marks said traffic studies for the hotel would be included in the environmental impact report prepared for the new downtown plan. 

That plan was mandated in the settlement of the city lawsuit filed early last year challenging the university Long Range Development Plan 2020, which includes more than a million square feet of additional university uses downtown. 

While developers and city officials are insistent the hotel should not be referred to as “the UC hotel,” the project arose out of a request for qualifications from the university and protracted negotiations between the university and their chosen developer. 

The city task force formed by the City Council at the request of the Planning Commission was called the UC Hotel Task Force. 

The university will have no ownership interest in the structure, although it will own part of the site, which Carpenter & Co. will lease. 

UC Berkeley is planning a new museum complex immediately east of the hotel site, and recently selected Japanese architect Toyo Ito to design the complex, which will take up a larger land area than the hotel. 

Bank of America agreed to sell the site only if the developer agreed to grant them a banking facility on the corner. While the bank initially demanded 13,000 square feet of ground floor space, Diana said that after tough negotiations, the bank agreed to allow half the space to be located in the underground parking area.

The Richmond City Council voted Nov. 14 to drop its membership in the Richmond Chamber of Commerce “to avoid potential civil or criminal penalties for using public resources to pay for memberships in organizations that participate in local political activities,” according to an e-mail from Richmond City Council-member Tom Butt. 

A letter to Richmond City Attorney John Eastman from consulting attorney Jayne Wil-liams of Meyers, Nave, Riback, Silver & Wilson, cites the case of Stanson v. Mott, from which she concludes that “such a membership paid for from the city’s treasury would undermine established jurisprudence and public policy that the public’s time, money or other resources may not be used to promote or oppose ballot measures or for other political campaign purposes….” 

Williams further cites Califor-nia state government code Sec-tion 54964(a) which says: “An officer, employee, or consultant of a local agency may not expend or authorize the expenditure of any of the funds of the local agency, to support or oppose the approval or rejection of a ballot measure or the election or defeat of a candidate, by the voters.” 

In Berkeley, the City Manager’s Office pays $245 membership dues annually to the Berkeley chamber as does the Fire Depart-ment, according to budget manager Tracy Vesely. (The Police Department is listed as a Cham-ber member, but payment of dues has not been verified.) 

This year the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce endorsed candidates for mayor and City Council and for and against ballot measures, as it has in previous elections.  

The Daily Planet asked Deputy City Attorney Kristy van Herick, who is secretary to the Fair Political Campaign Practices Commission, whether Berkeley could be similarly in violation in belonging to an organization that supports and opposes political candidates and measures. Van Herick, however, said that since the question does not fall within the purview of Berkeley’s local election law, she is unable to respond. 

Berkeley City Manager Phil Kamlarz did not return calls before deadline.

Despite promised lawsuits by the City of Berkeley and project neighbors, UC Regents voted Tuesday to approve a massive athletic training center along the western wall of Memorial Stadium. 

But the Regents withheld one key approval needed before the project can move forward—certification of the environmental impact report (EIR). 

City Councilmembers voted unanimously in closed session Tuesday night to sue the Regents under the California Environmental Quality Act if the project’s current environmental impact report is approved. Kriss Worthington was absent. 

The EIR which would trigger litigation includes the Student Athlete High Performance Center, major stadium renovations, a nearby 912-car underground parking lot, an even larger new building joining functions of the UC Berkeley law and business schools and streetscape changes for Piedmont Avenue/Gayley Road. 

Any suit challenging the EIR and the project it covers must be filed within 30 days after regents adopt the document, a move which could happen as early as the first week in December in a telephone conference of the Board of Regents’ Committee on Grounds and Building. 

The committee voted unanimously to approve the project, simultaneously urging UC Berkeley officials to see if a compromise on EIR issues isn’t possible—though officials said approval of an EIR in time to allow for bidding to begin in January so excavation at the building site could be completed before the start of the fall football season was deemed an essential feature to avoid a year’s delay in construction. 

The other would-be plaintiff is the Panoramic Hill Association (PNA), which is comprised of residents who live on hillside homes to the east of the stadium. 

PNA member Michael Kelly told the Regents Tuesday, “The only road left to us is legal action.” He said the association has been advised that “there are elements of the current proposal which have serious flaws.” 

But the regents approved the $112 million project budget, with $12 million in potential standby financing if needed during fund-raising and plans for the 142,000-square-foot training and office facility. All funds are to come from corporations, organizations and individual donors 

Four stories tall in places, the training center would fit beneath the base level of the landmark stadium building. 

When it came time for a City Council vote Tuesday, Betty Olds said, “The trees are enough to make me vote for it,” referring to the 40 Oaks that were among the trees slated for destruction if the project goes through.  

The new parking lot added to her determination. “Nine hundred cars to too much to put on Gayley Road,” Olds said. Gayley is the two-lane nationally landmarked roadway that leads to the Stadium. 

The city retained Harriet Steiner of Sacramento-based McDonough 

Holland & Allen to work on the lawsuit, which will be filed within one 

month, Olds said. 

Fault issues 

One objection cited by the city and neighbors is the contention that the projects embraced by the EIR include structures on or near the Hayward Fault, and thus are susceptible to provisions of the Alquist-Priolo act, a law governing buildings on or adjacent to active earthquake faults. 

While acknowledging the Hayward Fault runs under Memorial Stadium itself, UC Berkeley’s Vice Chancellor Ed Denton and Associate Vice Chancellor for Project Manager Rob Gayle insisted the training center is exempt from the law because it is not on or sufficiently near the fault. 

UC Berkeley officials who addressed the regents dismissed claims of neighbors and the city that the project would impair emergency response times for the surrounding city neighborhoods. 

But Kelly said he was encouraged by the comments of Regent Leslie Tang Schilling, who questioned the wisdom of building an athletic training center next to a stadium which was facing legal challenge. 

Both PNA and the city said they plan to use the Alquist-Priolo Act in their challenges, a law the university concedes does apply to the stadium itself—while arguing the training center is exempt. 

The PNA, which has retained Alameda environmental lawyer Michael Lozeau, contends the university is barred from massive renovations of the stadium under Alquist-Priolo, which restricts upgrade work to 50 percent of the value of the structure. 

An assessment obtained by PNA valued the structure at between $27 million and $110 million, but the Denton told the regents that the stadium should be valued at what they say is a replacement value of $600 million. 

The university’s planned stadium renovations would be barred if the PNA figures are held to be accurate, and permitted under their own estimate. 

Kelly said one solution for the university would be to split the EIR into two documents, one for the projects west of Gayley Road and one for those east of the roadway. 

“That way they could approve one set of projects and go ahead with them,” Kelley said. 

He presented the suggestion in a letter he hand-delivered to the regents Tuesday. 

Regent Odessa Johnson, who described herself as “a great Bears fan” and a frequent attender of their games at the stadium, said that while it was important to attract top athletes and provide the facilities to support them, “it’s important to maintain good town/gown relations ... we need to work out some sort of consolation.” 

While she supported going further with the projects, Johnson said, “I would be happy to put off” adoption of the EIR. 

Committee Chair Joanne Kozberg said that while she supported the projects, the documentation had arrived at the committee so late that she felt she need time to reflect on the massive EIR. 

“We need to do our due diligence,” she said. 

Minutes later the committee voted unanimously to approve the key elements of the training center project, while delaying the essential vote on the EIR which is essential for the project to move forward.

With the failure of Berkeley’s Measure I in this month’s general election, the East Bay battleground over the hotly-contested issue of condominium conversions shifts across the border into Oakland, and the attempt by a coalition of three councilmembers to change some of the provisions of that city’s condo law. 

Originally written by District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks and now co-sponsored by Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and At-Large Councilmember Henry Chang, the proposed “Conversion To Homeowner Condominiums” proposes to increase home ownership by current Oakland tenants both by easing some of the current impediments to condo conversion and by providing discounts and assistance to tenants seeking to purchase their converted homes. 

The proposed ordinance is opposed by tenants’ advocates and their allies, who have charged that the implementation of the ordinance would lead to mass evictions and drive many current rental tenants out of Oakland.  

On Wednesday, after hearing 70 speakers divided evenly on both sides of the debate, the Oakland City Council’s Community & Economic Development (CEDA) committee voted 3-0-1 (Councilmembers Ignacio De La Fuente, Henry Chang, and Larry Reid voting yes, Jane Brunner voting no) to pass on the proposal to the full council for its Dec. 5 regular meeting. 

Both opponents and proponents of the proposed measure say they want the same thing: a comprehensive study of Oakland’s demographics, housing laws, and possible proposed changes in order to increase the ability of current Oakland residents to stay in their homes. 

“It’s the wrong way to do it right now,” said Eddie Ytuarte, of the Oakland Tenants Union in a telephone interview. “There’s been no staff analysis produced on the impacts of the proposal, and you would think that the City Council would want an analysis before they make any changes. There’s been no projection as to how many current housing tenants would be able to afford to buy their units, or else would have to be evicted, for the number of new conversions that would take place.” 

And in a memorandum sent to the Oakland City Council earlier this week, a coalition of Oakland organizations (including such groups as ACORN, the California Affordable Housing Law Project, the East Bay Community Law Center, the East Bay Housing Organizations, Just Cause Oakland, and the Oakland Tenants Union) said that they “strongly contend that the Oakland City Council should comprehensively study the impacts of any proposed changes to Oakland’s condominium conversion laws on vulnerable populations, community health, and the physical environment.” 

The groups added that “the proposed timeline of adopting significant changes by Dec. 19 would not enable adequate study or public participation to occur,” and that “city review of the proposed changes MUST await the legal analyses currently being conducted by the Oakland City Attorney regarding whether an Environmental Impact Review is legally required…” 

And Councilmember Brunner, who also opposed the measure and has been a longtime proponent of affordable housing, said that “home ownership is good, but it should be studied along with redevelopment and inclusionary zoning to see how we can help best renters. It’s a contradiction to say that we shouldn’t pass an inclusionary zoning ordinance until more study is done, but then try to rush condominium conversion through without a study.” 

But Brooks blames tenant advocates for not studying her own proposal, which she originally began working on in 2002. 

“They’ve had a knee-jerk reaction against it,” Brooks said by telephone. “But instead of being opposed to any change to the condo conversion ordinance, why don’t they look at the proposal and see what needs to be altered?” 

Brooks added that while “condo conversion by itself will make it more affordable than it is now for Oakland renters to purchase homes, conversion is not the end-all and the be-all. It’s just one piece of the puzzle. What we need to think about is a comprehensive way to free up more housing in Oakland for lower-income people.” 

The city staff analysis of the proposed ordinance change, signed by City Administrator Deborah Edgerly, noted that “the proposed changes to the condominium conversion ordinance are well founded and build on the comments and concerns previously raised about the existing ordinance. In particular, the desire to revise the procedures and account for changed circumstances in law and market conditions since the original ordinance was enacted in 1981.” 

But even Edgerly appeared to call for more study, adding that “these proposed changes are not without consequence. There needs to be careful review of the change in policy direction and a review of protections to avoid or minimize problems in project/program administration. This proposal represents a major shift in approach and purpose from protection of rental housing to encouraging home ownership.” 

If the four votes (De La Fuente, Chang, Reid, and Brooks) all hold firm through the scheduled Dec. 5 council consideration, there is some possibility that the measure could tie 4-4 in the eight-member council, with outgoing Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown being called in for the second time in a little more than a month to break the tie. That last happened in late October, when Brown supported Brooks’ proposal to delay passage of an inclusionary zoning ordinance in Oakland until more study is done on its implications. 

Ironically, Brooks and Brown have often been at odds during their terms as councilmember and mayor. And Brooks, who has also often feuded with De La Fuente, has now formed an alliance with the Council President on two recent issues: slowing down inclusionary zoning (where De La Fuente provided the swing vote that brought about the tie), and now condo conversion. 

Brown, who has been decidedly pro-development during his two four-year tenure in Oakland City Hall, has not taken a public position on the proposed condo conversion ordinance. 

Another unknown in the mix is the position of incoming mayor Ron Dellums, who has not yet spoken out on the condo conversion issue. While Dellums has said that he believes there should be a strict distinction between the roles of City Council and the mayor’s office in Oakland—with the Council setting policy and the mayor’s office deciding on how it should be implemented—it is widely believed that the new mayor will want to have some say in setting Oakland’s direction for the next four years. 

Both Councilmember Brunner and tenants union representative Ytuarte believe that the condo conversion proposal is being “rushed through,” in their words, in the hopes that Brown would step in to break a possible tie in favor of the new ordinance. 

But Brunner said that although Brown has not made a public statement on the issue, “when we talked about it, he made a comment to the effect that he has not been involved in bringing this issue forward to the Council.” 

For her part, Brooks said she does not know what Dellums might do if the council vote is delayed and the issue is his to decide after he takes office in January. 

“Ron hasn’t said anything on this issue,” she said. “I haven’t gotten a call from him about it.” 

Brooks supported Dellums over De La Fuente in last June’s mayoral election, and she is widely considered to be one of his main allies on the council. 

But Brooks said she is rejecting suggestions from some tenant advocates that the issue should wait until Dellums takes office in January. 

“We can’t stop governing until the new mayor comes in,” Brooks said. She said that while “some things should stop” until January, “such as the appointment process, it’s the City Council’s job to set policy, and that should continue forward.” 

Berkeley’s 30-year-old public police complaint process hung in the balance Tuesday as the city squared off against its police union in an Oakland courtroom.  

Judge Winifred Smith presided over a hearing in which Alison Berry Wilkinson of Pleasant Hill-based Rains, Lucia & Wilkinson argued for the Berkeley Police Association that a police officer’s right to privacy is violated when the officer is “forced” to respond publicly to a civilian complaint. 

The judge has taken the matter under submission and must respond within three months, although she is expected to rule sooner. 

Berkeley’s Police Review Commission Boards of Inquiry—where an individual’s complaint against a police officer is reviewed publicly in the presence of the officer and the complainant—were suspended mid-September in response to a California Supreme Court decision, Copley Press vs. San Diego County, that said a police officer’s discipline records cannot be made public.  

All police review boards in California—about a dozen—suspended public complaint hearings after the court decision. If Smith rules in Berkeley’s favor, open hearings will resume, even if the BPA appeals the ruling, according to City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque. 

The Berkeley Police Association took aim at the public complaint hearings four years ago, with a lawsuit claiming that the process violated a police officer’s right to privacy in regards to discipline records, as established by state law in the Police Officers’ Bill of Rights.  

But the suit was put on hold in 2004 as Copley made its way through the courts. The BPA complaint now incorporates the Copley decision. 

Albuquerque argued in court Tuesday that Berkeley’s process does not violate an officer’s right to privacy in disciplinary matters, because the city’s Police Review Commission hearings air an individual’s complaint against the police, but the PRC is not charged with discipline. 

“The city manager hires, fires and disciplines police officers,” Albuquerque said. “Only the city manager has a right to see personnel records.” 

Wilkinson did not dispute that, but noted that when a complaint is lodged with the PRC the Berkeley Police Bureau of Internal Affairs begins a parallel investigation.  

“The [PRC] investigation finds facts, comes to conclusions,” either sustaining or not sustaining the complaint, Wilkinson said. Both processes end with the city manager and the police chief. 

“The police chief and the city manager can consider anything in the public record. That includes the PRC findings, whether they have chosen to do it [in the past] or not,” Wilkinson said. 

Judge Smith interjected that the “personnel file of the officer is not given to the Commission.” 

And Albuquerque argued that “anyone can use anything in the public domain,” that the PRC hearings would not lead to discipline any more than a newspaper article or police report. 

Allison argued further that the complaint process includes criticism of the officer, which is in itself a form of discipline.  

“Is it the act of criticism that is discipline?” Judge Smith asked. 

“Yes it is,” Allison answered. 

Observers at the court hearing included members of the Police Review Commission, Berkeley Copwatch, Oakland-based Bay Area Police Watch, Oakland’s Citizens’ Police Review Board, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of the city. 

“Without public hearings, we risk becoming a police state,” Jake Gelender, UC Berkeley student and Copwatch member said outside the courtroom. “The Berkeley Police Association attacks our right to know what’s going on. Falling on the heels of the [Sergeant Cary] Kent scandal, they should be trying to rebuild public trust.” 

Kent is the former Berkeley officer convicted of stealing drugs from the evidence vault of which he was in charge. 

Also speaking outside the hearing room, Wilkinson told the Daily Planet that as things currently stand, the law regards an officer’s privacy as more important than the public’s right to know and to change that “will be an issue for the legislature to resolve.”

Four finalists have been named for the position of Berkeley’s director of Library Services, according to a Berkeley Public Library press statement. 

The finalists are Gerry Garzón, deputy director at the Oakland Public Library; Donna Corbeil, deputy director at the Solano County Library; Valerie G. Gross, director of the Howard County Library, Maryland; and Rivkah K. Sass, director of the Omaha Public Library, Nebraska 

Closed-session interviews by the Board of Library Trustees, library staff and community leaders began Thursday and continue today (Tuesday) and Wednesday. 

A public forum will be held Saturday, Nov. 18, 11 a.m. in the Story Room, 4th floor, Central Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge Street. The finalists will each address the community meeting for 45 minutes. The audience will have an opportunity to engage the candidates in discussion. Forms will be available for library staff and the public to comment on their interactions with the candidates.  

Community members and users of People’s Park are organizing a meeting on Sunday to plan how to defend the bulldozing of the berms, or mounds, on both ends of the Community Garden in the park. 

In an effort to help the police to see through the park without getting out of their cars, UC Berkeley recently laid out a plan to bulldoze the berms.  

Both chiefs from the UC Berkeley police departments explained the need to thin the vegetation for better visibility through the park at the People’s Park Community Advisory Board meeting on Monday. 

In meeting with UC officials and the advisory board in July, park users had made it clear that any attempt to cut down trees and trim shrubbery in an effort to clean the university-owned park should be done with community input. 

Board members said they were not convinced at the July meeting that clearing trees was the only way to check the crime and drug problem in the park. The board will be deciding on what advice it would give about bulldozing the berms at their next meeting on Dec. 4 at the Trinity Methodist Church in Berkeley. 

Planning meeting in the Park: Sunday Nov. 19, 4 p.m., Council Grove (northwest corner of the park.) 

People’s Park Community Advisory Board meeting: Monday Dec. 4, 7 p.m., Trinity Methodist Church, 2362 Bancroft Way.

Late Tuesday night, after two years of contentious meetings in which environmentalists often clashed with property owners, the Berkeley City Council approved revisions to the Creeks Ordinance, 6-2-1, aimed at safeguarding the city’s many open and culverted waterways. 

Councilmembers Betty Olds and Gordon Wozniak voted in opposition; Councilmember Laurie Capitelli abstained. 

Following this vote, the council also approved, 6-1-2, a zoning ordinance amendment, giving property owners the right to rebuild a structure of up to four units that was “involuntarily” destroyed, such as by flood or fire, with an easily obtained across-the-counter permit. Councilmember Betty Olds voted in opposition, with Councilmembers Gordon Wozniak and Laurie Capitelli abstaining. 

Among the most controversial requirements of the revised Creeks Ordinance is one that imposes severe limitations on new construction within 30 feet of the center of an open creek (all ordinance measurements reference the creek center) and on expansion of an existing structure within 25 feet of the creek. Such construction will require a variance, generally needed when zoning laws prohibit a proposed project; a hearing before the zoning board is required to obtain a variance. 

Applauding the proposed requirement for a variance, rather than a more easily obtained use permit, Joshua Bradt, who serves on the 15-member Creeks Task Force (CTF) responsible for revising the ordinance, spoke at the public hearing before the vote that drew some 70 people. 

“If you build too close to the creek, there will be erosion,” he said. “A variance is more protective.” 

But Neighbors on Urban Creeks member Mischa Lorraine, among the five members of the CTF who authored a minority report in opposition to the proposed ordinance, said the requirements create “unacceptable pressure on property owners.” 

Among the issues outlined in the minority report is the question of the one-size-fits-all permit required in the area 30 feet from a creek. 

“We support a case-by-case analysis of the appropriate setback from the creeks,” the dissenters wrote, arguing that the staff should “develop flexible standards which consider, among other matters, the varying depth and water flow of creeks in Berkeley.” 

“The interests I represent have been ignored by the Creeks Task Force majority,” Lorraine told the council. 

The revised ordinance will allow: 

• vertical expansion (building up and down) within 30 feet of an open creek, and horizontal expansion of an existing structure between 25 and 30 feet from an open creek, with an administrative creek permit, based on a report showing the construction would have no adverse impact on the creek;  

• building within 15 feet of a culverted creek with an administrative culverted creek permit, based on a structural engineer’s report demonstrating culvert stability, access and water quality protection. 

A number of speakers called on the council to take the culverted waterways out of the Creeks Ordinance. 

“We need to recognize culverts as part of the city’s storm-drain system,” said Barbara Allen, of Neighbors on Urban Creeks, a group formed to support property owners with creeks on their lots.  

Applauding the final ordinance as a “basic compromise between homeowners and environmentalists,” Helen Burke, planning commissioner who chairs the Creeks Task Force called for a holistic approach to manage Berkeley’s water resources, something agreed on by people representing homeowner interests and by those speaking to environmental concerns. 

“We need a half-time watershed manager,” Burke said. “We want a watershed management plan.”

On Thursday night Councilmember Laurie Capitelli sent a letter to the Planet regarding the just-passed Creeks ordinance which came too late to be added to this issue in full.  

It charged that “because of a rush to approve the CTF recommendations without amendments, several of us on the Council were not given the opportunity to fully comment, ask questions and explore the possibilities of unintended consequences. It certainly appears the decision to pass the ordinance was made before the public hearing, exhibiting a disregard to those who testified, those from the Planning Commission and Public Works Commission who provided alternative reports, and to the three members on the Council unwilling to proceed without further consideration of the draft ordinance.” 

He asked the council to set aside an hour at their Nov. 28 meeting to continue consideration of the ordinance. 

Text of letter: 

Dear Council Colleagues,  

Tuesday night, we were privileged to hear the long awaited report and proposed ordinance from the Creeks Task Force. I commend the staff and the task force for their diligence, tenacity and focus on this issue.  

Unfortunately, because of a rush to approve the CTF recommendations without amendments, several of us on the Council were not given the opportunity to fully comment, ask questions and explore the possibilities of unintended consequences. It certainly appears the decision to pass the ordinance was made before the public hearing, exhibiting a disregard to those who testified, those from the Planning Commission and Public Works Commission who provided alternative reports, and to the three members on the Council unwilling to proceed without further consideration of the draft ordinance.  

This was a major piece of legislation that deserved very careful review. We did not honor the two-year work of the task force by so quickly and cavalierly approving their recommendations. We did not honor the work of the Planning and Public Works Commissions whose perspectives were dismissed.  

The Council's long-held policy of postponing votes after a public hearing to the subsequent Council meeting would have served us all well in this case. I was reassured by some colleagues that this was their understanding on Tuesday night, and that there would be adequate time for further questions and discussion. But this policy was not even acknowledged much less considered when raised by Councilmember Olds.  

I understand completely that the CTF wanted validation for their work and closure to the process. That is only natural. My hope was to support their work, not merely abstain because of flawed process.  

So, I respectfully request that at the November 28, 2006 City Council meeting, that we unanimously pull the first reading of this ordinance, set it for action, and set aside one hour to discuss with staff present various issues raised in the public record. Among the topics to discuss are:  

1. Treatment of culverts. Whether culverts are regulated in the Creeks Ordinance or through the Public Works Department is mostly a question of symbolism. How they are regulated is not. Culvert repair and replacement in the flatlands will be exponentially more expensive because they are older, significantly larger and will need attention sooner. Culvert replacement in the hills will be incrementally less. (One needs only imagine replacement of a 6" culvert in the hills versus a 6' culvert in the flatlands.) Also, we need to identify the location of these culverts - an expense that should be borne by the city because it would be more efficient and, therefore, less costly to do this as a community rather than one property at a time.  

2. The right to rebuild. What will be the exact process and potential limitations imposed by the ordinance regarding the right to rebuild? Why does there need to be a differentiation between 'voluntary' and 'involuntary'? There seems to be an issue around the definition of demolition, but do we really want to go down the path of arguing whether or not something was voluntary unless there is a substantive reason to do so?  

3. List of effected properties. The ordinance indicates that the city should maintain a list of effected properties. Is it fair to have properties that are regulated differently ("open" or "culverted" creeks) on the same list? And being on or off this list has enormous implications for property owners, particularly those on a 'culvert' list because of the unknown liability for culvert maintenance, repair, or replacement. (This will have especially heavy impacts on property owners in Districts 1,2 and 3 because of the potentially larger costs for to larger culverts.)  

4. Minor encroachments that do not increase square footage. We could save a lot of grief for individual property owners who want to make minor changes to their homes with new language inserted in the ordinance. For instance: currently, if a property owner wants to replace a flat roof with a pitched roof that includes a new three-foot eve, and that eve would project into the 25 foot creek setback, it would not be allowed. Suggested language to add to the ordinance might be: Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, eaves, cornices, bay windows, and awnings that do not increase the floor area of an existing building or encroach within 10' feet of the centerline of an open creek are not subject to the provisions of this section. Add to section 17.08.050  

There were several other concerns raised by testimony during the public hearing or submitted in the public record. At a minimum, these concerns deserve a respectful hearing and response.  

Sincerely,  

Laurie Capitelli  

Berkeley City Council, District 5  

The city’s short-term fiscal health—with about $800,000 more in anticipated annual revenue than forecast—and a possible long-term structural deficit were highlighted at a City Council workshop Tuesday. 

At its regular meeting, the council considered the question of cultural uses at the Gaia building, financing difficulties at the Brower Center-Oxford Plaza project and referred the use of surveillance cameras to catch criminals to the city manager’s office. 

Budget report 

The good fiscal news was that anticipated annual hotel tax revenue is about $300,000 more than expected, parking fine revenue is forecast at $500,000 over the anticipated level and interest income is up almost as much. 

On the downside—for city coffers—home prices decreased from an average of $792,000 to $775,000 over one year and the volume of home sales decreased from 438 to 324 over a year causing transfer tax revenue to slip by about $1 million. 

Property taxes remain the city’s greatest revenue generator at an estimated $32 million, as had been anticipated. 

While the city’s sales tax revenues and business license tax revenues are expected to remain as forecast—about $14 million and $11 million respectively—economic development staff said city retail should be performing better, especially because of the large number of daytime non-residents who work or study in Berkeley.  

“People are spending money outside Berkeley or on the Internet,” said Dave Fogarty, economic development manager. “The per capita income has risen higher than the Alameda County average. We’re not realizing the potential sales tax.”  

Michael Caplan, recently appointed head of the economic development division, said a program to attract and retain business has to start with data collection. 

“We do not know the shifts in retail trends,” he told the council. 

The anticipated structural deficit (expenses built into the budget) includes cost of living increases for city staff (the amount will be determined through labor negotiations), increases in staff health care costs, the downturn in the housing market and the higher cost of construction materials, which impacts city projects  

Responding to the anticipated deficit, the staff said it would wait until February to make budget decisions on the level of Fire Department staffing and whether to continue funding the Telegraph Avenue Improvement Plan, which includes funding social service workers and police. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington, whose district includes the Telegraph Avenue area, called for a “special focus on Telegraph at the next quarterly budget update” in February. 

In a phone interview Thursday, Worthington said that bicycle police and social service outreach on Telegraph should not be paid for with one-time funding. “This is an ongoing need,” he said, contending the city should return to community policing. 

Gaia Building 

At the council meeting, the question of cultural uses at the Gaia building—developer Patrick Kennedy was allowed to build two residential stories higher than normally permitted in exchange for the promise of cultural use on the first two floors—was again on the agenda. 

Gaia tenant Anna de Leon, who owns Anna’s Jazz Island, argued that the building’s use permit called for 100 percent cultural activities on the two floors.  

“It was intended to benefit the community—that’s why he got the bonus,” de Leon said. 

Kennedy contended that the first two floors of the building were never supposed to be 100 percent cultural use, given that the original use of the space was to be for the Gaia Bookstore that went out of business. The store was a for-profit business that also provided cultural activities.  

Councilmember Dona Spring said that to resolve the situation councilmembers should examine contracts Kennedy has with the management group, which also provides catering for private events, and other users of the space.  

“That’s confidential,” Kennedy said, to which Councilmember Dona Spring replied: “This is a public matter.” 

City staff said at some point they would call a closed-session meeting on the question: both parties have talked about suing the city to resolve the issue. 

The council voted 7-0-2 to hear the question again on Dec. 12, with Councilmembers Betty Olds and Gordon Wozniak abstaining. 

Oxford Plaza-Brower Center 

The $68 million Oxford Plaza-Brower Center has hit some snags, which the council discussed after midnight on Wednesday. The project is supposed to locate offices for non-profit environmental groups in the Brower Center, with retail on the ground floor. Oxford Plaza would house low-income families, also with retail on the ground floor, and would include a parking structure that would belong to the city.  

“We need a sense of the council to move forward,” Housing Director Steve Barton told a weary council, which, at around 1 a.m., voted 7-2 for staff to continue working on the project. Councilmembers Betty Olds and Gordon Wozniak voted in opposition. 

A major retailer, Patagonia, had signed a letter of intent to occupy retail space on the Oxford Plaza ground floor, but pulled out of the project. The presence of Patagonia would have ensured repayment of a $1 million HUD loan. Without a retailer in this space, the city may become liable for the $1 million in the eighth year of the loan. 

Also, construction costs are up 24 percent, which, in a worst-case scenario, could reach $7 million; the city could become responsible for $4 million of that. When the council discusses the project in December, it will have to decide whether to approve a soft close on the deal, that is, turning ownership of the Brower Center and Oxford Plaza over to developers conditionally, so that the land would revert to the city if the project does not work out.

When Jannat Muhammad’s 7-year-old grandniece developed asthma back in 2000, Muhammad was pained but not surprised. After all, many of the child’s schoolmates at Verde Elementary in North Richmond were succumbing to the disease with numbing regulatory. 

“There’s a tremendous amount of asthma among children in Verde,” said Muhammad, who works with the Costa Contra County Health Services’ West County Asthma Coalition. 

A study released today indicates that children living along truck routes in California have high rates of asthma and low lung capacity. Verde Elementary is in the proximity of the Chevron oil refineries, long blamed for some of the health woes of West Contra Costa County’s residents, and a thoroughfare for trucks between Highway 80 and the Richmond Parkway. 

Asthma, the most common chronic disease among children in the United States, causes wheezing, coughing and shortness of breath. Airborne particles such as dust, soot and smoke less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter are small enough to lodge themselves deep in the lungs, causing a host of respiratory problems and even nonfatal heart attacks, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. A significant portion of these fine particles are produced by diesel engine emissions. 

The landscape of West Contra Costa County and the Alameda county communities of West San Leandro and West Oakland is dotted with waste-transfer stations, ports, rail yards and departmental stores that provide good business to the trucking industry. The Port of Oakland, for instance, boasts more than 10,000 truck trips a day, according to Bill Aboudi, operations manager of AB Trucking, whose fleet of trucks hauls goods out of the port. Aboudi says that because of “limited space” at the port terminals, “there is always a long line of trucks inching along,” generating diesel emissions. 

It’s not just children who are affected by the emissions. “So many truckers have asthma,” Aboudi says. 

Studies have shown that there is a strong link between diesel pollution and respiratory problems, says Swati Prakash, program director with the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based nonprofit. “There is also no question that diesel pollution causes cancer. In fact, the state estimates that 70 percent of cancer risk from air pollution is from diesel.” 

In West Contra Costa County, where racial and ethnic minorities make up more than 35 percent of the population, diesel pollution is 40 times higher per square mile than in the rest of California, according to Meena Palaniappan, Pacific Institute’s senior research associate. 

“Children in West Oakland are seven times more likely to be hospitalized for asthma than children living the rest of California,” says Palaniappan, whose nonprofit collaborated with more than a dozen environmental justice and health organizations in conducting the year-long study, titled “Paying With Our Health: The Real Cost of Freight Transport in California.” And children living in North Richmond, home to largely low-income African-American and Latino residents, are visiting emergency rooms three times more frequently than those living in the town of Lafayette, a few miles to the southeast. 

For years, neighborhood groups from these San Francisco Bay Area cities have been protesting the unchecked pollution caused by freight transport running through their cities, which is estimated to cost California residents $200 billion over the next 15 years in health costs, most of which is borne by low-income communities of color living near freight transport hubs. 

“Diesel is the number one air polluter in California,” notes Palaniappan. “Poor communities are subsidizing cheap goods for the rest of California with their health.” 

At least 80 percent of tax revenues in San Leandro is generated from businesses in the western part of the city, says Wafaa Aborashed, executive director of the Healthy San Leandro Collaborative and a West San Leandro resident. “People are sacrificed here, but the city is in denial about it.” 

Those outside these neighborhoods are also picking up the tab. According to the California Air Resources Board, freight transport each year causes around 2,400 people to die prematurely; 2,380 people to be admitted to the hospital; 360,000 missed workdays and 1,100,000 missed days of school, the study reports. 

Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Safeway and the neighborhood grocery store are among scores of companies that transport their freight using big rig trucks that spew out toxic particulates from burnt diesel fuel. 

“These companies make a lot of money, while I spend money on medicine and miss work, and my daughter misses school,” complains Oti Nungaray, who has been living close to the Long Beach port in Southern California for the last 10 years, the nation’s largest port complex. 

“Because we are a community of color and low-income, everyone wants to dump on us,” asserted Lee Jones, a community advocate who lives in North Richmond after he retired from the University of California in San Francisco in 1998 because “this was the only affordable place for me.” 

In 1998, the Golden Gate Environmental Law and Justice Clinic took the Port of Oakland to court on behalf of West Oakland residents. Palaniappan says that a good chunk of the $9 million settlement the port set aside for air quality improvement has still not been used. 

“It’s just been a constant, constant fight,” she says. 

Port of Oakland officials assert that their emission reduction project is a “multi-year program.” 

“The Port of Oakland is in the early development stages of an air quality regional master plan,” contends Marilyn Sandifur, the port’s media and public relations specialist. “We’re trying to pool our resources with other public agencies,” she says, in order to have a bigger impact. 

Environmental justice advocates hope that the data from the new study will give them enough ammunition to demand statewide legislation requiring polluters to mitigate their toxic effects by such measures as imposing container fees that can be used for environmental cleanup and community health programs. 

Viji Sundaram is health editor for New America Media.

Beating bandit sought 

Berkeley police want the public’s help in capturing a young robber who brutally assaulted a clerk at J & L Laundry & Cleaning on Oct. 23. 

According to spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan, the man entered the 2520 Shattuck Ave. store about 3 p.m. A woman was working in the front counter area, when the robber leapt over the counter, demanded cash and began beating her with his fists. 

The attack ended only when a customer walked in the door, prompting the attacker to flee south on Shattuck aboard a red bicycle. 

The woman was rushed to a local emergency room and hospitalized for the treatment of severe facial injuries. She has since been released, he said. 

Galvan also released a composite drawing of the suspect, who is described as an African American man between the ages of 19 and 22 who stands about 5’11” to 6’ tall and weighs about 250 pounds. 

His front teeth, both upper and lower, were silver colored, and he was wearing dark jeans and a green and white striped shirt. 

Officer Galvan asked anyone with information about the attack to call BPD Homicide investigators at 981-5741. 

Steals on wheels 

A teenage bandit on a mountain bike who ripped off purses and cellphones in the South Berkeley area over the course of several days may have ended his spree when a spunky victim resisted. 

The bandit, a youth between the ages of 13 and 15 who sports a shaved head and usually wore a white T-shirt, would ride up to victims on his red mountain bike and land a punch or a threat before making off with his loot. 

A bandit of that description stole a large purse from a 26-year-old San Francisco woman who was walking along Ashby Avenue near the Ellis Street intersection just before 7:30 p.m. on the day after the election. 

At 6:30 the following day, a cycle-mounted clouter rode up to a Berkeley woman walking along Shattuck Avenue near the corner of Parker Street, then punched her face before making off with her cell phone. 

The crime spree apparently came to end after the bicycling bandit encountered a Berkeley woman as she walked along Dwight Way near the corner of Ellsworth Street at midnight Saturday. 

“He rode up on his bike and tried to take her cell phone, but she grabbed it back and he rode off,” said Officer Galvan. 

But the fellow followed the woman to the next traffic light, where he was spotted by his would-be victim. 

“You tried to take my phone,” she said. 

“Don’t you know you’re supposed to give it to me,” he said. 

She didn’t, and with that he sped off. He hasn’t been heard from since, said Officer Galvan. 

Busted bandit 

Police arrested a 16-year-old Berkeley youth after he lingered too long following his strong-arm robbery of a 22 year old man in the 2200 block of San Pablo Avenue just before noon Nov. 7.  

Repeat offender 

Another serial heister, this one wearing a green hoodie and packing a silver colored pistol, didn’t fare as well as the bicycling bandit. 

His first reported robbery took place shortly before 12:30 a.m. on the 8th. He robbed a woman in her 60s of her cell phone as she was walking near the corner of Domingo and Oakvale avenues, said Officer Galvan. 

His caper complete, he hopped into a nearby car and sped off. 

His next and final caper followed at 2 o’clock the next morning when he robbed two UC Berkeley students of their backpacks and valuables near the corner of Channing Way and Bowditch Street. 

An alert university employee spotted the fellow near Top Dog and alerted police, who stopped to question him. Backtracking, officers found the missing backpacks, along with some clothing he’d discarded along the way. 

Police booked the 25-year-old suspect, a Berkeley man, on suspicion of multiple counts of armed robbery. 

Between the biking bandit and the busted pistolero, the city had experienced a spike in robberies, said Officer Galvan. 

“Things have calmed down since,” he said. 

iJacked 

A pair of teenage bandits, one wearing a peacoat, robbed a 15-year-old of his iPod and cash after they confronted him just before 5 p.m. Nov. 9 as he walked along Ninth Street near the corner of Bancroft Way. 

Framed 

Police took a Berkeley teen into custody on suspicion of assault after her brother made a citizen’s arrest shortly before 9 p.m. on the 9th, said Officer Galvan. 

The young man was cut by broken glass after his sibling bashed him over the head with a picture frame. 

Pipe assault 

Police arrested a 27-year-old Oakland man on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon after he and a companion attacked a 20-year-old woman with a metal pipe near the corner of Haste Street and Telegraph Avenue at 11 p.m. on the 9th, said Officer Galvan. 

After the attack, the two men fled toward People’s Park, and patrol officers were able to apprehend one of the suspects moments later. 

Shot, silent 

An alert citizen called police called police about 7:15 p.m. on the 9th to report that he’d just seen someone in a car who looked like he’d been shot. 

Officers called surrounding jurisdictions to see if they’d turned up anyone with a gunshot, but came up dry. Eventually they found the fellow in the 1900 block of Harrison Street, with a jacket wrapped around the bleeding wound in his leg. 

At first the 40-year-old victim refused to talk, asking only for help from paramedics. He later allowed that he’d been shot by a fellow wearing a white hoodie, though just where he was at the time he wasn’t quite sure. 

“He thinks it was in Oakland,” said Officer Galvan. 

Hapless heister 

A 20-year-old Berkeley woman used her cell phone to call police at 5:30 Sunday afternoon to report that a young fellow had just attempted to swipe the device as she was walking along the 2400 block of Ellsworth Street. 

Unfortunately for the would-be bandit, the call was quick enough to summon officers to the scene in time to find him nearby. The 17-year-old was given a ride to Juvenile Hall, where he was successful in copping another kind of cell.

Students, parents, educators and city officials gathered at Old City Hall Wednesday to bid farewell to School Board President Terry Doran, who is retiring after eight years on the board. 

Doran, who has been in public education for the last six decades, said that his retirement did not spell the end of his public service. Land use, he said, was the issue he wanted to serve the community in next. 

“I am really not ready to run away,” he said. “Some people go to retirement homes, others go on long vacations. But I am not there just yet. Land use is one of the most exciting and contentious areas of concern in the city and it’s the direction I would like to go in.” 

As school board president, Doran had been involved in the school district’s Construction Advisory Oversight Committee and had worked with the mayor and City Council on the warm water pool and South Campus. 

Councilmember Darryl Moore told the Planet that Doran would make a great addition to the Zoning Adjustment Board. Moore’s current ZAB appointee Raudel Wilson ran against District 4 councilmember Dona Spring in the recent elections. 

“I would love to see [Doran] more involved in city politics. I think he would be an asset,” Moore said. 

When asked about why he had decided not to continue after his second term on the school board, Doran said he wanted to honor tradition.  

“For the last 40 years the informal term limit to serve on the school board has been eight years,” he said. “I made the commitment when I ran that it would be at the most for two terms. It’s time for new people, a fresh pair of eyes.” 

Also, according to tradition, the director with the most votes in the school board elections is nominated for president. 

School board vice president Joaquin Rivera, who won the most votes in the last school board election, would be nominated for president. Director John Selawsky, who received the second highest number of votes, would become vice-president. 

“Nothing has been decided yet but I am definitely excited about the possibility of serving as president,” Rivera said. 

A decision could be announced as early as Dec. 6, the day the new and re-elected school board directors would be sworn in. 

Speaking about the areas that still needed work in the school district, Doran focused on unequal achievement levels in the schools.  

“The school district’s funds need to be used more wisely to meet the needs of all our children,” he said. “We need to focus on closing the achievement gap when it comes to children of color. I am afraid we haven’t been as successful as we’d like to be in that direction.” 

Doran added that Berkeley High School would be best served if it was broken down into smaller schools.  

“That was my goal when I first joined the board,” he said. “I envisioned small schools that would have 500 students or less where each child would get the benefit of a small learning environment.” 

Doran was successful in getting the very first federal grant available for planning small schools when he joined the board in 1998 after serving the school district since 1966. 

Friends and colleagues who had spent time with Doran in the school district described him as a father, a teacher and an administrator. 

“His humanity came across at every school board meeting public hearing,” said district superintendent Michele Lawrence. “Since I have been on the board, Terry’s strong advocacy for equality in classrooms and humanity has helped guide my decisions.” 

Doran was given a proclamation by the Berkeley Unified School District, which noted his efforts at passing the school parcel taxes Measures BB in 2000, Measure B in 2004 and Measure A in 2006, the improvement of the food quality in the Berkeley public schools, his defense of the Student Assignment Plan and his commitment and affection towards students. 

Doran also received the Alameda County Board of Education Public Education Award and a proclamation by the City of Berkeley. 

Many also praised Doran for his contributions to the operation of the Berkeley High newspaper—The Yellow Jacket. 

“In my first year as advisor to the Jacket, the newspaper got its first computer,” Doran said. “Desktop publishing had just started and the earlier advisors were having a tough time meeting deadlines. I promised the students that I would show them how to bring out a newspaper in two weeks time and worked hard to make that happen. It never missed a deadline since then.” 

Photograph by Mark Coplan 

County schools supervisor Shelia Jordan hugs Terry Doran at his retirement ceremony from the Berkeley school board Wednesday.

The Berkeley Unified School District thanked parents, teachers, students and community members for supporting Measure A at the School Board meeting on Wednesday. 

“It would not have been possible without all of you,” said BUSD superintendent Michele Lawrence in her address to the audience. 

School board director Nancy Riddle called the passing of Measure A “a victory for honesty and integrity” and “a victory against deception and misinformation.” 

“We had an amazing list of supporters, a great steering committee and a great treasurer, Larry Gordon, who kept the campaign truly transparent,” she said. “It was a campaign that was honest, genuine and open to the whole public.” 

Board president Terry Doran—who retired after the meeting—congratulated the new and re-elected board members and pointed out that there would be a female majority on the board for the first time in ten years.  

“I don’t think the public has to worry that I am stepping away,” he said. “I am confident board member Karen Hemphill will more than fill my seat.” 

The board unanimously voted to approve four additional counseling positions in grades 7-12 with new targeted state grants. 

The state has funded a new Supplemental School Counseling Program to provide extra counseling services to pupils. This program sets minimum requirements for service to all secondary students but focuses particularly on those students who are at risk of not graduating with the rest of their class. 

The board needed to approve accepting funding provided by the state for the program. The passage of Measure A assures additional funding for counseling services for middle schools, a plan for which will be presented to the board at a later date.

The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive received a $300,000 National Leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) on Tuesday, which will help connect high school and college students to CineFiles, BAM/PFA's online database with thousands of historical documents related to film. 

The grant will enable BAM/PFA to embark on a three-year project which will focus on expanding access to CineFiles to secondary and postsecondary educators in the humanities and social sciences. 

Chris Fox, audience development coordinator for BAM/PFA, said the funding would benefit Berkeley High students by allowing their teachers to make use of the CineFiles Collection. 

“A major goal of the project is to develop ways to put high school and college teachers in touch with the documents in the PFA Library and Film Study Center’s extensive collection and then to give those teachers tools for using those documents in their classrooms,” Fox said. “For instance, a U.S. history teacher might use historical publicity documents to visually enrich a discussion of early Hollywood films and their influence on American culture.” 

The project will not be limited to students from Berkeley schools. 

“The grant will allow us to create tools for teachers to integrate film into their classrooms, ultimately enhancing the educational experience of their students,” said Lucinda Barnes, deputy director of programs and collections at BAM/PFA. 

The funds will add 15,000 items to CineFiles that are of particular relevance to educators and their students. This will enhance the CineFiles interface and help develop tutorials and workshops for teachers who want to use film and related materials in their classrooms but have no formal training in film history, Fox said.

Partisan politics is standing in the way of progress in California, according to new research released this week on the heels of startling Census numbers showing a deepening racial divide. 

Data released Nov. 14 by the U.S. Census Bureau documents a persistent and deepening racial divide nationwide and in California. White households had incomes that were two-thirds higher than Blacks and 40 percent higher than Hispanics last year. Whites are also more likely to attend college and less likely to live in poverty. 

“The new census data shows that race matters in California and throughout the nation. As our population grows, we need a plan for addressing the changing needs of our diverse state,” said Menachem Krajcer, senior policy analyst at the Applied Research Center. “Bitter partisan politics and budget restraints are crippling long overdue reforms in health and education.” 

Evaluated in this context, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state legislature have done little to provide solutions for disparities in health, education, income and other key indicators of racial inequity, according to Krajcer, who authored the report “Facing Race: California Legislative Report Card on Racial Equity 2006.” 

The legislature scored a “C-” and Schwarzenegger a “D” in the report card evaluation. 

As evidence of California’s crippling partisanship, Kracjer points out that only two Republicans received passing grades on racial equity in California while in Illinois, where a similar study was conducted, only three Republican legislators failed. 

This year, Illinois also passed universal health care for children, a bill which died in California. 

Schwarzenegger vetoed a total of nine bills that would have benefited low-income people of color and immigrants, including legislation providing statewide single-payer healthcare, fair practices in standardized testing for English learners, and wage protections for domestic workers such as live-in nannies and homecare providers. 

Of the 20 bills addressing racial equity that actually passed in California, 12 originated in the assembly. Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez received an A for 100 percent support, while Senate Pro Tem Don Perata received a C for 70 percent support, for failure to vote on six racial equity bills. 

The higher the racial diversity of a legislative district, the higher the support for racial equity. Average scores for districts with 75 percent or more people of color were 99 percent in the assembly and 95 percent in the senate. On average, districts with white majorities voted for racial equity 44 percent of the time in the assembly and 43 percent of the time in the senate. 

According to the report, the limited success of the legislature was overshadowed by striking missed opportunities; key legislation to address structural racism stalled in the legislature or was vetoed by the governor. 

“While racial disparities are pervasive in California, they need not be permanent. California must begin facing race,” said Tammy Johnson, policy director at the Applied Research Center, which also released reports on racial equity in Minnesota and Illinois. 

“Strategies to advance racial equity, like providing healthcare for our kids and increasing access to college, already exist. Our elected leaders must overcome partisan squabbles and build the political will necessary to make them real.” 

As Democrats recaptured control of the House and Senate last week, Black Democrats won more than half of the 13 statewide offices they competed for while Black Republicans won none, debunking what the GOP had billed as “the year of the Black Republican.” 

The Black Democratic wins yielded one governor, two lieutenant governors, one attorney general, one secretary of state, one state treasurer and one commissioner of labor. Black Republicans ran for governor in Ohio and Pennsylvania and for the U. S. Senate in Maryland. 

“It was a great year for Democrats,” says David Bositis, senior analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, referring to both Black and White party members. Only 11 percent of Blacks voted for Republican congressional candidates, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the Associated Press and television networks. That percentage is consistent with shares won by Republicans in the 2004 presidential race. 

Terone B. Green, a Black Republican operative in Virginia widely known for his outspokenness and activism, says the Black Republican losses were fueled by more than just opposition to extended U.S. presence the Iraq. 

“People are going to say it’s the war, but Republicans just don’t have a solid strategy to prevail in the Black community,” he explained. 

“You can run a Black Republican all you want to, but it’s clearly evident that Black folks don’t believe in them because Black Republicans do not prop up African-Americans in any significant way. Black people just don’t trust Republicans. That’s the bottom line.” 

Much of that distrust comes from the failure of Republicans to support issues favored by African-Americans. On the last NAACP Report Card, 98 percent of all Republicans in Congress received Fs, compared to only 2 percent of Democrats. 

In recent years, only two Black Republicans have won U. S. House seats. They are former Connecticut Rep. Gary Franks (1992-1997) and Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts (1994-2003). They were the only Blacks elected to the House since 1932 and both won in districts that were at least 90 percent White districts. The only Black Republican elected to the Senate since Reconstruction was Sen. Ed Brooke who served from 1967 to 1979. 

Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman, who had boasted that this would be the “year of the Black Republican,” now says he will leave the chairmanship by January after this year proved to be the year of neither the Black nor White Republican. 

“Give us a chance, and we’ll give you a choice,” he told the annual conference of the Conservative Political Action Committee in Washington, D.C. in February. Blacks rejected that choice, according to exit surveys. 

Green says, “They just don’t get it. They want people that they feel comfortable with. But they need to find Black candidates that can really identify with the Black community.” 

So far, that has been an uphill struggle. 

All three of the statewide Black Republican candidates failed to get more than 25 percent of the Black vote. 

They were: Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who lost his gubernatorial bid with 20 percent of the Black vote; former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann, who lost his Pennsylvania gubernatorial bid with 13 percent of the Black vote; and Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who lost his senatorial bid received 25 percent of the Black vote. No Black Republicans ran for lower statewide offices. 

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Tara Wall argued that this election represented progress. 

“That’s historic for any Republican to get 25 percent of the Black vote. We have definitely made strides,” she says. You can compare that with the last Republican that ran for that seat in ‘88…I think we’ve made great strides.” 

That candidate was conservative Republican activist Allen Keyes, who got 14 percent of the Black vote in that campaign, losing to incumbent Democrat Paul Sarbanes. 

“So, I think you see that there is an increase of the number of African-Americans who are voting for Republicans,” says Wall. 

“This is just the beginning. This is not the end. These three folks have very bright futures in this party.” 

Of 13 Democrats who ran in the Nov. 7 elections, seven won: Deval Patrick Massachusetts’ governor-elect; David Patterson, New York Lt. Gov.-elect; Anthony Brown, Maryland Lt.Gov.-elect; and three who were re-elected, Thurbert Baker, Georgia attorney general; Jesse White, Illinois secretary of state; Denise Napier, Connecticut treasurer and Michael Thurmund, Georgia commissioner of labor. 

The six losing Democrats were: U. S. Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.), candidate for U. S. Senate; Mississippi senatorial candidate Erik Fleming; Georgia state superintendent of education candidate Denise Majette, a former congresswoman; South Carolina secretary of state candidate Cheryl Footman; Ohio state auditor candidate Barbara Sykes; and Ohio Supreme Court candidate Ben Espy. 

Bositis says the problems of the three statewide Black Republican candidates extended beyond their race. 

“Blackwell made big enemies of everybody else in the Republican Party and so they really wanted him to lose,” Bositis explains. 

Largely credited with Bush’s controversial win in the 2004 presidential race, Blackwell has been beleaguered with legal problems afterward, including a suit that found that Ohio election officials had, in violation of state law, informed former felons that they could not vote. He also directed his office to only accept voter-registration forms printed on paper of at least 80-pound weight, a decision that he later reversed under pressure from voting rights groups.This year, Blackwell issued an advisory that said voter identification cards must have their current addresses, a requirement that was contrary to state law. 

Bositis continued, “Lynn Swann wasn’t going to win. The Republicans were desperate when they picked him. I mean, he’s a football player, what do you want? And Michael Steele, you know, Maryland is a Democratic state, that’s why he lost.” 

Democratic wins in Congress are ultimately expected to amount to a 232-203 majority in the House and a 51-49 majority in the Senate. That majority will probably be expanded with support coming from independent Bernie Saunders, a socialist; and Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent. Both have said they will caucus with Democrats. 

Democratic governors are also celebrating a majority they have not had in 12 years. They now have a 28-22 edge in statehouses. Ohio, Colorado and Arkansas are among states that returned to Democratic hands after eight years or more of Republican occupation. 

“Lost in all this talk about the House and the Senate is the governorships,” says Daniella Gibbs Leger, a spokeswoman for the Center for American Progress. 

“Often you have a lot of governors complaining that they are shouldering the burden of a lot of domestic issues because they can’t get the help that they need from Congress.” 

States look to the federal government for help on many issues impacting low income communities, such as money for educational shortfalls, after school programs, Head Start and community development block grants. 

“The 109th Congress has been the do-nothing Congress,” says Leger. 

“And I think that with a new progressive Congress in power, they will understand the struggles that the states are going through and they won’t leave the states out there to hang, basically, and try to fulfill all of these duties without help from the federal government.” 

And candidates running for president might benefit from that shift as well. If presidential voting mirrors the votes for governors, 295 electoral votes could go to a Democratic candidate president, 169 more than they had. The presidency is won with 270 electoral votes. 

Even with early speculations that the presidential race is shaping up to possibly include Black Republican Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Green says he is tiring of trying to change the party from within. 

“The ones they do prop up, like your Colin Powell’s, he carried the water for Bush and now that he’s out of there he’s beginning to tell how he really felt,” Green says. 

“He should have had the courage to tell how he felt while he was sitting there with that power…I’m not there because I believe in what they say. I’m there because somebody’s got to be there to tell them that they are wrong.”

We drove to Sacramento on Sunday afternoon, through a dense tule fog which made seeing the road a dicey proposition. The fog lifted just as we came into town, and was still gone when we came back to the Bay Area. The trip seemed a bit like the current political perspective.  

This year those who feel the weight of the world on their shoulders have some things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. It appears that the majority of the winners in the national election are people who understand that the war on Iraq was a big mistake, and that the elected representatives are going to make a good faith effort to figure out what to do now. Not, of course, that naysayers can’t still find plenty to worry about, since what to do is still not a whole lot clearer than I-80 in a tule fog. The easiest prediction is that even if the U.S. troops pulled out next week Iraq would face a civil war which would last for many years.  

Also, it’s not guaranteed that the Congress of the United States of America currently has enough power to effect a rapid withdrawal even if it wanted one. The contractor corporations are so entrenched in Iraq that getting them out will take years. If you believe Lewis Lapham’s cynical suggestion that the real purpose of the Iraq invasion was not to liberate Iraq but to provide a way of transferring taxpayers’ money to corporate pockets, the job is still not 100% done. There’s a lot more money to be made, and the profiteers are tenacious.  

U.S. contractors have built immense detached bases in Iraq with all the American amenities (even Burger Kings). These are well-positioned to control access to the vast pool of oil on which Iraq sits. They won’t be easily abandoned, even if Baghdad and Basra proper become increasingly unappealing to the occupying forces.  

And milking the military is a new American tradition in many areas. A friend relays a story from a young relative who has joined the Air Force. Everyone in his group is now required to carry a cell phone, and there’s only one approved vendor, which is now making out like, well, bandits. 

But perhaps the new Congress will be able to figure something out.  

Recent accounts of the election of the House majority leader demonstrated primarily that a lot of reporters can’t find much to do in Washington but are reluctant to leave town to look for better stories. Old pols are well aware that taking a fall on behalf of a friend once in a while is how you make more friends for the future. Loyalty counts for a lot. As a second-generation professional politician, Nancy Pelosi clearly believed that it was important to recognize an old ally by supporting Murtha’s candidacy for majority leader, but that’s not the same thing as saying that she cared deeply whether or not he actually got the job. 

There was also a lot of Washington chat in the big media about new Democratic electees being almost as conservative as the Republicans they replaced, but when you do the numbers that’s just not true. This is especially apparent when you sort out those who do disagree for religious reasons with the standard liberal position on matters sexual, notably abortion and marriage, with new senator Robert Casey in Pennsylvania a prime example. His views on abortion didn’t affect his condemnation of the Iraq war or his campaign to repeal high-end tax cuts.  

One area where it should be possible to fix things fast is the accumulated assaults on human rights and civil liberties which were rushed through over the summer at the behest of the Bush administration. Most of those should simply be repealed as of early January. Civil liberties organizations should be working right now on a minimum laundry list of changes that must be made to restore the traditional rights of Americans and internationally recognized human rights. No Democrat, no matter how conservative the district, was elected on a platform of supporting Bush’s assault on habeas corpus. 

Newly elected congresspersons might be tempted to buy into the Rahm Emmanuel version of political correctness: that being as much like the Republicans as possible will keep you in power. There are two good counter-examples to that misguided belief: Tammy Duckworth’s loss in Ohio, where she was injected by Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in place of someone who almost won in 2004 and could have won this time, and Jerry McNerney’s California race, where he needed to beat the conservative DCCC candidate in a primary before going on to victory in November.  

So how do we keep the Democrats from blowing it between now and 2008? Making sure that Howard Dean stays on as national chair will help—though undoubtedly someone’s plotting at this very moment to knock him off, since a lot of people hate winners. Getting to know all the new people in Congress and supporting them when they do the right thing will help a lot.  

We’ve been getting a lot of robot-mail at the Planet from some organizations which are still pushing impeaching George Bush, but it’s hard to see why that would be a good idea. Our lifetime political hero, John Conyers, has shifted gears in the wake of the unexpected Congressional victory and dropped his call for impeachment. That seems like an eminently sensible recommendation from a canny old fox who knows his turf. It would be a big marketing mistake to turn Dubya into a victim, which would only provoke his addle-brained base to rally round in sympathy. Much better he should be encouraged to keep on looking like a fool, as he has lately. That way he won’t have enough prestige to appoint a successor—and most one-time Republican presidential hopefuls took a beating in the recent election. 

We’ve gotten communications from a couple of supporters of winning candidates in the recent election who claim to be shocked at the decision of the Planet’s publishers to print extra copies of our record 44-page pre-election issue and distribute them door-to-door instead of just placing them in boxes for reader pickup. Both letter writers seemed to be charging that this distribution was part of a management plot to enhance the fortunes of particular candidates. There are a number of responses which should be made to such assertions—we’ll take them in no particular order.  

First, as unattractive as it is to be a sore loser, it’s even more unattractive to be a sore winner. You won, guys, so now it’s time for the gracious speech welcoming your opponent back to the common table where political discussions take place among consenting adults. 

Second, the decision to print extra copies and contract with a door-to-door distribution agency was a marketing decision made by the advertising department. It was a big, solid paper, and they wanted to show it off. They’ve done this several times in the past in various locations: with the launch of our real estate pages, when we did special holiday issues and on other occasions. It’s true that this pre-election issue contained the paper’s editorial endorsements, as had previous issues, but it also ran a long and absolutely free campaign statement by the complainers’ candidate, Mayor Bates, whom we did not endorse. Our pre-election issues contained many exhortations about Measure A, which we supported, and no one complained about those getting around town the weekend before election day. And of course our regular commercial advertisers didn’t complain about the extra exposure. 

Third, and we won’t belabor this point excessively, the complaint about home delivery of the Planet from the chief apologist for the candidate who stole the endorsement issue of the Daily Cal out of their distribution boxes in 2002 looks a bit lame, doesn’t it? We could claim proactive self-defense, but we won’t. 

These are the minor points. More important is the apparent belief of the writers that there’s something illegitimate about independent newspapers taking editorial positions on elections. The Nov. 27 issue of The Nation contains an excellent column by Eric Alterman on this very topic. We hope to get permission to reprint it, but you can find it on the internet at www.thenation.com/ doc/20061127/alterman. 

Alterman notes that “while reporters and editors would like to believe that their readers are fully aware of the split between the news and editorial desks, in fact the distinction matters only to the minuscule minority who read the paper the way journalism professors would wish.” He claims, and based on our reading of recent letters we agree, that “most news consumers do not know or care enough to make such distinctions.”  

But careful readers of the pre-election issues of the Planet should have noticed that the most excitement among our news staff was not about the relative virtues of the candidates, but about the role played by the Chamber of Commerce’s Political Action Committee, which raised a lot of money from developer sources which it spent in largely unreported ways. That was the big election story, and it’s still going on. Many facts have yet to be uncovered. Our news staff deserves major props for tracking down the PAC’s early donor list in the Alameda County offices when the PAC neglected to file it in Berkeley. And they were appropriately careful not to let their personal opinions of candidates or ballot measures (and certainly not the opinion of the Planet’s management) color their reporting.  

Reporting on the PAC scandal seems not to have made much difference to the average Berkeley voter anyhow. As usual, name recognition and incumbency trumped almost all other factors in voter decision-making.  

Alterman dismisses the apparent potency of editorial endorsements: “Of course, editorial writers would argue that their authority rests not on any inherent influence, but on the power of their prose to persuade. But if so, why not sign your name to your argument? Lord knows, nobody reads committee-written and vetted editorials for their scintillating prose. Too often, the stentorian voice of the collective editorial acts as a condom against effective communication—a prophylactic against the accidental conception of wit or irony.” 

We had reached the same conclusion when we re-started this paper. That’s why we opted against the turgid collective editorial in favor of just having a column signed by the executive editor.  

For those of you who haven’t broken the code, if I say “we” in this space, it usually means that I’ve at least discussed the topic with the publisher over breakfast, and perhaps as well with the cynics in the newsroom, though I still reserve the right to make the final call. When I use “I” it’s usually my personal opinion. Others on the paper’s staff might or might not disagree.  

As some perceptive readers have noticed, the editorial cartoonist’s unflattering depiction of one of the mayoral candidates in the recent election was not calculated to echo my endorsement of her. Her supporters griped, but that’s the way it works. He draws the cartoons, we just print them. And just to make it even more confusing, the cartoonist is also the associate editor who works with me on the opinion pages, and together we managed to get almost all pre-election submissions into the paper eventually, whether we agreed with them (or each other) or not. 

Which brings us to Alterman’s final suggestion, again one the Planet’s gone part way to implementing already: 

“Wouldn’t most papers be immediately improved by dropping their editorial page and increasing the ideological range and informational expertise of their contributing columnists? I’ll go even further. Why not heed the examples of Britain’s universally admired (liberal) Guardian and (conservative) Economist and drop the frequently phony distinction between “fact” and “opinion”? Why not just let reporters tell us what they know to be true and how and why they know it? Such a solution would borrow what’s most engaging from the blogosphere without sacrificing the crucial function of newspapers in a democratic society.” 

Exactly. That’s why the Planet has so many columnists, including the Public Eye columnists who are unashamed participants in the political process. That’s why we devote such an ungodly number of column inches to the opinions of our readers.  

We still do require our staff news reporters to adhere to conventional American notions of objectivity in the news section, to attempt to get “all the facts” and a variety of voices into news stories. However, one of our news reporters also writes a column in which he expresses his personal opinions, which a conventional paper would never allow.  

Is this the best way to perform “the crucial function of newspapers in a democratic society”? Let’s hear from readers: Tell us what you think about this important topic. But of course we don’t promise to agree with you, or to follow your advice. 

TOWERING BUILDING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What is your image of a building “towering over” other buildings? Only negative images come to my mind. So, when Daily Planet reporter Richard Brenneman writes in the beginning of his article on plans for a new downtown hotel that “...it would tower above the current reigning monarchs of the urban skyline, the Power Bar and Wells Fargo buildings,” I sure imagined New York-size buildings, or a San Francisco Transamerica pyramid-like building. 

But then, upon reading more of his article and viewing the sketch in the paper of the proposed building, I had to scratch my head. A building, across a major street, Shattuck, and part way up Center Street from Shattuck, is shown to be 25 feet higher than the already 180-foot high Power Bar building. Twenty-five feet higher, wow. 

Now I can’t believe Mr. Brenneman has a built-in bias for this project, or if he does, as a self-respecting journalist, he would certainly keep his biases out of his “news” articles. 

So, how is one to interpret a story that begins with an inflammatory and/or skewed portrait of this very important project in the heart of our city, possibly a key in the revitalization of our downtown? 

Your guess is as good as mine. 

Terry Doran 

• 

PARKING PROBLEMS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The 19-floor tower doesn’t bother me. I think the Hotel Conference Center will be a fine facility and a great landmark. I just wish the design did not include those layers of underground parking. Even if the water table problem is solved, the underground parking lot is a bad idea. Berkeley does not need another huge generator of car traffic in the core of downtown. The traffic from UC’s LRDP is going to be bad enough. Do the planners expect that most conference attendees will be coming from too far to walk but too close to fly? If most conferences involve people who fly in, then these people can catch a BART train at either OAK or SFO and get off across the street from the Conference Center. They don’t need to rent a car. Would conferees need a car to visit sites on the campus? Of course not. Right now, people who work at UC can get everywhere on campus by UC shuttle buses—even up on the hill. There’s a shuttle bus stop right in front of the Conference Center. Special buses can be arranged for large groups. Maybe the parking is for the condominiums, which will take up a large part of the building. How about, for once, creating some car-free housing downtown among the buses and BART? Removing the underground parking would be a major cost saving for the project and a major betterment for our environment. 

Steve Geller 

• 

HOUSING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

At last Tuesday’s Berkeley Housing Authority/City Council meeting it became apparent that Section 8 had not passed its HUD certification procedure. Courtesy of the City of Berkeley’s irresponsible oversight and landlord friendly board over the last four years tenants will now get Section 8 rent gouges that they cannot afford. 

A BHA assistant manager, recently told me that each Section 8 renter—disabled, elderly, poor families—has to come up with an average of $100 a month or leave the area. If poor people don’t have money to stay, do they have money to move? 

Last Tuesday Mayor Bates was assigned to appoint a BHA/Section 8 Oversight Committee. Will Mayor Bates appoint the usual landlord/developer cronies? Will Mayor Bates continue to endorse the two sitting “rubber stamp” tenants already on the board? This could lead to a literal blood bath as Section 8 renters are helplessly dumped on the streets? The poor, and those of us who were once middle class—who had one illness, or one too many birthdays—have no money to relocate, thus turning Berkeley into a combination of Silicon Valley and Calcutta. 

I propose to fill this Oversight Committee by selecting active Section 8 tenants for the board. A tenant advocate nominating process can be instituted now so that by the first of the year an appropriate group of tenants can be identified. It’s only well qualified tenants, with a background of experience of the poor, that will help to give fixed income people at least one last chance to save their own lives. 

Vita Viola 

• 

APOLOGY NOT NECESSARY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I found it amusing, and a bit frightening, that Mal Burnstein suggested this paper apologize for it’s outspoken role in our recent local election (Letters, Nov. 14). Considering the writer supports a mayoral administration that continuously seeks to silence opponents (trashing Daily Cal papers endorsing his opponent, using an agenda committee to squelch debate on council, etc.) I guess I should not be surprised at the lack of appreciation for the First Amendment (that pesky constitutional clause protecting freedom of press and free speech). Still it amazes me when seemingly intelligent people ask the press to apologize for fulfilling the very role the Constitution assigns to citizens and publishers! Clearly, the Daily Planet would be a lot more to the liking of the mayor and some of his supporters if only the Planet would emulate FOX TV. For some strange reason the Planet refuses to conform to conventional corporate standards of reporting on crime and acting as a cheer leader for development and the powers that be. Instead the Planet has the bizarre notion that the role of a newspaper is to report, comment upon and demand accountability from our local elected officials. My apologies in advance, for daring to write this letter! 

Elliot Cohen 

Peace and Justice Commissioner 

• 

TRADER JOE’S 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I like shopping at Trader Joe’s as much as the next person, and I would be happy to see one closer to home. 

But I’m amazed at how the potential traffic and parking problems associated with a TJ at MLK and University are being minimized. This project seems to be receiving far less scrutiny than the West Berkeley Bowl—at this point only the immediate neighbors have spoken up—yet this could easily have a major impact on anyone who travels through central Berkeley. 

A couple of months ago, I was visiting a friend in San Francisco who wanted to pick up a few things for dinner at her local TJ (at Masonic and Geary). To my shock, she pulled into a line of idling cars that sat unmoving, literally waiting to enter the parking lot one at a time whenever someone exited. I was amazed and wondered if it was just because of the time of day—she said “No, it’s always like this.” No wonder it was decided that a parking entrance on University would “increase congestion.” 

The Nov. 14 article states that the project would include 157 parking spaces in a two-level garage, but doesn’t clarify whether these are all for shoppers. If this parking also serves the “148 residential units and 22 below-market-rate units”—um, do the math. 

As for the rosy predictions of TJ reducing car trips and becoming a pedestrian destination—well, I love the idea of moms with toddlers strolling in, and I’m sure there would be walk-in business from the immediate neighbors. But, with all respect to Tim Southwick of Toyota of Berkeley, his remarks about how TJ would “turn University into a street more like Solano because ...Trader Joe’s...would help attract pedestrian traffic” show a fundamental misunderstanding of how pedestrian-friendly shopping areas work. It’s the convenient proximity of individual, interesting businesses (preferably selling small, light items) that makes people want to leave the car at home and walk around—not a big supermarket, however appealing. 

I would love to be proved wrong, but until everyone who is so ecstatic about the prospect of Trader Joe’s in Berkeley is honest about how they plan to get there, I don’t think it’s possible to say that this project would not increase congestion. University is already often at a standstill at rush hours and on weekends. 

Alice Jurow 

• 

A SLAP IN THE FACE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a “slap in the face” move to Democrats, President Bush on Nov. 15 re-nominated six conservative judges to the federal appellate bench. All had been previously blocked from receiving a Senate floor vote by the minority Democrats in the Senate due to their extremist views. It is highly unlikely that the lame duck Congress will act on any of these nominations before it adjourns, so Bush is obviously sending a clear message to Democrats in Congress and his base that he will not be deterred from trying to shape the federal judiciary in a more fascist direction. 

And even though they will not receive a Senate floor vote in the next month, Bush can re-nominate them again in January. Federal judicial appointments have been a priority during the Bush regime. Bush nominated John Roberts and Sam Alioto and got them on the Supreme Court to the delight of most reactionaries. On the lower federal court level, Bush has also managed to put most of his people on the bench with only minor opposition from the Senate democrats. 

And the Bush White House spokesperson did not sound conciliatory to the Democrats in the Senate when she stated, “We are hopeful that the days of judicial obstruction are behind us. We are hopeful that President Bush’s nominees will receive a fair up or down vote.” This is an open challenge to the Senate Democrats and belies any words uttered by Bush about bi-partisanship after the election. For Bush it appears that as long as the Democrats give him what he wants, he will consider that bi-partisanship. Anything else is “obstructionism.”  

The shape of the federal judicial bench is critical to the Bush regime. Federal judges will rule on much of the regime’s program. Everything from the right to abortion, outlawing gay marriages, the ruining of the environment, anti-immigrant legislation, to the Military Commissions Act which allows torture and deprives defendants of their legal rights, etc. will come before the courts. The Bush regime wants its fellow fascists on the bench to rule in its favor. 

Many people who voted for the Democrats in the recent elections hoped that Bush would be forced to become more “moderate” after his party suffered defeat. But the re-nomination of these judges would indicate that these hopes were mere illusions. Bush is still Bush. 

Bush has two more years in which to continue to nominate conservative judges to the courts. The world can not afford to wait two more years to get rid of him and his entire rotten regime. To find out how you can hasten Bush out of office, please see worldcantwait.org. 

Kenneth J. Theisen 

Oakland 

• 

WAR IN IRAN 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to the current events around Iran I am writing to urge the public to not get caught up in another frenzy of fear surrounding this issue and to stop, think logically and use what resources we have at our disposal. 

First off, I think it is important to understand that the biggest threat is the possibility that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and then decide to attack the United States or any other country and igniting another war. So, what is the best way to avoid this? Diplomacy and proper action from our congress and the current administration. And we all know that congress hasn’t had a great history of acting on issues like this without response from the public. Basically what I’m getting at is, if you want to feel more protected or if you understand that this is a serious issue that could lead to disastrous consequences we must make our voices heard. Call or write your congressperson and representative and talk to your friends and family members about the issues. 

The most disastrous thing that could happen would be for the United States to respond with military force and sanctions against Iran. We’ve seen, throughout history, that these are tactics that simply don’t work. For example, in 1981 Israel attacked Iraq in an attempt to stop them from developing a nuclear program and all this achieved was Saddam’s increased lust for the bomb. And, with sanctions, it’s not the weapons programs or those in charge that suffer, it only hurts the innocent civilian population and creates resentment towards the U.S. which could likely lead to more incidents of terrorism. 

Again I am stressing the need for diplomacy and action from Congress generated by the voice of the people. If you could take the five minutes to call and/or write your congressperson and representative it could make all the difference. The number for the Congressional Switchboard is: 800-614-2803, or if you have Internet access you can visit your congresspersons website and write them an e-mail or find their address and write them a letter (recommended). This is a pivotal point in history and I ask you to stand up and speak your voice! 

Flynn Gourley 

Oakland 

• 

BERKELEY IS A CULT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Very very odd… I’ve been reading the letters to the editor and I can’t seem to get it… Hello??? Jim Jones or the Branch Davidians come to mind when I look upon Berkeley as a whole. Homogenized and singular in most respects… 

Ernest Grouns 

Bloomington, IN 

• 

AN UN-MERRY GO-ROUND 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Back in the days of the civil rights movement—SNCC, SDS, Black Muslims and Panthers, et al.—there was a popular slogan that went, “What goes around comes around.” For the benefit of today’s 30-somethings, this meant, like, you know, if you keep pushing and oppressing you eventually must confront the folks you push and oppress. Picture a wheel (vertical) or a merry go-round (horizontal). The aftermath of the recent election has given new life to this aphorism. 

Democratic and Republican leaders appeared triumphant and dejected on center stage and offstage veterans in both groups maneuvered for leadership positions. Meanwhile, in the audience we the people were treated to bursts of news reports popping one after another like firecrackers: Gates to occupy the hot seat vacated by Rumsfeld; Abramoff imprisoned and Lott reborn; Murtha loses to Hoyer, Baker drafted to help stay a changed course in Iraq and blah, blah.  

Oh, sure, come January when the 110th Congress gets going the Dems will hold a majority. But hold on, there’ll be just 65 new faces, Dems and Reps combined. Consequently, nearly 90 percent of the new Congress will be old Congress. That ain’t much of a change. What goes around comes around and, what comes around goes around. 

Marvin Chachere 

• 

RICHMOND STORIES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I want to express appreciation for the fine articles written by Richard Brenneman on the Zeneca site in Richmond. This site may well lead the country in the citizens’ fight for a toxic-free living environment which is surely one of our foremost inalienable rights. Those who pollute must be stopped and those who take no accountability must surely be held accountable.  

Keep up the good work. There is nothing more important to me than my spiritual base and the well being of my family. I feel it is my responsibility to protect myself and my family from harm. My perception is that the activities of the developers at the Zeneca site are a danger to myself, my family and my community.  

M. Child 

Richmond 

• 

MORE HISTORY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

John Parman is right about the early history of the Republican Party in his letter of Nov. 17, and certainly right about the history of the Democratic Party. (During the entire 19th century, not one single Democrat, North or South, voted for a single civil rights bill.) He misses, however, on the 20th century history of the parties. The shift of Black voters out of the Republican Party and into the Democrats began during the 1920s, well before the New Deal. The Republican Party, in a precursor of Nixon’s later “southern strategy,” began allying itself with the Ku Klux Klan when that organization moved north into Indiana, Illinois and Ohio after World War I. This was primarily an opportunist anti-immigrant stance, but the racial baggage came along with it in the party of “white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.” This coincided with a move of Blacks into northern cities where they allied themselves with the Democratic Party machines against the Republican—big business—Klan alliance. By that time, the “party of Lincoln” hadn’t given Blacks much besides lip service and a few patronage jobs in decades. They didn’t get much out of the Democrats either, but that’s another story. 

Tom Condit 

• 

FREE BOX 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing to bring up the loss of the People’s Park free box, once again. It has been gone, now, roughly, for about seven months. For those of you, who don’t know: Volunteers have built numerous replacement boxes, which have been confiscated by the UC Berkeley police and Berkeley police. 

This has made a very real emergency situation, for people who are already having a hard time, dealing with life, on a hand to mouth basis. Besides the fact that homeless people, and people on SSI, and others, in low-income situations, do not have enough money to launder their clothes, plenty of homeless people will now have innumerable problems with their health, due to wet, dirty clothes. And this is happening for no good reason.  

George Beier (Willard Neighborhood Association) says there is “better ways of distributing clothes,” but I have seen no signs of alternative, 24-hour accessible clothing. Having been homeless myself for a year and a half, and now working with homeless, and mentally ill people, I think I have a good reason to give an opinion on this subject. 

The other evening, I rode my bike up to Telegraph, to see some of my acquaintances. I came across an old friend, who was huddled awkwardly on the ground. I asked him what the problem was. He said his pants had ripped-out, in the back, and he was afraid if he got up, one of the numerous, hostile acting bicycle cops, would write him up a ticket, for indecent exposure. I knew his fears were valid, as I had been written a ticket by one of these cops, for crossing the sidewalk, on my bike, while exiting People’s Park. 

I think lots of people can empathize with what it feels like, to be cold and wet. We don’t have enough bed space, in the shelters, here in Berkeley, and now, this winter, with no clothing and bedding, in the free box, many people here in Berkeley are really going to be in danger of hypothermia, due to this cruel and unjust removal of an invaluable asset to our community. 

Katy Blau 

• 

YEAH! AND  

YOUTH CONNECT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In your Nov. 14 story about Oakland’s Homeless One-Stop event you briefly touched on Youth Connect and YEAH!. Daily Planet readers should know that YEAH!—the only nighttime shelter in Berkeley dedicated to 18-25-year-old transition-age homeless youth—is opening for the winter on Nov. 20 at 8 p.m. As you indicated, hot showers are available. But instead of the peanut butter sandwiches you mentioned, we have home-cooked dinners and breakfasts, more than 50 welcoming volunteers and mentors each week, as well as a clinical program providing referrals and counseling. And on Dec. 4 from 2-5 p.m., YEAH! and the City of Berkeley are hosting a multi-service opportunity for these young people. It takes intention and effort from all Berkeley citizens to ensure that today’s street youth do not become tomorrow’s street adults. Join with us. Visit our website: www.yeah-berkeley.org  

Adrianne Bank 

Co-Founder, YEAH! 

• 

CORRECTION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In our Nov. 17 commentary, “Bad Process, Wrong People, Outsourcers,” the names of the two members of the seven-member advisory committee of librarians were incorrect. The correct names are Susan Hardie, formerly of Alameda Public Library, and Carmen Martinez, Oakland Public Library. 

We also reported from a “reliable source” that all four library director final candidates are from RFID libraries, except the candidate from Oakland, where RFID is being removed from one trial branch; we subsequently obtained information from the libraries in question that, although two said they may consider RFID for future use, none currently operate RFID. 

We relied on our source because the library released the names Nov. 15, and not on Nov. 13 and 14 when we asked for them, resulting in insufficient time for independent verification. 

We regret these inadvertent errors. 

Peter Warfield and  

Gene Bernardi 

In his Nov. 14 commentary, “Why Measure J Lost,” Alan Tobey left out the elephant in the room. The “City Attorney’s Impartial Analysis of Measure J” in the county’s voter pamphlet was written by Zach Cowan, the author of the revisions designed to gut our Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, which Measure J would have continued. Is it surprising that the ballot language turned out to be hopelessly confusing to voters? 

The ballot language was so biased that Measure J supporters took the city to Superior Court, petitioning by writ of mandate for a more impartial analysis in the voter pamphlet. We could not afford a lawyer—but the city could—it hired a San Francisco law firm, at the expense of the taxpayers of Berkeley, to oppose a group of citizens seeking honesty from our legal department.  

The 21-page brief of the city’s hired gun was attached to hundreds of pages of exhibits. The brief argued, regarding the petitioners, “…Section 9295 then requires them to show, again by clear and convincing evidence, that the materials were [“false and misleading.”]” But this statement is untrue. The language of California Election Code Section 9295 actually reads, “false, misleading or inconsistent….”, a far lower burden of proof for the citizens to have achieved. 

Did the city’s hired attorney simply make a mistake, and then highlight the mistake with italics and bold print? Or was he deliberately trying to mislead the judge? If the latter, his behavior was a perfect mirror of the party who hired him.  

The judge decided that the ballot argument was not misleading enough to order the language to be rewritten. Therefore, readers of the voter pamphlet, including all of the endorsing “mainstream” political groups, received inaccurate information about Measure J from a source that was supposed to be impartial, but was quite the opposite.  

One misleading claim was about possible liability due to conflicts with state permit processing timelines. Measure J was not in conflict with any state law. But threats about the Permit Streamlining Act are often used to give developers favors. I do not believe that any developer has ever sued the city. Outraged citizens, on the other hand, sue the city all the time, frequently over development policies. Sadly, they usually lose even when their legal case is good, because judges are loathe to rule against charter cities. 

Given that we had to fight a pack of legal lies at the outset, and a Chamber of Commerce PAC of lies at the finish line, I think we did very well, especially since we were up against a well-oiled political machine, for which no lie is too egregious. 

I came away from the campaign convinced that very few people, excepting members of the Political Machine, those whose family income derives from development (most of Livable Berkeley), and their staunch advocate, Mr. Tobey, really like the kind of massive projects that have been blighting Berkeley. There will be interesting times ahead, now that developers are trying to unload “fully permitted” land as “opportunity sites”, while recently completed projects appear forlornly under-occupied. 

Perhaps the people of Berkeley should start thinking about amending the City Charter to return to us, who are paying for it all, some of the power that the City Council-attorney-developer complex has been using to pillage the town. 

Gale Garcia is a Berkeley resident.

At Berkeley Food & Housing Project, giving is the most important part of Thanksgiving. 

The days are getting shorter, pumpkins and turkeys are in demand and the nip of fall is in the air. At this time of year we come together in many ways, whether with the families that we were born into, or the families that we have made, to count our blessings and express our gratitude for the plentitude in our lives. It is also the time we feel the tug to reach out to those less fortunate neighbors living in our midst: from the ones who go to sleep at night hungry; to the ones living on the streets; and to those who struggle emotionally and physically each day just to get by. Thus we search for ways to make a difference, ways to give back to a community that has nourished and sustained us over the years.  

At Berkeley Food & Housing Project, a community-based organization serving Berkeley’s hungry and homeless residents for more than 35 years, this is a simple task. You need look no further than the individuals and families who come to this organization for support. I want to share the story of a local senior who eats at the Quarter Meal, a daily hot meal program served by Berkeley Food and Housing Project (BFHP). Cassie, an artist who turned 60 this year, moved to the Bay Area from New York City seven years ago after the end of a long marriage. Cassie suffers from chronic arthritis and depression and cannot work. She is fortunate to have senior housing, but her income is meager and she has no health benefits. Although Cassie is careful, her modest disability check is not enough to get her through the month. Cassie makes ends meet by joining us at the nutritious Quarter Meal, which BFHP has served for well over three decades.  

In response to dire community need, Berkeley Food & Housing Project now delivers a continuum of services to the community’s poor and homeless through seven programs: In 2005 alone they provided over 300 meals every weekday (90,000 yearly), an increase of 25 percent over last year; over 500 women and children stayed in their Women’s Shelter, receiving a bed, 3 meals a day accompanied by tremendous moral and emotional support; their Men’s Shelter provided 16,790 bed nights for homeless men and of these, 780 men received case management and 177 moved into housing; their Multi Service Center served 524 new resource counseling clients - nearly double the number of clients they had planned on serving; their Russell Street Residence continues its excellent work, providing permanent housing to 21 long-term chronically homeless, dual diagnosed clients. And these are just a few of the highlights. 

In this era of ever-shrinking support from the government, the support of Berkeley residents is key to Berkeley Food & Housing Project’s ongoing ability to carry out its mission: to ease and end the crisis of homelessness in this community. Indeed, it is gratifying and humbling to witness the generosity and outpouring of support the agency receives year-round, but particularly at Thanksgiving. In your generous support of their work on behalf of the homeless and poor, you demonstrate that—whether by dining in one of BFHP’s partner food establishments during Dining Out Month, volunteering to serve meals, sponsoring events or making a donation—“giving is the most important part of Thanksgiving” is more than a tired platitude for die-hard members of the Berkeley community.  

As Assemblywoman Patty Berg reminds us, California will be the grayest state in the nation…exceeding the elderly population of Florida by 2020. A University of California study has found that a majority of the Bay Area’s homeless people are aging into their late 40s and early 50s and are staying on the streets for longer periods... and without coordinated care they soon will start crowding hospital emergency rooms and dying in large numbers (San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 4). Men comprise roughly 84 percent of Berkeley’s total homeless population. The percentage of homeless men is high compared to women and yet services specifically targeted for them are rare. Men are more treatment resistant so that when they finally agree to assistance they are in poor physical, psychiatric or medical health and in street years 50 is already equal to 65! 

BFHP’s vision is supported by decades of listening and learning as well as solid experience about what does and does not work in serving this vast and shifting demographic of homeless clients. As the numbers show, people are quietly and consistently being helped by BFHP programs. And the outpouring of support they receive from Berkeley residents demonstrates further that many in the community know this. Yes, seeing people overcome temporary or chronic homelessness gives BFHP the energy and enthusiasm to continue their mission. However, they are equally inspired by the empathy and consistent giving of time, resources and money from the collective Berkeley community. BFHP salutes you and wishes you a particularly Happy Thanksgiving 2006.  

Terrie Light is the new executive director of Berkeley Food & Housing Project.  

The Quarter Meal and other BFHP programs can be seen on a virtual tour at www.bfhp.org. On-line donations are accepted or you can contribute to: Help the Homeless…by Dining Out at SKATES on the Bay, Poulet, Double Tree & Rose Garden Inn (all will donate a portion of their November proceeds to BFHP and in addition SKATES will donate $1 from every Thanksgiving meal)! Call 649.4965 x312 for more information.  

Initiatives and referenda are often viewed as the purest forms of democracy, removing issues from the control of fallible legislators and placing them directly before the electorate. (An initiative is newly drafted legislation submitted directly to voters; a referendum is a popular vote to overturn legislation already passed.)  

Unfortunately, these democratic tools can also be misused, as the Measure J situation demonstrated. In a clear case of anti-democracy in action, initiative backers sought to supersede six years of community dialogue and compromise. While anti-growth activists repeatedly referred to Landmarks ordinance revisions under consideration by the City Council last summer as “the Mayor and Councilman Capitelli’s draft,” that is a distortion. In fact, the revisions are the product of extended discussions between homeowners, preservationists, businesspeople, and City planning staff dating back to 2000. The output of that discourse is balanced legislation that was endorsed by a broad majority—including Landmarks Preservation Commissioner Carrie Olsen, not known as friendly to developers. With Measure J’s defeat, this compromise ordinance will soon be back before the City Council for a second reading.  

In a recent Planet article, Measure J co-author Laurie Bright warned that having lost the popular vote by a healthy 15 percent margin (a greater margin than 13 of the last 17 presidential elections), he was now considering a referendum on the compromise legislation. That is, after being soundly defeated in his effort to anti-democratically trump the intentions of a diverse array of Berkeley stakeholders, he now hopes to anti-democratically trump the will of Berkeley voters at large.  

In order to get a referendum on the ballot, Mr. Bright and his cadre of supporters must collect roughly 4,000 signatures. That’s a significant number, but might be achievable if they reuse the scare tactics deployed in the last election, which suggested that a “No” vote on Measure J would mean quick demolition of every Julia Morgan and Bernard Maybeck in the city. And it’s well established that repeated votes on the same issue favor extremists: partisans are more likely to vote in downstream elections while the moderate majority opts out, believing that they have decided the matter already.  

There is a deep irony here. One of the anti-growth extremists’ complaints about the compromise Landmarks legislation once again before the City Council is its inclusion of the “Assessment of Historical Significance” (AHS). The AHS rules allow a property owner to request a historic review from the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) without first submitting a zoning application. This makes financial and procedural sense: why should a homeowner waste thousands of dollars on architectural plans and permit fees—and consume scarce city planning staff time—if the improvements they wish to make to their home will be later denied by the Landmarks Commission? Measure J backers claim that “developers” will sneak AHS requests past neighbors, who without a pending project won’t be motivated to defend the property in question. In other words, developers will count on citizen apathy to win demolition rights they couldn’t win after open discussion. Of course, this hypothetical apathy is the same that anti-growth activists must leverage to win any referendum. (In any case their argument is entirely specious. AHS requests have the same notification requirements as regular zoning applications: property owners must erect a signboard and send postal mail to all neighbors. And every AHS requires a public hearing.)  

A successful referendum would return the Landmarks ordinance to the status quo, a status quo the six-year revision process aimed to improve. Recall that back in 2000 the City Council requested a review of the ordinance in response to a spate of complaints about LPC malfeasance. In a number of instances commissioners “protected” properties with no historical merit in order to block development, when the city’s other land-use processes were not expected to generate the outcome desired by anti-growth extremistsor hostile neighbors. Most citizens would agree that the crumbling retaining wall on Le Conte, the overhead pipelines stretching across Fourth Street south of Gilman, and the Spenger’s parking lot do not merit protection, but in each case a property owner’s rights were abridged in the interests of an agenda outside the LPC’s mandate.  

The pre-revision Landmarks Ordinance also does not require the commission to adhere to state standards of historical integrity (California Code of Regulations Title 14,§4852), standards widely accepted by architectural historians for assessing whether a property is worth preserving. Measure J backers left this requirement out of their initiative language, and don’t want to be constrained by it now. But without such guidelines, an activist commissioner or an antagonistic neighbor can find “historical validity” in just about any wall, dirt patch, or derelict structure. And when just 25 homeowners can initiate the creation of a “historic district” that constrains an entire neighborhood, the potential for abuse is high.  

Measure J promoters hoped to act as spoilers, suppressing for their own narrow interests the outcome of an inclusive community process. It is therefore gratifying to see that Berkeley voters were not fooled by the scare tactics used to support Measure J and soundly rebuffed an attempt to smother true participatory democracy. A referendum on the compromise ordinance would be just one more bite at the apple for a small but noisy group that demonstrably fails to represent the interests of most citizens and seems to reject the civic spirit of Berkeley. 

Adam Block is a Berkeley resident. 

BIASED COVERAGE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your biased election coverage was way over the top. “Daily Planet” is a great name for a newspaper as it is associated with Superman, fairness and justice. It would be more truthful to re-name your paper the Environmental Daily, or the Slow Growth Gazette, or some other title that announces the context and tone of your news stories. As long as you refuse to limit the expression of your views to the editorial pages you should relinquish the proud name, and valiant memory you dishonor. 

Ronald Tauber 

• 

HEROES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Where was crime-fighting Superhero George Beier when the Chamber of Commerce PAC was disseminating lies about Kriss Worthington, Dona Spring, and Measure J? Except for a brief remark about finding it distasteful, Beier was uncharacteristically silent. Could it be that white-collar misdeeds are like Kryptonite to our hero? Yes, although Super George wanted to be a community leader, he was tragically powerless to act against the influence of his friends in the Chamber of Commerce PAC and their arsenal of lies. 

Fortunately, a mild-mannered public servant, who cannot be bought, continues to protect the people of District 7 from the PAC’s greed, and a great metropolitan newspaper in Berkeley fights for truth, justice, and the American way. The heroes walk among us, even if we don’t notice them. 

Jordan Elliot 

• 

LESS THAN TACTFUL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I felt that the less-than-flattering cartoon featuring George Beier in last Friday’s issue was also less than tactful. During the course of the campaign, I worked vigorously to re-elect Kriss Worthington so that his positive vision of District 7 and Berkeley can be propelled into motion for four more years. But the campaign is now over. While I understand and don’t dispute the financial inequity of the races in District 7, I hope that we can give credit to both candidates for the hard work they have invested into the election and into presenting their options to their constituents. Recently I have had the opportunity to run a race for an ASUC executive seat against a much better endowed candidate and lose by 219 votes, and am therefore intimately familiar with the pathology of just barely coming short. Adding insult to injury is utterly unnecessary. I hope that Berkeley is a place where we will be able to each across our barriers and work together—regardless of election outcome or difference in message—for the betterment of all. I hope Berkeley is not a place where a narrow win margin is prominently ridiculed.  

Igor Tregub 

Member, Berkeley Commission on Labor 

• 

POMPOUS AND ARROGANT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In response to Becky O’Malley’s wrap-up of election in the Nov. 10 issue: very interesting. Why such a condescending commentary on Raudel Wilson? “Wilson is a nice enough guy, though he’ll soon be forgotten...” 

I believe Mr. Wilson pretty courageous to challenge the Berkeley establishment knowing his chances of winning this election were slim. Did he say he is leaving politics? 

This latest comment goes hand in hand with the pompous and arrogant attitude found in most of her writings. 

Tri Ying 

• 

WARM POOL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It has been 15 long months since I have dipped my body into a pool. This day, I lower myself slowly into the old swimming pool at Berkeley High which is heated to 95 degrees for the convenience of senior citizens and others who suffer from one disability or another. I am very aware, however, that this is not a pool for people who are suffering. As I look around the almost Olympic-sized pool, I see a mother tenderly holding her young daughter with Downs Syndrome so she can enjoy the pleasure of the warm water. I see a man being lowered into the pool on a mechanical chair by an aide because he obviously couldn’t get in otherwise. I see a woman with limited visual capabilities swimming with her young son. And there are others whose physical impediments are not apparent until they get out and sit in their wheelchairs. Here, also, are some of my friends with bad back ailments and structural problems to get relief from their perpetual pain. I have gone through the rigorous (the current word is “aggressive”) treatment for pancreas cancer. I have spent nine-months on a feeding tube which precluded me from swimming for fear of infecting my intravenous line. But, here I am in the water again, and the dry period I had crossed, like a desert with no oasis, is behind me. All I can feel, other than the extreme delight of being back swimming, is the good will of everybody present. As they bob up and down or swim laps, or simply stand in the shallow end with their eyes closed in meditative contentment, it seems that all their disabilities have apparently melted away, and I feel like I’m dipping my entire being into some special energy. It is not only the warmth, the lightness of my body, and the ability to move and exercise limbs that have lain stagnant in bed for months, it is also the quiet friendliness of everyone in the water—as if their generosity of spirit and wisdom that comes from suffering, and their focus on healing is surrounding me, buoying me up. Right here, in the center of old Berkeley, is a mystical healing pool – recognized by the wise for what it is, by those, whether young or old, who flock to it four or more times a week. Our senses, our hearts, and our minds cry out in sadness and indignation, because this old pool, a value beyond price, has been slated for demolition. We recognize the old pool and its healing powers as a vestige from a time, not too far past, when appearances and profit-making were not the only principles governing community life. My tears become one with the warm, salty water in which I float. I wonder why the city fathers and mothers have abandoned us all. I wonders what magic could happen for them to recognize what they are about to do before it is too late! 

Aspasia Nea 

• 

SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Rob Browning’s arrest reminded me of a time a couple of years ago when, on a grey rainy day when I went to an ATM near the Public Safety Building and saw a car parked with both right wheels up on the sidewalk effectively blocking wheelchair access. When a uniformed officer came along, I was sure the miscreant would be issued a ticket but no, the officer simply joined the line and began bantering with the customer at the ATM window who turned out to be the Watch Commander of the Day and who, after completing his transaction, got in the offending vehicle and drove away. 

Joanne Kowalski 

• 

PACIFIC STEEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Pacific Steel Casting came first, soccer fields came second. Our organization built and is responsible for managing the soccer fields around Fifth and Harrison streets. When we lobbied to expand the number of soccer fields in this area we were well aware that the land was located in an industrial area and that a “burning pot handle” smell came from Pacific Steel Casting. 

The local youth and adult sports organizations (including the Albany Berkeley Soccer Club, Alameda Contra Costa Youth Soccer, Albany Berkeley Girl’s Softball League, East Bay Men’s Senior Soccer, etc.) understood that this West Berkeley industrial area had smells, sounds, and traffic that was not always 100 percent compatible with recreational uses. Despite this we agreed, based on our long history of operating playing fields in the area, that both uses could co-exist. In fact, people registering to play for the local youth soccer club are required to sign a document acknowledging the above. 

While we obviously cannot control what individuals may do, I was distressed to read that people are trying to leverage the soccer fields as a reason why Pacific Steel Casting should be required to clean up it’s emissions. In general, the soccer fields and West Berkeley industrial community have been good neighbors for many years. 

Pacific Steel Casting and all businesses should do what they can to minimize environmental pollution, however, the users of the fields (and the skatepark) were well aware of the situation when they lobbied to build the facility. We all acknowledged and accepted the neighborhood environmental issues that affected the site at the time it was converted from vacant industrial land to playing fields. It was a central issue in the city’s decision to purchase the property for recreational uses. Interestingly enough, the polluter that most affected the fields was the City of Berkeley’s own transfer station. 

As for concerned parents they are certainly able to exclude their child from any game played in this area (although they will find that a rather large number of playing fields are located alongside highways or in industrial areas) and request that their child not be assigned a team that practices at these fields. 

Doug Fielding 

Chairperson, Association of Sports Field Users 

• 

WHAT TO DO  

WITH A BROKEN POT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The political landscape is quivering with anticipation. Voices of portent emanate from federal legislators and the loudest, or at least those given accommodation in print and electronic media, come from leaders of the party that attained majority in the last election. Alas, regarding what to do about the mess in Iraq these veteran legislators are not in harmony; some say leave, others say leave bit by bit, others say leave but first stop the civil war, others say divide Iraq and leave, others want to win, to send more troops and blah, blah, blah. This sad cacophony does not depress me nearly as much as the underlying unacknowledged arrogance, paternalism and Pilate-like washing of hands. 

Forget why we invaded Iraq. We did it; in Colin Powell’s simile, we broke the pot. Most of what’s being said now amounts to picking up the pieces gluing the pot back together, one way or another, even if the pieces don’t fit which means by force if necessary. 

If I entered a home without being invited and broke a pot because I misjudged the conditions in the home, what would my mother expect from me? “Marvin” she’d say “apologize, make restitution and get out of there!” 

Oh, how I wish for a legislator to demand that the 110th Congress behave as my mother would want me to. 

Marvin Chachere 

San Pablo 

• 

ANTI-SEMITIC 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I can’t imagine why the author of the anti-Semitic “You Can’t Visit Any Other Country Haikus” didn’t bother to sign his or her name. 

Renata Polt 

EDITOR’S NOTE: The name of the author was mistakenly omitted. His name is Arnold Passman. 

• 

KPFA 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Today I had the pleasure of voting for a candidate I support. Aaron Aarons critiques “our” radio from the left, as opposed to the middling go-along-ism of the other candidacies—wanting to improve relations of people directly involved, reportage/coverage of the area, response to the community especially to provide programming that serves more of us, recognizing the constantly reducing allegiance of the faithful and the income, thereby. 

The discussions in the Planet have done little to clear up the mysteries of the difficulties the network has. The difficulty is really the approach, which is complaisant by comparison to what it needs to be. Once a healthy left direction would be defined it’d serve to get the programming to advance our causes, our interests, and our educations and enjoyment. Absent a clear commitment to other than the Lou Hill pacifisms and such there is no helpful program such as Aarons is proposing. 

Norma J F Harrison 

• 

SUBSCRIBE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The good burghers are up in arms. The mayor's money man Mal Burnstein screams “Illegal!” “Violation of trust!” and “You owe the city an apology!” and downtown developer spokesperson Mim Hawley carries on interminably about the “unabashed adulation of the Planet's favored candidates and its unrestrained attacks on their rivals” (Letters, Nov. 14). It's a no-holds-barred fight between established power and a give-’em-hell local publisher, just like the old days when freedom of the press actually meant something in this country. 

I subscribe to KQED and KPFA, but so far there’s no Pacifica for newspapers. Until that happens, I'm so happy to see this outbreak of a free press in the midst of the nation-wide corporate media takeover that I don't see how I can afford not to shell out 20 bucks a month to subscribe. Here's my credit card number and expiration date (um, please don’t print that part) and no, I don’t need you to actually deliver me a private copy, I can pick it up on the corner. 

Bonnie Hughes 

• 

OAKPAC 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Sadly, I fear Paul Rockwell doth protest too much in his Commentary, which stated that OakPAC’s challenge to Oakland’s campaign reform law has left us in a state where “we have no way of knowing who would have won a legal, fair election in District 2.” 

The winner of the November election in District 2 was Pat Kernighan. She was also the top vote getter in the June primary and was the top vote getter in the 2005 Special Election. Aimee Allison failed to get enough votes to top Kernighan three times in the past year and a half. Mr. Rockwell’s implication that the November election was somehow extraordinary and that it would be intellectually dishonest to believe Pat the victor smacks of sour grapes more than a quest for truth, for Mr. Rockwell was a strong advocate in print for Ms Allison and was very supportive of her campaign.  

We should get clear facts: the OakPAC action, while indeed unfortunate, was not illegal. Indeed, anyone is permitted to petition the court, and OakPAC’s ability to convince a judge to stay Oakland’s law was, again, not illegal.c OakPAC spent money on one mailer before Mr. Dellums came forward and admirably brokered a fair agreement. 

One must also note that Allison’s independent expenditures, one funded generously by a San Francisco attorney, came after the public announcement of the Dellums deal. By the end of the campaign, pro-Allison independent expenditures surpassed those made on behalf of Kernighan. I also do not believe that Mr. Rockwell actually knows whether pro-Allison expenditures were made to “match” what OakPAC did, or whether they were made in the same spirit of campaign opportunism originally embraced by the Chamber. The fact that these expenditures did nothing to advance Allison’s chances of victory may lead Mr. Rockwell to reconsider the entire thesis of his Commentary. 

Before one accuses the Chamber of “destroying” an election, one may also want to examine the whole story, which includes the hours and hours of work put in by volunteers on both sides. Since Mr. Rockwell is a writer, perhaps he overvalues the impact of the written word in shiny mailers. The fact remains that Pat won for the third time because more voters appreciated her solid record of actual accomplishment in District 2, over the mere words, promises and ideas, albeit energetically delivered, of Aimee Allison. 

Jerome Peters 

Oakland 

• 

HISTORY LESSON 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Ted Vincent needs to learn his history when he paraphrases: “Berkeley was one of the few cities of any size in the state to remain solidly in the Republican ranks in yesterday’s election” ran the lead in the Nov. 9, 1932 Berkeley Gazette report on the Franklin D. Roosevelt defeat of Herbert Hoover.”  

It is not funny to learn how so many people have a skewed vision of the history of political parties in this country. Until Roosevelt’s election, most blacks in the United States were Republicans. Why? because they are the party of Lincoln, the ones who freed the slaves, and who stood for civil rights during and after reconstruction. It would have been completely understandable that the liberals of that day were the Republicans. For what were the alternatives? The Democrats? The American Socialist Party? True libs then were the party that stood up most resoundingly for civil rights. It was the New Deal that took blacks and social liberals to Roosevelt. Certainly, Mr. Vincent could have mentioned that many Democrats, until the 1960s, were southern, white segregationists. The complete flip-flop in our country on moral values is one of the reasons for the current make-up of our political parties. Although I am not a Republican, it should be noted the first black to serve in the U.S. Congress was a Republican: Hiram R. Revels of Mississippi.  

John Parman 

CONGRATULATIONS 

Dear Democrats, 

I’m writing to congratulate you on the success of your party to win both the Senate and the House. I could not be more pleased for you. 

My analysis of your victory seems not to be the standard analysis in the news and I would like to ask you to consider my thinking. I think you have been selected by the American people to return democracy to this country and get us out of Iraq. There is no other explanation for the victory of your party. Many Republicans switched sides, most Independents switched sides, and only their fear of the destruction of the economy due to the War and the fear of Government intrusion into their private lives could have made that happen. There are many ways to play on this, but none I have heard so far will answer the desire of most Americans for freedom and justice. May I suggest that your party re-read the Constitution of the United States and re-visit the Oath of Office they have all taken. The reason I suggest this is I believe all of the mischief that has been done over the last six years has been the results of gaming the Constitution by men and women who have lost their idealism and have behaved as if their election was more important than doing their primary duty to defend the Constitution. 

The war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, torture, and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 could only be considered Constitutional by people whose powers of rationalization far exceed the normal citizen and that is why the national political landscape has temporarily changed. Please, please, please make defending the Constitution and getting us out of Iraq your party’s primary goals. To that end I suggest you do not let Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and George Bush return to their private lives without paying a big price of trying to change this country by destroying its Constitution. If they do not face censure or worse, our Constitution will permanently be a target for power hungry citizens with the means to become part of the government. You have been blessed with the power to become a savior of our democracy or just a power. Please use your position for preserving democracy. 

Harry Wiener

Will operation of the Berkeley Public Library (BPL) be outsourced to a private, for-profit agency? Will the next library director be another pro-RFID autocrat with little respect for staff and the public? The signs for a good outcome look cloudy, because the Board of Library Trustees (BOLT) search for a new director is using a bad process, the wrong people, and a search firm whose principals are active advocates of outsourcing library operations from top to bottom. 

Bad process 

BOLT has set up a process that has made most decisions without effective public input, including creation of three committees with no clearly-defined decision-making powers, and selection of a search firm, Dubberly and Garcia. BOLT president Susan Kupfer appears to be making most of the decisions on her own, without the library trustees’ participation.  

The names and resumes of the reported four final candidates were not released as of Tuesday, Nov. 14—even though they are to be presented to the public on Saturday, Nov. 18. The timetable for replacing the librarian who left in early June is much too fast for the necessary considered evaluation and discussion—and is a set-up for minimal public input. What’s the hurry? We have an interim director. 

Flash: We learned on Nov. 15 the names of the final four candidates—far too late for considered review and discussion. We understand from a reliable source that all are from RFID libraries, except the candidate from Oakland, where RFID is being removed from one trial branch.  

Wrong people 

The primary group advising BOLT on the selection of a new library director is a seven-member advisory committee of librarians from other jurisdictions, a majority of whom have either advocated use of privacy-threatening RFID or are associated with libraries that have installed it. What chance is there that the librarians’ committee would approve a candidate who understands the downsides of RFID and who would consider removing it from BPL’s books? 

Committee member Susan Hildreth, currently state librarian and, until June 30, 2004, head of San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), and Luis Herrera, SFPL’s current head, sought RFID funding in 2004 and 2005 that the San Francisco Board of supervisors did not approve.  

Additional members include Susan Hardy of Alameda Public Library, which recently installed the technology, and Carmen Gutierrez of Oakland Public Library, which installed RFID at one branch.  

Hildreth and Herrera have a reputation of being hostile to public openness. For example, under Hildreth, SFPL had more complaints filed with the city’s official open government watchdog, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force (SOTF)—and was found in violation—more often than any other city department. The SOTF referred one of the violations – failure to provide information, related to the library’s RFID advocacy, about staff repetitive stress injuries—to the district attorney and Ethics Commission for enforcement in October, 2004.  

Outsourcing advocacy 

Dubberly and Garcia have been engaged as the search firm—but this did not come to BOLT for formal action, and the public record does not reveal the cost or who is paying. 

Who are these folks? Ron Dubberly and his business partner, June Garcia, are two of the current five members on the Advisory Council of LSSI (Library Systems and Services, Inc.), a Germantown, MD company known for helping libraries outsource.  

Dubberly wrote an article, “Why Outsourcing is Our Friend,” published in the January, 1998 edition of American Libraries magazine. The article praises a 1997 contract between LSSI and Riverside County, Calif., to manage and operate the county’s Riverside County Library System (RCLS). Dubberly wrote that the county librarian is “the only remaining library staffer employed by local authorities. Everyone else who now works at [RCLS] serves at the discretion of Library Systems and Services.” Further, he wrote, “a private-sector company is better positioned to serve the public more easily and efficiently without the bureaucracy.” 

Norman Oder provides a different view in his Library Journal (LJ) article, “When LSSI Comes to Town: Public libraries, private company: the outsourcing compromise,” (Oct. 1, 2004, pp. 36-40).Oder suggests that there are questions about funding and service quality. He references an American Library Association (ALA) report that said future hires received lower pay and there are ”vague indications of increasing workloads…”  

Other revelations in the LJ article: LSSI prefers having all library employees work for the company. “We have much more control. We can incent them,” says [LSSI CEO Frank] Pezzanite. “If an employee does a good job, we like to give them a $5 gift certificate to Borders Books or Mrs. Fields.”  

The article states, “The loss of civil service rights and pension vesting has alarmed unions and library groups.” Additionally, “LSSI’s record suggests tensions between a profit-seeking company and a public agency. Savings may go to the profits instead of services,” and “the library may be less publicly accountable.” 

Dubberly has not merely advised LSSI, the LJ article says. LSSI actually hired members of its own Advisory Council, including Ron Dubberly and others, “to help LSSI clients on projects.” 

Hype and secrecy 

The 2004 LJ article states, “Some LSSI marketing claims are, at best, imprecise.” As an example, it reports, “a flyer distributed at the New Jersey Conference of Mayors last April said ‘LSSI is currently managing libraries for these communities’; the 20 communities listed represented seven contracts, two of which had expired by that time.”  

In a section headed “Compromising Transparency,” the article indicates “Former employees say LSSI has required them to sign a nondisclosure agreement.” One contract requires Linden, NJ, to portray the early ending of its LSSI contract in the “most positive manner possible.” Another reported example: “Because of a contract clause preventing current Jersey City Public Library (JCPL) top managers from discussing LSSI, it’s hard to evaluate fully LSSI’s performance at JCPL, where it operated from 1999 to 2001.” 

Conclusion 

Bad process, including a hasty timetable and secrecy; the wrong people on the advisory committee, and a search firm with connections to a secretive outsourcing company -- these are unlikely to produce a good result for Berkeley.  

Peter Warfield is executive director of the Library Users Association (libraryusers2004@yahoo.com). Gene Bernardi and Warfield are SuperBOLD members.  

The four library director finalists are scheduled to make presentations to the public in the Story Room, fourth floor, main library, on Saturday Nov. 18 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. A trustees meeting with public comment is to follow. 

The library’s Nov. 15 press release announcement says the four finalists for director of Library Services are Donna Corbeil, deputy director at the Solano County Library; Gerry Garzon, deputy director at Oakland Public Library; Valerie G. Gross, director of the Howard County, Library, Maryland; and Rivkah K. Sass, library director of the Omaha Public Library, Nebraska. 

Pleased as I am with Ms. Pelosi’s accession to power and gratified as I am by her warm ties to the Jewish community, as reported recently in your newspaper, I am less encouraged by her obeisance to the Israel-right-or-wrong stance of AIPAC. 

It is generally acknowledged that the turmoil in the Middle East is today the greatest threat facing world peace, and that the Israel-Palestine conflict is at the heart of this turmoil. Successive administrations have made token gestures toward resolving this problem, all of them defeated by the absolute refusal of Israel to relinquish conquered territory and by the bad faith of the American side, which purports to be an honest broker but which in fact—thanks in large measure to AIPAC—is in fact Israel’s chief advocate (as well as financier and arms supplier).  

What is most tragic is the fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict could be ended virtually overnight by an Israeli withdrawal to its 1967 borders and compliance with innumerable UN resolutions demanding that Israel bow to international law on the treatment of refugees. The situation is no longer what it was twenty or ten or even five years ago. Realities have sunk in. Every surrounding Arab nation, including Lebanon and Syria, would today recognize Israel’s existence and exchange ambassadors; Hamas would abandon its absolutist bargaining point; Iran would grudgingly accept the reality of the situation, even if it continued to fulminate. The old Israeli argument of the “existential threat” is simply obsolete. Equally obsolete is its claim on Palestinian (or Syrian) territory for military defense purposes: rockets have long since obviated the significance of “high ground” for artillery emplacements. 

We are left with the picture of a country that simply cannot bring itself, regardless of cost, to give up tiny patches of territory once seen as the seeds of a Greater Israel extending from the Mediterranean to the precious water of the Jordan River. That dream has been definitively abandoned. Yet these remaining tiny patches of land are—aside from the cold fact that they belong to Palestine—an absolute impediment to the formation of a coherent Palestinian state. We now see in Israel a country that has—perhaps deliberately—painted itself into a corner by settling hundreds of thousands of colonists on Palestinian land: What Israeli politician could have the courage to bring them home? Who, if not the United States, would pay the billions of dollars needed for their resettlement? These ugly facts of internal Israeli politics—and not an “existential threat” from the outside—are the stumbling-blocks to peace in the Middle East. 

And this is where we return to the role of the United States, to Nancy Pelosi. and to my pessimistic view of the future. As long as our government is populated by AIPAC sycophants, as long as we carry water for every corrupt administration in Tel Aviv, as long as we supply cluster bombs to the Israeli air force, as long as we “regret” massacres of women and children in Gaza, as long as we strangle democratically-elected Palestinian governments that refuse to toe Israel’s line, in short: as long as we complacently foster the bloody and tragic status quo in Palestine, nothing will change. The Israelis are patient: forty years have gone by, Israel is prospering thanks to an endless influx of charity from its American friend, perhaps in another five or ten or forty years the Palestinians will have been ground down into compliance. Does Israel’s recalcitrance have worldwide ramifications? Let the Americans take care of them, just as they took care of Iraq and, with a bit of nudging, will hopefully soon take care of Iran! 

Nancy Pelosi and a new Democratic congress could exert some influence toward a sane and even-handed American policy for Palestine. The United States alone is in a position to hold Israel’s nose to the grindstone. Sadly, your recent article about her would seem to indicate that nothing is going to change. 

George Aid is a Berkeley resident.

“The past is prologue,” wrote William Shakespeare. 

When a courageous candidate loses a fair and free election, there is a natural desire to lick wounds and forget. But unfair elections should never be forgotten. Our future depends on setting the record straight, rectifying wrongs. 

In the last week of the election in District 2 in Oakland, a series of misleading and hostile articles appeared in both the Oakland Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle. The anti-Aimee Allison columns by Heather MacDonald (Tribune) and Chip Johnson (the Chronicle) include two erroneous claims: that Allison sent out “hit pieces,” a negative mailer against Kernighan; that Allison organized a “push-poll,” a phone bank that spread negative information. Both writers, one a columnist, one a reporter, whitewash the role of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, which defied the will of Oakland’s voters by overturning a measure establishing campaign limits. And both writers—in contradiction to the actual record—portray Kernighan as an upright, positive campaigner, while they transform Allison into the villain of dirty politics. 

The Chip Johnson column is directed against the so-called “Allison flyer.” According to Johnson, a new, little-known group called “Oaklanders for New Leadership” published a negative mailer. Johnson calls it a hit piece. Then comes the sleight of hand. In the next sentence, Johnson refers to the “Allison flyer.” Suddenly, Allison is linked to a group over which she has no control, a group completely independent from Allison’s campaign. Johnson continues to link Allison to outside groups the way McCarthyites used to link Democrats to Communists. Once the link is established, he calls Allison “the aggressor,” and charges her with dirty campaign tactics. 

In response to Allison’s denial of the charges, Johnson sneers “Uh-huh.” It’s a sleazy way of making unsubstantiated charges—that Allison is a liar, that she broke the law (it is illegal for candidates to collaborate with independent groups)—without bearing responsibility for his claims. Talk about hit-pieces! 

There are no “uh-huhs” following Kernighan’s many claims about her faithfulness to campaign ethics. The press has two different yardsticks: one for Kernighan, another for the African-American candidate.  

Johnson’s column includes a second, wild accusation, that “her campaign has run push polls, the kind made famous by Presidential advisor Karl Rove.”  

What are the facts? Allison never conducted a push poll. Such tactics contradict not only the spirit, but the actual record of her two-year campaign. The image of Allison as a negative campaigner, a hit-piece candidate, was manufactured by hostile and unethical columnists in the last days of the campaign.  

The press attacks are not only misleading, they are defamatory and can only be seen as an attempt to undermine Allison’s career and dash the hopes of young Oaklanders who became involved in civic life for the first time. 

MacDonald charges 

The same kind of charges and innuendoes appear in Heather MacDonald’s Oakland Tribune articles. Without investigating the facts, MacDonald—in the last moments of the election, when Allison is helpless to respond—associates Allison with push polls and negative literature. 

Reporters have a responsibility to check facts and demand evidence. Yet in three successive articles, one day after another, MacDonald parrots the vindictive claims by OakPAC chair Michael Colbruno and Kernighan.  

History 

Not only are the major claims about Allison unsubstantiated, they are false, contrary to evidence that was available to both writers. Neither MacDonald or Johnson took time to look over the record of either candidate, to compare the literature. 

If we review Allison’s literature as far back as 2005, her campaign is positive, sometimes inspirational. Her pamphlets include concrete proposals for change, and the strong critique of Kernighan policy failures is reasonable and fair. In view of the homicide rate in Oakland and the failure of the City Council to deal with crime effectively; in view of Kernighan’s claim that she is a successful crime-fighter, Allison’s criticism of Kernighan’s failure of policy is reasonable, and actually long overdue.  

Contrary to both Johnson and MacDonald, it is Kernighan, not Allison, that has a documented record of dirty campaigns. Did MacDonald even review her own newspaper’s archives?  

On April 30, 2005, in the midst of Kernighan’s first campaign, the popular, respected writer Peggy Stinnett published an article entitled: “Council Candidate Takes Campaign to the Gutter.” Pretty strong language from a popular, moderate editor. The subhead reads: “Kernighan Takes the Low Road with political hit piece.” 

There were four victims of Kernighan attacks. Aimee Allison was one of them. “Kernighan’s piece disparages four of them in an outright attack.” Stinnett, unlike so many reporters who avoid the issue, comments on the racist implications of Kernighan’s literature. She wrote, “The flier tried to smear her opponents as unqualified to hold office.” 

Stinnett’s commentary on Kernighan was based on the actual literature produced by Kernighan. The columns of MacDonald and Johnson are based on wild accusations contrary to the historical record.  

Both writers also misrepresent the role and views of Mayor-elect Ron Dellums. Their articles, through a misuse of context, give the impression that Dellums’ known aversion to negative campaigning is directed at Allison. Johnson obscures the issue by blending and confusing separate issues. The reference to Dellums’ general view about campaigning in the context of Johnson’s false charges against Allison is an attempt to mislead readers into thinking that Dellums blames Allison for the breakdown of ethics under the impact of money!  

I called Dellums’ office to get the full story. According to both Deborah Ford and Mike Healey, Dellums never charged Allison with negative campaigning. He was, of course, upset that independent groups, who were not party to his negotiated truce with the Chamber, spent money beyond the limits. But Johnson puts Dellums’ views in an anti-Allison context, and the net result is that Dellums is misrepresented. 

It is not a minor error. The press in the U.S. has a long history of fomenting suspicion, pitting black leaders against each other. The Tribune and Chronicle columns smack of what Malcolm X once called “white-press journalism.” 

There is an old story, a joke about Lyndon Johnson, a crafty politician who was known for hardball politics in Texas. As the story goes, Johnson came up to his campaign manager and said, “I want you to get our reporters to put out a story that my opponent has sex with farm animals.” 

“What?!” the manager exclaimed. “The charge is false.” 

“I know that. I just want to hear him deny it.” 

The story captures the essence of the anti-Allison campaign. Allison was forced to defend herself against outrageous charges in the last two days of the contest. Her detractors in the media just wanted to hear her deny them.  

What galls me most of all about both MacDonald and Johnson is their holier-than-thou attitude. They pretend to be neutral interpreters of events, trying to clean up dirty politics. But their own hit-pieces, presented as “reporting,” are more damaging than any campaign literature.  

MacDonald and Johnson do not tell their readers that the corporations for which they write are members of the Chamber of Commerce, the organization which played the primary role bringing dirty money into the contest. Both the Tribune and the Chronicle opposed the Clean Money Initiative. Is it any wonder that Tribune and Chronicle employees whitewashed the OakPAC and the Chamber? 

Is it possible, in the present climate, to reach higher ground? Dellums’ call for a “new day in Oakland” is a great challenge for all of us. But there can be no real peace and harmony, mutual respect, until the falsehoods about Allison are retracted. Healing begins with respect for the truth. 

Paul Rockwell is an Oakland writer.

The university recently unveiled its plan to bulldoze the berms (mounds) on either side of the Community Garden in People’s Park. In an effort to allow police to see through the park without getting out of their cars, they want to sacrifice the natural boundary that separates the park from traffic and city bustle. People’s Park, already much less green space than we need in such a populated area, is an important refuge for our collective psyches to reconnect with nature.  

At the People’s Park Community Advisory Board meeting on Monday, the chiefs of police from both UC and Berkeley police departments showed up with practically matching letters, written at the request of the university, explaining that they need sight lines clear of “vegetation” to police from the streets. While that may help in patrolling prison yards, our parks and neighborhoods are not prisons and should not be treated as such. We reap much social benefit from common meeting spaces, quiet meditation nooks, romantic benches for new loves, and opportunities for chance meetings with hummingbirds or blossoms. We mustn’t turn our places of beauty and freedom into desolations because of fear. 

People’s Park is not a dangerous place. I’ve gardened there most every week for years. It’s got a bad reputation. Everyone talks about all the drug dealing there which I’m convinced is the advertising that actually creates it. I don’t like drug dealing in the park, it should be legalized and sold elsewhere. In the mean time though, it is kept down by the presence of people and by police on foot and bikes that actually enter the park. And even still drugs are victimless crimes and don’t threaten you. 

But in People’s Park you may encounter people different from yourself. Real people with real problems that really exist in our society may be present. This is an opportunity. People’s Park is our social experiment in sharing, in tending common land, in integrating races and classes and philosophies.  

The Park can surely be improved. We welcome efforts in the future, like those of the past, that create and add to the park. Events, gardening, picnics, art projects, fix it up days, etc. all improve our neighborhood. And the berms themselves can be recreated. The “berms” are the piles of asphalt torn up from the parking lot and put on the edges of the garden. They now miraculously host a variety of plants and trees including mature oaks, plums, maple, apple, agave, roses, manzanitas, and many small plants. They are a lesson in how to transform our urban concrete cancer back into productive living land. Imagine students of Permaculture Gardening recreating the berms retaining their ecological, historical and social value. 

I’d like to believe that our human consciousness is finally awakening to our innate connection and need for nature. Berkeley’s schools have all started gardens. Our own Joanna Macy talks of “The Great Turning” as the “essential adventure of our time: the shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life sustaining civilization.” People’s Park was a step in that awakening to the importance of the environment and remains a living urban oasis.  

It is all wrong for the university to think they can bulldoze this relevant and large portion of the park. Time and again we are called upon to stick up for our history, our volunteer creations, our right to land and community. How things are done in People’s Park is very important. If the university comes in some morning with bulldozers, no public process and destroys the trees, history and calm in the park, it will create a disaster like the 1991 volleyball court debacle that cost two million dollars and threw our neighborhood into a crisis. 

Stop the bulldozers. Speak up at the next meeting of the Community Advisory Board, Monday Dec. 4 at 7 p.m. at the Trinity Methodist Church, 2362 Bancroft Ave. (below Dana). Defend People’s Park. Planning meeting in the park Sun Nov. 19, 4 p.m., Council Grove (northwest corner of the park). 

Terri Compost is a Berkeley resident.

“We need to wait until after election time to see if we can get any changes to the law, meanwhile, we will do what we can under existing conditions.”  

—Deborah Badhia, Downtown Berkeley Association, For the Berkeley Business District Network, Oct. 5, 2006 

Dear Chief Hambleton, Oct. 5, 2006 

The BBDN (Berkeley Business District Network) appreciates your taking time to meet with us yesterday. We remain very concerned about street behavior problems throughout the City. Telegraph and the downtown district continue to be heavily impacted by inappropriate behavior. There is a very large number of people with mental health problems who are shifting between our districts… 

In our meeting, it was helpful to review the content of 13.36.015, one of the current laws related to the enforcement of street behavior. As action items, we committed to the following: 

The districts will update and distribute our Crime Watch brochure. We will publicize the use of 981-9900 as the call in for all non-emergency reports such as sleepers…”* 

While the rest of the nation dealt a resounding blow to political business as usual, the citizens of Berkeley not only gave a resounding endorsement to the status quo, they are all tucked in for another winter of hounding the homeless. 

The same business interests that originated the anti-poor, anti-homeless legislation and street sweeps of the last two decades are poised to strike again with both the usual tactics; chasing people from one end of town to the other, arresting people under current laws, and familiar calls for new, more powerful legislative “tools” to help criminalize the poor and mentally ill. 

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates’ administration began with 240 shelter beds, and dedicates itself to “maintaining” those shelter beds. Translation? No more shelter beds in Berkeley. Despite an enormous low-cost housing deficit growing in tandem with the destruction of single room occupancy housing and its replacement with high-end condos, which often function as weekday bedrooms for people who work in the city but whose family digs are in Concord, Berkeley has no plans for the people it has huddled in doorways except to have a huddle of its own with the business interests, the police, and the city council, and produce some new, creative legislation to put them away for good. 

Long-time Berkeley residents recognize that crackdowns on Berkeley’s poor come with the holidays as sure as Salvation Army bell-ringers and plastic Santas. But the post-election holiday season, if Deborah Badhia’s letter is any indication, has the poor and homeless right in its cross-hairs. 

* Letter from Deborah Badhia of the Downtown Berkeley Association to the Berkeley Business District Network, Phil Kamlarz, City Manager of the City of Berkeley, and Berkeley Chief of Police Doug Hambleton. 

Carol Denney is a musician and activist. 

On Monday, Nov. 6, I witnessed an encounter between a Berkeley policeman and two women that culminated in what I considered unnecessary and brutal violence. This encounter demonstrated very rapidly how the thin veneer of civilized behavior that we are all so dependent on can disappear so quickly, that we are left with a sense of helplessness and impotence. 

I was parking my car on Addison, at the corner with Martin Luther King, when I saw two women crossing Martin Luther King using the crosswalk. I noticed them because one of them, the younger one, was obviously concerned with her safety and at one point made a motion with her hands as if asking a car to stop before running them over. Suddenly a police car appeared and a police officer stopped the two women, asked for their identification and started writing them a ticket. As I did not see them do anything illegal, I was intrigued by this and stayed in my car observing the interaction. The younger woman very quickly became agitated. In a loud voice and using somewhat vulgar language, she asked several times why she was getting a ticket for just crossing the street. The other woman attempted to calm her down several times and also talked to the officer. I could not hear what she and the officer talked about. I did notice that the younger woman became more and more agitated as the cop continued writing the tickets. Suddenly, the younger woman screamed that she needed her ID back as she needed to go. The police officer approached her, threw her to the ground face down, slammed his knee on her back or neck and appeared to be out of control, yelling at the other woman to stay away as he jammed the younger woman forcefully on the cement. I would not be surprised if the young woman suffered some serious injury as a consequence of being treated so roughly. I will never forget this scene. Fortunately, shortly after, about five or six other police officers came running out of the station, took over the situation, and took the women away. Had they not appeared, I am afraid the woman would have continued being treated very roughly. Why did this policeman wait to call for assistance until after he completely lost his temper? 

I wonder what happened to these two women. Were they arrested? How much time did they spend in jail? Will the police report charge the woman with assault when all she did was become agitated and run off the mouth? Was her companion, who was trying to calm the situation, also charged? Will the police officer be charged with assault? 

A woman who was across the street yelled at the policeman saying that this was “totally unnecessary.” I did not know what to do so I stood there for a while and left with the feeling that I had seen a nightmare in real life. None of the policemen approached any of the potential witness to ask us what we had seen. I was afraid to approach them fearing for my own safety. Do policemen only talk to each other when one of them is involved in a violent situation? 

The next day I sent an e-mail to the police department describing what I had seen. No one has responded to me. I called the Berkeley Police Review Commission, and was told that because I had not been a victim of police action, I could not file a complaint or report the incident. They would not even take my name as a potential witness in case the women approached them with a complaint. They told me the women would contact me if they needed a witness. When I explained that neither of the women would even know I had witnessed the incident, they did not have any other suggestions. So I am writing to you hoping that if necessary, someone will contact me. 

Jaime Reyes is a Berkeley resident.

Those of us who live on Southside of the UC campus see what being homeless is at first hand, every day. We may walk by and look elsewhere; sometimes we become involved. Always we know that official and private poses of indifference are symptoms of something terribly wrong with our society. 

Last week I dropped down to Telegraph for a late night coffee break at the Cafe Med. Passing People’s Park I saw police cars driving fast with lights and sirens on. Oddly enough, the lights and sirens were shut off and the speed reduced after the cars passed the parkl. The overall impression was that of danger. Tension filled the air, and once I became used to the relative darkness, seemed to infect the sad and anxious faces of people with no place to sleep. People who are now advised that the park extends “from curb to curb", as one Berkeley cop told a group of people on the sidewalk at the upper end of the parkl. 

When they were told they could no longer sleep in the park, law-abiding people with nowhere to go moved their cardboard beds to the sidewalk adjacent to the curb and slept there. In response, the City of Berkeley has declared the curb a “park". (Ain’t semantics grand?) Now these people move their beds and possessions half a block down Hillegass or Benvenue and sleep there. Does anyone involved in this charade of public policy seriously call this progress? 

To shake off the willies from the lights and sirens I decided to see for myself just how “bad” the night-time environment around the park actually is. I took my coffee to go, and sat on the steps of the Baptist Seminary on Dwight Way just East of Hillegass and watched the scene unfold. Several times UC and Berkeley police cars came barreling toward me on Bowditch (my position was right in front of them), with lights flashing, and once two UC cars put sirens on. Twice a Berkeley black-and-white cruised by me v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, as if to indicate that I was the object of their attention. A UC police car headed West on Haste suddenly accelerated, then dropped back to normal speed at Telegraph.  

It looked like heavy-handed intimidation to me. In the time that I sat there I did not see a single private citizen do anything to warrant so much police activity. 

On my way to the Med, and subsequently to the Baptist Seminary steps, I recognized a woman whom I had met previously in the dumpster at my apartment building. She was literally in the dumpster, looking for food or clothing. On the night of my vigil she was looking very scattered and frantic, traipsing along the park perimeter, asking out loud where her boyfriend might be. She seemed to be either losing it, or on the verge. 

When we spoke at the dumpster I had asked her if she would like to vacuum hallways for some money and she was excited by the idea. Feeling a bond with her, it became intolerable to watch her distress, so I approached and said hello. She registered my presence, but seemed unsure of how to respond. I continued to stand nearby and reminded her about our previous conversation, which she did remember. 

That night her condition was not the same. She said several times that she was thirsty. Really, really thirsty—not for alcohol, for water. (If you live on the street you can’t go to the kitchen for a glass of water.) She kept bending down and rummaging through a collection of bags and boxes that held her clothing and other possessions. She was flinging things around with such abandon that it was hard to tell what she meant to do, and I recalled that dehydration causes mental confusion. But I think that fatigue, dehydration, and anxiety were all influencing her behavior. 

Her clothes and bedding were filthy. I knew at that time—just after midnight—there was little risk of outrage if I let her wash her clothes in the communal laundry room, so I asked her if she would like to do that. I thought she might also want to grab a shower, and figured I could throw together a meal. Eyeing her collection, it was obvious that washing bedding was as necessary as the rest, a big enough chore to made me feel skittery about having started this conversation. But it felt craven to offer assistance and then walk away. Good intentions notwithstanding, the tone of this project was not genteel. She tended to shout when she spoke and moved in the oddest way. It seemed unlikely that her decorum in the building would meet Emily Post standards. But the raw reality of this person that I knew, even slightly, lost, broke, dirty, in despair, and ignored by all, temporarily overrode my fine sensibilities. 

The first thing to do was move her possessions out of the parkl. It was now half-past midnight and cops were everywhere. After daybreak she could put them back, but now they had to be moved. The young woman spasmodically tried to segregate items to be washed and began to drag the cardboard, sleeping bag and blankets a legal distance from the parkl. I rolled up the bedding and put it in the box with the clothes. It made a real mountain. The bottom of the box had something gooey on it, but in the interest of time I decided to ignore it. The lady was all over the place, fiddling with bags, throwing a collection of shoes around, and complaining that she hadn’t seen her boyfriend all day. Looking like two ragged gypsies, we crossed Dwight and gradually headed South on Hillegass. The cardboard she was carrying fell by the wayside as I struggled to hold together the massive box of clothes and bedding. She finally settled on the sidewalk in front of an apartment building to make a bed between two driveways. I was surprised she didn’t go for concealment, but then it struck me: if she has to do this every day, then fuck it—the fewer steps the better 

While she stooped and flung things around I walked up the block to retrieve the cardboard and several dropped items. When I returned I suggested that it was time to think about getting her clothes into the washer. My prodding made her bristle. She said I could go on, but she could not be rushed. I felt an impulse to walk away, then reflected that dealing with people takes patience in the best of circumstances, and how little I seemed to have. Standing by while she attacked the pile of cardboard and bedding from every angle, I realized that in her present state she was incapable of an organized effort to vacuum hallways: her sheer dogged persistence to keep moving was impressive in its own right. 

The laundry never got done. She was feeling abandoned and alone on this dark night on the street and wanted her boyfriend. She asked another homeless woman who was walking up and down Hillegass if she had a cell phone so she could call him (at that time he carried their phone) so I offered mine, which she eagerly accepted and used. It turned out that her man had taken a fall from a skateboard (these people are in their early twenties) and was being attended to by an EMT somewhere on Bancroft. She was going to him. All else could wait. 

Walking slowly home to space, light, heat, water and food, I reflected that none of the six or eight people I talked to that night was in a position to change their circumstances. One man asked me if he could do some work—he overheard me talking to the woman—and I put him off. But I will have to find him again and get to know him to decide if I can work with him.  

By the way, workers comp insurers make it near-impossible for a business to pay for temporary casual labor. To hire the homeless you have to write up a receipt for, say, second-hand plumbing parts, and pay in cash. Such a transaction is technically illegal. And yes, the State of California and the IRS would insist that it not take place at all. Thus, the official machinery prevents citizens from helping the homeless by making such efforts unfeasible, even while it denies them its own intervention in their fate. 

The sing-song “spare change?” rhetoric of the easy-going days is gone. Today people on the street look you right in the eye and say in all seriousness: “If you can give me some money, I really need it.” The ones I have met lately are not pushy or obnoxious; they state a hard and obvious fact that should not be ignored. 

Glen Kohler lives in Berkeley’s South Campus area. 

An old friend sent me a free plane ticket to Phoenix, Arizona, and I went. Pam lives in Lexington, Kentucky, but she was attending a veterinary-chiropractic meeting at the Scottsdale Chaparral Suites, located not on the chaparral but along a six-lane boulevard lined with imported palm trees and newly constructed strip malls. 

The plan was for me to hang out at one of the two hotel pools and explore downtown Scottsdale while Pam attended classes on equine yoga, proper saddle fit, and racehorse foot management. I would meet her at noon for the free lunch buffet provided by the American Veterinary Chiropractic Association, and again, at 6 p.m., for the hotel-hosted (and also free) happy hour.  

In addition to the AVCA convention, there was an Arizona Christian Family Prayer delegation staying at the hotel over the weekend, and also a large number of fans and participants of the Checker Auto Parts 500 NASCAR Race taking place at Avondale’s Phoenix International Raceway on Saturday. Sunday included a match-up between the Arizona Cardinals and Dallas Cowboys at the University of Phoenix Stadium.  

Chaparral Suites was filled to capacity with men in brightly checkered leather jackets sporting transmission fluid and engine oil logos, bible-carrying Christian parents and their well-behaved children, football fans lugging golf club bags, and the somewhat touchy-feely veterinarian-chiropractic folks. I was in a contingent composed of one: confused-and-possibly-destitute-newly-widowed-middle-age woman. There are probably worse groups to belong to.  

The reason I was confused was because, among other things, I haven’t been able to get the proper documents from several financial institutions in order to understand my changing fiscal situation. There have been multiple mix ups on how to acquire, complete, send-in, and process these forms. I’ve been operating on faith, and the advice of a lawyer, that the miscommunication and confusion will work out for the best. Perhaps it was the Christian influence at the hotel that led me to believe I was safe. Whatever the reasons, I did what everyone else in Scottsdale seems to do—I shopped.  

Retail therapy is Scottsdale’s raison d’etre. After shopping comes eating, and after eating comes golfing, football watching, racecar driving and plastic surgery. I didn’t need to shop but the power of suggestion was overwhelming. Hiking into the desert under a hot midday sun was not as appealing as schlepping to Fashion Square in order to wander through its fountains, food courts, and air-conditioned chain stores.  

It was kind of a girls gone wild weekend for the over-50 set. I spent money I didn’t have on things I didn’t need while Pam participated in seminars entitled “Dorsoventral Spinal Motion and Equine Rib Adjusting” and “Pain Neurophysiology, Neuroanatomy and More.” Our favorite time together was happy hour, when we were finally able to catch up on 26 years of friendship, 23 of them spent on opposite sides of the continent.  

There is something healing about spending time with an old friend after many years apart. Sharing memories of what we were like when we were in our late twenties made us feel and act younger. Being in Scottsdale, where we knew no one, allowed us to act as if we really were 25, not 50-plus. Maybe that’s why I returned to Oakland with a suitcase full of new clothes only a teenager could wear.  

My newfound happiness came to a screeching halt when I unlocked my front door and found myself alone in a house that felt cold and unfamiliar, a house that didn’t go with my new attire.  

Twelve and a half years ago, after Ralph’s Claremont Avenue bicycle accident, I had to reinvent myself. As his disabilities increased with age and the accumulating effects of powerful drugs, I had to evolve as well. Now he’s gone and I need to reinvent myself again. Either I’ll have to renovate the house to go with the new wardrobe or get some clothes that match-up with the empty house. I made a few false starts in the Juniors Department at Fashion Square. Maybe it’s time to look for something in the Over-the-Hill-But-Not-Out-for-Lunch section. I’ve been gone for a very long time; it feels good to be on my way back.

You may have noticed last month that the Ig Nobel laureates for 2006 included Ivan Schwab, a professor of ophthalmology at UC Davis, recognized for his explanation of why woodpeckers don’t get headaches. 

The Ig Nobels are bestowed for the year’s most dubious contributions to science (and sometimes other fields: last year’s literature prize went to the collective authors of the Nigerian Prisoner Scam email and all its variations). 

Other winners included studies of why the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard is irritating, why dry spaghetti breaks into multiple fragments when you bend it, and whether mosquitoes are more attracted to human feet or Limburger cheese. In previous years, research on how herring communicate by farting and the fluid dynamics of swimming in syrup has been honored.  

Schwab, who accepted the award wearing a red-crested, beaked headdress and a tux, was actually piggybacking on the work of the late Philip May of UCLA. 

May’s articles on the anatomy and physiology of the pileated woodpecker had appeared in scholarly journals like The Lancet; Schwab just summarized May’s findings in his monthly column for the British Journal of Ophthalmology, in which he has covered such topics as how kingfishers spot fish underwater and why the eyes of goats have slit pupils.  

So why don’t woodpeckers get headaches? By all rights they should, considering the beating their heads take. May calculated that a pileated woodpecker, which is about crow-sized, may strike a tree trunk at a rate up to 20 times a second up to 12,000 times a day, with a 1200 g force on each impact. This would be roughly equivalent to hitting a wall face first at 16 miles an hour. Few of us could take 12,000 repetitions of that sort of thing. 

But then we’re not built like woodpeckers. The bird has a thick skull with spongy cartilage at the base of its beak to absorb the force of all that hammering. The mandibles—the upper and lower jaws—are attached to the skull by strong muscles that contract a millisecond before each blow, creating further cushioning. 

The muscles also divert the force of the impact to the base and rear of the skull, bypassing the brain. 

Each hammer blow is a perfect perpendicular stroke, without the torsion that might tear the membrane enclosing the brain or cause concussion. 

A pileated woodpecker also has a relatively small brain for a bird its size. The small ratio of brain weight to brain surface area allows the force of an impact to spread over a larger area, further reducing the risk of concussion. 

I don’t know whether the small-brain principle also holds for the smaller woodpeckers—the downy, the hairy, the acorn, the Nuttall’s—which are also dedicated headbangers.  

According to Schwab, high-speed photography of a woodpecker in action shows that the bird closes the nictitating membrane—the so-called “third eyelid”—over each eye in those pre-strike milliseconds. 

He speculates that this may serve to restrain the eyes from literally popping out of the woodpecker’s head, in addition to providing protection from flying debris. In addition, the pecten, a ridged portion of the eyelid, fills with blood to increase pressure on the lens and retina during the strike, apparently preventing retinal detachment. 

Then there’s the tongue. It’s not clear whether this extraordinary organ acts as a supplemental shock absorber, but clearly Schwab could not resist describing it: “The tongue is most unusual as it originates on the dorsum of the maxilla, passes through the right nostril, between the eyes, divides in two, arches over the superior portion of the skull and around the occiput passing on either side of the neck, coming forward through the lower mandible, and uniting into a single tongue in the oropharyngeal cavity.” Sorry about the anatomical Latin. 

“Through the right nostril” is my favorite part of the tongue’s itinerary, and I would like to hear some advocate of Intelligent Design venture an explanation of all this.  

What this Rube Goldbergian anatomy does is allow the woodpecker to extend its tongue up to 4 inches beyond the tip of its bill (and remember, we’re dealing with a crow-sized bird). This enables it to get at insects lurking deep under the bark of trees. 

The tip of the tongue is further equipped with sticky saliva to which ants adhere and backward-pointing barbs for impaling beetle grubs and other larger insects.  

All well enough, but it appears to me that the question of woodpecker headaches remains open. 

A headache is a subjective kind of thing, and I’m not sure—barring brain scans on an active woodpecker—we can know for certain whether the birds suffer headaches as an occupational hazard or not. It’s up to some enterprising graduate student to pick up the torch from Dr. May.

It would be easy for Democrats to become a bit heady what with the newly won House and Senate seats and all. But before getting too carried away, I would suggest that the “Blue” party take stock and ask themselves some serious questions, namely; who are we and what are we doing here?  

As I write this column, the media has just announced that our new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has already experienced her first defeat. Pelosi had publically backed her longtime ally Rep. John Murtha to become the House majority leader over her previous competitor, Rep. Steny Hoyer. Fellow Democrats rallied around Hoyer to defeat Murtha 149-86. “It was a stunning victory for him,” declared Pelosi, looking quite stunned.  

What was Pelosi thinking? Most reports so far—and we can be sure this outcome will be the leading news story on all of the networks for days to come—harp on Pelosi’s extreme loyalty to those who have supported her career. Murtha not only managed her 2000 campaign against Hoyer to become the Democratic whip, his opposition to the Iraq war has made him a semi-celebrity, despite his questionable ethics. (I hestitate to even bring up Murtha’s ties to the 1980 Abscam sting—he was only “almost caught” whereas I believe that most politicians engage in unscrupulous backroom dealing—it’s the nature of the beast.)  

In fact, Hoyer, who is pro-choice and supports gun control and the protection of the environment (unlike Murtha), more closely represents Pelosi’s constituents. So, Pelosi did not select Murtha to benefit us. She chose him for personal reasons. Big mistake. She hasn’t even had a chance to warm up her seat yet and she’s already kow-towing to conservatives. Where’s your power, Nancy? Don’t give it away so soon. 

Democrats have given away a lot over the past few decades. Their claim to certain words, for example. Words and phrases like “family values,” “pro-life,” “concerned citizens” and “morally correct.” I recently heard a gay activist on the radio who referred to his opponents more than 10 times during 60 seconds as “values voters,” giving credence and free advertising to those on the right who claim to be the only ones with “values.” How dumb is that? (By the way, I miss rainbows standing for nothing but rainbows.)  

Meanwhile, Dems run away from words they should embrace, like “liberal” and “affirmative action.” To be a liberal and support affirmative action is essentially to acknowledge that many Americans are treated unfairly and need our help. (Note to Christian voters: Jesus was a liberal. They say he even had a bleeding heart.)  

If there’s one thing I hope Democrats have finally learned after this mid-year election, it’s that they are sorely in need of a brand manager. There are Democrats who oppose abortion and gun control while they support the war. There are Democrats, like Bill Clinton, who prefer that gays and lesbians stay in the closet and who believe in dismantling welfare but only as it applies to the poor. There are Democrats like John Kerry who will make a “botched joke,” then ignore it for a few days and then try to take it back. (Talk about your “cut and run.”) Worse are the other Dems who distanced themselves from Kerry when they should have either explained and defended his “joke” or stated the underlying truth; that many young people serving in our armed forces are poorly educated and have few other options. 

Most Dems are not liberal in my book. It is not “liberal” to fight for an increase in the minimum wage from a paltry $5.15 an hour all the way up to a measly $7.25. What would be liberal—meaning morally correct and might I say, Christian—would be to fight for a living wage; to value working families’ efforts to feed their children and keep the lights on over excessive corporate profit. 

Republicans have many Americans thinking that they are the only “true” or “real” Americans because they adhere to certain self-proscribed “values.” In a country such as ours, based on consumerism and run by ad agencies, I find it not only puzzling but alarming that Democrats have yet to figure out how to manipulate the media in order to acquire votes, as their bretheren have done so expertly for so long.  

As the old saying goes; “If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.”  

Democrats: Figure out who the hell you are and then stand up for it. These recent victories are mere battles. It is time for Democrats to redefine themselves and prepare to engage in the real war, that of competing ideologies. Take back your power; turn the word “liberal” into a word full of empathy for our fellow human beings and for our planet. Make it “Christian” to care more about people than profit. Declare that red, black, brown and yellow people are at the top of the list of “real” Americans and that there is room for everyone. Make it a “family value” to think it so. Hire an ad agency and get moving.

Three years ago, when the United States invaded Iraq, I put up a map of that country on my wall—as the old-timers used to do in other wars—so I could follow the course of the battles. I also bought two or three Middle Eastern history books, so that I might have a better knowledge of that part of the world, and a better understanding of the ancient racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts that we—America—had now thrust ourselves into. 

Though the map is still there, I haven’t looked at it more than once or twice since the President’s infamous “mission accomplished” speech on the aircraft carrier, and the Iraq conflict turned from a battle over cities and river crossings to a battle of shadows, where control of territory is fleeting, and has little or no meaning. And while I finally came to understand—I think—what originally drove Shi’a against Sunni and the nervousness of Arab nations about Turkey, that was little help in following the complex, bewildering, and all-but-overwhelming interplay between the new Iraqi government and all Iraq’s peoples—including the Kurds—the militias, the religious organizations, and the various surrounding nations. 

Instead, like so many Americans who identify themselves by the broad category of “progressives,” I long ago came to the broad conclusion that “we” should not be “there,” and the sooner out, the better. So long as our Republican friends were in power, both in Congress and in the White House, that was an easy position to take, since no thoughtful dialogue seemed possible with the Rumsfelds of the world, and it appeared that events—rather than reasoned argument—would be the determining factor. 

And so, events have. The balance of American opinion tipped against the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy, driving the Republicans out of the majority in both houses of the national congress, putting the Democrats back into national legislative power. Despite the Bush administration’s stubborn insistences to the contrary, American policy in the Iraq war is going to change. But in which direction? And how much? And to what end? That has yet to be determined and, in the determining, the future of both our country and our world will be determined. We are at that sort of pivotal, historic point. The decisions this country is about to make need both our close attention, and our studious and determined participation. 

We have not won the political battle over American foreign policy, in other words, so much as we have gained entrance to the battleground as participants. 

The famous line from Irish poet William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” poem—“things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”—is too often quoted to apply to too many things, but in this instance, at least, it seems appropriate. 

The center, in this instance, is the current Bush policy in Iraq—whatever that policy may happen to be—keeping roughly the same number of troops on the ground with roughly the same strategies and tactics. If the history of the last three years has taught us anything, it is that this policy is a halfway measure that retains the worst of both worlds—draining the blood and treasure and moral authority and international good will of the United States on the one hand, while it fails to either diminish the violence in Iraq or advance appreciably towards a democratic Iraq run by the Iraqis themselves. 

That leaves the country with two alternatives, advocacy of which combined together to make up the national disaffection that led to the overthrow of Republican Congressional power in this month’s general elections. 

The first alternative—now articulated by U.S. Senator John McCain—is to overwhelm the opposition in Iraq—whoever they are—by escalation, increasing the number of U.S. troops in the country. 

The second alternative—embraced by the Democrats—involves a reduction in the active U.S. military participation in the Iraq wars. But how fast a reduction? And how much? And to where would the troops be sent? To barracks in Baghdad? Back into Afghanistan to reinvigorate the war against Al Queda and the Taliban? To permanent, Middle East bases as a strike force rather than an occupying army? To Tehran or Pyongyang, to take out the nuclear reactors? Or back home? Those destinations were left deliberately, and appropriately, vague by Democrats during the fall election cycle. But the election is over, and the time has come for concrete planning and implementation, in which vagueness is no longer permissible. 

What are the Democrats to do? 

What should progressives—whoever they are—advocate? 

One of the central questions in this discussion will be our national policy towards “terrorists” and “terrorism.” 

There ought to be a general consensus among progressives that the indiscriminate violent targeting of innocents—one of the central definitions of what we call “terrorism”—is wrong, abhorrent, and cannot be supported. 

But one of the major reasons progressives cringe and fail to take that fatal step forward to join the current American anti-terrorist drumline is that the Bush Administration and too many of our brothers and sisters in the conservative camp have defined the terms “terrorist” and “terrorism” too broadly when it comes to people they don’t like—allowing them to harass and jail nonviolent anti-war demonstrators, for example, or keep Congolese or Cuban folkloric dancers out of the country—while simultaneously applying the terms too narrowly when it comes to people they support. This has led to the type of skewed thinking that somehow America has the right to bring foreign nationals to this country—by kidnap, if necessary—for trial for crimes against American citizens that did not take place on American soil, but that somehow, this doesn’t then automatically confer that right on other nations—Germany, for example, in the case of the war crimes accusations against outgoing Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld. It has also allowed the turning of a blind eye to people like Ann Coulter, who have for years been tossing out phrases that extol violence against American citizens who disagree with their political or social positions. The Coulters of the world are excused by saying that this is, after all, merely free speech and lively rhetoric. But when does this cross the line into the encouragement of violence, and, therefore, terrorism? When some young man listens long enough, takes it seriously enough, and decides to mail threats and fake anthrax to progressive and liberal figures?  

But with Democrats coming back into power, progressives can no longer avoid a public discussion on terrorism—how it should be defined, how it should be addressed, how it should be stopped—since much of what will drive the new Democratic Congress’ agenda is what is suggested and promoted by the left. 

A good place to start, for progressives, is a discussion of what we think should be done with and to Al Queda and the organization’s leader—Osama bin Laden—and, in a broader question, what we advocate to do to prevent the growth of terrorism and terrorists in the world. This should not a device to convince the middle that the left is serious about national security. It should be a means of plumbing into our own souls and consciences, to delve into what we actually feel and stand for, and what we are willing to do to protect the people we love. 

While I have my own thoughts on the matter, I am purposely not advocating a particular outcome of this discussion, only that a discussion is needed. Get out of Iraq. Get out of Iraq! GET OUT OF IRAQ! In order to be heard over the deliberate obfuscation and national bedlam, we have had to continue a single-minded chant-and-shout over these past three years. 

But the time for shouting has ended, friends, at least for the present, and we have come into a brief, breathless moment in which we can have a quiet talk among ourselves about what we now want to do, and who we want to be. 

Let us not waste it. 

Editor’s note: This article appeared on openDemocracy.net prior to Thursday’s vote in the House for majority leader 

The world will long wonder what took the American people so long to realize that George W. Bush, the swaggering, macho, faux rancher from Texas, was an incompetent and dangerous man who threatened the democratic foundations and moral credibility of the United States.  

The answer, I believe, can be summed up in one word: fear.  

After Sept. 11, 2001, Bush successfully employed a politics of fear which resulted in widespread indifference to his domestic and foreign-policy agenda. Urged to be terrified by terrorism, Americans became blinded by fear. If a policy was part of the “war against  

terror,” most Americans figured it was probably worthwhile. As a result, they ignored the administration’s “tax relief” to the wealthy, its lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, its zealous campaign to promote the religious right’s vision of a Christian nation, and its determination to privatize anything and everything, including security in Iraq.  

As long as they thought they had a strong masculine president who would protect them, Americans seemed willing to give up all kinds of constitutional liberties and rights. As long as they felt comforted by the illusion of safety, Americans also seemed willing to tolerate Bush’s arrogant attitude toward the rest of the world.  

But such hubris almost always ends in tragedy. Eventually, people began to notice that the emperor wore no clothes. When hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans, Bush’s incompetence and lack of compassion could no longer be hidden behind a strutting swagger. As people drowned, he dined. As people died, he ignored their plight. Widespread corruption and sexual scandals among conservative Republicans further undermined the illusion that Bush—the man who believed God wanted him to be president—had anyone righteous on his side.  

Finally, the daily news reports of death and devastation in Iraq made Bush’s daily mantra of “staying the course” seem more pathetic than protective. “Is this man capable of safeguarding my family?” Americans asked themselves. At the polls, they cast their votes and decisively answered “no”. 

As New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd put it: “This will be known as the year macho politics failed—mainly because it was macho politics by marshmallow men. Voters were sick of phony swaggering, blustering and bellicosity, absent competency and accountability.”  

And so they turned to the Mommy party. Victories by 50 Democratic women in the House of Representatives helped their party gain control of both houses of Congress and catapulted Nancy Pelosi, a feminist liberal from San Francisco, to assume leadership as the first female speaker of the House of Representatives, second in line to the presidency.  

Not everyone turned to the Mommy party, of course. But women gave Democrats an important edge; 55 percent of them voted for Democrats, but only 43 percent voted for Republicans. Exit polls reveal that both white men and women split their votes fairly evenly between the two parties. The female vote that really made a difference came from women who were young, poor, and from ethnic and racial minority populations. Democrats also enjoyed even larger margins from both men and women among the young, between 18 and 29 years of age (22 percent); low-income workers who earn less than $15,000 (37 percent); African Americans (79 percent); Latinos (39 percent) and the highly educated (17 percent).  

The real “family values” 

Although she won’t become speaker of the House until January 2007, Nancy Pelosi has hit the ground running. During her first 100 hours as speaker, she has promised to introduce legislation that raises the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour, requires all cargo shipped into the United States to be screened, cuts student-loan interest rates in half, allows the government to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices for Medicare patients, and broadens the types of stem-cell research allowed with federal funds.  

Pelosi has also demonstrated bold leadership by backing John Murtha in the race for majority leader in the House. One year ago, Murtha—a hawkish Democrat from Pennsylvania, and a decorated Vietnam veteran—stunned colleagues when he called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Defying the president, Murtha argued that many troops were demoralized and poorly equipped and that after more than two years of war, they were impeding Iraq’s progress toward stability and self-governance.  

On Nov. 13 2006, Pelosi wrote to all elected representatives, saluting Murtha’s outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq and endorsing him as Democratic majority leader. At a time when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton still hasn’t opposed the war, Pelosi has staked out a strong anti-war position by promoting Murtha to such a position of leadership.  

Liberal women have been celebrating this election for many reasons, including the potential return of the nation’s attention to actual “family values”. Throughout the election, Pelosi, a self-described “mother of five children and grandmother of five,” emphasized the necessity of health care, education, energy independence, and a dignified retirement.  

Pelosi’s promises have already raised expectations among women’s rights advocates. Just days after the election, author Judith Warner argued in a widely-discussed New York Times op-ed that Pelosi should expand her agenda and do even more to support America’s working mothers and their families: “The American family,” she wrote, “needs quality after-school programs, national standards for childcare, voucher programs and tax subsidies to help pay for that care, universal, voluntary public preschool, paid family leave and incentives for businesses to make part-time and flex-time work financially viable.” 

Not all these things will necessarily happen, but still (as a friend of mine recently commented) at the very least we now have politicians who will discuss these vital matters.  

For those who have feared the end of legal abortion in the United States, the election means that the Democrats won’t have to watch helplessly as the Bush administration packs the Supreme Court with rightwing conservatives. As a result, legal abortion seems protected—for now. Even in the conservative state of South Dakota, voters defeated an initiative that would have banned all abortion, except to save the life of a pregnant woman. In California and Oregon, they also beat back initiatives that would have limited women’s reproductive choices.  

As the National Family Planning  

and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA) notes: “the change in House leadership can only bring good things for reproductive health advocates...” In particular, the organization expects “a marked decline in anti-choice, anti-family planning legislative attacks, including the freestanding anti-choice bills that have been a centerpiece of the social conservative agenda.”  

The election has raised hopes, but they will almost certainly be dampened by political reality. Still, there is a palpable sense of possibility in the air, a glimpse of a brighter future, a growing confidence that the constitution will not be eviscerated, that a theocracy won’t govern this nation, and that Americans just might remember, as the Declaration of Independence proclaims, that Americans should pay “A decent respect to the opinions of mankind ...”  

One day after the election, my stepson—a properly cynical, but sensibly progressive young man with whom I’ve shared these years of bleakness and gloom—called me and said: “Today, I’m proud to be an American. We still live in a democracy.” I couldn’t remember the last time I heard anyone I respected utter those sweet and moving words.  

Ruth Rosen is a historian and journalist who formerly wrote a column for the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. She now teaches at UC Berkeley and is a senior fellow at the Longview Institute. A new edition of her book The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (Penguin, 2001) will be republished in 2007 with an updated chronology and epilogue.

The Church of the Good Shepherd, situated on the corner of Ninth Street and Hearst Avenue, was one of the first nine structures designated City of Berkeley Landmarks on Dec. 15, 1975. It is the oldest church building standing in Berkeley, as well as the oldest in continuous use by its founding congregation in the entire East Bay. 

In its earlier years, the congregation included such prominent figures as Anna Head (1857–1932), founder of the famous preparatory school for girls; H.N. Marquand, publisher and proprietor of the Berkeley Advocate; and Zimri Brewer Heywood (1803–1879), Berkeley pioneer and owner of the Heywood lumber yard. 

The building originated with a women’s sewing society, which began collecting funds in 1877 to build an Episcopal church in West Berkeley. 

It was constructed in 1878, the year in which the City of Berkeley was incorporated. The architect, Charles L. Bugbee, modeled it after the Gothic Revival Mendocino Presbyterian Church designed a decade earlier by his father’s firm, S.C. Bugbee & Sons of San Francisco. 

In 1869, S.C. Bugbee & Sons was responsible for designing the California Theatre at 430 Bush St., between Kearny and Grant in San Francisco (California State Historic Landmark 86). It cost $150,000 and was for many years the city’s leading theatre. 

Also in 1869, S.C. Bugbee & Sons designed Mills Hall for Mills Seminary (now Mills College) in Oakland. That building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

An earlier version of Oakland City Hall reputedly was one of the firm’s commissions. In 1875, Sumner Bugbee was the architect of record for Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin’s Baldwin Theatre at the corner of Market and Powell Streets, to which a hotel was added in 1877 or ’78. 

Among the palatial Nob Hill residences designed by the firm was David Colton’s neoclassical mansion (1871–72) at the top of California Street, which later passed into the hands of Collis P. Huntington, and which architect Willis Polk in the 1890s would call “the most artistic [...] dwelling in the [...] city.” 

Next came Leland Stanford’s mansion (1875–76), which the San Francisco Chronicle described at the time as “the largest private residence in the state.” It was followed by Charles Crocker’s rococo mansion (1885), situated next door to the Colton residence. 

All three mansions burned in the 1906 fire. The Crocker and Colton palaces have been replaced with Grace Cathedral and Huntington Park, respectively, while the Stanford Court Hotel now stands on the site of Leland Stanford’s Mansion. 

Sumner Bugbee’s own house at 146 Lake St. in Oakland was far more modest. In its Victorian Stick style one can detect some of the same elements that appear on the Church of the Good Shepherd. 

Reflecting its Episcopalian denomination, the Church of the Good Shepherd is considerably more ornate and playful than its severe Presbyterian model in Mendocino. Here we find Victorian ornamentation on the façade walls and decorative shingle patterns on the spire roof. 

The building appears more earth-bound and less vertical than the Mendocino church, owing not only to the wider tower but also to the shape of the windows and the treatment of the belfry. 

This small church boasts no fewer than ten stained-glass windows—two large and eight small ones. The pseudo-Gothic buttresses “supporting” the tower and the chapel are hollow wooden boxes. The eighty-foot tower contains a thousand-pound Blymer bell. 

Until 1894, the latter fulfilled the double function of church bell and fire alarm. 

The building was renovated in 1978 with a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. 

While the exterior remains virtually unchanged, a few minor alterations were made to the interior. A Guild Hall was built in 1917, and a pastor’s house shortly thereafter. These were consolidated into a Parish Hall in 1959. 

The Church of the Good Shepherd was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. On Aug. 10, 2003 it celebrated its 125th anniversary. 

On that occasion the building was renovated again, with $70,000 raised by means of a capital campaign. In addition to receiving a structural upgrade, the church was painted in a handsome color scheme that emphasizes its Victorian style. 

Ornamentation in the neo-Gothic style abounds on the Church of the Good Shepherd exterior. Photograph by Daniella Thompson

I thrashed myself but good last weekend, just doing a little lightweight gardening. 

I was just cutting back some cabbage and weeding out a lot of nastygrass and blackberry, but it did rain just a bit before that, and much of the bed we were working in is in shade.  

So I’m whacking away merrily and what the heck? 

Where’d the air go? And I’m turning blue and wheezing like a punctured accordion and coughing like a whole TB ward and never mind the more unpleasant specifics: I realized I’d got nose-deep in some allergen and it’s a nasty surprise indeed.  

That allergen was almost certainly a mildew growing on the leaves of some hapless plant. There are a slew of mildews that affect garden plants, generally a particular mildew species (or more!) for each plant species. They find happy homes here because we have damp and fog so consistently in the warm growing seasons and, being mildew, they thrive in moisture and find lots of tender sweet cells to feed on then.  

Mildews don’t feed only on those live cells, as we know. They show up indoors in our north-facing rooms, on dampish walls and windowframes, on books and clothing. 

I lost my favorite pair of boots a couple of decades ago—knee-high purple suede with fringe around the tops, and my mother, of all people, had picked them out for me—to some evil-smelling white mildew, though I’d hung them from the closet ceiling for ventilation. Sometimes this California indoor/outdoor living thing goes too far.  

Mildews aren’t plants themselves. Some of them are fungi, members of a whole different kingdom. They have cell walls like plants, but composed of chitin, like shrimp shells. Mushrooms are fungi, of course, and so are lots of less tasty and more annoying things like athlete’s foot. Strange to think of eating something related to athlete’s foot. In fact, let’s stop thinking about it right now. 

Powdery mildews are fungi; they turn up on roses, grapes, apples, oh, lots of plants. 

They don’t need moisture to grow, but they need it to reproduce, and often spread their spores via water splashes or droplets from garden “debris”—which in happier circumstances is nice nutritious mulch from last year’s fallen leaves.  

Downy mildews (or water molds) are not fungi. They’re oomycetes, as are the Phytophthora that cause sudden oak death and potato blight, and the Pythium types that cause damping-off of plant seedlings. They have cell walls too, but composed of cellulose like plants. They’re “primitive” single-celled protists.  

Downy mildews show up on grapes too—poor grapes; it’s a wonder we still have wine—and other plants, and also use water to get their young distributed, though their sexual cells are more survivalist-oriented, tough enough to stand heat and drying. 

Some downy mildews make their living from fungi and from other oomycetes. It’s a dog-eat-dog world even if you’re not a dog.  

All these kingdoms picking on me in one garden foray! So much for being the crown of creation.  

Before I ever look for a single foundation bolt there are a always a few other questions I always have about the building I’m looking at. Of course, I’m talking about earthquake readiness or seismic stability or whatever term-du-jour we’re currently using. 

Houses are not all alike in their inherent earthquake vulnerability and I’d like to bring up just a handful of special conditions that might be present in your home. Hopefully, this will get you thinking about what might have been missed (or could get missed) in the retrofitting of your house, resulting in a really big difference when the earth does the Watusi. 

Line-Wire Stucco: This is a generic term that I’m really not too fond of because it focuses on one aspect of a set of conditions that actually extend far beyond the use of line-wires. Back in the 1940’s some clever but not very smart contractors began installing stucco directly over framing without the use of any sort of backing. Building paper (usually called felt) was installed over the framing but the only other thing behind the stucco was a network of wires that were strung across the studs and stapled in place to provide a semi-rigid backing for the paper so that the wet stucco would have something to push against and wouldn’t just tear through the paper. It was minimalism (and capitalism) at it’s most profound. Prior to this period, stucco had been installed over horizontally installed boards (usually something like a 1 by 10) that would get nailed to the studs. The felt was then stapled over this, along with a metal mesh such as chicken wire to reinforce & hold the stucco in place (that last part, the chicken wire, is also used in line-wire too). 

In an earthquake, even these simple horizontal boards would provide a fair amount of shear resistance (the force that resists tearing and the resulting collapse of walls). This means that when the stucco cracked and detached, the boards would help keep the walls upright. If you take those boards away and you have a skeleton of uprights, they can easily get pushed over during an earthquake (helped enormously by whatever weight is resting upon them, such as the main floor, second story or roof). 

If you happened to have diagonal boards behind your stucco, you really lucked-out because they provide a much higher level of shear strength. You can usually see these diagonal or horizontal boards from the garage or crawl space and occasionally in an attic along one of the gable (triangular) ends. Today we almost always install stucco over plywood or a similar structural panel such as oriented strand board (OSB). OSB is made up of small pieces of wood, lots of glue and a very clever assembly that creates great strength. 

Once again, if you take the boards away and install stucco with no attachment except for a small number of nails, you may be in for lots more damage. Engineers seem always to disagree on the severity of one thing or another but there seems to be a consensus that this is far less serious in a one-story house but may be quite serious with additional stories, especially when combined with large openings such as sliding glass doors, large (or many) windows or garage openings. 

Another very similar condition involves the substitution of line-wires with soft wooden panels that have just enough rigidity to throw the wet stucco against without breakage. Celotex made most of the material I’ve seen and it’s so soft that you can push a pencil through without much effort. This looks like you’ve got some bracing but, in fact, it’s really about the same as the wires alone. It did provide a little insulation but may increase flammability due to its soft pithy makeup. 

If you have a house like this (either line-wire or soft backing panels), it’s best to talk to an engineer. You may want to add some extra bracing. 

Another common condition that I occasionally see is the all-glass house of the 50’s. Glass is not a structural material and if you have a lot of glass around the exterior of your house, you don’t have much shear resistance and that’s a bad thing. While there are numerous solutions to this vulnerability, it’s important to retrofit these houses. I fear that some of our “architect designed” beauties of the 50’s and 60’s will end up either fully collapsed or at best, so badly damaged that escape may be impossible. A house like this can be retrofitted by a clever engineer so it’s important to look into it. 

Eichlers fall into this category too. They’re the very modular looking homes from the 1950’s through the 70’s that have lots of floor-to-ceiling glass, stone fireplaces and simple wood panels. Though a popular “retro” style, these houses are likely to be seriously damaged in a moderate to large local earthquake. 

Wooden houses tend to perform really well in earthquakes if they’re effectively connected to their foundations but the more you remove the wooden walls, the weaker they get. 

Any house that has a lot of holes punched through the exterior walls (windows, doors, garages) tends to get pretty floppy. Since earthquake shear forces are greatest at the bottom of the structure, where the ground is trying to shake the house free (imagine a dog shaking off a flea), any big holes near the base become places for the walls to tear and begin the deformation that eventually can lead to a collapse (partial or complete). 

Imagine you’re sitting on a nice new thick cardboard box. You can sort of shift around and it stays pretty solid. Now cut some holes for windows. When you shift around you’ll start tears at corners of your windows and pretty soon, you’re beautiful house is suffering from an identity crisis. If you cut holes near the very bottom, this happens faster and collapse occurs quicker. 

Step outside your home and consider it as if it were the cardboard box. Consider every door, window, garage opening or other medium to large penetration as a big hole cut in the box. Chimneys are included (in addition to the fact that they’re the first things to come down) because they are often installed over framing without the benefit of wood planking or structural panels behind them. If you can visualize well, you may also note that one or more sides are weaker than the rest.  

One such case that I often see is a building with garage openings all across one side (usually the front). These are, of course at the base and constitute one of the most serious earthquake weakness we see. This is called a soft-story and means that there is almost no resistance to tearing or collapse on that side. Many multi-unit buildings feature this unfortunate element and, once again, an engineer really ought to be consulted since a) it can mean a very nasty event and b) it’s avoidable with the proper alterations.  

I remember so clearly that in 1989, when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit the Marina district in San Francisco, one of the primary images that poured over TV screens again and again was that of multi-story apartment buildings that had collapsed over their front garages. 

There are more special conditions that merit attention including steep hillsides (which change the dynamics of movement in the house), brick walls (as well as other masonry building materials), the soil type you’re resting upon and the weight of your roof. The list really gets sort of ridiculous. I don’t mean to make this unduly complex but it’s actually … complex. 

Nonetheless, the basic principle does work. If your house has a lot of “holes” (windows, doors or garages) or if your house lacks inherent bracing (as in the case of line-wire stucco), it’s more likely to get wanked out of shape when our big one hits. So what do you do? Get professional help, sleep later on Saturday and eat more ice cream. That’s about as helpful as I can get. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.

TUESDAY, NOV. 21 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Basil De Pinto and Kevin Kelly will read selections from the works of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai at 7:30 p.m. at the Gibson Center, Corpus Christi Church, 322 St. James Dr. at Park Blvd., Piedmont. 530-4343. 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Motordude Zydeco, Gerard Landry & the Lariats and Andrew Carriere & the Cajun All Stars in a benefit for RC Carrier at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10-$20 sliding scale. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ellen Hoffman and Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

PhilipsMarine Duo at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Head Royce School Jazz Bands at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 22 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Valerie Troutt & Ya Jazz Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $TBA. 841-JAZZ.  

Bio-Bluegrass with Three Mile Grade and Barefoot Nellies in a benefit for the Sierra Club at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15-$25. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Orquestra La Verdad at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Blue & Tan, with bassist Vicky Grossi at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Tracy Grammer, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Jacqui Naylor at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200.  

THURSDAY, NOV. 23 

THANKSGIVING 

FRIDAY, NOV. 24 

CHILDREN 

“Little Nemo in Circusland” at 7 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $8-$14. 925-798-1300.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Whitework Embroidery” at Lacis Museum of Lace and Textiles, 2982 Adeline St. Runs through Feb. 5. Hours are Mon.-Sat. noon to 6 p.m. Free. lacismuseum.org 

“The Black Panthers” Photographs by Stephen Shames and posters from the archives of Alden Kimbrough on display at the Oakland Asian Resource Gallery, 310 8th St., Oakland., through Nov. 30. 532-9692. 

The Photography of Matt Heron “Voting Rights: The Southern Struggle, 1964-1965” on display in the Catalog Lobby, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., through Jan. 6. 981-6100. 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre “Ice Glen” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Dec. 10. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Azeem’s “Rude Boy” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at The Marsh, 2120 Allston Way, through Nov. 25. Tickets are $15-$22. 415-826-5750. www.themarsh.org 

Contra Costa Civic Theater, “And Then There Were None” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., at Moeser, El Cerrito, through Dec. 9. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132.  

Impact Theater “Jukebox Stories” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Dec. 10. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Masquers Playhouse “Company” by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through Dec. 16.. Tickets are $18. 232-4031.  

Women’s Will “Week 2” Eight short plays, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sinn. at 3 p.m. at Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St., Oakland. Tickets $15-$25. 420-0813. www.womanswill.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Golden Dragon Acrobats Fri. at 8 p.m., Sat. at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sun. at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $11-$42. 642-9988.  

Stompy Jones at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Shana Morrison, Celtic funk and roll, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Ellen Honert Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Masha at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

somethingfour, Cosmic Mercy, Race at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. 

Re: Ignition, Holy Ghost Circuit, Alexic, 3606 at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

Stanley at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Tuck & Patti at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, NOV. 25 

CHILDREN 

Elmwood Theater Matinee Benefit for local schools showing “Robots” at 10 a.m. and noon, and noon on Sun. Cost is $2. Sponsored by Elmwood merchants. 843-3794. 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Select Paintings of Anthony Holdsworth” Reception with the artist Sat. and Sun. fron noon to 5 p.m. at 351 Lewis St., Oakland. www.anthonyholdsworth.com 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Joyce Maynard, Jane Meredith Adams, Meg Waite Clayton on “Searching for Mary Poppins: Women Write About the Intense Relationship Between Mothers and Nannies” at 4 p.m. at Mrs. Dalloways, 2904 College Ave. 704-8222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Yancie Taylor & the Jazztet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ.  

West African Highlife Band at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054.  

Laurie Lewis & Tom Rozum, bluegrass, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

The Ravines at 8 p.m. at Kensington Circus Pub, 389 Colusa Ave., Kensington. 524-8814. 

The Mad Maggies, Los Diablos at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. All ages show. Cost is $8. 841-2082.  

Benefit for the Ford Street Studio Fire Sun Kings, Bombay Cruisers, Gunpowder at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $10. 451-8100.  

Eddie Marshall Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Rebecca Griffin, jazz, at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Sonando Quintet An Afro-Carib 

bean Tribute to Stevie Wonder at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Ghoul, Stormcrow, Arise, Hatchet at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 26 

CHILDREN 

Asheba at Ashkenaz at 3 p.m. Cost is $4-$6. 525-5054.  

“Little Nemo in Circusland” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. Tickets are $8-$14. 925-798-1300.  

EXHIBITIONS 

Berkeley Arts Center Annual Members’ Showcase Opening reception at 2 p.m. at 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. Exhibition runs to Dec. 21. 644-6893.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Poetry Flash with Alfred Arteaga and Joel Barraquiel Tan at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Brazilian Soul at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $9. 841-JAZZ.  

Phillips Marine Duo at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Bluehouse at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. 

MONDAY, NOV. 27 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

ParaSpheres, readings from the anthology with Michael Moorcock at 7:30 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Daniel Levitin on “Your Brain on Music: The Science of an Obsession” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

Poetry Express Between the holidays erotic poetry night at 7 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. 644-3977. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Khalil Shaheed, all ages jam, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Roger Linn and Bruce Zweig, at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave. 548-5198.  

Blue Monday Blues Jam at 7:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

West Coast Songwriters Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $5. 548-1761. 

Wayne Wallace at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$12. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

MATINEE SCREENINGS TO BENEFIT SCHOOLS 

A matinee benefit for local schools will be held Saturday at the Elmwood Theate with screenings of Robots at 10 a.m. and noon. Robots was created by the same folks who made Ice Age and features the voices of Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Books, Amanda Bynes, Drew Carey and Robin Williams.. $2. Sponsored by Elmwood merchants. 2966 College Ave. 843-3794.  

‘RUDE BOY’ CONTINUES AT THE MARSH 

Azeem’s one-man show, Rude Boy, continues its run at The Marsh Berkeley through Saturday. The solo performance consists of a string of vignettes that make up a loosely episodic tale told with humor and insight. For a review of the show, see the Daily Planet’s Nov. 14 edition. 2120 Allston Way. $15-$22. (415) 826-5750.www.themarsh.org. 

POETRY FROM THE MIDDLE EAST 

Basil De Pinto and Kevin Kelly will read selections from the works of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai at 7:30 p.m. at the Gibson Center, Corpus Christi, 322 St. James Drive at Park Boulevard.

Eisa Davis—actor, playwright, singer and songwriter—has returned to her hometown, performing at Berkeley Rep as The Mother in rock singer Stew’s play, Passing Strange. Her own play, Bulrushers, about a visitor from Montgomery, Ala., to the Mendocino County town of Boonville on the eve of the Civil Rights Movement, will be produced next year by the Shotgun Players. 

“I was born at Alta Bates; I’m a native all the way to the ground,” said Davis, talking about her early influences, which led her to performing and writing in New York. “My parents and grandparents believed in a well-rounded education, and understood the importance of the arts. Not that the arts were a way to get you better at math, but to help you to understand other people, that creativity leads to compassion.” 

Davis recalled how her mother would play music “at the crack of dawn—jazz, salsa, African music,” and the love of both literature and live performance she received from both mother and grandmother. She studied classical piano, with some lessons in jazz from an accompanist of Pharoah Sanders, a friend of her mother’s. 

Her start in “seeing and being a part of plays” came with student-run productions at Berkeley High, learning “an expanded idea of what theater could be, as well as the value of plays outside the classroom, helping to understand life ... I was in a little playwrights’ circle, and had friends who weren’t theater people, but were interested. Peers influenced me.” 

She also credits the UC Young Musicians’ program, which “gave us everything, from the bus tickets to get there to a chorus for everybody to sing in. And everybody sang and played piano. There was emphasis on rhythm and composition. Some of the Berkeley High Jazz Band members were there with us. There was a weekly concert to perform—then afterwards, we swam.” 

Yet Davis wasn’t stagestruck.  

“I didn’t think of it as a career,” she said, “But when I got to college, I’d sing and play just to write my own songs. I at least wanted to try.”  

Though performing had been something she’d done “since I was 6, in little livingroom shows,” she didn’t start “acting in earnest” until grad school. In the meantime, Davis had worked at LA’s Mark Taper Forum, in particular with playwright and solo performer Anna Devere Smith, and interviewed artists for a hip-hop magazine.  

The big step to a career awaited her back east, where she attended Harvard and enrolled in The Actors Studio at The New School in New York. 

“West and East Coast cultures are so different!” she said, “And New York is its own place.”  

Davis credits the “idealism and excitement over what we could accomplish--could we alter theater?” as the spur for cofounding a theater company with classmates, “an offshoot of school,” which eventually “crashed and burned, as companies can do easily.” 

Still, working with “the personalities, politics and aesthetics--and learning from failures” in a group context enabled her to “take ideals into the New York scene, the industry at large,” where she’s forged a journeyman career in theater, film and TV. 

“I still think the best way to create theater is with an ensemble,” she said. 

She performs with a vibrant ensemble in Passing Strange, gracefully a standout in the most grounded role in the play. 

“Everybody’s so gifted,” she said. “We all look forward to going onstage, not knowing what will happen! I’m even singing offstage at one point We’re as wild and satirical as Stew lets us be. Our input is heard as it goes along. After we’re done here, it’s back into rehearsal, then the run at the Public Theater in New York. We’ve created the kind of ensemble I’ve dreamed of working in.” 

The more personal side of her career, writing plays and performing her own dramatic and musical material, has brought her back to Berkeley as well, with her autobiographical solo show Angela’s Mixtape at La Pena last year, another appearance there a month back with a band—and next year’s production of Bulrushers by Shotgun. 

“I grew up around the corner from where the Ashby Stage is now,” Davis said. “I’m excited my old neighborhood’s the subject of Love is a Dream House in Lorin. Marcus Gardley, the playwright, is from Oakland and a colleague at New Dramatists, and Aaron Davidman, the director, I saw him play Mack The Knife with Traveling Jewish Theatre. Shotgun’s produced other colleagues of mine, too, like Adam Bock and Liz Duffy Adams.” 

Davis is also the niece of author and activist Angela Davis, the namesake for her solo show.  

“She’d make mixtapes for me of the music I heard at her house, especially vocal jazz,” she said. “In the biggest way, she influenced me as an artist. She’s the one in my family who discovered Mendocino, so she helped create Bulrushers. Her book on blues, of how cultural production had an impact on society and the way we conceive of ourselves and each other really affected me. 

“Angela and my mother have been involved in Civil Rights, my mother as an attorney, now fighting academic and corporate discrimination,” Davis continued. “I’ve had to ask myself what I wanted to do with my life; is being an artist selfish? But I’ve realized the work I’m doing comes from experiencing others, creating characters people haven’t seen, telling stories that allow us to conceive of ourselves differently. My inspiration comes from their bravery and consistancy of principle in ending oppression—and we do that in whatever arena we’re in.” 

Eisa Davis, with Daniel Breaker, in Passing Strange, a musical now making its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre before heading to New York City. Photograph by Kevin Berne.

As part of an extraordinary daily regimen for the theatrical palate, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 Days/365 Plays national theater project, which will run the 365 plays Parks wrote in 2002 over the coming year all around the country, was inaugurated in San Francisco last week—and will be continued throughout the year in the Bay Area, Weeks Two and Four produced by East Bay companies Woman’s Will and Ten Red Hen.  

Week two of 365 will be staged by Woman’s Will (in all-female shows) Nov. 24-28 at the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, 1616 Franklin St. (near the 19th Street BART; 420-0813 or www.womanswill.org). 

During week four, Ten Red Hen will be appearing in different private homes, including an artist’s loft in Fruitvale on Thursday, Dec. 7 (with a special play, The Carpet Cleaner On Pearl Harbor Day, included) and Sat. Dec. 9 at a co-housing community in Berkeley. Venue addresses will be provided with reservations through Ten Red Hen (547-8932 or www.tenredhen.net). All shows are Pay-What-You-Will. 

“We’ve been looking for an excuse to do something by Suzan-Lori Parks for a long time,” said Erin Merritt, founder of Woman’s Will, best-known for their all-female productions of Shakespeare in Bay Area parks, but also producers of site-specific shows of Oscar Wilde and a Brecht/Weill musical. “I heard about this, wanted to know how to get involved—and we got an invitation.” 

“All of the plays are complete events in themselves,” said Maya Guarantz of Ten Red Hen, who also directed one of the pieces for Woman’s Will, “and they reveal a bone-deep understanding of the theatrical moment. Some are abstract; all are very stageable.”  

True to their mission, Woman’s Will employs several female directors (Merritt, Guarantz, Carla Spindt, Tessa Koning-Martinez, Molly Noble, Keiko Shimosato, JoAnne Winter) and an all-women ensemble to put on the plays of week two. 

“A lot of interesting directors,” remarked Merritt. “It’s nice to work with other directors. I never get to do that. When I see how a piece is going, I think ‘Wonderful! I wouldn’t have done it that way!’ And the actors haven’t worked with each other before; they’re excited about that. There’s more there for everybody, both in the company and in the audience. The project was set up by the author for the companies staging it to put it on any way they wanted, staged readings or played in a BART station. And it lets us put all our heads together, asking ‘What if we do this?’ The actors get the same freedom, too, which isn’t usual. It’s like the annual playfest we have, when writers and actors have a day to put something together, see what they can come up with. When you experiment like this, concentrating more on the challenge, the fun of it—the real reason people do theater—it’s as much fun to watch as it is to do.” 

Ten Red Hen’s also right on their own mission, producing collaboratively, as an ensemble, no designated director. 

“The different weeks often have different logic, different play structures,” said Guarantz. “In week two ‘New, innovative, old, has-been’ seem to crop up; in week four, it’s more like war, different wars ... we end on a battlefield conversation between Napoleon and Wellington, with Jane Chen playing Napoleon, wearing hats and swords that will be made of that day’s newspaper. You can see the author’s different obsessions and how she works them out.” 

And there’s a festive side to all of it, especially during the holiday season, that each troupe works out for itself, too. 

“We think of the audience as our family,” said Merritt, “and hope they’ll think of us as part of theirs. Since it’s on Thanksgiving weekend, we hope people bring their families. There’s a limited, optional audience participation at the end before our reception, when everybody can meet everyone else in that room and share together.” 

Guarantz agreed: “And it’s a celebration of the American theater community. We never get together like this—Ten Red Hen and ACT [who’ll produce a week of the project] never get to hang out! Big and little companies, joining in collaboration ...” 

The sense of audience engagement runs high as well. 

“Until the 20th century, the arts were participatory,” Merritt said. “There was no amateur, professional—it was everybody sitting around the piano. What people don’t like about theater is not participating; they don’t always realize that the energy in the room is part of it.” 

“It’s important to remember that theater is 365 days a year,” Guarantz emphasized, “Every day, for many of us. It may seem like a rarefied form, but it’s an elemental urge in all of us. That’s why we’re celebrating this in people’s homes.” 

A full Bay Area schedule for Suzan-Lori Parks’ 365 Days/365 Plays at www.zspace.org/365schedule.htm. 

You may have noticed last month that the Ig Nobel laureates for 2006 included Ivan Schwab, a professor of ophthalmology at UC Davis, recognized for his explanation of why woodpeckers don’t get headaches. 

The Ig Nobels are bestowed for the year’s most dubious contributions to science (and sometimes other fields: last year’s literature prize went to the collective authors of the Nigerian Prisoner Scam email and all its variations). 

Other winners included studies of why the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard is irritating, why dry spaghetti breaks into multiple fragments when you bend it, and whether mosquitoes are more attracted to human feet or Limburger cheese. In previous years, research on how herring communicate by farting and the fluid dynamics of swimming in syrup has been honored.  

Schwab, who accepted the award wearing a red-crested, beaked headdress and a tux, was actually piggybacking on the work of the late Philip May of UCLA. 

May’s articles on the anatomy and physiology of the pileated woodpecker had appeared in scholarly journals like The Lancet; Schwab just summarized May’s findings in his monthly column for the British Journal of Ophthalmology, in which he has covered such topics as how kingfishers spot fish underwater and why the eyes of goats have slit pupils.  

So why don’t woodpeckers get headaches? By all rights they should, considering the beating their heads take. May calculated that a pileated woodpecker, which is about crow-sized, may strike a tree trunk at a rate up to 20 times a second up to 12,000 times a day, with a 1200 g force on each impact. This would be roughly equivalent to hitting a wall face first at 16 miles an hour. Few of us could take 12,000 repetitions of that sort of thing. 

But then we’re not built like woodpeckers. The bird has a thick skull with spongy cartilage at the base of its beak to absorb the force of all that hammering. The mandibles—the upper and lower jaws—are attached to the skull by strong muscles that contract a millisecond before each blow, creating further cushioning. 

The muscles also divert the force of the impact to the base and rear of the skull, bypassing the brain. 

Each hammer blow is a perfect perpendicular stroke, without the torsion that might tear the membrane enclosing the brain or cause concussion. 

A pileated woodpecker also has a relatively small brain for a bird its size. The small ratio of brain weight to brain surface area allows the force of an impact to spread over a larger area, further reducing the risk of concussion. 

I don’t know whether the small-brain principle also holds for the smaller woodpeckers—the downy, the hairy, the acorn, the Nuttall’s—which are also dedicated headbangers.  

According to Schwab, high-speed photography of a woodpecker in action shows that the bird closes the nictitating membrane—the so-called “third eyelid”—over each eye in those pre-strike milliseconds. 

He speculates that this may serve to restrain the eyes from literally popping out of the woodpecker’s head, in addition to providing protection from flying debris. In addition, the pecten, a ridged portion of the eyelid, fills with blood to increase pressure on the lens and retina during the strike, apparently preventing retinal detachment. 

Then there’s the tongue. It’s not clear whether this extraordinary organ acts as a supplemental shock absorber, but clearly Schwab could not resist describing it: “The tongue is most unusual as it originates on the dorsum of the maxilla, passes through the right nostril, between the eyes, divides in two, arches over the superior portion of the skull and around the occiput passing on either side of the neck, coming forward through the lower mandible, and uniting into a single tongue in the oropharyngeal cavity.” Sorry about the anatomical Latin. 

“Through the right nostril” is my favorite part of the tongue’s itinerary, and I would like to hear some advocate of Intelligent Design venture an explanation of all this.  

What this Rube Goldbergian anatomy does is allow the woodpecker to extend its tongue up to 4 inches beyond the tip of its bill (and remember, we’re dealing with a crow-sized bird). This enables it to get at insects lurking deep under the bark of trees. 

The tip of the tongue is further equipped with sticky saliva to which ants adhere and backward-pointing barbs for impaling beetle grubs and other larger insects.  

All well enough, but it appears to me that the question of woodpecker headaches remains open. 

A headache is a subjective kind of thing, and I’m not sure—barring brain scans on an active woodpecker—we can know for certain whether the birds suffer headaches as an occupational hazard or not. It’s up to some enterprising graduate student to pick up the torch from Dr. May.

TUESDAY, NOV. 21 

Tuesday is for the Birds An early morning walk for birders through Martin Luther King-Arrowhead Marsh. Bring water, sunscreen, binoculars and a snack. For meeting location or to borrow binoculars, call 525-2233.  

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds, at 3:15 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Berkeley Garden Club with Ann Leyhe of Mrs. Dalloways Bookstore speaking on “Great Garden Books and Resources” at 2 p.m. at Epworth Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 845-4482. 

“Winessing Palestine” a report back by Katie Mirand and Jonas Moffat on their work with the Tel Rumeida Circus for Detained Palestinians at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowhip Hall, 1924 Cedar St. 415-503-7630. 

“Natural Solutions to Eliminate Pain” with Dr. Jay Sordean, LAc at 1:15 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

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

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Discussion Salon on End of Life Compassion at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut.  

“Complimentary Interventions for Treatment of Pain and Stress” with Dr. Michael Rodevich, Clinical Neuropsychologist and Bioifeedback Trainer at noon in the Maffly Auditorium, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Herrick Campus, 2001 Dwight Way. 644-3273. 

Handbuilding Ceramics Class from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. John’s Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Free, except for materials and firing charges. For information call 525-5497. 

Albany Library Homework Center is open from 3 to 5 p.m., Tues. and Thurs. for students in third through fifth grades. Emphasis is placed on math and writing skills. No registration is required. 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720 ext 17. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 22  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Music in the Community Fundraiser from 6 to 10 p.m. at Kimball’s Carnival, 522 Second St., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$15. 444-6979. 

Myers-Briggs for Mothers A workshop to understand your child’s temperment, at 7 p.m. at Epic Arts Studio, 1923 Ashby Ave. Registration required. 266-2069.  

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, NOV. 23 

Annual Food Not Bombs Dinner from 2 to 5 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Free. Please bring a vegetarian dish and a thank you to share. 525-5054.  

Spare the Turkey Vegan Potluck at 4 p.m. at 1606 Bonita, Berkeley Unitarian Universalists Recreation Center. Donation $3-$12. RSVP to 562-9934. 

FRIDAY, NOV. 24 

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

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

SATURDAY, NOV. 25 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SUNDAY, NOV. 26 

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

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

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

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

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

MONDAY, NOV. 27 

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

ONGOING 

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

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

CITY MEETINGS 

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

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

FRIDAY, NOV. 17 

THEATER 

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley “Hedda Gabler” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. through Nov. 18 at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave. at Berryman. Tickets are $12. 525-1620. www.aeofberkeley.org 

Aurora Theatre “Ice Glen” Wed.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2 and 7 p.m. at 2081 Addison St., through Dec. 10. Tickets are $38. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

Azeem’s “Rude Boy” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at The Marsh, 2120 Allston Way, through Nov. 25. Tickets are $15-$22. 415-826-5750. www.themarsh.org 

Berkeley Rep “Passing Strange” at the Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison St. through Dec. 3. Tickets are $45-$61. 645-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org 

Central Works “Andromache” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 5 p.m. at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. through Nov. 19. Tickets are $9-$25. 558-1382. 

Contra Costa Civic Theater, “And Then There Were None” Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m. Sun. at 2 p.m. at 951 Pomona Ave., at Moeser, El Cerrito, through Dec. 9. Tickets are $11-$18. 524-9132. www.ccct.org 

Impact Theater “Jukebox Stories” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid Ave., through Dec. 10. Tickets are $10-$15. 464-4468. www.impacttheatre.com 

Masquers Playhouse “Company” by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, Fri. and Sat. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 2:30 p.m. at 105 Park Place, Point Richmond, through Dec. 16. Tickets are $18. 232-4031. www.masquers.org  

TheatreFirst “Criminal Genius” Thurs.-Fri. at 8 p.m., Sun. at 3 p.m. at Old Oakland Theatre, 481 Ninth St., at Broadway, Oakland, through Nov. 19. Tickets are $19-$25. 436-5085. www.theatrefirst.com 

UC Dept. of Theater “Suburban Motel” six plays by George Walker at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Campus, through Nov. 19. Tickets are $8-$14. For schedule see http://theater.berkeley.edu 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Living Dreams in a Dying Village” A documentary exhibit about children affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic in central China. Receptions at 3:30 and 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley High School, Building C, 2nd Flr. 486-1221. 

FILM 

“Dog Day Afternoon” Shot-by shot analysis with screenwriter Frank Pierson at 7 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

“Poeta del Guaran” at 6:30 p.m. and “La Sagrada Familia” at 8:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $6-$8 for each film. 849-2568.  

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Panel Discussion on Adoption with authors Micky Duxbury, and Susan Ito at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

University Chorus performs “Elijah” by Mendelssohn at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-9988. http://music.berkeley.edu 

San Francisco City Chorus performs Mendelssohn’s St. Paul Oratorio at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way. Tickets are $15-$20. 415-701-SONG. www.sfcitychorus.org 

The Jack Gates Trio, jazz, Brazilian and popular music at 7:30 p.m. at A Cheerfull Noyse, 1228 Solano Ave., Albany. Donations accepted. 524-0411. 

V Neck, Ross Hammond on guitar and Tom Monson on drums, at 8 p.m. at 1510 8th St., Oakland. Donation $5-$15. sfjazzmusic@yahoo.com 

Lua Hadar & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Reggae Angels at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $11-$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

John Gorka, songcrafter, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Bill Bell Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

The Freys at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Everest, The Parties, Praba & the Substitutes at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Jason Webley, Jherek & Alex Sprouts, The Pastries, Shakey Bones at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $7. 525-9926. 

Ashkon, hip hop, urban at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 548-1159.  

Beatropolis at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Partyline, Dinky Bits at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

Hubert Laws at 8 and 10 p.m., through Sun. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $14-$26. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, NOV. 18 

CHILDREN  

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Orange Sherbert at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Asheba, calypso music and stroytelling, at 11 a.m. at Studio Grow, 1235 10th St. at Gilman Cost is $6, children under 1 free. 526-9888.  

EXHIBITIONS 

“Harvest Works” Karl Reichley’s paintings and sculptures. Reception at 6 p.m. at Giorgi Gallery, 2911 Claremont Ave. Exhibit runs to Nov. 30. 848-1228. 

“Miniatures, Works of Limited Size” opens with a reception at 7 p.m. at Fourth Street Studios, 1717D Fourth St., and runs through Dec. 24. 527-0600. 

FILM 

“Cool Hand Luke” with screenwriter Frank Pierson in person at 6:30 p.m. and “Cat Ballou” at 9:15 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Lee Tanner on “Masters of Jazz Photography” at 8 p.m. at the Jazzschool. Cost is $10. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Flauti Diversi “Classical Rhapsody” Quartets by CPE Bach and Mozart, at 8 p.m. at Music Sources, 1000 The Alameda, at Marin. Reservations recommended. Tickets are $15-$18. 527-9840. 

Chora Nova “Treasures of Michale Haydn” at 8 p.m. at First Congregational Church, Dana and Durant. Tickets are $15-$20. www.choranova.org 

Trinity Chamber Concerts Music of Aaron Blumenfeld with Pamela Hicks, soprano and John D. Frederick, baritone, at 8 p.m. at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St. Tickets are $8-$12. 549-3864. www.trinitychamberconcerts.com 

Berkeley Broadway Singers “Music from the Movies” at 8 p.m. at St. Ambrose Church, 1145 Gilman St. 604-5732. www.berkeleybroadwaysingers.org 

San Francisco Taiko Dojo at 7 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $32-$46. 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu 

“The Music Party” Song, dance and poetry at 7 p.m. at Unitarian Universalist Church, 1 Lawson Rd., Kensington. Cost is $15-$20. 525-0302. 

Works in the Works Dance performance by St. Mary’s College Dance Company, Davalos Dance Company at 7:30 p.m. at Eighth Street Studio, 2424 Eighth St. Tickets are $10 at the door. 527-5115. 

Kirtan: Jagadambe at 8 p.m. at Studio Rasa, 933 Parker St. Cost is $16-$18. 843-2787. 

Linda Tillery & The Cultural Heritage Choir at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Robin Gregory & Her Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Haitian Vertieres Day Celebration with Kalbasskreyol and Rasine Bambou at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Kompa dance lesson at 8:30 p.m. Cost is $12-15. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Crooked Roads and Zac Cahn at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

John Gorka, songcrafter, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $22.50-$23.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Maya Kronfeld Trio at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Kurt Ribak at 9:30 p.m. at Albatross, 1822 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $3. 843-2473. www.albatrosspub.com 

Mark Lemaire with Elaine Kreston at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7-$10. 558-0881. 

Matthew Hansen Band, The Trenchermen, The Inversions at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. All ages show. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

The Living Remix at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

Sarah Manning Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Babyland, Replicator at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 19 

EXHIBITIONS 

The Photography of Matt Heron Artist talk by the civil rights photojournalist on his work covering the struggle for voting rights in the South, at 2 p.m. in the Community Meeting Room, Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

Berkeley Arts Center Annual Members’ Showcase opens at 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park, and runs through Dec. 21. 644-6893. www.berkeleyartcenter.org 

“Wild About Birds” mixed media paintings Rita Sklar. Reception at 4 p.m. in the Foyer Gallery of the Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany. Exhibition runs to Feb. 16. 524-9283. www.ritasklar.com 

Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle Guided tour at 2 p.m. in Gallery 2, Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. 

THEATER 

Wilde Irish Productions “Beckett Centennial Celebration” with staged readings of his work at 2 p.m. at Berkeley City Club Library, 2315 Durant Ave. Free, but reservations suggested. 644-9940. www.wildeirish.org 

FILM 

Yiddish Films “Letter to Mother” at 3 p.m. at the JCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

“King of Gypsies” with director Frank Pierson in person at 5:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Riches, Rivals and Radicals: 100 Years of Museums in America” A talk and film screening with Marjorie Schwarzer at 2 p.m. at the Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St. Cost is $6-$8. 549-6950. 

Poetry Flash presents a reading for 26 Magazine with Kit Robinson, Sarah Rosenthal and Todd Melicker at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

St. Mark’s Choir Association, Music of Arvo Part: Berliner Messe, at 10 a.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way. 845-0888. 

Prometheus Symphony Orchestra at 3 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 116 Montecito, Oakland. Admission free, donations requested. www.prometheussymphony.org  

Contra Costa Chorale and Octangle Wind Octet at 7 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, One Lawson Rd., Kensington. Tickets are $12.50-$15. 527-2026. 

“The Bringer of Light” Early Scandinavian Yuletide Music and Nordic Folk Music at 7:30 p.m. at Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar St. Tickets at the door are $12-$15. 486-2803. 

“Jazz at the Chimes” with vocalist Kenny Washington at 2 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland. Tickets are $10, children under 12 free. 228-3218.  

Paul Arnoldi, folk and western, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Feminina & Cerro Negro/Brasil at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

“Thangs Taken” Rethinking Thanksgiving, A People’s Holiday event with poetry, music, visual art and hip hop at 7 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $15. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Works in the Works Dance performance by St. Mary’s College Dance Company, Davalos Dance Company at 7:30 p.m. at Eighth Street Studio, 2424 Eighth St. Tickets are $10 at the door. 527-5115. 

New Life Band, African drum beats, at 7:30 p.m. with community potluck at 5 p.m. at Lutheran Church of the Cross, 1744 University Ave. 848-1424. 

Gabriela Frank, music of the Americas, at 4:30 at the Jazzschool. Cost is $12. 845-5373. www.jazzschool.com 

Flamenco Open Stage at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Montara Mountain Boys at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Demonstrations, The Slits, Tussle at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $15. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

MONDAY, NOV. 20 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Journeys East: Patterns of Collecting” Art and artifacts from North Africa, India and the former Ottoman Empire on display at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St., through May 7, 2007. 549-6950. www.magnes.org 

“Through the Eye of the Needle: Fabric Art of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz” opens at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, 2911 Russell St., through Feb. 11, 2007. 549-6950. www.magnes.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

PlayGround Six emerging playwrights debut new works at 8 p.m. at Berkeley Repertory Theater, 2025 Addison St. Tickets are $18. 415-704-3177. www.PlayGround-sf.org 

Thomas Pynchon’s “Against the Day” Countdown to the release from 9:30 p.m. to midnight at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Poetry Express with Lucy Lang Day and Chas from Los Angeles at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players at 8 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $4-$12. 642-9988. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Berkeley Broadway Singers “Music from the Movies” at 4 p.m. at St. Augustine’s Church, 400 Alcatraz Ave. 604-5732. www.berkeleybroadwaysingers.org 

Blue Monday Blues Jam at 7:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

Khalil Shaheed, all ages jam, at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Ben Goldberg Group at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $6-$10. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com  

TUESDAY, NOV. 21 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Basil De Pinto and Kevin Kelly will read selections from the works of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai at 7:30 p.m. at the Gibson Center, Corpus Christi Church, 322 St. James Dr. at Park Blvd., Piedmont. 530-4343. 

Freight and Salvage Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $4.50-$5.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Motordude Zydeco, Gerard Landry & the Lariats and Andrew Carriere & the Cajun All Stars in a benefit for RC Carrier at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cajun dance lesson at 8 p.m. Cost is $10-$20 sliding scale. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ellen Hoffman and Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

PhilipsMarine Duo at 7:30 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Head Royce School Jazz Bands at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$20. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

Jazzschool Tuesdays, a weekly showcase of up-and-coming ensembles from Berkeley Jazzschool at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 22 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik and Three Blind Mice, at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082 www.starryploughpub.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Valerie Troutt & Ya Jazz Quartet at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $TBA. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Bio-Bluegrass with Three Mile Grade and Barefoot Nellies in a benefit for the Sierra Club at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15-$25. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Orquestra La Verdad at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Blue & Tan, with bassist Vicky Grossi at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Tracy Grammer, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jacqui Naylor at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$14. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

THURSDAY, NOV. 23 

THANKSGIVING

PHOTOGRAPHING THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 

Civil rights photojournalist Matt Heron will discuss his work covering the struggle for voting rights in the South at 2 p.m. Sunday in the Community Meeting Room of the Berkeley Public Library at 2090 Kittredge St. 981-6100. 

100 YEARS OF  

SAMUEL BECKETT  

Wilde Irish Productions will host the Beckett Centennial Celebration, an afternoon of staged readings from the writer’s works at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Berkeley City Club Library, 2315 Durant Ave. Admission is free, but reservations are strongly suggested. 644-9940. www.wildeirish.org. 

CLOSELY WATCHED FILMS AT PFA 

Screenwriter Frank Pierson will lead a shot-by-shot analysis and discussion of Dog Day Afternoon (Sidyney Lumiere, 1975) at 7 p.m. Friday at Pacific Film Archive. The discussion is part of PFA’s “Closely Watched Films” series in which Pierson will discuss several of his works, including Cool Hand Luke (Stuart Rosenberg, 1967) at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965) at 9:15 p.m. Saturday, and The King of the Gypsies (1978), which Pierson directed himself, at 5:30 p.m. Sunday. 2575 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. 

NEEDLEPOINT ARTWORK AT MAGNES MUSEUM 

“Through the Eye of the Needle: Fabric Art of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz” opens Monday and runs through Feb. 11 at the Judah L. Magnes Museum at 2911 Russell St.549-6950. www.magnes.org.

The San Francisco Symphony is taking a lighter turn for the Thanksgiving holiday, presenting guest conductor David Robertson leading the orchestra in a performance of Charlie Chaplin’s score to his 1931 film City Lights.  

Robertson has a reputation for eclecticism, bringing a diverse range of interests to his position as conductor of the St. Louis Symphony. His talent and varied interests have been credited for the revitalization of the orchestra after a troubled few years that featured a brush with bankruptcy and dissolution, the untimely death of conductor Hans Von and a labor dispute that resulted in a work stoppage in 2005.  

Robertson, a relatively young conductor at the age 47, is proving to be something of a hot commodity, a much sought-after guest conductor who has brought his expansive repertoire—from the great international masters to the lowly slapstick comedians of early Hollywood—to a series of concerts around the country. 

Charlie Chaplin is not often thought of as a music man, but Robertson has long been a champion of the comedian’s musical talents, conducting the St. Louis Symphony in presentations of several of Chaplin’s scores, including The Idle Class, City Lights and The Kid. As in the case of the San Francisco concerts, the scores are usually performed as accompaniment to the films themselves. In St. Louis, they’ve even sold popcorn in the lobby.  

Chaplin’s City Lights is perhaps his best feature film, with one of the most moving and poignant closing shots ever filmed. But what gets lost in the haze of hagiography is that City Lights was a daring and controversial project. The movies had begun to talk, quickly banishing the silent filmmakers to the ash heap of cultural irrelevance. Many filmmakers made the shift to sound willingly, eager to explore the possibilities of what was essentially a new art form. Others, like Chaplin, went begrudgingly. 

But his was a unique case. As an independent producer, he had no studio bosses to force the change upon him. And as one of the most successful and beloved of screen icons, he had the clout and the means to stand his ground and produce whatever sort of picture he wanted. So he opted to remain silent.  

This was not simply a case of stubbornness however, nor of vanity, though Chaplin possessed no shortage of either. Rather, this was a case of retaining the integrity of the character he had nurtured for more than 15 years, the beloved Tramp who had made him famous the world over. For the Tramp was an inherently silent character, and one that had international appeal; to give him a voice—and, perhaps most damaging, a particular language—would limit his archetypal quality.  

“A good silent picture had universal appeal both to the intellectual and the rank and file,” Chaplin wrote in his autobiography. “Now it was all to be lost.” 

So Chaplin set out to prove that silence was an art form rather than an outdated commodity, and he succeeded beyond all expectations. But still there is more to the story, more to the range and depth of Chaplin’s accomplishment. The advent of sound meant that for the first time Chaplin could have absolute control over the scoring of his film. In the silent era, films were often sent to theaters along with complete scores, or at least cue sheets so that each theater’s house musicians could accompany the film with appropriate music. Chaplin had always been involved in compiling these cue sheets, but the nature of the operation limited his influence. The new technology allowed Chaplin to compose his own score and oversee its recording, thus filling the only remaining gap in his auteurist resume. 

The music, however, may not be quite what you’d expect from silent comedy. It has none of the clichéd bumps and whistles that pedestrian musicians so often use to accompany visual comedy. Again from Chaplin’s autobiography: 

I tried to compose elegant and romantic music to frame my comedies in contrast to the tramp character, for elegant music gave my comedies an emotional dimension. Musical arrangers rarely understood this. They wanted the music to be funny. But I would explain that I wanted no competition, I wanted the music to be a counterpoint of grace and charm, to express sentiment, without which, as Hazlitt says, a work of art is incomplete. 

Chaplin scored all of his future films as well, and even went back and composed and recorded scores for many of his earlier films. And, as per his estate, the films must be screened with those scores. Thus modern audiences who wish to see Chaplin on the big screen are often cheated of one of the essential pleasures of silent film: live musical accompaniment.  

David Robertson and the San Francisco Symphony however are correcting that flaw and providing just such an opportunity. 

CITY LIGHTS 

Guest conductor David Robertson will lead the San Francisco Symphony in a performance of Charlie Chaplin’s score for his 1931 classic City Lights at 8 p.m. Nov. 22, 24 and 25. The performance will accompany a screening of the film. The concert will be preceded by an onstage conversation between Robertson and San Francisco Silent Film Festival Artistic Director Stephen Salmons at 7 p.m. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., 

San Francisco. (415) 864-6000. 

www.sfsymphony.org.

In Ice Glen, Joan Ackerman’s play in its West Coast premiere at Aurora Theatre, the eccentric inhabitants of a country estate in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, circa 1919, are disturbed in the pursuit of their various autumnal tasks by the unannounced visit of a Boston editor, seeking to publish the poems of one of the denizens—who doesn’t want her poems published, or even memorized, by a stranger. 

Anyone familiar with today’s poetry scene might be jolted by this unlikely response, but the bucolic housemates take it in stride, more unsettled by the surprise visit and its immediate consequences. Meanwhile, the poet brusquely turns away from welcoming the visitor and returns to her seclusion in nature, where she’s already been mauled (or at least jostled) by a bear, whose unseen presence haunts the play, a spirit of place, or maybe a simile for another unseen presence: the ursine and profligate late master of the domain. 

The insistent editor stays over, at the pressing invitation of the late master’s young widow, visiting the sites—the Ice Glen of the title, for instance—he would like to help the poet immortalize, treating the poet herself as some kind of monument. But an impulsive response to his hostess’s welcoming confidences, followed by departure and silence, muddies the waters, implying a triangle to the others, overlaying another, older triangle. 

Ackermann has a talent for repetition that develops into inference, and an ability to offhandedly disclose the backstory in her glib dialogue. The fine cast, with Barbara Oliver’s direction, is more than a match for the virtues in the dialogue and whatever’s intriguing in the situation, with fine performances by Lauren Grace as the widow, girlish Dulce who endeavors to act the proper lady, and Julian Lopez-Morillas as taciturn manservant Grayson, whose repeated questionings of the editor as to why he wants to publish the poems gradually reveals less incredulity than intuition as to motive. 

These two are by far the most interesting characters. Jessica Powell has a field day with housekeeper Mrs. Roswell, that sanguine fount of gloom, soliloquizing (when she isn’t gossiping) over the sad onset of winter; Marvin C. Greene represents insoucient editor Peter Woodburn very well as he shifts his gears, rediscovering himself under the professional glaze. But these are types—rustic comedienne and repressed city slicker—as are the other two roles, even more so: Zehra Berkman as self-occulting nature poet Sarah Harding and Douglas B. Giorgis as inquisitive but “slow” orphan Denby both get the most out of parts that are limited in conception, stereotypes that are sometimes overly decorated with colorful language—their own, or the epithets of others. 

There’s local color tipped in—Greylock, the peak that figures in Melville’s Piazza Tales—and a fair amount of period name-dropping: Edith Wharton has sent Sara’s poems to Woodburn at the Atlantic Monthly, unbeknownst to the poet. And Woodburn tries to gain Sara’s confidence, or impress her, by offering to get Wallace Stevens or T. S. Eliot to read her poems—not too enticing an offer in 1919, when Stevens’ Harmonium hadn’t yet come out, and Eliot had only a very few poems out in little magazines. A fashionable editor might have mentioned Amy Lowell to a talented, eccentric young woman writer. 

Ice Glen brings up issues of art, communication, loss and sociality, as well as that old chestnut of city-versus-country. But it treats its novelistic themes in a precious and tidy way, despite a few leading ideas, much like Masterpiece Theatre or Hallmark Hall of Fame would, adapting books by second-rate imitators of Wharton or Henry James, sentimentalizing the great authors’ concerns with the dearth or control of communication in a provincial society. 

The fine efforts of director, cast and designers (John Iacovelli’s set and Anna Oliver’s costumes especially) help skirt kitsch, but the overriding sense is of a feel-good reversal of another trip by a Boston editor, years before, to visit a recluse, whose poems he felt were too unusual for print. That editor found Emily Dickinson unbearably intense as a person as well as poet. Such is the tragedy of art in America in its ongoing phases. In Ice Glen, the poetry is finally just another pretext for therapy, self-expression and, one way or another, recognition. 

ICE GLEN 

8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays and at 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays through Dec. 10. $38. Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org.

Steve Anderson’s new documentary Fuck takes a thorough look at the most multi-faceted of expletives—at its murky, myth-laden origins, its many conjugations, its cathartic, emotive power as well as its power to offend.  

While the film contains clips from controversial performances by comedians Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, as well as animations by Bill Plympton and excerpts from dozens of Hollywood films, it is essentially a talking-head documentary, a string of interviews examining the word from all sides. 

But what a collection of talking heads. From sociologists and linguists to comedians and porn stars, Fuck runs the gamut, for who can’t claim some level of expertise with the word and at least one of its myriad meanings? It’s one of the most democratic words in the English language. Television writer/producer Steven Bochco relates tales of clashes with censors over “NYPD Blue”; 1950s wholesome heartthrob Pat Boone shares his G-rated alternative expletive (“Boone!”), while Ice T consequently ridicules it; moralists like Judith “Miss Manners” Martin and radio talk show hosts Alan Keyes and Dennis Prager rail against the prevalence of the word in popular culture, while Bill Maher decries the hypocrisy of the Christian right as he and other comedians and performers defend their right to use it; and Hunter S. Thompson … well, I’m not sure what the hell Thompson was mumbling about between swigs of whiskey and the compulsive adjusting of his transparent blue “Las Vegas” visor, but I’m sure it was fascinating.  

The movie is fun but ultimately it has little insight. Indeed there is more to learn about profanity, self-expression, censorship and the First Amendment by spending more time with the performances the film excerpts, namely those of Lenny Bruce and George Carlin. Bruce of course is the iconic image most associated with topic, having been arrested onstage nine times for his use of profanity and convicted twice, events which hastened the downward spiral which resulted in his death by drug overdose. If you want a better, more moving and insightful glimpse into the topic, check out Bruce’s recordings, or perhaps Dustin Hoffman’s performance as Bruce in Lenny and you’ll get a more compelling portrait of the power of language.  

Or try one of Carlin’s performances, either on video or on one of his old records. Occupation: Foole, his 1973 album, is excerpted in the documentary and it’s a good place to start, for not only do you get Carlin’s riff on the seven infamous words, you also get his comedic take specifically on the word fuck—its drama, its passion and its hurtfulness.  

Fuck provides an interesting and entertaining overview of the word but ultimately the film is far less insightful than its director probably hoped it to be. 

FUCK 

Directed by Steve Anderson. 93 minutes.  

Not rated. Playing at Shattuck Cinemas. 

Image: An array of experts weigh in: Musician Evan Seinfeld and adult film star Tera Patrick, singer Pat Boone, rapper Chuck D, newsman Sam Donaldson, radio talk show host Dennis Prager, late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, comedian Bill Maher, comedian Drew Carey and talk show host and political candidate Alan Keyes.

The films of Agnes Varda and her husband Jacques Demy could not be more different.  

Demy, best known for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, was both part of and apart from the French New Wave. Enamored with Hollywood’s golden age musicals, he is sometimes referred to as France’s answer to Busby Berkeley: sweet but trite stories, artfully decorated but too slight for the tastes of his contemporaries. 

Varda, on the other hand, is New Wave through and through. There are no gunfights, no car crashes, no dramatic chages of heart. Varda made small, insightful films about complex young characters. She represents the feminine side of the New Wave, a movement largely dominated by male directors. And while the male directors for the most part did a fair job of portraying women, Varda’s female characters have a depth and profundity unmatched in the work of her male counterparts. 

Cleo From 5 to 7 details essentially two hours in the life of its heroine in real time, though the timing is not exact and may not be quite realistic; it’s an action-packed two hours of supposedly everyday life. In that short span, the young pop singer protagonist manages a shopping trip, a rehearsal, a visit with a friend and an encounter with a stranger, not to mention bus and taxi trips all over Paris.  

But this is hardly the point. What we’re watching is the psychological processes Cleo undergoes as she awaits the results of a medical test that will tell her just how serious her condition is. She has cancer; we don’t know what kind, we don’t know how serious. We only know that this beautiful, spoiled princess of a woman is suddenly dealing with something she is not accustomed to: hardship and pain.  

How she deals with it tells us almost as much about her as the trappings of her privileged life—her furs, her hats, the adulation of her acquaintances. She approaches her illness with as much self-absorbed intensity as she presumably approached her pre-illness life; she draws people to her, collects them as small testaments to her beauty. But this is not portrayed with condescension; we do not feel contempt for her. Rather we are witnessing the sudden, painful expansion of a young woman’s consciousness as she learns that she is not the center of the world, a notion beautifully expressed in a scene where she plays her latest hit on a cafe jukebox and realizes that no one is paying attention. And, in an encounter with a young soldier about to return to battle in Algeria, she finally gives something of herself to another, offering companionship and conversation to a kindred spirit who also carries a burden. 

The conclusion is typical of the New Wave; there is no big Hollywood–style conclusion, no tearful dramatic close or trite, happy finale, but rather just a small revelation, the flicker of heightened consciousness across Cleo’s face. It is not a big change, not a life-altering change, and in fact the change may prove to be fleeting. But the drama in Cleo From 5 to 7 is not in the action, it is in the mind of its heroine. Such drama is difficult to express as an actor and difficult to photograph for a director, but Varde and her star make it as evident as any Hollywood car crash. 

The film is showing at Pacific Film Archive as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of Janus Films and is available on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection’s 50 Years of Essential Arthouse box set. 

CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 

(France, 1961) 

Directed by Agnes Varda. Starring Corinne Marchand and featuring the music of Michel Legrand. 3 p.m. Sunday at Pacific Film Archive. 2575 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. 

www.criterionco.com.

The Church of the Good Shepherd, situated on the corner of Ninth Street and Hearst Avenue, was one of the first nine structures designated City of Berkeley Landmarks on Dec. 15, 1975. It is the oldest church building standing in Berkeley, as well as the oldest in continuous use by its founding congregation in the entire East Bay. 

In its earlier years, the congregation included such prominent figures as Anna Head (1857–1932), founder of the famous preparatory school for girls; H.N. Marquand, publisher and proprietor of the Berkeley Advocate; and Zimri Brewer Heywood (1803–1879), Berkeley pioneer and owner of the Heywood lumber yard. 

The building originated with a women’s sewing society, which began collecting funds in 1877 to build an Episcopal church in West Berkeley. 

It was constructed in 1878, the year in which the City of Berkeley was incorporated. The architect, Charles L. Bugbee, modeled it after the Gothic Revival Mendocino Presbyterian Church designed a decade earlier by his father’s firm, S.C. Bugbee & Sons of San Francisco. 

In 1869, S.C. Bugbee & Sons was responsible for designing the California Theatre at 430 Bush St., between Kearny and Grant in San Francisco (California State Historic Landmark 86). It cost $150,000 and was for many years the city’s leading theatre. 

Also in 1869, S.C. Bugbee & Sons designed Mills Hall for Mills Seminary (now Mills College) in Oakland. That building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

An earlier version of Oakland City Hall reputedly was one of the firm’s commissions. In 1875, Sumner Bugbee was the architect of record for Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin’s Baldwin Theatre at the corner of Market and Powell Streets, to which a hotel was added in 1877 or ’78. 

Among the palatial Nob Hill residences designed by the firm was David Colton’s neoclassical mansion (1871–72) at the top of California Street, which later passed into the hands of Collis P. Huntington, and which architect Willis Polk in the 1890s would call “the most artistic [...] dwelling in the [...] city.” 

Next came Leland Stanford’s mansion (1875–76), which the San Francisco Chronicle described at the time as “the largest private residence in the state.” It was followed by Charles Crocker’s rococo mansion (1885), situated next door to the Colton residence. 

All three mansions burned in the 1906 fire. The Crocker and Colton palaces have been replaced with Grace Cathedral and Huntington Park, respectively, while the Stanford Court Hotel now stands on the site of Leland Stanford’s Mansion. 

Sumner Bugbee’s own house at 146 Lake St. in Oakland was far more modest. In its Victorian Stick style one can detect some of the same elements that appear on the Church of the Good Shepherd. 

Reflecting its Episcopalian denomination, the Church of the Good Shepherd is considerably more ornate and playful than its severe Presbyterian model in Mendocino. Here we find Victorian ornamentation on the façade walls and decorative shingle patterns on the spire roof. 

The building appears more earth-bound and less vertical than the Mendocino church, owing not only to the wider tower but also to the shape of the windows and the treatment of the belfry. 

This small church boasts no fewer than ten stained-glass windows—two large and eight small ones. The pseudo-Gothic buttresses “supporting” the tower and the chapel are hollow wooden boxes. The eighty-foot tower contains a thousand-pound Blymer bell. 

Until 1894, the latter fulfilled the double function of church bell and fire alarm. 

The building was renovated in 1978 with a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. 

While the exterior remains virtually unchanged, a few minor alterations were made to the interior. A Guild Hall was built in 1917, and a pastor’s house shortly thereafter. These were consolidated into a Parish Hall in 1959. 

The Church of the Good Shepherd was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. On Aug. 10, 2003 it celebrated its 125th anniversary. 

On that occasion the building was renovated again, with $70,000 raised by means of a capital campaign. In addition to receiving a structural upgrade, the church was painted in a handsome color scheme that emphasizes its Victorian style. 

Ornamentation in the neo-Gothic style abounds on the Church of the Good Shepherd exterior. Photograph by Daniella Thompson

I thrashed myself but good last weekend, just doing a little lightweight gardening. 

I was just cutting back some cabbage and weeding out a lot of nastygrass and blackberry, but it did rain just a bit before that, and much of the bed we were working in is in shade.  

So I’m whacking away merrily and what the heck? 

Where’d the air go? And I’m turning blue and wheezing like a punctured accordion and coughing like a whole TB ward and never mind the more unpleasant specifics: I realized I’d got nose-deep in some allergen and it’s a nasty surprise indeed.  

That allergen was almost certainly a mildew growing on the leaves of some hapless plant. There are a slew of mildews that affect garden plants, generally a particular mildew species (or more!) for each plant species. They find happy homes here because we have damp and fog so consistently in the warm growing seasons and, being mildew, they thrive in moisture and find lots of tender sweet cells to feed on then.  

Mildews don’t feed only on those live cells, as we know. They show up indoors in our north-facing rooms, on dampish walls and windowframes, on books and clothing. 

I lost my favorite pair of boots a couple of decades ago—knee-high purple suede with fringe around the tops, and my mother, of all people, had picked them out for me—to some evil-smelling white mildew, though I’d hung them from the closet ceiling for ventilation. Sometimes this California indoor/outdoor living thing goes too far.  

Mildews aren’t plants themselves. Some of them are fungi, members of a whole different kingdom. They have cell walls like plants, but composed of chitin, like shrimp shells. Mushrooms are fungi, of course, and so are lots of less tasty and more annoying things like athlete’s foot. Strange to think of eating something related to athlete’s foot. In fact, let’s stop thinking about it right now. 

Powdery mildews are fungi; they turn up on roses, grapes, apples, oh, lots of plants. 

They don’t need moisture to grow, but they need it to reproduce, and often spread their spores via water splashes or droplets from garden “debris”—which in happier circumstances is nice nutritious mulch from last year’s fallen leaves.  

Downy mildews (or water molds) are not fungi. They’re oomycetes, as are the Phytophthora that cause sudden oak death and potato blight, and the Pythium types that cause damping-off of plant seedlings. They have cell walls too, but composed of cellulose like plants. They’re “primitive” single-celled protists.  

Downy mildews show up on grapes too—poor grapes; it’s a wonder we still have wine—and other plants, and also use water to get their young distributed, though their sexual cells are more survivalist-oriented, tough enough to stand heat and drying. 

Some downy mildews make their living from fungi and from other oomycetes. It’s a dog-eat-dog world even if you’re not a dog.  

All these kingdoms picking on me in one garden foray! So much for being the crown of creation.  

Before I ever look for a single foundation bolt there are a always a few other questions I always have about the building I’m looking at. Of course, I’m talking about earthquake readiness or seismic stability or whatever term-du-jour we’re currently using. 

Houses are not all alike in their inherent earthquake vulnerability and I’d like to bring up just a handful of special conditions that might be present in your home. Hopefully, this will get you thinking about what might have been missed (or could get missed) in the retrofitting of your house, resulting in a really big difference when the earth does the Watusi. 

Line-Wire Stucco: This is a generic term that I’m really not too fond of because it focuses on one aspect of a set of conditions that actually extend far beyond the use of line-wires. Back in the 1940’s some clever but not very smart contractors began installing stucco directly over framing without the use of any sort of backing. Building paper (usually called felt) was installed over the framing but the only other thing behind the stucco was a network of wires that were strung across the studs and stapled in place to provide a semi-rigid backing for the paper so that the wet stucco would have something to push against and wouldn’t just tear through the paper. It was minimalism (and capitalism) at it’s most profound. Prior to this period, stucco had been installed over horizontally installed boards (usually something like a 1 by 10) that would get nailed to the studs. The felt was then stapled over this, along with a metal mesh such as chicken wire to reinforce & hold the stucco in place (that last part, the chicken wire, is also used in line-wire too). 

In an earthquake, even these simple horizontal boards would provide a fair amount of shear resistance (the force that resists tearing and the resulting collapse of walls). This means that when the stucco cracked and detached, the boards would help keep the walls upright. If you take those boards away and you have a skeleton of uprights, they can easily get pushed over during an earthquake (helped enormously by whatever weight is resting upon them, such as the main floor, second story or roof). 

If you happened to have diagonal boards behind your stucco, you really lucked-out because they provide a much higher level of shear strength. You can usually see these diagonal or horizontal boards from the garage or crawl space and occasionally in an attic along one of the gable (triangular) ends. Today we almost always install stucco over plywood or a similar structural panel such as oriented strand board (OSB). OSB is made up of small pieces of wood, lots of glue and a very clever assembly that creates great strength. 

Once again, if you take the boards away and install stucco with no attachment except for a small number of nails, you may be in for lots more damage. Engineers seem always to disagree on the severity of one thing or another but there seems to be a consensus that this is far less serious in a one-story house but may be quite serious with additional stories, especially when combined with large openings such as sliding glass doors, large (or many) windows or garage openings. 

Another very similar condition involves the substitution of line-wires with soft wooden panels that have just enough rigidity to throw the wet stucco against without breakage. Celotex made most of the material I’ve seen and it’s so soft that you can push a pencil through without much effort. This looks like you’ve got some bracing but, in fact, it’s really about the same as the wires alone. It did provide a little insulation but may increase flammability due to its soft pithy makeup. 

If you have a house like this (either line-wire or soft backing panels), it’s best to talk to an engineer. You may want to add some extra bracing. 

Another common condition that I occasionally see is the all-glass house of the 50’s. Glass is not a structural material and if you have a lot of glass around the exterior of your house, you don’t have much shear resistance and that’s a bad thing. While there are numerous solutions to this vulnerability, it’s important to retrofit these houses. I fear that some of our “architect designed” beauties of the 50’s and 60’s will end up either fully collapsed or at best, so badly damaged that escape may be impossible. A house like this can be retrofitted by a clever engineer so it’s important to look into it. 

Eichlers fall into this category too. They’re the very modular looking homes from the 1950’s through the 70’s that have lots of floor-to-ceiling glass, stone fireplaces and simple wood panels. Though a popular “retro” style, these houses are likely to be seriously damaged in a moderate to large local earthquake. 

Wooden houses tend to perform really well in earthquakes if they’re effectively connected to their foundations but the more you remove the wooden walls, the weaker they get. 

Any house that has a lot of holes punched through the exterior walls (windows, doors, garages) tends to get pretty floppy. Since earthquake shear forces are greatest at the bottom of the structure, where the ground is trying to shake the house free (imagine a dog shaking off a flea), any big holes near the base become places for the walls to tear and begin the deformation that eventually can lead to a collapse (partial or complete). 

Imagine you’re sitting on a nice new thick cardboard box. You can sort of shift around and it stays pretty solid. Now cut some holes for windows. When you shift around you’ll start tears at corners of your windows and pretty soon, you’re beautiful house is suffering from an identity crisis. If you cut holes near the very bottom, this happens faster and collapse occurs quicker. 

Step outside your home and consider it as if it were the cardboard box. Consider every door, window, garage opening or other medium to large penetration as a big hole cut in the box. Chimneys are included (in addition to the fact that they’re the first things to come down) because they are often installed over framing without the benefit of wood planking or structural panels behind them. If you can visualize well, you may also note that one or more sides are weaker than the rest.  

One such case that I often see is a building with garage openings all across one side (usually the front). These are, of course at the base and constitute one of the most serious earthquake weakness we see. This is called a soft-story and means that there is almost no resistance to tearing or collapse on that side. Many multi-unit buildings feature this unfortunate element and, once again, an engineer really ought to be consulted since a) it can mean a very nasty event and b) it’s avoidable with the proper alterations.  

I remember so clearly that in 1989, when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit the Marina district in San Francisco, one of the primary images that poured over TV screens again and again was that of multi-story apartment buildings that had collapsed over their front garages. 

There are more special conditions that merit attention including steep hillsides (which change the dynamics of movement in the house), brick walls (as well as other masonry building materials), the soil type you’re resting upon and the weight of your roof. The list really gets sort of ridiculous. I don’t mean to make this unduly complex but it’s actually … complex. 

Nonetheless, the basic principle does work. If your house has a lot of “holes” (windows, doors or garages) or if your house lacks inherent bracing (as in the case of line-wire stucco), it’s more likely to get wanked out of shape when our big one hits. So what do you do? Get professional help, sleep later on Saturday and eat more ice cream. That’s about as helpful as I can get. 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.

FRIDAY, NOV. 17 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Professor Emeritus Didier de Fontaine on “Cosmology.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. 526-2925.  

“The State Vs. Reed” A documentary on a death row inmate’s case, followed by discussion at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donations requested. 528-5403.  

“Mission Against Terror” A documentary about five Cuban men in prison in the U.S. at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., between Broadway and Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. www.HumanistHall.net 

Movies that Matter “The Secret” at 6:30 p.m. at Neumayer Residence, 565 Bellevue St. at Perkins, Oakland. 451-3009. http://joyfulharmony.org 

Share Berkeley History The Berkeley Historical Society is looking for photographs, stories and other memorabilia of Berkeley history. Drop by the North Berkeley Senior Center from 1 to 3 p.m. with your stories and photographs so that Berkeley Historical Society embers can archive them. 848-0181. 

Panel Discussion on Adoption with authors Micky Duxbury and Susan Ito at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

“Go to Your Library and Make Art” A craft program for children in grades 4-12 at 3 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave., Kensington. 524-3043. http://ccclib.org  

SATURDAY, NOV. 18 

Finalists for the Position of Library Director will give presentations from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Story Room, 4th floor, Central Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St. at Shattuck. 981-6195.  

Dig In To Fall Planting Season Volunteers need to help with the ongoing restoration of West Stede Marsh from 9 a.m. to noon at The Watershed Project, 1327 South 46th St., Richmond. To register call 665-3689. www.thewatershedproject.org 

Conference on Racism and Katrina from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Connie Barbour Room (not wheelchair accessible) at 1606 Bonita, enter through education building. 

Chiapas Caravan Sendoff A potluck dinner and update on Mexico and Oaxaca at 6:30 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar St. at Bonita. Donation $5-$20. 415-924-3227. 

Solo Sierrans Sunset Walk in Emeryville Meet at 3:30 p.m. behind Chevy’s Restaurant small parking lot for an hour’s walk through the Marina. Paved trail, wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 234-8949. 

Origami Ornaments at 10:30 a.m. at Elephant Pharmacy, 1607 Shattuck Ave. 549-9200. 

Tilden Tots Join a nature adventure program for 3 and 4 year olds, each accompanied by an adult (grandparents welcome)! We’ll learn about the water cycle, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 7-12 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

“No Safe Haven” with Leena Khandwala, Appellate Advocacy Fellow with the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies on the exploitation of women and girls, at 2 p.m. in the basement auditorium at Berkeley City College. 

Music Business Seminar from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. Cost is $30-$65. Sponsored by California Lawyers for the Arts. 415-775-7200, ext. 107. 

“Video Games Review” with Gen Katz of games4girls, and Lou Katz of Family Media Literacy, at 1:30 p.m. at the Oakland Public Library, Rockridge Branch, 5366 College Ave., Oakland. Sponsored by American Assn. of University Women. 

“Positively No Filipinos Allowed” Building communities and discourse, a panel discussion with Antonio Tiongson, Rick Bonus and Dylan Rodriguez at 2 p.m. at Heller Lounge, 2nd flr., Student Union building, UC Campus. 548-2350. 

Arts and Crafts Faire, with activities for children, from 9 to 5 p.m. at Cottage in the Woods Preschool, 3917 Lyman Rd., Oakland. 531-3121. 

California Writers Club meets to discuss Writers’ Dilemmas: Markets, Mania and Melancholy at 10 a.m. at Barnes & Noble, Jack London Square. 272-0120. 

Friends of the Albany Library Book Sale begins at 9 a.m. in the Edith Stone Room of the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. For more information or to volunteer to help call 526-3720, ext. 5. 

ProArts Benefit Auction “Box Art” at 6 p.m. at 550 Second St., Oakland. 763-9425. 

Kol Hadash Non-Theistic Thanksgiving Shabbat at 10 a.m. at the Albany Senior Center, 846 Masonic Ave. Please bring finger dessert to share, and non-perishable food for the needy. 428-1492. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 19 

Turkey Tales Meet Tilden’s tom turkey and learn all about him at 10 a.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

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

Clouds and You Join us on a short hike to learn about cloud names and cloud families. Meet at 3 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Community Labyrinth Peace Walk at 3 p.m. at Willard Middle School, Telegraph Ave. between Derby & Stuart. Everyone welcome. Wheelchair accessible. Rain cancels. 526-7377.  

Candlelight Vigil for community members at the School of the Americas Watch protest of torture at 5 p.m. at on the steps of St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. 845-4740. 

“Learn How To Build A Living Roof Garden” Learn how to convert a flat roof into a planted garden with Steph Lind. This is a hands-on workshop, converting the Ecohouse tool shed roof into a living garden and add a duck pond and planted drainage swale. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Berkeley Eco-House, 1305 Hopkins St. Cost is $15 sliding scale, no one turned away. 548-2220 ext. 242.  

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tour “UC in 1931: An Era of Change” led by Steve Finacom at 10 a.m. Cost is $8-$10. To register and learn meeting place call 848-0181.  

Mayan Weaving with Celia Santiz Ruiz Learn about her experience as a weaver and a member of the Jolom Mayaetik weavers’ fair trade cooperative at 7:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. Live Oak Park. 644-6893. 

Play Reading Group meets to read Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” at 2 p.m. in the community room of 1471 Addison St., corner of Sacramento, rear of the 1473 building. Donation $5. 655-7962. 

Yiddish Films “Letter to Mother” at 3 p.m. at the JCC, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Tibetan Buddhism with Lama Palzang and Pema Gellek on “Cultivating the Mind of Compassion” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, NOV. 20 

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Kaiser Permanente Dining Conference Room, 1950 Franklin St. To schedule an appointment, call Rachelle at 625-6188. 

CodePINK Monthly Eat and Greet at 6 p.m. at 1248 Solano Ave. Donation $20. 524-2776.  

First Person Superhero A memoir writing workshop at 7 p.m. at Epic Arts Studio, 1923 Ashby Ave. Registration required. 266-2069. 

TUESDAY, NOV. 21 

Tuesday is for the Birds An early morning walk for birders through Martin Luther King-Arrowhead Marsh. Bring water, sunscreen, binoculars and a snack. For meeting location or to borrow binoculars, call 525-2233.  

Tilden Explorers An after-school nature adventure program for 5-7 year olds, at 3:15 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $6-$8. Registration required. 636-1684. 

Berkeley Garden Club with Ann Leyhe of Mrs. Dalloways Bookstore speaking on “Great Garden Books and Resources” at 2 p.m. at Epworth Methodist Church, 1953 Hopkins St. 845-4482. 

“Winessing Palestine” a report back by Katie Mirand and Jonas Moffat on their work with the Tel Rumeida Circus for Detained Palestinians at 7 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowhip Hall, 1924 Cedar St. 415-503-7630. 

“Natural Solutions to Eliminate Pain” with Dr. Jay Sordean, LAc at 1:15 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5190. 

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

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers Join a few slowpoke seniors at 9:30 a.m. in the parking lot near the Little Farm for an hour or two walk. 215-7672, 524-9992. 

Discussion Salon on End of Life Compassion at 7 p.m. at JCC, 1414 Walnut.  

Handbuilding Ceramics Class from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at St. John’s Senior Center, 2727 College Ave. Free, except for materials and firing charges. For information call 525-5497. 

Albany Library Homework Center is open from 3 to 5 p.m., Tues. and Thurs. for students in third through fifth grades. Emphasis is placed on math and writing skills. No registration is required. 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720 ext 17. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

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

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 22  

Walk Berkeley for Seniors meets every Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. Heavy rain cancels. 548-9840. 

Music in the Community Fundraiser from 6 to 10 p.m. at Kimball’s Carnival, 522 Second St., Oakland. Tickets are $5-$15. 444-6979. 

Myers-Briggs for Mothers A workshop to understand your child’s temperment, at 7 p.m. at Epic Arts Studio, 1923 Ashby Ave. Registration required. 266-2069. 

Fresh Produce Stand at San Pablo Park from 3 to 6:30 p.m. in the Frances Albrier Community Center. Sponsored by the Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice. 848-1704. www.ecologycenter.org 

Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil at the Berkeley BART Station, corner of Shattuck and Center. Sing for Peace at 6:30 p.m. followed by Peace Walk at 7 p.m. www. 

geocities.com/vigil4peace/vigil 

THURSDAY, NOV. 23 

Annual Food Not Bombs Dinner from 2 to 5 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Free. Please bring a vegetarian dish and a thank you to share. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

ONGOING 

All Net Youth Basketball for ages 9-11 begins Nov. 21 at Berkeley Youth Alternatives, 1255 Allston Way. For information call 845-9066. 

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

Holiday Food Drive Sponsor a Food Drive at your business, school, place of worship or community center. Help the Food Bank reach its goal of collecting 700,000 pounds of nutritious, non-perishable food for families in need during the holiday season. 635-3663, ext. 318. www.accfb.org  

CITY MEETINGS 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon. Nov. 20, Nov. 27, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St. 981-6900. 

www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon. Nov. 20, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche, 644-6128 ext. 113.